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AUTHOR: 


GROTE, GEORGE 


TITLE: 


GREECE ... | 


PLACE: 


NEW YORK 


DATE: 


1900 


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Ε 884 

ἐ. 691}4 i eee ον 
Beast: Grote, George, 1794-1871. . Sag 
Greece: 1. Legendary Greece. wu. Grecian history to the Ὁ 
reign of Peisistratus at Athens, by George Grote, esq. Re- 


printed from the 2d London edition ... New York, P. F. 
Collier & son, 1900 «1901 ” 


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12 v. fronts., plates. 204°, (Lettered on cover: Nations of the 
world) 


Published originally under title: History of Greece. London, 1846-56, 
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911 ᾿ Αι Greece—History. 


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RETURN OF ALCIBIADES TO ATHENS 


Krontispte ὅς Greece, vol, 


GREECE 


I. LEGENDARY GREECE 
GRECIAN HISTORY TO THE REIGN 
OF PEISISTRATUS AT: ATHENS 


oe 
GEORGE GROTE, 2SOQ: 


REPRINTED FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION 


ILLUSTRATED 


ee ee ad 


, YOLUME | 


NEW YORK 


PETER FENELON COLLIER & SON 


MCM 


PART L--LEGENDARY 3REECR 


᾿Ανὸρῶν ἡρώων ὕειον γένος, οἱ KaAEo”TAL 
Ἡμίϑεοι προτέρῃ γενέ;:,. --- ἨΈΒΙΟΡ 


PART Π..-- HISTORICAL GREECE. 


. eeedlvdses μερόπων ἀνϑρώπων. -- Homme 


PROBERT s. ‘(Ett Gey 


PREFACE. 


THE first idea sf this History was conceived many years 
ago, at a time whin ancient Hellas was known to the English 
public chiefly throu,th the pages of Mitford ; and my purpose 
in writing it was to rectify the erroneous statements as to 
matter of fact which that History contained, as well as to pre- 
gent the general pheaomena of the Grecian world under what 
I thought a juster and more comprehensive point of view. My 
leisure, however, was not at that time equal to the execution 
of any large literary undertaking ; nor is it until within the 
last three or four years that I have been able to devote to the 
work that continvems=ma@eextlasive labor, ‘without which, 
though much may be done to illustrate detached points, no 
entire or complicated subject can ever be set forth in a man 
ner worthy to meet the public eye. 

Meanwhile the state of the English literary world, in ref 
exence to ancient Hellas, has been materially changed in 
more ways than one. If my early friend Dr. Thirlwall’s 
History of Greece had appeared a few years sooner, I should 
probably never have conceived the design of the present 
work at all; I should certainly not have been prompted to the 
task by any deficiencies, such as those which I felt and regret- 
ted in Mitford. The comparison of the two authors affords, 
indeed, a striking prowf of the progress of sound and enlarged 


xv Pkrr ACE. 
views respecting the ancient world during the present gener 

ation. Having studied of course the same evidences as Dr 

Thirwall, I am better enabled than others to bear testimony 
to the learning, the sagacity, and the candor which pervade 
his excellent work: and it is the more incumbent on me to 
give expression to this sentiment, since the particular points 
on which I shall have oceasion to advert to it will, unavoidably, 
be points of dissent oftener than of coincidence. 

The liberal spirit of criticism, in which Dr. Thirwall stands 
so much distinguished from Mitford, is his own: there are 
other features of superiority which belong to him conjointly 
with hisage. For during the generation since Mitford’s work, 
philological studies have been prosecuted in Germany with 
remarkable success: the stock of facts and documents, com- 
paratively scanty, handed down from the ancient world, 
has been combined and illustrated in a thousand different 
ways: and if our witnesses cannot be multiplied, we at least 
have numerous interpreters to catch, repeat, amplify, and ex- 
plain their broken and half-naudible depositions. Some of 
the best writers in this department— Boeckh, Niebuhr, 
0. Miiller — have been translated into our language ; so that 
the English public has been enabled to form some idea of the 
new lights thrown upon many subjects of antiquity by the in- 
estimable aid of German erudition. The poets, historians, 
orators, and philosophers of Greece, have thus been all ren- 
dered both more intelligible and more instructive than they 
were to a student in the last century; and the general pic- 
ture of the Grecian world may now be conceived with a de- 
gree of fidelity, which, considering our imperfect materials, it 
is curious to contemplate. 

It is that general picture which an historian of Greece is 
required first to embody in his own mind, and next to lay out 
before his readers ; — ἃ picture not merely such as to: elight 
the imagination by brilliancy of coloring and depth of senti- 
ment, but also suggestive and improving to the reason Nog 


PREF ACE. 5 


omitting the points of resemblance as well as of contrast with 
the better-known forms of modern society, he will especially 
study to exhikit the spontaneous movement of Grecian intel- 
lect, sometimes aided but never borrowed from without, and 
lighting up a small portion of a world otherwise clouded and 
stationary. He will develop the action of that social system 
which, while insuring to the mass of freemen a degree of ὼν 
tection elsewhere unknown, acted as a stimulus to the crea 
tive impulses of genius, and left the superior minds sufficiently 
upshackled to soar above religious and political routine, to 
overshoot their own age, and to become the teachers of pos 
terity. 

To set forth the history of a people by whom the first spark 
was set to the dormant intellectual capacities of our nature,— 
Hellenic phenomena, as illustrative of the Hellenic mind and 
character,— is the task which I propose to myself in the 
present work ; not without a painful consciousness how muck 
the deed falls short of the will, and a yet more painful con- 
viction, that full success is rendered impossible by an obstacle 
which no human ability can now remedy,— the insufficiency 
of original evidence. For, in spite of the valuable expositions 
of so many able commentators, our stock of information re 
specting the ancient world still remains lamentably inadequate 
to the demands of an enlightened curiosity. We possess only 
what has drifted ashore from the wreck of a stranded vessel : 
and though this includes some of the most precious svticlen 
amongst its once abundant cargo, yet if any man will cast his 
eyes over the citations in Diogenes Laértius, Athenzeus, or 
Plutarch, or the list of names in Vossius de Historicis Gree 
cis, he will see with grief and surprise how much larger is 
the proportion which, through the enslavement of the Greekg 
themselves, the decline of the Roman Empire, the change of 
religion, and the irruption of barbarian conquerors, has been 
irrecoverably submerged. We are thus reduced to judge of 
dhe whole Hellenic world, eminently multiform as it was, 


ω PREF ACE. 


from a few compositions; excellent, indeed, in themselves, but 
bearing too exclusively the stamp of Athens. Of Thucydides 
and Aristotle, indeed, both as inquirers into matter of fact, 
and as free from narrow local feeling, it is impossible to speak 
too highly ; but, unfortunately, that work of the latter which 
would have given us the most copious information regarding 
Grecian political life — his collection and comparison of one 
hundred and fifty distinct town constitutions — has not been 
preserved : and the brevity of Thucydides often gives us but a 
single word where a sentence would not have been too much, 
and sentences which we should be glad to see expanded into 
paragraphs. 

Such insufficiency of original and trustworthy materials, as 
compared with those resources which are thought hardly suf- 
ficient for the historian of any modern kingdom, is neither to 
be concealed nor extenuated, however much we may lament 
it. I advert to the point here on more grounds than one. 
For it not only limits the amount of formation which an 
historian of Greece can give to his readers,— compelling him 
to leave much of his picture an absolute blank,— but it also 
greatly spoils the execution of the remainder. ‘The question 
of credibility is perpetually obtruding itself, and requirmg a 
Jecision, which, whether favorable or unfavorable, always in- 
troduces more or less of controversy ; and gives to those out 
lines, which the interest of the picture requires to be straight 
and vigorous, a faint and faltering character. Expressions 
of qualified and hesitating affirmation are repeated until the 
reader is sickened ; while the writer himself, to whom this 
restraint is more painful still, is frequently tempted to break 
loose from the unseen spell by which a conscientious criticism 
binds him down, — to screw up the possible and probable 
into certainty, to suppress counterbalancing considerations, 
and to substitute a pleasing romance in place of half- 
known and perplexing realities. Desiring, in the present 
work, to set forth all which can be ascertained, together witb 


VY REF ACE. vij 


such conjectures and inferences as can be reasonably deduced 
from it, but nothing more,—l notice, at the outset, that faulty 
state of the original evidence which renders discussions of 
credibility, and hesitation in the language of the judge, una- 
voidable. Such discussions, though the reader may be as- 
sured that they will become less frequent as we advance into 
times better known, are tiresome enough, even with the com- 
paratively late period which I adopt as the historical begin- 
ning; much more intolerable would they have proved, had I 
thought it my duty to start from the primitive terminus of 
Deukalion or Inachus, or from the unburied Pelasgi and 
Leleges, and to subject the heroic ages to a similar scrutiny. 
[ really know nothing so disheartening or unrequited as the 
elaborate balancing of what is called evidence,— the compar- 
ison of infinitesimal probabilities and conjectures all uncerti 
fied,—- in regard to these shadowy times and persons. 

The law respecting sufficiency of evidence ought to be the 
game for ancient times as for modern; and the reader will 
find in this History an application, to the former, of ‘criteria 
analogous to those which have been long recognized in the 
latter. Approaching, though with a certain measure of 
indulgence, to this standard, I begin the real history of 
Greece with the first recorded Olympiad, or 776 B.c. To 
guch as are accustomed to the habits once universal, and still 
not uncommon, in investigating the ancient world, I may ap- 
pear to be striking off one thousand years from the scroll of 
history ; but to those whose canon of evidence is derived 
from Mr. Hallam, M. Sismondi, or any other eminent histo- 
rian of modern events, I am well assured that I shall appear 
‘ax and credulous rather than exigent or sceptical. For 
the truth is, that historical records, properly so called, do not 
begin until long after this date: nor will any man, who caw 
didly considers the extreme paucity of attested facts for two 
centuries after 776 B. c., be astonished to learn that the state 
of Greece in 900, 1000, 1100, 1200, 1300, 14UU 2. 6. om, 


viii PREFACE. 


—or any eatlier century which it may please chronologists te 
include in their computed genealogies,— cannot be described 
to him upon anything like decent evidence. I shall hope, 
when I come to the lives of Socrates and Plato, to illustrate 
one of the most valuable of their principles,— that conscious 
and confessed ignorance is a better state of mind, than the 
fancy, without the reality, of knowledge. Meanwhile, I begin 
by making that confession, in reference to the real world of 
Greece anterior to the Olympiads; meaning the disclaimer 
to apply to anything like a general history,— not to exclude 
rigorously every individual event. 

The times which I thus set apart from the region of his- 
tory are discernible only through a different atmosphere, — 
that of epic poetry and legend. To confound together these 
disparate matters is, in my judgment, essentially unphilo- 
sophical. I describe the earlier times by themselves, as con 
ceived by the faith and feeling of the first Greeks, and known 
only through their legends, — without presuming to measure 
how much or how little of historical matter these legends may 
contain. If the reader blame me for not assisting him to de- 
termine this, —if he ask me why I do not undraw the curtain 
and disclose the picture, -—I reply in the words of the painter 
Zeuxis, when the same question was addressed to him on ex- 
hibiting his master-piece of imitative art: “The curtain as 
the picture.” What we now read as poetry and legend was 
once accredited history, and the only genuine history which 
the first Greeks could conceive or relish of their past time: the 
curtain conceals nothing behind, and cannot, by any ingenuity, 
be withdrawn. I undertake only to show it as it stands, — 
not to efface, still less to repaint it. 

Three-fourths of the two volumes now presented to the 
public are destined to elucidate this age of historical faith, 
as distinguished from the later age of historical reason: to 
exhibit its basis in the human mind,— an omnipresent religious 
and personal interpretation of nature ; to illustrate it by com 


PREFACE iz 


parison with the like mental habit in early modern Europe ; 
to show its immense abundance and variety of narrative 
matter, with little care for consistency between one story 
and another ; lastly, to set forth the causes which overgrew 
and partially supplanted the old epical sentiment, and intro- 
duced, in the room of literal faith, a variety of compromises 
and interpretations. 

The legendary age of the Greeks receives its principal 
tharm and dignity from the Homeric poems: to these, there- 
bre, and to the other poems included in the ancient epic, an 
entire chapter is devoted, the length of which must be justi- 
fied by the names of the Iliad and Odyssey. I have thought 
it my duty to take some notice of the Wolfian controversy as 
it now stands in Germany, and have even hazarded some 
speculations respecting the structure of the Iliad. The so 
ciety and manners of the heroic age, considered as known in 
a general way from Homer’s descriptions and allusions, are 
also described and criticized. 

I next pass to the historical age, beginning at 776 B.c. ; 
prefixing some remarks upon the geographical features of 
Greece. I try to make out, amidst obscure and scanty indi- 
cations, what the state of Greece was at this period ; and I 
indulge some cautious conjectures, founded upon the earliest 
verifiable facts, respecting the. steps immediately antecedent 
by which that condition was brought about. In the present 
volumes, I have only been able to include the history of Sparta 
and the Peloponnesian Dorians, down to the age of Peisis- 
tratus and Croesus. I had hoped to have comprised in 
them the entire history of Greece down to this last-mentioned 
period, but I find the space insufficient. 

The history of Greece falls most naturally into six com- 
partments, of which the first may be looked at as a period of 
preparation for the five following, which exhaust the free life 
of collective Hellas. 

I. Period from 776 B. σ. to 560 B. ¢., the accession of 


Peisistratus at Athens and of Croesus in Lydia 
A* 


x PREFACE. 


IT. From the accession of Peisistratus and Croesus to the 
repulse of Xerxes from Greece. 

III. From the repulse of Xerxes to the close of the Pelo 
ponnesian war and overthrow of Athens. 

IV. From the close of the Peloponnesian war to the bat- 
tle of Leuktra. 

V. From the battle of Leuktra to that of Chzroneia. 

VI. From the battle of Chzeroneia to the end of the gen- 
eration of Alexander. 

The five periods, from Peisistratus down to the death of 
Alexander and of his generation, present the acts of an his- 
torical drama capable of being recounted in perspicuous suc- 
cession, and connected by a sensible thread of unity. I shali 
interweave in their proper places the important but outlying 
adventures of the Sicilian and Italian Greeks, — introducing 
such occasional notices of Grecian political constitutions, phi- 
losophy, poetry, and oratory, as are requisite to exhibit the 
many-sided activity of ths people duriag their short but 
brilliant career. 

After the generation of Alexander, the political action of 
Greece becomes cramped and degraded, — no longer interest- 
ing to the reader, or operative on the destinies of the future 
world. We may, indeed, name one or two incidents, especially 
the revolutions of Agis and Kleomenés at Sparta, which are 
both instructive and affecting; but as a whole, the period, 
between 300 B. c. and the absorption of Greece by the Ro- 
mans, is of no interest in itself, and is only so far of value 
as it helps us to understand the preceding centuries. ‘The 
dignity and value of the Greeks from that time forward be 
long to them only as individual philosophers, preceptors, as- 
tronomers, and mathematicians, literary men and critics, med 
ical practioners, etc. In all these respective capacities. 
especially in the great schools of philosophical speculation 
they still constitute the light of the Roman world; though 
as communities, they have lost their own orbit, and have be 
me satellites of more powerful neighbors. 


PREFACE. 2B 


I propose to bring down the history of the Grecian com- 
munities to the year 300 8. Ο.. or the close of the generation 
which takes its name from Alexander the Great, and I hope 
to accomplish this in eight volumes altogether. For the next 
two or three volumes [ have already large preparations 
made, and 1 shall publi’: my third (perhaps my fourth) in 
the course of the ensuing winter. 

There are great disadvantages in the publication of one 
portion of a history apart from the remainder ; for neither the 
earlier nor the later phenomena can be fully comprehended 
without the light which each mutually casts upon the other. 
But the practice has become habitual, and is indeed more 
than justified by the well-known inadmissibility of “long 
hopes”’ into the short span of human life. Yet I cannot but 
fear that my first two volumes will suffer in the estimation of 
many readers by coming out alone,— and that men who value 
the Greeks for their philosophy, their politics, and their ora- 
tory, may treat the early legends as not worth attention. 
And it must be confessed that the sentimental attributes of 
the Greek mind— its religious and poetical vein —here ap- 
pear in disproportionate relief, as compared with its more 
vigorous and masculine capacities, — with those powers of 
acting, organizing, judging, and speculating, which will be re- 
vealed in the forthcoming volumes. I venture, however, to 
forewarn the reader, that therc will occur numerous circum- 
stances in the after political life of the Greeks, which he will 
not comprehend unless he be initiated into the course of their 
legendary associations. He will not understand the frantic 
terror of the Athenian public during the Peloponnesian war, 
on the occasion of the mutilation of the statues called Her- 
mz, unless he enters into the way in which they connected 
their stability and security with the domiciliation of the gods 
in the soil: nor will he adequately appreciate the habit of 
the Spartan king on military expeditions, — when he offered 
his daily public sacrifices on behalf of his army and his coun 


xii PREFACE. 


try, — “always to perform this morning service ‘mmediately 
before sunrise, in order that he might be beforehand in ob- 
taining the favor of the gods,” if he be not familiar with the 
Homeric conception of Zeus going te rest at night and 
awaking to rise at early dawa from the side of the “ white- 
armed Héré.” The oecasion will, indeed, often occur for 
remarking how these iegends illustrate and vivify the politi 
cal phenomena of the succeeding times, and I have onl7 now 
to urge the necessity of considering them as the beginning of 
a series, —not as an entire work. 


1 Xenophon, Repub. Lacedsmon. cap. xiii 8 ‘Ael δὲ, ὅταν ϑύηται, dpye- 
ται μὲν τούτου τοῦ ἔργου ἔτι κνεφαῖος, κγολαμρανειν βουλόμενος τὴν τοῦ Deed 
αὔνοιαν. 


Lonpon, March 5 1946. 


PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION OF 
VOLUMES I. AND II. 


In preparing a Second Edition of the first two volumes 
of my History, I have profited by the remarks and correc- 
tions of various critics, contained in Reviews, both English 
and foreign. I have suppressed, or rectified, some positions 
which had been pointed out as erroneous, cr as advanced 
upon inadequate evidence. I have strengthened my argu- 
ment in some cases where it appeared to have been imper- 
fectly understood, —adding some new notes, partly for the 
purpose of enlarged illustration, partly to defend certain 
opinions which had been called in question. The greater 
number of these alterations have been made in Chapters 
XVI. and XXI. of Part I., and in Chapter VI. of Part IT. 

I trust that these three Chapters, more full of speculation, 
and therefore more open to criticism than any of the others, 
will thus appear in ἃ more complete and satisfactory form. 
But I must at the same time add that they remain for the 
most part unchanged in substance, and that I have seen no 
sufficient reason to modify my main conclusions even respect- 
ing the structure of the Iliad, controverted though they have 
been by some of my most esteemed critics. — 

In regard to the character and peculiarity of Grecian le 
gend, as broadly distinguished throughout these volumes from 
Grecian history, I desire to notice two valuable publications 


av PREFACE. 


with which I have only become acquainted since the date of 
my first edition. One of these is, A Short Essay on Primz- 
val History, by John Kenrick,M. A. (London, 1846, publish- 
ed just at the same time as these volumes, ) which illustrates 
with much acute reflection the general features of legend, 
not only in Greece but throughout the ancient world, — see 
especially pages 65, 84, 92, et seg. The other work is, 
Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, by Colonel 
Sleeman, — first made known to me through an excellent no- 
tice of my History in the Edinburgh Review for October 1846. 
The description given by Colonel Sleeman, of the state of 
mind now actually prevalent among the native population of 
Hindostan, presents a vivid comparison, helping the modern 
reader to understand and appreciate the legendary era of 
Greece. I have embodied in the notes of this Second Hdi- 
tion two or three passages from Colonel Sleeman’s instruc- 
tive work: but the whole of it richly deserves perusal. 

Having now finished six volumes of this History, without 
attaining a lower point than the peace of Nikias, in the tenth 
year of the Peloponnesian war, — I find myself compelled to 
retract the expectation held out in the preface to my First 
Edition, that the entire work might be completed in eight 
volumes. Experience proves to me how impossible it is to 
measure beforehand the space which historical subjects will 
require. All I can now promise is, that the remainder of the 
work shall be executed with as much regard to brevity as is 
consistent with the paramount duty of rendering it St for 
public acceptance. 


London, April 3, 1849 


νυ pe es oe —— en to a —, ‘ 4 : 
" aes hig Poet CE ἫΝ Sgt chet satiny μι aio he's ΟΝ τὴς a δ» ame 


NAMES OF GODS, GODDESSES, AND HEROES. 


FoLLowi1ne the exampic 2 Dr. Thirlwall and other excellent 
scholars, I call the Greek deities by their real Greek names, and 
not by the Latin equivalents used among the Romans. For the 
assistance of those readers to whom the Greek names may be leas 
&miliar, I here annex a table of the one ard the other. 


Greek. Latin. 
Zeus, Jupiter. 
Puseid6n, Neptune. 
Arés, Mars. 
Dionysus, Bacchus. 
Hermés, Mercury. 

- Hélios, Sol. 
Héphestus, Vulcan. 
Hadés, Pluto. 


Héré, Juno. 
Athéné, Minerva. 
Artemis, Diana. 
Aphrodité, Venus. 
Eos, Aurora. 
Hestia, Vesta. 
Lété, Latona. 
Démétér, Ceres. 


Héraklés, Hercules. 
Asklépius, Aésculapius. 


A few words are here necessary respecting the crthography 
ot Greek names adopted in the above table and generally through- 
out this history. I have approximated as nearly as I dared to 
the Greek letters in preference to the Latin; and on this point I 
venture upon an innovation which 1 should have little doubt of 
vindicating before the reason of any candid English student. For 
the ordinary practice of substituting, in a Greek name, the English 
C in place of the Greek K, is, indeed, so obviously incorrect, that 


evi 


tt admits of vo rational ,ustification. Our own K, precisely and 
in every point, coincides with the Greek K: we have thus the 
means of reproducing the Greek name to the eye as well as to 
the ear, yet we gratuitously take the wrong letter in preference i: ~ -- 
to the right. And the τς κέ of the Latins is here against us ΐ CONTENTS 
rather than in our favor, for their C really coincided in sound ; 

with the Greek K, whereas our C entirely departs from it, and VOL. L 
becomes an §, before 6, 7, @, @, and y. Though our C has so far 
deviated in sound from the Latin C, yet there is some warrant 
for our continuing to use it in writing Latin names, — because we 
thus reproduce the name to the eye, though not to the ear. But 
this is not the case when we employ our C to designate the Greek Ἑ 

K, for we depart here τι t tess from the visible than from the audi- LAVERSARY CREECH 
ble original ; while we mar the unrivalled euphony of the Greek 
language by that multiplied sibilation which constitutes the least 
inviting feature in our own. Among German philologists, the K 
is now universally employed in writing Greek names, and I have 
adopted it pretty largely in this work, makiag exception for such 
names as the English reader has been so accustomed to hear with 
the C, that they may be considered as being almost Anglicised. 


I have, farther, marked the long 6 and the long 9 (yj, 0,) by 8 
— ex (Héré) when they occur in the last syllable or in the disabled. — Kronos and the Titans. — Kronos overreached. — Birth and 
safety of Zeus and his brethren. — Other deities. — Ambitious schemes of 


penultimate of a name. os 

δ Zeus. — Victory of Zeus and his brethren over Kronos and the Titans. — 

ἣ Typhdeus. — Dynasty of Zeus. — His offspring. — General distribution of 
the divine race. — Hesiodic theogony — its authority. — Points of differ- 
ence between Homer and Hesiod. — ‘Homeric Zeus. — Amplified theogony 
of Zeus.— Hesiodic mythes traceable to Kréte and Delphi.— Orphic 
theogony.-- Zeus and Phanés. — Zagreus. — Comparison of Hesicd and 
Orpheus. — Influence of foreign religions upon Greece — Especially 
in regard to the worship of Démétér and Dionysos. — Purification for 
homicide unknown to Homer. —New and peculiar religious rites. — Cir- 
culated by voluntary teachers and promising special blessings. — Epime- 
nidés, Sibylla, Bakis. — Principal mysteries of Greece. — Ecstatic rites 
introduced from Asia 700-500 B. C.— Connected with the worship of 
Dionysos. — Thracian and Egyptian influence upon Greece. — Encour- 
agement to mystic legends. — Melampus the earliest name as teacher of 
the Dionysiac rites. — Orphic sect, a variety of the Dionysiac mystics. —~ 
Contrast of the mysteries with the Homeric Hymns.— Hymn to Diony- 
sos. — Alteration of the primitive Grecian idea of Dionysos. — 
frenzy grafted ou the joviality of the Grecian Dionysia. — Eleusinian m 
teries. — Homeric Hymn to étér. — Temple of Eleusis, built by order 
of Démétér for her residence. — Démétér prescribes the mystic ritual of 
Eleusis. — Homeric Hymn a sacred Eleusinian record, explanatory of the 
details of divine service. — Importance of the mysteries to the town of 
Eleusis. — Strong hold of the legend upon Eleusinian feelings. Di 


eA 


PART I. 


Ap weet bo dels 


lee, 


SYA 


CHAPTER I. 


ν᾿ We noe 


LEGENDS RESPECTING THE ΘΟΣΒ. 


ἀπὲ, i ἐ. 
om 


os 


Dpening of the mythical world. — How the mythes are to be 
gory rarely admissible. — Zeus —foremost in Grecian conception. — The 
βοᾶς τ how conceived: human type enlarged. — Past history of the gods 
tted on to present conceptions. — Chaos. — Gea and Uranos.— Uranos 


t 
τί 
~ 


ere) 


pai 


xvi CONTENTS. 


ent legends respecting I émétér elsewhere. — Expansion of the legends. ~- 
Hellenic importance of Démétér.— Legends of Apollo. — Delian Apollo. 
— Pythian Apollo. — Foundation legends of the Delphian oracle. — Th 
served the purpose of historical explanation. — Extended worship οἱ 
Apollo. — Multifarious local legends respecting Apollo.— Festivals and 
Agoénes. — State of mind and circumstances out of which Grecian mythes 
arose. — Discrepancies in the legends little noticed. -— Aphrodité. — Athéné. 
— Artemis. — Poseidén. — Stories of temporary servitude imposed on 
s. — Héré. — Héphestos. — Hestia. — Hermés. — Hermés inventor of 
the lyre—— Bargain between Hermés and Apollo. — Expository value of 
the Hymn. — Zeus. — Mythes arising out of the religious ceremonies. — 
Small part of the animal sacrificed. — Prométheus had outwitted Zeus. ~ 
Gods, heroes, and men, appear together in the mythes pages 1-64 


CHAPTER II. 
LEGENDS RELATING TO HEROES AND MEN. 


Baccs of men as they appear in the Hesiodic “ Works and Days.” — The 
Golden. — The Silver.--The Brazen.— The Heroic.— The Iron.— 
Different both from the Theogony and from Homer. — Explanation of 
this difference. — Ethical vein of senitiment.— Intersected by the myth- 
ical. — The “ Works and Days,” earliest did>~tic poem. — First Introduc- 
tion of dzmons.— Changes in the idea of demons.— Employed in 
attacks on the faith. — Functions of the Hesiodic demons. — Per- 
zonal feeling which pervades the “ Works and Days.” — Probable age of 

64-73 


CHAPTER III 


LEGEND OF THE IAPETIDS. 


ids in Hesiod. — Prométheus and Epimétheus. — Counter-manceuvring 

of Prométheus and Zeus.— Pand6ra.— Pandora in the Theogony. — 
General feeling of the poet.— Man wretched, but Zeus not to blame. — 
Mischiefs arising from women.— Punishment of Prométheus.— The 
Prométheus of Aischylus.— Locality in which Prométheus was con- 
73-80 


CHAPTER IV. 
HEROIC LEGENDS. —GENEALOGY OF ARGUB. 


Structure and purposes of Grecian genealogies. — To connect the Grecian 
community with their common god. — Lower members of the genealogy 
historical — higher members non-historical.— The non-historical portion 
equally believed, and most valued by the Greeks. — Number of such gen- 
ealogies — pervading every fraction of Greeks. — Argeian genealogy. — 
Inachus.— Phoréneus. — Argos Panoptés. — 16.— Romance of I6 his- 
thoricized by Persians and Phoenicians. — Legendary abductions of hero 
imes a πα to the feelings prevalent during the Persian war. — Danaos 
and the aldes. — Acrisios and Prostos. — The Preetides cured of frenzy 


- 
3 
- 
3 
‘* 
| 
: Ἷ 


CONTENTS. εἰν 


oy Melampus. — Acrisios, Danaé, and Zeus. — Perseus and the Gargons. 
— Foundation of Mycénz — commencement of Perseid dywasty. — Am- 
phitryon, Alkméné, Sthenelos. — Zeus and Alkméné. — Birth of Héraklés. 
— Homeric legend of his birth: its expository value. -~ The Hérakleids 
expelled. — Their recovery of Peloponnésus and establishment in Argos, 
Sparta, and Messénia 80-95 


CHAPTER V. 


DEUKALION. HELLEN, AND SONS OF HELLEN. 


Denkalién, son of Prométheus. — Phthidtis: his permanent seat. — General 


deluge. — Salvation of Deukalion and Pyrrha. — Belief in this deluge 
throughout Greece. — Hellén and Amphiktyon.— Sons of Hellén : Dérus, 
Xuthus, olus.— Amphiktyonic assembly.— Common solemnities and 
games. — Division of Hellas: olians, Dorians, Iénians. — Large extent 
of Doris implied in this genealogy. — This form of the legend harmonizes 
with the great establishments of the historical Dorians. — Achzus — 
purpose which his name serves in the legend. — Genealogical diversi- 
GOS .....«δοουουσοοῥνωυνοοονσοροφουν» "αὐ νυν υσαβονας ... 96-106 


CHAPTER VI. 


THE ZOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ZXOLUS. 


L:gends of Greece, originally isolated, afterwards thrown into series. — Zo- 


lus. — His seven sons and five daughters. —1. First olid line — Salmé- 
neus, Tyr. — Pelias and Néleus. — Péré, Bias, and Melampus. — Peri 
klymenos. — Nestor and his exploits. — Néleids down to Kodrus.— 
Second “ΖΞ οϊϊα line — Krétheus. — Admétus and Alcéstis. — Péleus and the 
wife of Acastus. —Pelias and Jasén.—Jasén and Médea. — Médea at 
Corinth. — Third olid line —Sisyphus.— Corinthian genealogy of 
Eumélus. — Coalescence of different legends about Médea and Sisyphus. 
— Bellerophon. — Fourth Atolid line — Athamas.— Phryxus and Hellé. 
— Ind and Palemén —Isthmian games.— Local root of the legend of 
Athamas. — Traces of ancient human sacrifices. — Athamas in the dis- 
trict near Orchomenos. — Eteoklés — festival of the Charitésia. — Found- 
ation and greatness of Orchomenos. — Overthrow by Héraklés and the 
Thebans. — Trophénius and Agamédés. —- Ascala hos and Ialmenos. — 
Discrepancies in the Orchomenian genealogy. — Probable inferences as 
to the ante-historical Orchomenos. — Its early wealth and industry. — 
Emissaries of the lake Képais. — Old Amphiktyony at Kalauria. — Orchoe 
menos and Thebés. — Aleyoné and Kéyx.— Canacé. — The Aldids.— 
Calycé. — Elis and Att6lia. — Eleian genealogy. — Augeas. — The Molio» 
nid brothers. — Variations in the Eleian genealogy. — /Etolian genealogy. 

~-(CEnens, Meleager, Tydeus. — Legend of Meleager in Homer. — How 
altered by the poets r Homer. — Althea and the burning brand. — 
Grand Kalydénian boar-hunt. — Atalanta. — Relics of the boar long pre: 
served at Tegea.— Atalanta vanquished in the race by stratagem.— 
Deianeira. — Death of Héraklés. — Tydeus. — Old age of CEneus. —- Dis- 
erepant genealogies ..... --+ssssecccccocesseessrereces vee 105-158 


cv UONTENTS. 


ont legends respecting 1 émétér elsewhere. — Expansion of the legends. ~ 
Hellenic importance of Démétér. — Legends of Apollo. — Delian Apolla 
— Pythian Apollo. — Foundation legends of the Delphian oracle. — Th 
served the purpose of historical explanation. — Extended worship 
Apollo. — Multifarious local legends respecting Apollo. — Festivals and 
Agénes. — State of mind and circumstances out of which Grecian mythes 
arose, — Discrepancies in the legends little noticed. -— Aphrodité. — Athéné. 
— Artemis. — Poseidén. — Stories of temporary servitude imposed on 
s. — Héré. — Héphwstos. — Hestia. — Hermés. — Hermés inventor of 
the lyre.— Bargain between Hermés and Apollo. — Expository value of 
the Hymn. — Zeus. — Mythes arising out of the religious ceremonies. — 
Small part of the animal sacrificed. — Prométheus had outwitted Zeus. — 


Gods, heroes, and men, appear together in the mythes 


CHAPTER II. 
LEGENDS RELATING TO HEROES AND MEN. 


Races of men as they appear in the Hesiodic “ Works and Days.” — The 
Golden. — The Silver. —The Brazen.— The Heroic.— The Iron.— 
Different both from the Theogony and from Homer. — Explanation of 
this difference. — Ethical vein of sentiment.— Intersected by the myth- 
ical. — The “ Works and Days,” earliest dide~tic poem. — First Introduc- 
tion of dwxmons.— Changes in the idea of dwemons.— Employed in 
attacks on the n faith.-— Functions of the Hesiodic demons. — Per- 
gonal feeling which pervades the “ Works and Days.” — Probable age of 
Che POEM «cece cece eeecerernreeneeceeeesceeeaeens eweecese 64-73 


CHAPTER III 


LEGEND OF THE IAPETIDS. 


in Hesiod. — Prométheus and Epimétheus. — Counter-manceuvring 
of Prométheus and Zeus.-— Pandéra.— Pandéra in the Theogony. — 
General feeling of the poet. — Man wretched, but Zeus not to blame. — 
Mischiefs arising from women.— Punishment of Prométheus. — The 


Prométheus of Aschylus.— Locality in which Prométheus was con- 
73-80 


CHAPTER IV. 


HEROIC LEGENDS. — GENEALOGY OF ARGUS. 


@tracture and purposes of Grecian genealogies. — To connect the Grecias 
community with their common god. — Lower members of the genealogy 
historical — higher members non-historical. — ‘The non-historical portion 
equally believed, and most valued by the Greeks. — Number of such gen- 

— pervading every fraction of Greeks. — Argeian genealogy. — 

— Phoréneus.— Argos Panoptés. — 16.— Romance of [ὃ his 
thoricized by Persians and Pheenicians. — Legendary abductions of hero 
imes to the feelings prevalent during the Persian war. — Danaos 
and the Ides. — and Prostos. — The Preetides cured of frenzy 


CONTENTS. hy 


oy Melampus. — Acrisios, Danaé, and Zeus. — Perseus and the Gargons. 
— Foundation of Mycénew — commencement of Perseid dywasty. — Am- 
phitryon, Alkméné, $ thenelos. — Zeus and Alkméné. — Birth of Héraklés. 
— Homeric legend of his birth: its expository value. - The Hérakleids 
expelled. — Their recovery of Peloponnésus and establishment in Argos, 
Sparta, and Messénia............+seeeeeesees cna inaien wie wl 80-95 


CHAPTER V. 


DEUKALION. HELLEN, AND SONS OF HELLEN. 


Denkalién, son of Prométheus. — Phthidétis: his permanent seat. — General 


deluge. — Salvation of Deukalién and Pyrrha. — Belief in this deluge 
throughout Greece. — Hellén and Amphiktyén.— Sons of Hellén : Dérus, 
Xuthus, Holus.— Amphiktyonic assembly. — Common solemnities and 
games. — Division of Hellas: Xolians, Dorians, Iénians. — Large extent 
of Doris implied in this genealogy. — This form of the legend harmonizes 
with the great establishments of the historical Dorians.— Achazus — 
purpose which his name serves in the legend.— Genealogical diversi- 

96-105 


CHAPTER VI. 


THE XOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ZXOLUS. 


Logends of Greece, originally isolated, afterwards thrown into series. — Alo- 


lus. — His seven sons and five daughters. —1. First olid line — Salmé- 
neus, Tyrd. — Pelias and Néleus.— Péré, Bias, and Melampus.— Peri 
klymenos.— Nestor and his exploits. — Néleids down to Kodrus.— 
Second olid line — Krétheus. — Admétus and Alcéstis. — Péleus and the 
wife of Acastus. —Pelias and Jasén.—Jasén and Médea. — Médea at 
Corinth. — Third olid line —Sisyphus.— Corinthian genealogy of 
Eumélus. — Coalescence of different legends about Médea and Sisyphus. 
— Bellerophén. — Fourth olid line— Athamas.— Phryxus and Hellé. 
—Iné and Palemén —Isthmian games.— Local root of the legend of 
Athamas. — Traces of ancient human sacrifices. — Athamas in the dis- 
trict near Orchomenos. — Eteoklés — festival of the Charitésia. — Found- 
ation and greatness of Orchomenos.— Overthrow by Héraklés and the 
Thebans. — Trophénius and Agamédés.-- Ascalaphos and Ialmenos. — 
Discrepancies in the Orchomenian genealogy. — Probable inferences as 
to the ante-historical Orchomenos. —Its early wealth and industry. — 
Emissaries of the lake Képats. — Old Amphiktyony at Kalauria. — Orchoe 
menos and Thebés.— Alcyoné and Kéyx.— Canacé.— The Aldids.— 
Calycé. — Elis and Atélia. — Eleian genealogy. — Augeas. — The Molio- 
nid brothers. — Variations in the Eleian genealogy. — /Etdlian genealogy. 
~ (Enens, Meleager, Tydeus.— Legend of Meleager in Homer. — How 
altered by the poets r Homer. — Althea and the burning brand. — 
Grand Kalydénian boar-hunt. — Atalanta. — Relics of the boar long pre- 
served at Tegea.— Atalanta vanquished in the race by stratagem. — 
Deianeira. — Death of Héraklés. — Tydeus. — Old age of Cineus. — Dis- 
erepant genealogies ..... ...sessecessseccccccsssecrcces oe 106-158 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER VII. 
THE PELOPIDS. 


Misfortunes and celebrity of the Pelopids. — Pelops — eponym of ep 
nésus — Deduction of the sceptre of Pelops. — Kingl antiates of the 


family — Homeric Pelops. — ydia, Pisa, etc., post-Homeric additions. 
— Tantalus. — Niobé. — Pelops and CEnomaus, king of Pisa. — Chariot 


victory of Pelops—his principality at Pisa.— Atreus, Thyestés, Chry- 
sippus. — Family horrors araong the Pelopids. — Agamemnon and Mene- 
laus. — Orestés. — The goddess Héré and Mykénw. — Legendary impor- 
tance of Mykénw. — Its decline coincident with the rise of Argos and 
Sparta. — Agamemnon and Orestés transferred to Sparta...... 153-167 


CHAPTER VIII. 
LACONIAN AND MESSENIAN GENEALOGIES. 


Lelex — autochthonous in Laconia. —'Tindareus and Léda. — Offspring of 
Leda. —1. Castér, Timandra, Klytemnéstra, 2. Pollux, Helen. —- Castér 
and Pollux.— Legend of the Attic Dekeleia.—Iaas and Lynkeus.— 
Great functions and power of the Dioscuri.— Messénian genealogy.— 


Periéres — Idas and péssa 168-173 


CHAPTER IX. 
ARCADIAN GENEALOGY, 


Pelasgus. — Lykaén and his fifty sons. — Legend of Lykaén — ferocity 
punished by the gods.— Deep reli ious faith of Pausanias.— His view 
of past and present world. — Kallisté and Arcas. — Azan, Apheidas, 
Elatus. — Aleus, Augé, Telephus.— Ancseus. — Echemus. — Echemas 
kills Hyllus.— Hérakleids repelled from Peloponnésus. — Corénis and 
Asklépius. — Extended worship of Asklépius —numerous legends. — 
Machaén and Podaleirius. -- Numerous Asklépiads, or descendants from 
Asklépius. — Temples of Asklépius —sick persons healed there. . 173-183 


CHAPTER X 
HZAKUS AND HIS DESCENDANTS. — ZGINA, SALAMIS, AND PHTHIA. 


Hakus —son of Zeus and Aigina.— Offspring of akus — Pélens, Tela 
mon, Phokus. — Prayers of Aakus — procure relief for Greece — Phékus 
killed by Péleus and Telamén. — Telam6n, banished, goes to Salamis. — 
Péleus — goes to Phthia—-his marriage with Thetis. — Neoptolemus. — 
Ajax, his son Philzus the eponymous hero of a déme in Attica. — Teukrus 
Lanished, settles in Cyprus. — Diffasion of the Aacid genealogy 184-190 


CHAPTER XI. 
ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES. 


Brechtheus — autochthonous. — Attic legends — originally from differem 
roots —each déme had its own. — Little noticed by the old epic poets. -- 
Kekrops. — Kranaus — Pandién.— Daughters of Pandién — Procné, Phi 


ioméla. — Legend of Téreus.— Daughters of Erechtheus — ~~ 
Kreiisa. — Oreithyia, the wife of Boreas. — Prayers of the FP ie τον 20 
Boreas — his gracious help in their danger. — Erechtheus and Eumolpus 
— Voluntary self-sacrifice of the three daughters of Erechtheus. — ie 
88 and I6n.— Sons of Pandién — Aigeus, etc. — Théseus.— His legend- 
ary character refined. — Plutarch —his way of handling the matter of 
legend. — Legend of the Amazons.— Its antiquity and prevalence. — 
Glorious achievements of the Amazons.— Their ubiquity. — Universall 

received as a portion of the Greek past. — Amazons produced as pcre 
by the historians of Alexander. — Eonfiict of faith and reason in the his- 
torical critics ......... δεν άν δι ῦν νι οἷον eavbcekeve κ᾿ ηπὺν 191-217 


CHAPTER XII. 
“ KRETAN LEGENDS. —MINOS AND H18 FAMILY. 


Minds and Rhadamanthus, sons of Zeus. — Europé. — Pasiphaé 
Minétaur. — Scylla and Nisus. — Death of Pre and jt r of Minds 
against Athens. — Athenian victims for the Mindtaur. — Self-devotion of 
Théseus — he kills the Minétaur. — Athenian commemorative ceremonies. 
— Family of Minos.— Minds and Daedalus — flight of the latter to 
Sicily. — Minds goes to retake him, but is killed. — Semi-Krétan &ttle- 
ments elsewhere — connected with this voyage of Minés. — Sufferings of 
the Krétans afterwards from the wrath of inds. — Portrait of Minds — 
how varied. — Affinity between Kréte and Asia Minor 


CHAPTER XIII. 
' ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION. 


Ship Argé in the Odyssey.—In Hesiod and Eumélus.—Jasén and his 
heroic companions. — Lémnus.— Adventures at Kyzikus, in Bithynia, 
etc. — Héraklés and Hylas. — Phineus. — Dangers of the Symplégades. - 
Arrival at Kolchis. — Conditions imposed by Alétés as the price of the 
golden fleece. — Perfidy of Aétés — flight of the Argonauts and Médea 
with the fleece. — Pursuit of Aétés —the Argonauts saved by Médea. — 
Return of the Argonauts — circuitous and perilous.— Numerous and 
wide-spread monaments referring to the voyage. — Argonautic legend 
aged — Fabulous geography — gradually modified as real geograph- 
cal knowledge increased.— Transposition of epical localities. — How 
and when the Argonautic voyage became attached to Kolchis. — Avétés 
_ Circe. — Return of the Argonauts — different versions. — Continued 

th in the voyage — basis of truth determined by Strabo 231-256 


CHAPTER XIV. 
LEGENDS OF THEBES. 


Abundant legends of Thébes.— Amphién and Zethus, Homeric foun 
Kadmus and Boedtus — both distinct legends. — Thébes. — How Thebes 
= founded by Kadmus.— Five primitive families at Thébes called 

parti.— The four daughters of mus: 1. Iné; 2. Semelé; 3. Aa- 
= and her son Acton; 4. Agavé and her son Pentheus. — He resists 
pe) , aga gu oearente end. — Labdakus, Antiopé, Amphidén, 
; . — Laius — pus — Legendary celebrity of CEdipus and his 
family. — The Sphinx. — Eteoklés and Poly i = Old pa poems o£ 


the sieges of Thébes .......... = er eegey ppm 256-269 


axii | SONTENTS. 


#1BGES OF THEBES 


Sarse pronounced by the devoted CEdipus upon his sons. — Novelties mtre- 
duced by Saphokibe Death of CEdipus — quarrel of Eteokiés and Pol 
nikés for the sceptre. — Polynikés retires to —aid given to him 
Adrastus. — Amphiaraus and Eriphylé. — Seven chiefs of the army a 
Thébes. — Defeat of the Thébans in the field — heroic devotion of Me 
neekeus. — Single combat of Eteoklés and Polynikés, in which both perish. 
— Repulse and destruction of the Argean chiefs — all except Adrastus — 
Amphiardus is swallowed up in the earth. — Kredn, king of Thébes, forbids 
the burial of Polynikés and the other fallen Argeian chiefs. — Devotion 
and death of Antigoné. — The Athenians interfere to procure the interment 
of the fallen chiefs. —- Second siege of Thébes by Adrastus with the Epi- 
goni, or sons of those slain in the first. — Victory of the Epigoni —cap- 
ture of Thebés. — Worship of Adrastus at Sikyon — how abrogated by 
Kleisthenés. — Alkmzé6n —- his matricide and punishment. — Fatal neck 


lace of Eriphyleé.... eee e@eweeveene .... 269-284 
CHAPTER XV. 


LEGEND OF TROY. 


Great extent and variety of the tale of Troy.— Dardanus, son of Zeus. = 
Tlus, founder of in Walls of Ilion built by Poseidon. — Capture of 
Hiiam by Héraklés.— Priam and his offspring. — Paris — his judgment 
on the three goddesses. —- Carries off Helen from Sparta. — Expedition 
of the Greeks to recover her.— Heroes from all parts of Greece com 
bined under Agamemnon. — Achilles and Odysseus. — The Grecian host 
mistakes Teuthrania for Troy — Telephus. — Detention of the Greeks at 
Aulis — Agamemnon and Iphigeneia. — First success of the Greeks on 
janding near Troy.—Briséis awarded to Achilles. — Palamédés — his 
genius, and treacherous death. — Epic chronology — historicized. — Period 
of the Homeric Iliad. — Heetér killed by Achilles. — New allies of Troy — 
Penthesileia. — Memmén -— killed by Achilles.— Death of Achilles. -- 
Funeral games celebrated in honor of him. — Quarrel about his Ranoply. 
— Odysseus prevails and Ajax kills himself— Philoktétés and Neoptol- 
emus. — Capture of the Palladium. — The wooden horse. — Destruction 
of Troy. — Distribution of the captives among the victors. — Helen restored 
to Menelaus —lives in dignity at Sparta—passes to a happy immor 
tality. — Blindness and cure of the poet Stesichorus — alteration of the 
ἃ about Helen. — Egyptian tale about Helen — tendency to histor- 
— Return of the Greeks from Troy.— Their sufferings —anger of 
the gods. — Wanderings of the heroes in all directions. — Memorials of 
them throughout the Grecian world. — Odysseus —his final adventures 
and death. — Aineas and his descendants. — Different stories about Aineas. 
— Mineadw at Sképsis. — Ubiquity of Aneas.— Antendr. — Tale of Troy 
—its magnitude and discrepancies. — Trojan war — essentially legendary 
— its importance as an item in Grecian national faith. — Basis of history 
for it— possible, and nothing more. — Historicizing innovations — Dio 
tom. — Historical Ilium. — Generally received and visited as the 
town of Priam. — Respect; shown to it by Alexander. — Successors of 
Alexander — foundation of Alexandreia Tréas.— The Romans — treat 
Tliam with marked respect. — Mythical legitimacy of Dium — first called 
im question by Démétrius of Sképsis and — Supposed Old Ilium, 
or real Troy, distinguished from New Ilium. — Strabo alone believes in 

@id Ilium as the real Troy — other authors continue in the old faith- 


¢ 


CONTENTS. xxiii 


the moderns follow Strabo. — The mythical faith not shaken by topo 

phical impossibilities. — Historical Tréas and the Teukrians. — Kolie 
Greeks in the Tréad — the whole territory gradually Aolized. — Old date, 
and long prevalence of the worship of Apollo Sminthius. — Asiatic cus- 
toms and religion — blended with Hellenic. — Sibylline prophecies. — Set- 
tlements from Miléteus, Mityléné, and Athens. .............. 284-340. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


GRECIAN MYTHES, AS UNDERSTOOD, FELT, AND INTERPRETED BY THE 
GREEKS THEMSELVES 


The mythes formed the entire mental stock of the early Greeks. — State of 


mind out of which they arose. — Tendency to universal personification. ~ 
Absence of positive knowledge — supplied by personifying faith. — Mul- 
titude and variety of quasi-human personages. — What we read as poeti- 
eal faneies, were to the Greeks serious realities. — The gods and heroes — 
their chief agency cast back into the past, and embodied in the mythes. — 
Marked and manifold types of the Homeric gods. — Stimulus which they 
afforded to the mythopeeic faculty. — Easy faith in popular and plausible 
stories. — Poets — receive their matter from the divine inspiration of¢the 
Muse. — Meaning of the word mythe — original — altered. — Matter of 
actual history — uninteresting to early Greeks. — Mythical faith and reli- 
gious point of view — paramount in the Homeric age. — Gradual develop- 
ment of the scientific point of view — its opposition to the religious. — _ 
Mythopeic age — anterior to this dissent. — Expansive force of Grecian 
intellect. — Transition towards positive and present fact. — The poet be- 
comes the organ of present time instead of past. — Iambic, elegiac, and 
lyric poets. — Influence of the opening of Egypt to Grecian commerce, 
B. C. 660. — hy δον — historical, gorrhict, social — from that period 
to B. c. 500. — Altered standard of judgment, ethical and intellectual. — 
Commencement of physical science — Thales, Xenophanés, Pythagoras. 
— Impersonal nature conceived as an object of study. — Opposition be- 
tween scientific method and the religious feeling of the multitude. — How 
dealt with by different philosophers. — Socratés. — Hippocratés. — Anax- 
agoras.— Contrasted with Grecian religious belief. — Treatment of So 
cratés by the Athenians. — Scission between the superior men and the 
multitude — important in reference to the mythes.— ΤῊΘ mythes accom- 
modated to a_new tone of feeling and judgment. — The poets and ] 
= — Pindar. — Tragic poets. — Achylus and Sophoklés. — Ten 
encies of Aischylus in regard to the old legends. —He maintains undi- 
minished the grandeur of the mythical world. — Euripidés — accused of 
vulgarizing the mythical heroes, and of introducing ex rated pathos, 
refinement, and rhetoric. — The logographers — Pherekydés, ete. — Heka- 
tseus — the mythes rationalized. — The historians — Herodotus. — Earnest 
piety of Herodotus —his mystic reserve. — His views of the mythical 
world. — His deference for Egypt and Egyptian statements. — His general 
faith in the mythical heroes and eponyms — yet combined with scepticism 
as to matters of fact.— His remarks upon the miraculous foundation of 
the oracle at Dédéna.— His remarks upon Melampus and his prophetic 
powers. — His remarks upon the Thessalian legend of Tempé. — Alle- 
gorical interpretation of the mythes — more and more esteemed and 
applied. — Divine legends allegorized. — Heroic legends historicized. — 
Limits to this interpreting re ee between gods and dw 
mons — altered and widened by Empedoclés. — Admission of dsemons as 
partially evil beings — effect of such admission. — Semi-historical inter. 


ion — utmost woich it can accomplish. — Some positive certificate 
ispensable as a constitnent of historical proof— mere popular faith 
t. — Mistake of ascribing to an unrecording age the historical 
sense of modern times. — Matter of tradition uncertified from the beginning. 
— Fictitious matter of tradition does not imply fraud or imposture.— 
Plausible fiction often generated and accredited by the mere force of 
and cor:mon sentiment, even in times of instruction. — Allegorical theory 
of the mythes—traceil by some up to an ancient priestly caste. — Real 
import of the mythes supposed to be preserved in the religious mysteries. 
— Supposed ancient meaning is really a modern interpretation. — Triple 
theology of the pagan world. Treatment and use of the mythes according 
to Plato. — His views as to the necessity and use of fiction. — He deals 
with the mythes as expressions of feeling and imagination — sustained by 
religious faith, and not by any positive basis. — Grecian antiquity esssen- 
tially a religious conception. — Application of chronological calculation 
divests it of this character.— Mythieal genealogies all of one class, and 
all on a level in respect to evidence. — Grecian and Egyptian genealogies. a 
— Value of each is purely subjective, sites Te gg er cee to the faith ΠῚ 
of the people. — Gods and men undistinguishable in Grecian antiquity. — gs 
"Βα ἡ μανκαΐρ ει υο τνσῖῃ — General public of Greece — familiar -with ἢ their : LIST OF ILLUSTRA LIONS 
local mythes, careless of recent history. — Religious festivals — their com- | 
memorative influence. — Variety and universality of mythical relics. — 
The mythes in their bearing on Grecian art. — Tendency of works of art : GREECE 
ὃν intensify the mythical faith. ....... 0. .ccccccccccecccceeces 340-461 a | 


VOL. I. 
CHAPTER XVII. ΕῚ Frontispiece—Return of Alcibiades to Athens 


THE GRECIAN MYTHICAL VEIN COMPARED WITH THAT OF MODERN Alexander the Great before Tyre . 


BUROPE. | Restoration of the Acropolis at Athens ° 
The Otri Coli Mask of Jupiter 


Μεῦϑος «---- Sage — an universal manifestation of the haman mind.— Analogy 
of the Germans and Celts with the Greeks. — Differences between them. 
— Grecian poetry matchless. — Grecian progress self-operated. — German 

s brought about by violent influences from without. — Operation of 
the Roman civilization and of Christianity upon the primitive German 
mythes.— Alteration in the mythical genealogies — Odin and the other 
gods degraded into men.— Grecian Paganism — what would have been 

e case, if it had been supplanted by istianity in 500 B. c. — Saxc 
Grammaticus and Snorro Sturleson contrasted with Pherekydés and Hel- 
Janikus. — Mythopeeic tendencies in modern Europe still subsisting, but 
forced into a new channel: 1. Saintly ideal; 2. Chivalrous ideal.— Le 
gends of the Saints — their analogy with the Homeric theology. — Chiv- 
alrous ideal — Romances of Charlemagne and Arthur. — Accepted as re- 
alities of the fore-time.— Teutonic and Scandavian epic —-its analogy 
with the Grecian. — Heroic character and self-expanding subject common 
to both. — Points of distinction between the two — epic of the Middle Ages 
neither stood so completely alone, nor was so closely interwoven with reli- 
gion, as the Grecian. —: History of England — how conceived down to the 
seventeenth century — ~ with Brute the Trojan.— Earnest and tena- 
cious faith manifested i defence of this early history. — Judgment of 
Milton. — Standard of historical evidence — raised in 

“ποῖ raised in 


—— Reasons for the latter. 
- prefrring 


HISTORY OF GREECE. 


PART L 


LEGENDARY GREECE. 


CHAPTER I. 


LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. 


Tue mythical world of the Greeks opens with the gods, 
anterior as well as superior to man: it gradually descends, first 
to heroes, and next to the human race. Along with the gods are 
found various monstrous natures, ultra-human and extra-human, 
who cannot with propriety be called gods, but who partake with 
gods and men in the attributes of freewill, conscious agency, and 
susceptibility of pleasure and pain,— such as the Harpies, the 
Gorgons, the Gre, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, Echidna, 
Sphinx, Chimera, Chrysaor, Pegasus, the Cyclépes,the Centaurs, 
etc. The first acta of what may be termed the great mythical 
cycle describe the proceedings of these gigantic agents — the 
crash and collision of certain terrific and overboiling forces, 
which are ultimately reduced to obedience, or chained up, or 
extinguished, under the more orderly government of Zeus, who 
supplants his less capable predecessors, and acquires precedence 
and supremacy over gods and men — subject however to certain 
ena Se ὧδ᾽ et. get oak. eee δῇ 

oc. 


VOL. I. 


9 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


him, as well as to the custom of occasionally convoking and 
consulting the divine agora. 

I recount these events briefly, but literally, treating them 
simply as mythes springing from the same creative imagination, 
addressing themselves to analogous tastes and feelings, and de- 
pending upon the same authority, as the legends of ‘Thebes and 
Troy. It is the inspired voice of the Muse which reveals and 
authenticates both, and from which Homer and Hesiod alike 
derive their knowledge — the one, of the heroic, the other, of the 
divine, foretime. I maintain, moreover, fully, the character of 
these great divine agents as Persons, which is the light in which 
they presented themselves to the Homeric or Hesiodic audience. 
Uranos, Nyx, Hypnos and Oneiros (Heaven, Night, Sleep and 
Dream), are Persons, just as much as Zeus and Apollo. To 
resolve them into mere allegories, is unsafe and unprofitable: we 
then depart from the point of view of the original hearers, with- 
out acquiring any consistent or philosophical point of view of our 
own.! For although some of the attributes and actions ascribed 
to these persons are often explicable by allegory the whole series 
and system of them never are 80: the theorist who adopts this 
course of explanation finds that, after one or two simple and 
obvious steps, the path is no longer open, and he is forced to clear 
a way for himself by gratuitous refinements and conjectures. 
The allegorical persons and attributes are always found mingled 
with other persons and attributes not allegorical; but the two 
classes cannot be severed without breaking up the whole march 
of the mythical events, nor can any explanation which drives us 
to such a necessity be considered as admissible. To suppose 
indeed that these legends could be all traced by means of alle- 
gory into a coherent body of physical doctrine, would be incon- 
sistent with all reasonable presumptions respecting the age or 
society in which they arose. Where the allegorical mark is 
clearly set upon any particular character, or aitribute, or event, 
to that extent we may recognize it; but we can rarely venture to 
divine further, still less to alter the legends themselves on the 
faith of any such surmises. The theogony of the Grecks contains 


' Tt is sufficient, here, to state this position briefly: more will be said 
respecting the allegorizing interpretation in a fature «* avter. 


LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. 8 


some cosmogonic ideas ; but it cannot be considered as a system 
sf cosmogony, or translated into a string of elementary, planet- 
ary, or physical changes. 

In the order of legendary chronology, Zeus comes after 
Kronos and Uranos; but in the order of Grecian conception, 
Zeus is the prominent person, and Kronos and Uranos are 
inferior and introductory precursors, set up in order to be over- 
thrown and to serve as mementos of the prowess of their con- 
queror. To Homer and Hesiod, as well as to the Greeks 
universally, Zeus is the great and predominant god, “the father 
of gods and men,” whose power none of the other gods can hope 
to resist, or even deliberately think of questioning. All the 
other gods have their specific potency and peculiar sphere of 
action and duty, with which Zeus does not usually interfere; but 
it is he who maintains the lineaments of a providential superin- 
tendence, as well over the phenomena of Olympus as over those 
of earth. Zeus and his brothers Poseidén and Hadés have made 
a division of power: he has reserved the exther and the atmos- 
phere to himself — Poseidon has obtained the sea — and Hadés 
the under-world or infernal regions; while earth, and the events 
which pass upon earth, are common to all of them, together with 
free access to Olympus.! 

Zeus, then, with his brethren and colleagues, constitute the 
present gods, whom Homer and Hesiod recognize as in full 
dignity and efficiency. The inmates of this divine world are 
conceived upon the model, but not upon the scale, of the human. 
They are actuated by the full play and variety of those appetites, 
sympathies, passions and affections, which divide the soul of man ; 
invested with a far larger and indeterminate measure of power, 
and an exemption as well from death as (with some rare excep- 
tions) from suffering and infirmity. The rich and diverse types 
thus conceived, full of energetic movement and contrast, each in 
his own province, and soaring corfessedly above the limits of 


1 See Iliad, viii. 405, 463; xv. 20, 130, 185. Hesiod, Theog. 885. 

This unquestioned supremacy is the general representation “of Zeus: at 
the same time the conspiracy of Héré, Poseidén, and Athéné against him, 
suppressed by the unexpected apparition of Briareus as his ally, is among 
the exceptions. (Iliad, i. 400.) Zeus is at one time vanquished by Titan, 
but rescued by Hermés. ( Apollodér. i. 6, 3) 


& HISTORY UF GREECE. 


experience, were of all themes the most suitable fur adventure 
and narrative, and opera’ed with irresistible force upon the 
Grecian fancy. All nature was then conceived as moving and 
working through a number of personal agents, amongst whom 
the gods of Olympus were the most conspicuous ; the reverential 
belief in Zeus and Apollo being only one branch of this omni- 
present personifying faith. The attributes of all these agents 
had a tendency to expand themselves into illustrative legends — 
especially those of the gods, who were constantly invoked in the 
public worship. Out of this same mental source sprang both 
the divine and heroic mythes — the former being often the more 
extravagant and abnormous in their incidents, in proportion as 
the general type of the gods was more vast and awful than that 
of the heroes. 

As the gods have houses and wives like men, so the present 
dynasty of gods must have a past to repose upon 3} and the 
curious and imaginative Greek, whenever he does not find a 
recorded past ready to his hand, is uneasy until he has created 
one. Thus the Hesiodic theogony explains, with a certain degree 
of system and coherence, first the antecedent circumstances under 
which Zeus acquired the divine empire, next the number of his 
colleagues and descendants. 

First in order of time (we are told by Hesiod) came Chaos; 
next Gea, the broad, firm, and flat Earth, with deep and dark 
Tartarus at her base. Erdés (Love), the subduer of gods as well 
as men, came immediately afterwards.? 

From Chaos sprung Erebos and Nyx; from these latter 
ZEthér and Hémera. Gea also gave birth to Uranos, equal in 
breadth to herself, in order to serve both as an overarching vault 
to her, and as a residence for the immortal gods ; she further 
produced the mountains, habitations of the divine nymphs, and 
Pontus, the barren and billowy sea. 

Then Gea intermarried with Uranos, and from this union 
came a numerous offspring — twelve Titans and Titanides, three 
Cyclépes, and three Hekatoncheires or beings with a hundred 


t Arist. Polit. i. 1. ὥσπερ δὲ καὶ τὰ εἴδη ἑαυτοῖς ἀφομοιοῦσιν ἄνϑρωποι, ot 


«ὡς καὶ τοὺς βίους, τῶν ϑεῶν. 
Hesiod, Theog. 116. Apollodérus begins with Uranos and Gaa (i. 1.} 


ne does not recognize Erés, Nyx, or Erebos. 


* 


URANOS AND KRONOS. ὺ 


nands each. The Titans were Oceanus, Koos, Krios, Hyperién, 
Iapetos, and Kronos: the Titanides, Theia, Rhea, Themis, 
Mnémosyné, Pheebé, and Téthys. The Cyclépes were Brontés, 
Steropés, and Argés, — formidable persons, equally distinguished 
for strength and for manual craft, so that they made the thunder 
which afterwards formed the irresistible artillery of Zeus.' 
The Hekatoncheires were Kottos, Briareus, and Gygés, of pro- 
digious bodily force. 

Uranos contemplated this powerful brood with fear and hor- 
ror; as fast as any of them were born, he concealed them in 
cavities of the earth, and would not permit them to come out. 
Gea could find no room for them, and groaned under the pres- 
sure: she produced iron, made a sickle, and implored her sons to 
avenge both her and themselves against the oppressive treatment 
of their father. But none of them, except Kronos, had courage 
to undertake the deed: he, the youngest and the most daring, 
was armed with the sickle and placed in suitable ambush by the 
contrivance of Gea. Presently night arrived, and Uranos 
descended to the embraces of Gea: Kronos then emerged from 
his concealment, cut off the genitals of his father, and cast the 
bleeding member behind him far away into the sea.2_ Much of 
the blood was spilt upon the earth, and Gea in consequence gave 
birth to the irresistible Erinnys, the vast and muscular Gigantes, 
and the Melian nymphs. Out of the genitals themselves, as they 
swam and foamed upon the sea, emerged the goddess Aphrodité, 
deriving her name from the foam out of which she had sprung. 
She first landed at Kythéra, and then went to Cyprus: the island 
felt her benign influence, and the green herb started up under 
her soft and delicate tread. Erés immediately joined her, and 
partook with her the function of suggesting and directing the 
amorous impulses both of gods and men.® 


1 Hesiod, Theog. 140, 156. Apollod. ut sup. 

3 Hesiod, Theog. 160, 182. Apollod. i. 1, 4. 

5 Hesiod, Theog. 192. This legend respecting the birth of Aphrodité 
seems to have been derived partly from her name (ἀφρὸς, foam), partly from 
the surname Urania, ᾿Αφροδίτη Οὐρανία, under which she was so very exten- 
sively worshipped, especially both in Cyprus and Cythéra, seemingly crigi- 
nated in both islands by the Phoenicians. Herodot. i. 105. Compare the 
instructive section in Boeckh’s Metrologie, c. iv. § 4. 


8 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Uranos being thus dethroned and disabled, Kronos and the Titans 
acquired their liberty and became predominant : the Cyclopes 
and the Hekatoncheires had been cast by Uranos into Tartarus, 
and were still allowed to remain there. 

Each of the Titans had a numerous offspring: Oceanus, 
especially, marrying his sister Tethys, begat three thousand 
daughters, the Oceanic nymphs, and as many sons: the rivers 
and springs passed for his offspring. Hyperién and his sister 
Theia had for their children Hélios, Seléné, and Eés; Koeos 
with Phoebé begat Lété and Asteria; the children of Krios were 
Astreos, Pallas, and Persiés, — from Astraos and Eos sprang the 
winds Zephyrus, Boreas, and Notus. _Iapetos, marrying the 
Oceanic nymph Clymené, counted as his progeny the celebrated 
Prométheus, Epimétheus, Mencetius, and Atlas. But the off 
spring of Kronos were the most powerful and transcendent of all 
He married his sister Rhea, and had by her three daughters — 
Hestia, Démétér, and Héré — and three sons, Hadés, Poseidén, 
and Zeus, the latter at once the youngest and the greatest. 

But Kronos foreboded to himself destruction from one of his 
own children, and accordingly, as soon as any of them were born, 
he immediately swallowed them and retained them in his own 
belly. In this manner had the first five been treated, and Rhea 
was on the point of being delivered of Zeus. Grieved and indig- 
nant at the loss of her children, she applied for counsel to her 
father and mother, Uranos and Ga, who aided her to conceal 
the birth of Zeus. They conveyed her by night to Lyktus in 
Créte, hid the new-born child in a woody cavern on Mount Ida, 
and gave to Kronos, in place of it, a stone wrapped in swaddling 
clothes, which he greedily swallowed, believing it to be his child. 
Thus was the safety of Zeus ensured.! As he grew up his vast 
powers fully developed themselves: at the suggestion of Gea, 
he induced Kronos by stratagem to vomit up, first the stone which 
had been given to him, —next, the five children whom he had 
previously devoured. Hestia, Démétér, Héré, Poseidén and 
Hadés, were thus allowed to grow up along with Zeus; and the 
stone to which the latter owed his preservation was placed neat 


--- 


1 Hesiod, Theog. 452, 487. Apollod. i. 1, 6. 


ee ewe ea » mr es . 


KRONO» AND ZEUS. } 


the temple of Delphi, where it ever afterwards stood, as a cor: 
spicuous and venerable memorial to the religious Greek.! 

We have not yet exhausted the catalogue of beings generated 
during this early period, anterior to the birth of Zeus. Nyx. 
alone and without any partner, gave birth to a numerous pro- 
geny: Thanatos, Hypnos and Oneiros; Mémus and Oizys 
(Grief) ; Klothé, Lachesis and Atropos, the three Fates; the 
retributive and equalizing Nemesis; Apaté and Philotés (Deceit 
and amorous Propensity), Géras (Old Age) and Eris (Conten- 
tion). From Eris proceeded an abundant offspring, all mischiev- 
ous and maleficent: Ponos (Suffering), Léthé, Limos (Famine) 
Phonos and Maché (Slaughter and Battle), Dysnomia and Até 
(Lawlessness and reckless Impulse), and Horkos, the ever- 
watchful sanctioner of oaths, as well as the inexorable punisher 
of voluntary perjury.? 

Gea, too, intermarrying with Pontus, gave birth to Nereus, 
the just and righteous old man of the sea; to Thaumas, Phorkys 
and Kéto. From Nereus, and Doris daughter of Oovenus pro- 
ceeded the fifty Nereids or Sea-nymphs. Thaumus also meted 
Elektra daughter of Oceanus, and had by her Iris and the two 
Harpies, Allo and Okypeté,— winged and swift as the winds. 
From Phorkys and Két6é sprung the Dragon of the Hesperides 
and the monstrous Graz and Gorgons: the blood of Medusa, ons 
of the Gorgons, when killed by Perseus, produced Chrysaor and 
the horse Pegasus: Chrysaor and Kallirrhoé gave birth to 
Gery6n as well as to Echidna, — a creature half-nymph and half: 
serpent, unlike both to gods and to men. Other monsters arose 
from the union of Echidna with Typhaén, — Orthros, the two- 
headed dog of Geryén; Cerberus, the dog of Hadés, with fifty 
heads, and the Lernean Hydra. From the latter pro-eeded the 
Chimera, the Sphinx of Thébes, and the Nemean lion. ' 

A powerful and important progeny, also, was that of Styx, 


1 Hesiod, Theog. 498. — 
Tov μὲν Ζεὺς στήριξε κατὰ χϑονὸς εὐρυοδείης 
Πυϑοῖ ἐν ἠγαϑέῃ, γυάλοις ὑπὸ Παρνήσοιο, 
Hw’ ἔμεν ἐξοπίσω, ϑαῦμα ϑνητοῖσι βροτοῖσι. 


* Hesiod, Theog. 212-232. 
’ Hesiod, Theog. 240-320. Apollodér. i. 2, 6, 7 


8 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


daughter of Oceanus, by Pallas; she had Zélos and Niké (Impe 
riousness and Victory), and Kratos and Bia (Strength and Force) 
The hearty and early codperation of Styx and her four sons with 
Zeus was one of the main causes which enabled him to achieve 
his victory over the Titans. 

Zeus had grown up ποῖ; less distinguished for mental capacity 
than for bodily force. He and his brothers now determined ἰς 
wrest the power from the hands of Kronos and the Titans, and a 
long and desperate struggle commenced, in which all the gods 
and all the goddesses took part. Zeus convoked them to Olym- 
pus, and promised to all who would aid him against Kronos, that 
their functions and privileges should remain undisturbed. The 
first who responded to the call, came with her four sons, and 
embraced his cause, was Styx. Zeus took them all four as his 
constant attendants, and conferred upon Styx the majestic distine- 
tion of being the Horkos, or oath-sanctioner of the Gods, — what 
Horkos was to men, Styx was to the Gods.! 

Still further to strengthen himself, Zeus released the other 
Uranids who had been imprisoned in Tartarus by their father, — 
the Cyclépes and the Centimanes,— and prevailed upon them to 
take part with him against the Titans. The former supplied him 
with thunder and lightning, and the latter brought into the fight 
their boundless muscular strength.2 Ten full years did the com- 
bat continue; Zeus and the Kronids occupying Olympus, and the 
Titans being established on the more southerly mountain-chain 
of Othrys. All nature was convulsed, and the distant Oceanus, 
though he took no part in the struggle, felt the boiling, the noise, 
and the shock, not less than Gea and Pontus. The thunder of 
Zeus, combined with the crags and mountains torn up and hurled 
by the Centimanes, at length prevailed, and the Titans were de- 
feated and thurst down into Tartarus. Japetos, Kronos, and the 
remaining Titans (Oceanus excepted) were imprisoned, perpetu- 
ally and irrevocably, in that subterranean dungeon, a wall of brass 
being built around them by Poseidon, and the three Centimanes 
being planted as guards. Of the two sons of Iapetos, Mencetius 
was made to share this prison, while Atlas was condemned ἐς 


1 Hesiod, Theog. 385-403. 
* Hesiod, Theog. 140 624,647. Apollodor.i. 2, 4. 


THE TITANS. 9 


etand for ever at the extreme west, and to bear upon his shom 
ders the solid vault of heaven.! 

Thus were the Titans subdued, and the Kronids with Zeus at 
their head placed in possession of power. They were not, how- 
ever, yet quite secure; for Gea, intermarrying with Tartarus, 
gave birth to a new and still more formidable monster called Ty- 
phoeus, of such tremendous properties and promise, that, had he 
been allowed to grow into full development, nothing could have 
prevented him from vanquishing all rivals and becoming supreme. 
But Zeus foresaw the danger, smote him at once with a thunder- 
bolt from Olympus, and burnt him up: he was cast along with 
the rest into Tartarus, and no further enemy remained to question 
the sovereignty of the Kronids.2 

With Zeus begins a new dynasty and a different order of 
beings. Zeus, Poseidén, and Hadés agree upon the distribution 
before noticed, of functions and localities: Zeus retaining the 
4thér and the atmosphere, together with the general presiding 
function ; Poseid6n obtaining the sea, and administering subterra- 
nean forces generally ; and Hadés ruling the under-world or re- 
gion in which the half-animated shadows of departed men reside. 

It has been already stated, that in Zeus, his brothers and his 
sisters, and his and their divine progeny, we find the present 
Gods; that is, those, for the most part, whom the Homeric and 
Hesiodic Greeks recognized and worshipped. The wives of Zeus 
were numerous as well as his offspring. First he married Métis, 
the wisest and most sagacious of the goddesses; but Gea and 
Uranos forewarned him that if he permitted himself to have 
children by her, they would be stronger than himself and dethrone 
him. Accordingly when Métis was on the point of being deliv- 


' The battle with the Titans, Hesiod, Theog. 627-735. Hesiod mentions 
nothing about the Gigantes and the Gigantomachia: Apollodérus, on the 
other hand, gives this latter in some detail, but despatches the Titans in a 
few words (i. 2,4; i.6,1). The Gigantes seem to be only a second edition 
of the Titans,— a sort of duplication to which the legendary poets were often 
inclined. 

* Hesiod, Theog. 820-869. Apollod. i. 6, 3. He makes Typhén very 
searly victorious over Zeus. Typhéeus, according to Hesiod, is father of 
she irregular, violent, and mischievous winds: Notus, Boreas, Argestés and 
Zephyrus, are of divine origin (870). 

1* 


10 HISTORY OF GREEC2. 


ered of Athéné, he swallowed her up, and her wisdom and saga- 
city thus became permanently identified with his own being.'! His 
head was subsequently cut open, in order to make way for the 
exit and birth of the goddess Athéné.2 By Themis, Zeus begat 
the Hére, by Eurynome, the three Charities or Graces; by 
Mnémosyné, the Muses ; by [διὸ (Latona), Apollo and Artemis: 
and by Démétér, Persephoné. Last of all he took for his wife 
Héré, who maintained permanently the dignity of queen of the 
Gods; by her he had Hébé, Arés, and Kileithyia. Hermés also 
was born to him by Maia, tke daughter of Atlas: Héphestos 
was born to Héré, accerding to some accounts, by Zeus; accord- 
ing to others, by her own unaided generative force.? He was 
born lame, and Héré was ashamed of him: she wished to secrete 
him away, but he made his escape into the sea, and found shelter 
under the maternal care of the Nereids ‘Thetis and Eurynome.4 
Our enumeration of the divine race, under the presidency of Zeus, 
will thus give us,> — 

1. The twelve great gods and goddesses of Olympus, — Zeus, 
Poseidén, Appollo, Arés, Héphestos, Hermés, Héré, Athéné, 
Artemi;, Aphrodite, Hestia, Démétér. 

2. An indefinite number of other deities, not included among 
the Olympic, seemingly because the number twelve was complete 
without them, but some of them not inferior in power and dignity 
to many of the twelve : — Hadés, Hélios, Hekaté, Dionysos, Léto, 
Diéné, Persephoné, Seléné, Themis, Eos, Harmonia, the Chari- 
ties, the Muses, the Eilaithyiz, the Moerz, the Oceanids and the 
Nereids, Proteus, Eidothea, the Nymphs, Leukothea, Phorkys, 
Zolus, Nemesis, ete. 

3. Deities who perform special services to the greater gods:— 
[ris, Hébé, the Hore, etc. 

4. Deities whose personality is more faintly and unsteadily 
conceived :— Até, the Lite, Eris, Thanatos, Hypnos, Kratos, Bia, 
Ossa, etc.6 The same name is here employed sometimes to desig- 
nate the person, sometimes the attribute or event not personi- 


— ——s 


Ν Apollod. i. 3, 6. 
3 Hesiod, Theog. 900-944. 4 Homer, Iliad, xviii. 397. 
*See Burckhardt; Homer, und Hesiod. Mythologie, sect. 102. (Leipe 
844). 
6 Awudc — Hunger —is a person, in Hesiod, Opp. Di. 299 


“πε IE aS IS een 


HESIODIC THEUGONY. n 


fied, — an unconscious transition of ideas, which, when consciously 
performed, is called Allegory. 

5. Monsters, offspring of the Gods: —the Harpies, the Gor 
gons, the Gr, Pegasus, Chrysaor, Echidna, Chimera, the Dra- 
gon of the Hesperides, Cerberus, Orthros, Gery6én, the Lernzan 
Hydra, the Nemean lion, Scylla and Charybdis, the Centaurs, the 
Sphinx, Xanthos and Balios the immortal horses, ete. 

From the gods we slide down insensibly, first to heroes, and 
then to men; but before we proceed to this new mixture, it is 
necessary to say a few words on the theogony generally. I have 
given it briefly as it stands in the Hesiodic Theogonia, because 
that poem — in spite of great incoherence and confusion, arising 
seemingly from diversity of authorship as well as diversity of 
age— presents an ancient and genuine attempt to cast the divine 
foretime into a systematic sequence. Homer and Hesiod were 
the grand authorities in the pagan world respecting theogony ; 
but in the Iliad and Odyssey nothing is found except passing 
allusions and implications, and even in the Hymns (which were 
commonly believed in antiquity to be the productions of the same 
author as the Iliad and the Odyssey) there are only isolated, un- 
connected narratives. Accordingly men habitually took their in- 
formation respecting their theogonic antiquities from the Hesiodie 
poem, where it was ready laid out before them; and the legends 
consecrated in that work acquired both an extent of circulation 
and a firm hold on the national faith, such as independent legends 
could seldom cr never rival. Moreover the scrupulous and scep- 
tical Pagans, as well as the open assailants of Paganism in later 
times, derived their subjects of attack from the same source; 80 
that it has been absolutely necessary to recount in their naked 
simplicity the Hesiodic stories, in order to know what it was that 
Plato deprecated and Xenophanés denounced. The strange pro- 
ceedings ascribed to Uranos, Kronos and Zeus, have been more 
frequently alluded to, in the way of ridicule or condemnation, 
than any other portion of the mythical world. 

But though the Hesiodic theogony passed as orthodox among 
the later Pagans,! because it stood before them as the only system 
anciently set forth and easily accessible, it was evidently not the 


-- 


? See Gottling, Preefat. ad Hesiod. p. 23, 


1: HISTORY OF GREECE. 


only system received at the date of the poem itself. Homer 
knows nothing of Uranos, in the sense of an arch-God anterior 
to Kronos. Uranos and Gea, like Oceanus, Téthys and Nyx, 
are with him great and venerable Gods, but neither the one nor 
the other present the character of predecessors of Kronos and 
Zeus.! The Cyclépes, whom Hesiod ranks as sons of Uranos 
and fabricators of thunder, are in Homer neither one nor the 
other; they are not noticed in the Iliad at all, and in the Odyssey 
they are gross gigantic shepherds and cannibals, having nothing 
in common with the Hesiodic Cyclops except the one round cen- 
tral eye.2 Of the three Centimanes enumerated by Hesiod, Bri- 
areus only is mentioned in Homer, and to all appearance, not as 
the son of Uranos, but as the son of Poseidon; not as aiding 
Zeus in his combat against the Titans, but as rescuing him at a 
critical moment from a conspiracy formed against him by Héré, 
Poseidén and Athéné.2 Not only is the Hesiodic Uranos (with 
the Uranids) omitted in Homer, but the relations between Zeus 
and Kronos are also presented in a very different light. Ne 
mention is made of Kronos swallowing his young children: on 
the contrary, Zeus is the eldest of the three brothers instead of 
the youngest, and the children of Kronos live with him and Rhea: 
there the stolen intercourse between Zeus and Heéré first takes 
place without the knowledge of their parents.‘ When Zeus puts 
Kronos down into Tartarus, Rhea consigns her daughter Héré 
to the care of Oceanus: no notice do we find of any terrific battle 
with the Titans as accompanying that event. Kronos, Iapetos, 
and the remaining Titans are down in Tartarus, in the lowest 
depths under the earth, far removed from the genial rays of 
Hélios; but they are still powerful and venerable, and Hypnos 
makes Héré swear an oath in their name, as the most inviolable 


that he can think of.5 


1 Iliad, xiv. 249; xix. 259. Odyss. v. 184. Oceanus and Téthys seem to be 
presented in the Iliad as the primitive Father and Mother of the Gods :— 
Ὠκεανόν τε ϑεῶν γένεσιν, καὶ μητέρα Τηϑύν. (xiv. 201). 
3 Odyss. ix. 87. 3 Tliad, i. 401. 4 Tliad, xiv. 203-295; xv. 204. 
δ Iliad, viii. 482; xiv. 274-279. In the Hesiodic Opp. et Di., Kronos is 
represented as ruling in the Islands of the Blest in the neighborhood of 
Oceanus (v. 168). 


HOMERIC THEOGONY. 19 


In Homer, then, we find nothing beyond the simple fact that 
Zeus thrust his father Kronos together with the remaining Titans 
into Tartarus ; an event to which he affords us a tolerable parallel 
in certain occurrences even under the presidency of Zeus himself. 
For the other gods make more than one rebellious attempt against 
Zeus, and are only put down, partly by his unparalleled strength, 
partly by the presence of his ally the Centimane Briareus. Kro- 
nos, like Laértes or Péleus, has become old, and has been sup- 
plauted by a force vastly superior to his own. The Homeric epic 
treats Zeus as present, and, like all the interesting heroic charac- 
ters, a father must be assigned to him: that father has once been 
the chief of the Titans, but has been superseded and put down 
into Tartarus along with the latter, so soon as Zeus and the supe- 
rior breed of the Olympic gods acquired their full development. 

That antithesis between Zeus and Kronos — between the Olym- 
pic gods and the Titans — which Homer has thus briefly brought 
to view, Hesiod has amplified into a theogony, with many things 
new, and some things contradictory to his predecessor; while Eu- 
mélus or Arktinus in the poem called Titanomachia (now lost) 
also adopted it as their special subject.! As Stasinus, Arktinus, 
Lésches, and others, enlarged the Legend of Troy by composing 
poems relating to a supposed time anterior to the commencement, 
or subsequent to the termination of the Iliad,—as other poets 
recounted adventures of Odysseus subsequent to his landing in 
{thaka,—so Hesiod enlarged and systematized, at the same time 
that he corrupted, the skeleton theogony which we find briefly 
indicated in Homer. There is violence and rudeness in the 
Homeric gods, but the great genius of Grecian epic is no way 
accountable for the stories of Uranos and Kronos, — the standing 
reproach against Pagan legendary narrative. 


* See the few fragments of the Titanomachia, in Diintzer, Epic. Gree, 
Fragm. p. 2; and Hyne, ad Apollodor. I. 2. Perhaps there was more than 
one poem on the subject, though it seems that Athenzus had only read one 
(viii. p. 277). 

In the Titanomachia, the generations anterior to Zeus were still further 
lengthened by making Uranos the son of Athér (Fr. 4. Dintzer). ρου 
was also represented as son of Pontus and Gea, and as having fought in the 
ranks of the Titans: in the Iliad he (the same who is called Briareus) is the 
fast ally of Zeus. 

A Titanographia was ascribed to Mus#as (Schol. Apollon. Rhod iii. 1178 
compare Lactant. de Fals. Rel. i. 21). 


14 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


How far these stories are the invention of Hesiod himselt is 
impossible to determine.|_ They bring us down to a cast of fancy 


1 That the Hesiodic Theogony is referable to an age considerably later 
than the Homeric poems, appears now to be the generally admitted opinion ; 
and the reasons for believing so are, in my opinion, satisfactory. Whether 
the Theogony is composed by the same author as the Works and Days is a 
disputed point. The Beeotian literati in the days of Pausanias decidedly 
denied the identity, and ascribed to their Hesiod only the Works and Days: 
Pausanias himself concurs with them (ix. 31. 4; ix. 35. 1), and Vélcker 
(Mithologie des Japetisch. Geschlechts, p. 14) maintains the same opinion, 
as well as Gottling (Pref. ad Hesiod. xxi.): Καὶ. O. Miiller (History of Grecian 
Literature, ch. 8. ὁ 4) thinks that there is not sufficient evidence to form a 
decisive opinion. 

Under the name of Hesiod (in that vague language which is usual in an- 
tiquity respecting authorship, but which modern critics have not much mend- 
ed by speaking of the Hesiodic school, sect, or family) passed many differ- 
ent poems, belonging to three classes quite distinct from each other, but all 
disparate from the Homeric epic: —1. ‘The poems of legend cast into histo- 
rical and genealogical series, such as the Eoiai, the Catalogue of Women, 
ete. 2. The poems of a didactic or ethical tendency, such as the Works and 
Days, the Precepts of Cheirén, the Artof Augural Prophecy, etc. 3. Sep- 
arate and short mythical compositions, such as the Shield of Héraklés, the 
Marriage of Keyx (which, however, was of disputed authenticity, Athens. 
ii. p. 49), the Epithalamium of Péleus and Thetis, etc. (See Marktscheffel, 
Prefat. ad Fragment. Hesiod. p. 89). 

The Theogony belongs chiefly to the first of these classes, but it has also 
a dash of the second in the legend of Prométheus, etc.: moreover in the por- 
tion which respects Hekaté, it has both a mystic character and a distinct 
bearing upon present life and customs, which we may also trace in the allu- 
sions to Kréte and Delphi. There seems reason to place it in the same age 
with the Works and Days, perhaps in the half century preceding 700 B. c., 
and little, if at all, anterior to Archilochus. The poem is evidently conceiv- 
ed upon one scheme, yet the parts are so disorderly and incoherent, that it 
is difficult to say how much is interpolation. Hermann has well dissected 
the exordium ; see the preface to Gaisford’s Hesiod (Poets Minor. p. 63). 

K. O. Miiller tells us (ut sup. p. 90), “ The Titans, according to the notions 
of Hesiod, represent a system of things in which elementary beings, natural 
powers, and notions of order and regularity are united to form a whole. The 
Cyclépes denote the transient disturbances of this order of nature by storms, 
end the Hekatoncheires, or hundred-handed Giants, signify the fearful pow- 
er of the greater revolutions of nature.” The poem affords little presump- 
tion that any such ideas were present to the mind of its author, as, I 
think, will be seen if we read 140-155, 630-745. 

The Titans, the Cyclépes, and the Hekatoncheires, can no more be con- 
strued into physical phenomena than Chrysaor, Pegasus, Echidna, the Gree, 
or the Gergons Zeus, like Héraklés, or Jas6én, or Perseus, if his advea 


LEGENDS ABOUT ZEUS. 18 


more coarse and indelicate than the Homeric, and more nearly 
resembling some of the Holy Chapters (ἱεροὶ λόγοι) of the more 
recent mysteries, such (for example) as the tale of Dionysos Za- 
greus. There is evidence in the Theogony itself that the author 
was acquainted with local legends current both at Kréte and at 
Delphi; for he mentions both the mountain-cave in Kréte where- 
in the new-born Zeus was hidden, and the stone near the Del- 
phian temple — the identical stone which Kronos had swallowed 
—-“placed by Zeus himself as a sign and wonder to mortal men.” 
Both these two monuments, which the poet expressly refers to, 
and had probably seen, imply a whole train of accessory and ex- 
planatory local legends — current probably among the priests of 
Kréte and Delphi, between which places, in ancient times, there 
was an intimate religious connection. And we may trace further 
in the poem,— that which would be the natural feeling of Kretan 
worshippers of Zeus, —an effort to make out that Zeus was jus- 
tified in his aggression on Kronos, by the conduct of Kronos 
himself both towards his father and towards his children: the 
treatment of Kronos by Zeus appears in Hesiod as the retribu- 
tion foretold and threatened by the mutilated Uranos against the 
gon who had outraged him. In fact the relations of Uranos and 
Geea are in almost all their particulars a mere copy and duplication 
of those between Kronos and Rhea, differing only in the mode 
whereby the final catastrophe is brought about. Now castration 
was a practice thoroughly abhorrent both to the feelings and to 
the customs of Greece;! but it was seen with melancholy fre- 


tures are to be described, must have enemies, worthy of himself and his 
vast type, and whom it is some credit for him to overthrow. Those who 
contend with him or assist him must be conceived on a scale fit to be drawn 
on the same imposing canvas: the dwarfish proportions of man will not 
satisfy the sentiment of the poet or his audience respecting the grandeur and 
glory of the gods. To obtain creations of adequate sublimity for such an 
object, the poet may occasionally borrow analogies from the striking acci- 
dents of physical nature, and when such an allusion manifests itself clearly, 
the critic does well to point it out. But it seems to mea mistake to treat 
these approximations to physical phenomena as forming the main scheme of 
the poet,— to look for them everywhere, and to presume them where therw 
is little or no indication. 

1 The strongest evidences of this feeling are exhibited in Herodotus, ifi 
48; viii 105. See an example of this mutilation inflicted upon α youth 


16 HIS1ORY JF GREECE. 


quency in the domestic life as well as in the religious worship of 
Phrygia and other parts of Asia, and it even became the special 
qualification of a priest of the Great Mother Cybelé,! as well as 
of the Ephesian Artemis. The employment of the sickle ascrib- 
ed to Kronos seems to be the product of an imagination familiar 
with the Asiatic worship and legends, which were connected with 
and partially resembled the Krétan.? And this deduction be- 
comes the more probable when we connect it with the first gen- 
esis of iron, which Hesiod mentions to have been produced for 
the express purpose of’ fabricating the fatal sickle; for metallurgy 
finds a place in the early legends both of the Trojan and of the 
Krétan Ida, and the three Idean Dactyls, the legendary :nven- 
tors of it, are assigned sometimes to one and sometimes to the 
other.3 

As Hesiod had extended the Homeric series of gods by prefix 
ing the dynasty of Uranos to that of Kronos, so the Orphic theog- 


named Adamas by the Thracian king Kotys, in Aristot. Polit. v. 8, 12, and 
the tale about the Corinthian Periander, Herod. iii. 48. 

It is an instance of the habit, so frequent among the Attic tragedians, of 
ascribing Asiatic or Phrygian manners to the Trojans, when Sophoclés in 
his lost play Troilus (ap. Jul. Poll. x. 165) introduced one of the characters 
of his drama as having been castrated by order of Hecuba, Σκαλμῇ γὰρ 
ὄρχεις βασιλὶς ἐκτέμνουσ᾽ ἐμούς ,---- probably the Παιδαγωγὸς, or guardian and 
companion of the youthful Troilus. See Welcker, Griechisch. Tragéd. vol. 
i. p. 125. 

ἢ Herodot. viii. 105, εὐνοῦχοι. Lucian, De Ded ϑ'ιγυϊὰ, ο. 50. Strabo, xiv. 
pp. 640-641. 

3 Diodor. v. 64. Strabo, x. p. 460. Hoeckh, in his learned work Kréta 
(vol. i. books 1 and 2), has collected all the information attainable respecting 
the early influences of Phrygia and Asia Minor upon Kréte: nothing seems 
ascertainable except the general fact ; all the particular evidences are lamen- 
tably vague. 

The worship of the Diktwan Zeus seemed to have originally belonged to 
the Eteokrétes, who were not Hellens, and were more akin to the Asiatie 
population than to the Hellenic. Strabo, x. p. 478. Hoeckh, Kréta, vol. i 
Ρ. 139. 

* Hesiod, Theogon. 161, 


Alwa δὲ rotpoaca γένος πολιοῦ ἀδάμαντος, 
Τεῦξε μέγα δρέπανον, ete. 


Bee the extract from the old poem Phorénis ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. 1120: 
and Strabo, x. p. 472. 


ORPHIC FHEOGONY. 17 


guy lengthened it still further.! First came Chronos, or Time, 
as a person, after him thér and Chaos, out of whom Chronos 
produced the vast mundane egg. Hence emerged in process of 
time the first-born god Phanés, or Métis, or Hérikapzos, a per- 
son of double sex, who first generated the Kosmos, or mundane 
system, and who carried within him the seed of the gods. He 
gave birth to Nyx, by whom he begat Uranos and Gza; as well 
as to Hélios and Seléne.2 

From Uranos and Gea sprang the three Mocerex, or Fates, the 
three Centimanes and the three Cyclopes: these latter were cast 
by Uranos into Tartarus, under the foreboding that they would 
rob him of his dominion. In revenge for this maltreatment of 
her sons, Gea produced of herself the fourteen Titans, seven 
male and seven female: the former were Koeos, Krios, Phorkys, 
Kronos, Oceanus, Hyperién and Iapetos; the latter were Themis, 
Tethys, Mnémosyné, Theia, Diéné, Pheebé and Rhea They 
received the name of Titans because they avenged upon Ura- 
nos the expulsion of their elder brothers. Six of the Titans, 
headed by Kronos the most powerful of them all, conspiring 
against Uranos, castrated and dethroned him: Oceanus alone stood 
aloof and took no part in the aggression. Kronos assumed the 
government and fixed his seat on Olympos; while Oceanus 
remained apart, master of his own divine stream.4 The reign 


' See the scanty fragments of the Orphic theogony in Hermann’s edition 
of the Orphica, pp. 448, 504, which it is difficult to understand and piece 
together, even with the aid of Lobeck’s elaborate examination (Aglaopha- 
mus, p. 470, etc.). The passages are chiefly preserved by Proclus and the 
later Platonists, who seem to entangle them almost inextricably with their 
own philosophical ideas. 

The first few lines of the Orphic Argonautica contain a brief summary of 
the chief points of the theogony. 

* See Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 472-476, 490-500, Μῆτιν σπέρμα φέροντα ϑεῶν 
κλυτὸν ‘Hpixeraiov; again, Θῆλυς Kal γενέτωρ κρατερὸς ϑεὸς Ἠρικέπαιος. 
Compare Lactant. iv. 8, 4: Snidas, v. Φάνης: Athenagoras, xx. 296: Dio- 
dér. i, 27. 

This egg figures, as might be expected, in the cosmogony set forth by the 
Birds, Aristophan. Av. 695. Nyx gives birth to an egg, ous of which steps 
the golden Erds , from Erés and Chaos spring the race of birds. 

* Lobeck, Ag. p.504. Athenagor. xv. p. 64. 

* Lobeck, Ag. p. 507. Plato, Timzus, p. 41. In the Διονύσου τρόφοι of 
ZEschylus, the old attendants of the god Dionysos were said to have been 

VOL. L 200. 


oe nt -- --- -- -.--.---ἔ --.- --....-..τ- «ὦ... 


18 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


of Kronos was a period of tranquillity and happiness, as well as 
of extraordinary longevity and vigor. 

Kronos and Rhea gave birth to Zeus and his brothers and sis- 
ters. The concealment and escape of the infant Zeus, and the 
swallowing of the stone by Kronos, are given in the Orphic 
Theogon y substantially in the same manner as by Hesiod, only 
in a style less simple and more mysticized. Zeus is concealed in 
the cave of Nyx, the seat of Phanés himself, along with Eidé 
and Adrasteia, who nurse and preserve him, while the armed 
dance and sonorous instruments of the Kurétes prevent his 
infant cries from reaching the ears of Kronos. When grown up, 
he lays a snare for his father, intoxicates him with honey, and 
having surprised him in the depth of sleep, enchains and cas- 
trates him.! Thus exalted to the supreme mastery, he swallowed 
and absorbed into himself Métis, or Phanés, with all the preex- 
isting elements of things, and then generated all things anew out 
of his own being and conformably to his own divine ideas.2 So 
scanty are the remains of this system, that we find it difficult to 
trace individually the gods and goddesses sprung from Zeus 


eut up and boiled in a caldron, and rendered again young, by Medeia. 
Pherecydés and Simonidés said that Jason himself had been so dealt with. 
Schol. Aristoph. Equit. 1321. 

' Lobeck, p. 514. Porphyry, de Antro Nympharum, c. 16. φησὶ yap παρ 
᾿Ορφεῖ ἡ Νὺξ, τῷ Διὶ ὑποτιϑεμένη τὸν διὰ τοῦ μέλιτος δόλον, 

Εὐτ᾽ ἂν δή μιν ἴδηαι ὑπὸ δρυσὶν ὑψικόμοισι 
Ἔργοισιν μεθύοντα μελισσάων ἐριβόμβων, 
Αὐτικά μιν δῆσον. 

Ὃ καὶ πάσχει ὁ Κρόνος καὶ δεϑεὶς ἐκτέμνεται, ὡς Οὐρανός. 

Compare Timzus ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 983. 

* The Cataposis of Phanés by Zeus one of the most memorable points 
of the Orphic Theogony. Lobeck, p. 519.; also Fragm. vi. p. 456 of Her- 
mann’s Orphica. 

From this absorption and subsequent reproduction of all things by Zeus, 
flowed the magnificent string of Orphic predicates about him, — 


Ζεὺς ἀρχὴ, Ζεὺς μέσσα, Διὸς δ᾽ ἐκ πάντα τέτυκται, --- 


an allusion to which is traceable even in Plato, de Legg. iv. p. 715. Plutarch, 
de Defectu Oracul. T. ix. p. 879. c. 48. Diodérus (i. 11 ) is the most ancient 
writer remaining to us who mentions the name of Phanés, in a line cited as 
proceeding from Orpheus; wherein, however, Phanés is identified witb 
Phonysos. Compare Macrobius, Saturnal i. 18. 


ZEUS AND ZAGREUS. 19 


beyond Apollo, Dionysos, and Persephoné,—the latter being 
confounded with Artemis and Hekaté. 

But there is one new personage, begotten by Zeus, who stands 
preéminently marked in the Orphic Theogony, and whose adven- 
tures constitute one of its peculiar features. Zagreus, “the 
horned child,” is the son of Zeus by his own daughter Perse- 
phoné: he is the favorite of his father, a child of magnificent 
promise, and predestined, if he grow up, to succeed to supreme 
dominion as well as to the handling of the thunderbolt. He is 
seated, whilst an infant, on the throne beside Zeus, guarded by 
Apollo and the Kurétes. But the jealous Héré intercepts his 
career and incites the Titans against him, who, having first 
smeared their faces with plaster, approach him on the throne, 
tempt his childish fancy with playthings, and kill him with a 
sword while he is contemplating his face in a mirror. They then 
cut up his body and boil it in a caldron, leaving only the heart, 
which is picked up by Athéné and carried to Zeus, who in his 
wrath strikes down the Titans with thunder into Tartarus ; whilst 
Apollo is directed to collect the remains of Zagreus and bury 
them at the foot of Mount Parnassus. The heart is given to 
Semelé, and Zagreus is born again from her under the form of 
Dionysos.! 


' About the tale of Zagreus, see Lobeck, p. 552, sqq. Nonnus in his Dion- 
ysiaca has given many details about it: — 


Zaypéa γειναμένη κέροεν βρέφος, etc. (vi. 264). 


Clemens Alexandrin. Admonit. ad Gent. Ρ. 11,12, Sylb. The story was 
treated both by Callimachus and by Euphoridn, Etymolog. Magu. v. 
Zaypedc, Schol. Lycophr. 208. In the old epic poem Alkmex6nis or Epi- 
goni, Zagreus is a surname of Hadés. See Fragm. 4, p. 7, ed. Dantzer. 
Respecting the Orphic Theogony generally, Brandis (Handbuch der Ges- 
chichte der Griechisch-Rémisch. Philosophie, ¢c. xvii., xviii.), K. O. Miiller 
(Prolegg. Mythol. pp. 379-396), and Zoega (Abhandlungen, v. pp. 211-263) 
may be consulted with much advantage. Brandis regards this Theogony 
as considerably older than the first Ionic philosophy, which is a higher an‘i- 
quity than appears probable: some of the ideas which it contains, such, for 
example, as that of the Orphic egg, indicate a departure from the string of 
purely personal generations which both Homer and Hesiod exclusively 
recount, and a resort to something like physical analogies. On the whole, 
we cannot reasonably claim for it more than half a century above the age 
of Onomakritus. The Theogony of Pherekydés of Syros seems to have 


20 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Such is the tissue of violent fancies comprehended under the 
title of the Orphic Theogony, and read as such, it appears, by 
Plato, Isokratés and Aristotle. It will be seen that it is based 
upon the Hesiodic Theogony, but according to the general expan- 
sive tendency of Grecian legend, much new matter is added: 
Zeus has in Homer one predecessor, in Hesiod two, and in 
Orpheus four. 

The Hesiodic Theogony, though later in date than the Iliad 
and Odyssey, was coeval with the earliesi period of what may be 
ealled Grecian history, and certainly of an age earlier than 700 
B.C. It appears to have been widely circulated in Greece, and 
being at once ancient and short, the general public consulted it as 
their principal source of information respecting divine antiquity. 
The Orphic Theogony belongs to a later date, and contains the 
Hesiodic ideas and persons, enlarged and mystically disguised: 
its vein of invention was less popular, adapted more to the con- 
templation of a sect specially prepared than to the taste of a 
easual audience, and it appears accordingly to have obtained cur- 
rency chiefly among purely speculative men.! Among the major- 


borne some analogy to the Orphic. See Diogen. Laért. i. 119, Sturz. Frag- 
ment. Pherekyd. § 5-6, Brandis, Handbuch, ut sup. c. xxii. Pherekydés 
partially deviated from the mythical track or personal successions set forth by 
Hesiod. ἐπεὶ of ye wemey ui νοι αὐτῶν καὶ τῷ μὴ μυϑικῶς ἅπαντα λέγειν, 
οἷον Φερεκύδης καὶ ἕτεροί τινες, ete. (Aristot. Metaphys. N. p. 301, ed. 
Brandis). Porphyrius, de Antro Nymphar. c. 31, καὶ τοῦ Συρίου Pepexidov 
μυχοὺς καὶ βόϑρους καὶ ἄντρα καὶ ϑύρας καὶ πύλας λέγοντος, Kai διὰ τούτων 
αἱἰνιττομένου τὰς τῶν ψυχῶν γενέσεις καὶ ἀπογενέσεις, etc. Eudémus the 
Peripatetic, pupil of Aristotle, had drawn up an account of the Orphic The- 
ogony as well as of the doctrines of Pherekydés, Akusilaus and others, which 
was still in the hands of the Platonists of the fourth century, though it is 
now lost. The extracts which we find seem all to countenance the belief that 
the Hesiodic Theogony formed the basis upon which they worked. See 
about Akusilaus, Plato, Sympos. p. 178. Clem. Alex. Strom. p. 629. 

' The Orphic Theogony is never cited in the ample Scholia on Homer, 
though Hesiod is often alluded to. (See Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 540). Nor 


can it have been present to the minds of Xenophanés and Herakleitus, as . 


representing any widely diffused Grecian belief: the former, who so severely 
condemned Homer and Hesiod, would have found Orpheus much more 
deserving of his censure: and the latter could hardly have omitted Orpheus 
from his memorable denunciation : — Πολυμαϑίη νόον ob διδάσκει- Ἡσίοδον 
yap ἂν ἐξίδαξε καὶ ἸΤυϑαγόρην, aitic δὲ Ξενοφάνεά re καὶ Ἑκαταῖον. Diog 
Laér. ἰχ. 1. Isokratés treats Orpheus as the most censurable of all the poets 


με —_ 
eT SE ee er em 


HESIOD AND ORPHEUS. 41 


ity of these latter, however, it acquired greater veneration, and 
above all was supposed to be of greater antiquity, than the 
Hesiodic. The belief in its superior antiquity (disallowed by 
Herodotus, and seemingly also by Aristotle!), as well as the 
respect for its contents, iacreased during the Alexandrine age and 
through the declining centuries of Paganism, reaching its maxi- 
mum among the New-Platonists of the third and fourth century 
after Christ: both the Christian assailants, as well as the defend- 
ers, of paganism, treated it as the most ancient and venerable 
summary of the Grecian faith. Orpheus is celebrated by Pindar 
as the harper and companion of the Argonautic maritime heroes: 
Orpheus and Muszeus, as well as Pamphés and Olén, the great 
supposed authors of theogonic, mystical, oracular, and prophetic 
verses and hymns, were generally considered by literary Greeks 
as older than either Hesiod or Homer :? and such was also the 
common opinion of modern scholars until a period comparatively 
recent. It has now been shown, on sufficient ground, that the 


See Busiris, p. 229; ii. p. 309, Bekk. The Theogony of Orpheus, as con- 
ceived by Apollonius Rhodius (i. 504) in the third century B. c., and by 
Nigidius in the first century Β. c. (Servius ad Virgil. Eclog. iv. 10), seems to 
have been on a more contracted scale than that which is given in the text. 
But neither of them notice the tale of Zagreus, which we know to be as old 
as Onomakritus. 

' This opinion of Herodotus is implied in the remarkable passage about 
Homer and Hesiod, ii. 53, though he never once names Orpheus — only 
alluding once to “ Orphic ceremonies,” ii. 81. He speaks more than once of 
the prophecies of Musseus. Aristotle denied the past existence and reality 
of Orpheus. See Cicero de Nat. Deor. i. 38. 

* Pindar Pyth. iv. 177. Plato seems to consider Orpheus as more ancient 
than Homer. Compare Theztét. p. 179; Cratylus, p. 402; De Bepubl. ii. p. 
364. The order in which Aristophanés (and Hippias of Elis, ap. Clem. 
Alex. Str. vi. p. 624) mentions them indicates the same view, Ranz, 1030. 
It is unnecessary to cite the later chronologers, among whom the belief in 
the antiquity of Orpheus was universal ; he was commonly described as son 
of the Muse Calliopé. Androtién seems to have denied that he was a 
Thracian, regarding the Thracians as incurably stupid and illiterate. Andro 
tién, Fragm. 36, ed. Didot. Ephorus treated him as having been a pupil of 
the Idwan Dactyls of Phrygia (see Diodér. v. 64), and as having learnt 
from them his τελετὰς and μυστήρια, which he was the first to introduce 
into Greece. The earliest mention which we find of Orpheus, is that of the 
poet Ibycus (about B. c. 530), ὀνομάκλυτον ᾿Ορφῆν. Ibyci Fragm 9, p. 841, 
ed. Schneidewin. 


22 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


compositions which passed under these names emanate for the 
most part from poets of the Alexandrine age, and subsequent te 
the Christian era; and that even the earliest among them, which 
served as the stock on which the later additions were engrafted, 
belong to a period far more recent than Hesiod ; probably to the 
century preceding Onomakritus (8. c. 610-510). It seems, how- 
ever, certain, that both Orpheus and Muszus were names of 
established reputation at the time when Onomakritus flourished ; 
and it is distinctly stated by Pausanias that the latter was him- 
self the author of the most remarkable and characteristic mythe 
of the Orphic Theogony —the discerption of Zagreus by the 
Titans, and his resurrection as Dionysos.! 

The names of Orpheus and Muszeus (as well as that of Pytha 
goras,? looking at one side of his character) represent facts of 
importance in the history of the Grecian mind—the gradual 
influx of Thracian, Phrygian, and Egyptian, religious ceremonies 
and feelings, and the increasing diffusion of special mysteries, 


' Pausan. viii. 37, 3. Τιτᾶνας δὲ πρῶτον ἐς ποίησιν ἐσήγαγεν “Ὅμηρος, ϑεοὺς 
εἷναι σφᾶς ὑπὸ τῷ καλουμένῳ 'Ῥαρτάρῳ - καὶ ἐστιν ἐν Ἡρᾶς ὅρκῳ τὰ ἔπη" παρὰ 
δὲ Ὁμήρου ᾿Ονομάκριτος, παραλαβὼν τῶν Τιτάνων τὸ ὄνομα, Διονύσῳ τε 
συνέϑηκεν ὄργια, καὶ εἶναι τοὺς Τιτᾶνας τῷ Διονύσῳ τῶν παϑημάτων ἐποίησεν 
αὐτουργούς. Both the date, the character and the function of Onomakritus 
are distinctly marked by Herodotus. vii. 6. 

* Herodotus believed in the derivation both of the Orphic and Pythagorean 
regulations from Egypt — ὁμολογέουσι dé ταῦτα τοῖσι ᾿Ορφικοῖσι καλεομένοισι 
καὶ Βακχικοῖσι, ἐοῦσι δὲ Αἰγυπτίοισι (ii. 81). He knows the names of those 
Greeks who have borrowed from Egypt the doctrine of the metempsychosis, 
but he will not mention them (ii. 123): he can hardly allude to any one but 
the Pythagoreans, many of whom he probably knew in Italy. See the 
curious extract from Xenophan¢s respecting the doctrine of Pythagoras, 
Diogen. Laért. viii. 37 ; and the quotation from the Silli of Timén, Πυϑα- 
yopav δὲ yontog ἀποκλίναντ᾽ ἐπὶ δόξαν, etc Compare Porphyr. in Vit. 
Pythag. c. 41. 

* Aristophan. Ran. 1030. -~ 


᾿Ορφεὺς μὲν γὰρ τελετὰς ϑ᾽ ἡμῖν κατέδειξε, φόνων τ᾽ ἀπέχεσϑαι - 
Μουσαῖος τ᾽, ἐξακέσεις τε νόσων καὶ χρησμούς - Ἡσίοδος δὲ, 

Τῆς ἐργασίας, καρπῶν ὥρας, ἀρότους " ὁ δὲ ϑεῖος “Ὅμηρος 

"An® τοῦ τίμην καὶ κλέος ἔσχεν, πλὴν τοῦϑ᾽, ὅτι χρήστ᾽ ἐδίδοσκεν, 
᾿Αρετὰς, τάξεις, ὁπλίσεις ἀνδρῶν; ete. 


Tle same general contrast is to be found in Plato, Protagoras, p. 316; the 
opinion of Pausanias, ix. 30,4. The poems of Musseus seem to beave borne 


MYSTIC RITES AND FRATERNITIES. 98 


schemes for religious purification, and orgies (I venture to angli- 
cize the Greek word, which contains in its original meaning no 
implication of the ideas of excess to which it was afterwards 
diverted) in honor of some particular god — distinct both from 
the public solemnities and from the gentile solemnities of primi- 
tive Greece, —celebrated apart from the citizens generally, and 
approachable only through a certain course of preparation and 
initiation — sometimes even forbidden to be talked of in the 
presence of the uninitiated, under the severest threats of divine 
judgment. Occasionally such voluntary combinations assumed 
the form of permanent brotherhoods, bound together by periodical 
solemnities as well as by vows of an ascetic character: thus the 
Orphic life (as it was called) or regulation of the Orphic brother- 
hood, among other injunctions partly arbitrary and partly absti- 
nent, forbade animal food universally, and on certain occasions, 
the use of woollen clothing.! The great religious and political 
fraternity of the Pythagoreans, which acted so powerfully on the 
condition of the Italian cities, was one of the many manifestations 
of this general tendency, which stands in striking contrast with 
the simple, open-hearted, and demonstrative worship of the 
Homeric Greeks. 

Festivals at seed-time and harvest — at the vintage and at the 
opening of the new wine — were doubtless coeval with the earli- 
est habits of the Greeks; the latter being a period of unusual 
joviality. Yet in the Homeric poems, Dionysos and Démétér, 
the patrons of the vineyard and the cornfield, are seldom men- 
tioned, and decidedly occupy little place in the imagination of the 
poet as compared with the other gods: nor are they of any con- 
spicuous importance even in the Hesiodic Theogony. But during 
the interval between Hesiod and Onomakritus, the revolution in 
the religious mind of Greece was such as to place both these 
deities in the front rank. According to the Orphic doctrine, 
Zagreus, son of Persephoné, is destined to be the successor of 
Zeus, and although the violence of the Titans intercepts this lot, 


considerable analogy to the Melampodia ascribed to Hesiod (see Clemen. 
Alex. Str. vi. p. 628); and healing charms are ascribed to Orpheus as well 
as to Muszeus. See Eurip. Alcestis, 986. 

' Herod. ii. 81; Euripid. Hippol. 957, and the curious fragment of the lost 
Κρῶτες of Euripides. ᾿Ορφεκοὶ βίοι, Plato, Legg. vii. 782. 


Vol. 1 8 


$4 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


yet even when he rises again from his discerption under the 
name of Dionysos, he is the colleague and coéqual of his divine 
father. 

This remarkable change, occurring as it did during the sixth 
and a part of the seventh century before the Christian zra, may 
be traced to the influence of communication with Egypt (which 
only became fully open to the Greeks about B. Cc. 660), as well 
as with Thrace, Phrygia, and Lydia. From hence new religious 
ideas and feelings were introduced, which chiefly attached them- 
selves to the characters of Dionysos and Démétér. The Greeks 
identified these two deities with the great Egyptian Osiris and 
Isis, so that what was borrowed from the Egyptian worship of 
the two latter naturally fell to their equivalents in the Grecian 
system.! Moreover the worship of Dionysos (under what name 
cannot be certainly made out) was indigenous in Thrace,? 
as that of the Great Mother was in Phyrgia, and in Lydia — 
together with those violent ecstasies and manifestations of tem 
porary frenzy, and that clashing of noisy instruments, which we 
find afterwards characterizing it in Greece. The great masters 
of the pipe —as well as the dythyramb,> and indeed the whole 
musical system appropriated to the worship of Dionysos, which 


1 Herodot. ii. 42, 59, 144. 

2 Herodot. v. 7, Vii. 111; Euripid. Hecub. 1249, and Rhésus, 969. and the 
Prologue to the Bacchie; Strabo, x. p. 470; Schol. ad Aristophan. Aves, 
874; Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg. 1069; Harpocrat. v. Σάβοι; Photius, 
Εὐοὶ Σαβοῖ. The “Lydiaca” of Th. Menke (Berlin, 1843) traces the 
early connection between the religion of Dionysos and that of Cybelé, c. 6, 
7. Hoeckh’s Kréta (vol. i. p. 128-134) is instructive respecting the Phrygian 
religion. 

1. Aristotle, Polit. viii. 7,9. Πᾶσα yap Βάκχεια καὶ πᾶσα ἡ τοιαύτη κίνησις 
μάλιστα τῶν ὀργάνων ἐστὶν ἐν τοῖς αὐλοῖς" τῶν δ᾽ ἁρμονίων ἐν τοῖς Φρυγιστὶ 
μέλεσι λαμβάνει ταῦτα τὸ πρέπον, οἷον ὁ διϑύραμβος δοκεῖ ὁμολογουμένως 
εἶναι Φρύγιον. Eurip. Bacch. 58.— 


Αἴρεσϑε τἀπιχώρι᾽ ἐν πόλει Φρυγῶν 
Τύμπανα, Ῥέας τε μητρὸς ἐμὰ ϑ᾽ εὑρήματα, ete. 


Plutarch, Ei.in Delph. c.9; Philochor. Fr. 21, ed. D'ot, p. 389. The com- 
plete and intimate manner in which Euripidés identifies the Bacchic rites of 
Dionysos with the Phryjian ceremonies in honor of the Great Mother, is very 
remarkabls. The fine description given by Lucretius (ii. 600-640) of the 
Parygian worship is much enfeebled by his unsatisfactory allegorizing 


POST-HOMERIC CHANGES IN RELIGION. 25 


contrasted so pointedly with the quiet solemnity of the Psan 
addressed to Apollo — were all originally Phrygian. 

From all these various countries, novelties, unknown to the 
Homeric men, found their way into the Grecian worship: and 
there is one amongst them which deserves to be specially noticed, 
because it marks the generation of the new clasa of ideas in 
their theology. Homer mentions many persons guilty of private 
or involuntary homicide, and compelled either to go into exile or 
to make pecuniary satisfaction ; but he never once describes any 
of them to have either received or required purification for the 
crime.'! Now in the time subsequent to Homer, purification for 
homicide comes to be considered as indispensable: the guilty 
person is regarded as unfit for the society of man or the worship 
of the gods until he has received it, and special ceremonies are 
prescribed whereby it is to be administered. Herodotus tells us 
that the ceremony of purification was the same among the Lydi- 
ans and among the Greeks :* we know that it formed no part of 
the early religion of the latter, and we may perhaps reasonably 
suspect that they borrowed it from the former. The oldest 
instance known to us of expiation for homicide was contained in 
the epic poem of the Milesian Arkiinus,? wherein Achillés is 


᾿ Schol. ad Iliad, xi. 690 ---οὐ διὰ τὰ καϑάρσια ᾿Ιφίτου πορϑεῖται ἡ Πύλος. 
ἐπεί τοι ᾽Οδυσσεὺς μείζων Νέστορος, καὶ παρ᾽ Ὁμήρῳ οὐκ οἴδαμεν φονέα po 
ϑαιρόμενον, ἀλλ᾽ ἀντιτίνοντα ἢ dvyadevouevov, The examples are numer- 
ous, and are found both in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Iliad, ii. 665 ( Zlépo- 
lemos); xiii. 697 (Medén); xiii. 574 (Epeigeus); xxiii. 89 ( Patroclos ) ; 
Odyss. xv. 224 ( Theoclymenos) ; xiv. 380 (an tolian). Nor does the inter- 
esting mythe respecting the functions of Até and the Lite harmonize with 
the subsequent doctrine about the necessity of purification. (Iliad, ix. 498) 
* Herodot. i. 8ὅ --- ἔστι δὲ παραπλησίη ἡ κάϑαρσις τοῖσι Aoletet καὶ vets 
Ἕλλησι. One remarkable proof, amongst many, of the deep hold which 
this idea took of the greatest minds in Greece, that serious mischief would 
fall upon the community if family quarrels or homicide remained without 
religious expiation, is to be found in the objections which Aristotle urges 
against the community of women proposed in the Platonic Republic. It 
could not be known what individuals stood in the relation of father son or 
brother: if, therefore, wrong or murder of kindred should take place the 
ἜΗΝ religious atonements (af νομιζόμεναι λύσεις) could not be applied, 
an e crime i i it. ii 
rll sede τα go unexpiated. (Aristot. Polit. ii. 1,14. Compare 
ἢ See the Fragm. of the Aithiopis of Arktinus, in Dantzer’s Collection, p.16 
VOL. ὁ. 2 


36 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


purified by Odysseus for the murder of Thersités : several others 
occurred in the later or Hesiodic epic — Héraklés, Peleus, Belle- 
rophon, Alkmz6on, Amphiktyon, Pomander, Triopas, — from 
whence they probably passed through the hands of the logogra 
phers to Apollodorus, Diodorus, and others.! The purification 
of the murderer was originally operated, not by the hands of any 
priest or specially sanctified man, but by those of a chief or king, 
who goes through the appropriate ceremonies in the manner 
recounted by Herodotus in his pathetic narrative respecting 
Creesus and Adrastus. 

The idea of a special taint of crime, and of the necessity as 
well as the sufficiency of prescribed religious ceremonies as a 
means of removing it, appears thus to have got footing in Grecian 
practice subsequent to the time of Homer. The peculiar rites 
or orgies, composed or put together by Onomakritus, Methapus,4 
and other men of more than the ordinary piety, were founded 
upon a similar mode of thinking,and adapted to the same mental 
exigencies. They were voluntary religious manifestations, super- 
induced upon the old public sacrifices of the king or chiefs on 
behalf of the whole society, and of the father on his own family 


hearth — they marked out the details of divine service proper to 
appease or gratify the god to whom they were addressed, and to 
procure for the believers who went through them his blessings 
and protection here or hereafter — the exact performance of the 
divine service in all] its specialty was held necessary, and thus the 
priests or Hierophants, who alone were familiar with the ritual, 
acquired a commanding position. Generally speaking, these 


‘ The references for this are collected in Lobeck’s Aglaophamos. Epi- 
metr. ii. ad Orphica, p. 968. 

* Pausanias (iv. 1, 5) --- μετεκόσμησε γὰρ καὶ Μέϑαπος τῆς τελετῆς (the 
Eleusinian Orgies, carried by Kaukon from Eleusis into Messénia), ἔστιν ἅ. 
Ὁ δὲ Μέϑαπος γένος μὲν ἦν ᾿Αϑηναῖος, τελετῆς τε καὶ bp γίων παντοίων 
σινϑέτης. Again, νἱϊῖ. 37,3, Onomakriws Διονύσῳ συν ἐϑηκεν ὄργια, 
etc. This is another expression designating the same idea as the Rhésus of 
Euripidés, 944. — 

Mvornpiov te τῶν ἀποῤῥήτων φάνας 
Ἔδειξεν ᾽Ορφεύς. 


ἢ Télinés, the ancestor of the Syracusan despot Geld, acquired great 
political power as possessing τὰ ἱρὰ τῶν χϑονίων ϑεῶν (Hercdot. vii 153); 


PRIESTS, PROPHETS, NEW CEREMONIAL, ETC. φῇ 


peculiar orgies obtained their admission and their influence at 
periods of distress, disease, public calamity and danger, or re- 
ligious terror and despondency, which appear to have been but 
too frequent in their occurrence. 

The minds of men were prone to the belief that what they 
were suffering arose from the displeasure of some of the gods, 
and as they found that the ordinary sacrifices and worship were 
insufficient for their protection, so they grasped at new sugges- 
tions proposed to them with the view of regaining the divine 
favor.' Such suggestions were more usually copied, either in 
whole or in part, from the religious rites of some foreign locality, 
or from some other portion of the Hellenic world; and in this 
manner many new sects or voluntary religious fraternities, prom- 
ising to relieve the troubled conscience and to reconcile the sick 
or suffering with the offended gods, acquired permanent establish- 
ment as well as considerable influence. They were generally 
under the superintendence of hereditary families of priests, who 
imparted the rites of confirmation and purification to eommuni- 
cants generally; no one who went through the prescribed cere- 
monies being excluded. In many cases, such ceremonies fell into 
the hands of jugglers, who volunteered their services to wealthy 
men, and degraded their profession as well by obtrusive venality 
as by extravagant promises :2 sometimes the price was lowered 


he and his family became hereditary Hierophants of these ceremonies. How 
Télinés acquired the ἱρὰ Herodotus cannot say —édev δὲ αὐτὰ ἔλαβε, ἢ 
αὐτὸς ἐκτήσατο, τοῦτο οὐκ ἔχω εἶπαι. Probably there was a traditional 
legend, not inferior in sanctity to that of Eleusis, tracing them to the gift of 
Démétér herself. 

* See Josephus cont. Apién. ii. c. 35.; Hesych. Θεοὶ ξένιοι ; Strabo, x. p 
471; Plutarch, Περὶ Δεισιδαιμον. c. iii. p. 166; ¢. vii. p. 167. 

ἢ Plato, Republ. ii. p. 364; Demosthen. de Corona, c. 79, p.313. The 
δεισιδαίμων of Theophrastus cannot be comfortable without receiving the 
Orphic communion monthly from the Orpheoteleste (Theophr. Char. xvi.). 
Compare Plutarch, Περὶ rod μὴ χρᾶν ἔμμετρα, ete., c. 25, p. 400. The comic 
writer Phrynichus indicates the existence of these rites of religious excite- 
ment, at Athens, during the Peloponnesian war. See the short fragment of 
ows Κρόνος, ap. Schol. Aristoph. Aves, 989 - 


᾿Ανὴρ χορεύει, καὶ τὰ τοῦ ϑεοῦ καλῶς" 
Βούλει Διοπείϑη μεταδράμω καὶ τύμπανα ; 


Diopeithés was a χργσμόλογος, or collecter and deliverer of prophecseg, 


28 HISTORY ΟΕ GREECE. 


to bring them within reach of the poor and even of slaves. But 
the wide diffusion, and the number of voluntary communicants 
of these solemnities, proves how much they fell in with the feel- 
ing of the time and how much respect they enjoyed —a respect, 
which the more conspicuous establishments, such as Eleusis and 
Samothrace, maintained for several centuries. And the visit of 
the Kretan Epimenidés to Athens — in the time of Soldén, and 
at a season of the most serious disquietude and dread of having 
offended the gods — illustrates the tranquillizing effect of new 
orgies! and rites of absolution, when enjoined by a man standing 
high in the favor of the gods and reputed to be the son of a 
nymph. The supposed Erythrean Sibyl, and the earliest collec- 
tion of Sibylline prophecies,? afterwards so much multiplied and 
interpolated, and referred (according to Grecian custom) to an 
age even earlier than Homer, appear to belong to a date not long 
posterior to Epimenidés. Other oracular verses, such as those of 
Bakis, were treasured up in Athens and other cities: the sixth 
century before the Christian «ra was fertile in these kinds of 
religious manifestations. © 

Amongst the special rites and orgies of the character just 
described, those which enjoyed the greatest Pan-Hellenic reputa- 
tion were attached to the Idean Zeus in Kréte, to Démétér at 
Eleusis, to the Kabeiri in Samothrace, and to Dionysos at Delphi 


which he sung (or rather, perhaps, recited) with solemnity and emphasis, in 
public. ὥστε ποιοῦντες χρησμοὺς αὐτοὶ Διδόασ' ἄδειν Διοπείϑει τῷ παραμαι- 
νομένῳ. (Ameipsias ap. Schol. Aristophan. ut sup., which illustrates 
Thucyd. ii. 21). 

* Plutarch, Solon, c. 12; Diogen. Laért. i. 110. 

* See Klausen, “ Aneas und die Penaten:” his chapter on the connection 
between the Grecian and Roman Sibylline collections is among the most 
ingenious of his learned book. Book ii. pp. 210-240; see Steph. Byz. v 
Tépyee. 

To the same age belong the χρησμοὶ and καϑαρμοὶ of Abaris and his mar 
vellous journey through the air upon an arrow (Herodot. iv. 36). 

Epimenidés also composed καϑαρμοὶ in epic verse; his Κουρήτων and 
Κορυβάντων γένεσις, and his four thousand verses respecting Minés and 
Rhadamanthys, if they had been preserved, would let us fully into the ideas 
of a religious mystic of that age respecting the antiquities of Greece. 
(Strabo, x. p. 474; Diogen. Laért.i.10). Among the poems ascribed to 
Hesiod were comprised not only the Melampodia, but also ἔπη μαντικὰ and 
ἐξηγήσεις ἐπὶ τέρασιν. Pausan. ix. 31 4. 


INFLUENCE OF EXTRA-HELLENIC RELIGION. 29 


and Thebes.! That they were all to a great degree analogous, 
is shown by the way in which they unconsciously run together 
and become confused in the minds of various authors: the an- 
cient inquirers themselves were unable to distinguish one from 
the other, and we must be content to submit to the like ignorance. 
But we see enough to satisfy us of the general fact, that during 
the century and a half which elapsed between the opening of 
Egypt to the Greeks and the commencement of their struggle 
with the Persian kings, the old religion was largely adulterated 
by importations from Egypt, Asia Minor,? and Thrace. The 
rites grew to be more furious and ecstatic, exhibiting the utmost 
excitement, bodily as well as mental: the legends became at once 
more coarse, more tragical, and less pathetic. The manifestations 
of this frenzy were strongest among the women, whose religious 
susceptibilities were often found extremely unmanageable,3 and 
who had everywhere congregative occasional ceremonies of their 
own, part from the men — indeed, in the case of the colonists, 
especially of the Asiatic colonists, the women had been originally 
women of the country, and as such retained to a great degree 
their non-Hellenic manners and feelings. The god Diony- 


* Among other illustrations of this general resemblance, may be counted 
an epitaph of Kallimachus upon an aged priestess, who passed from the 
service of Démétér to that of the Kabeiri, then to that of Cybelé, having 
the superintendence of many young women. Kallimachus, Epigram. 42. p. 
308. ed. Ernest. 

* Plutarch, (Defect. Oracul. c. 10, p. 415) treats these countries as the orig- 
inal seat of the worship of Damons (wholly or partially bad, and interme- 
diate between gods and men), and their religious ceremonies as of a corres- 
ponding character: the Greeks were borrowers from them, according to him, 
both of the doctrine and of the ceremonies. 

* Strabo, vii. p.297. “Amavrec γὰρ τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας ἀρχηγοὺς οἴονται τὰς 
γυναῖκας" αὐταὶ δὲ κὰι τοὺς ἄνδρας προκαλοῦνται ἐς τὰς ἐπὶ πλέον ϑεραπείας 
τῶν ϑεῶν, καὶ ἑορτὰς, καὶ ποτνιασμούς. Plato (De Legg. x. pp. 909, 910) 
takes great pains to restrain this tendency on the part of sick or suffering 
persons, especially women, to introduce new sacred rites into his city. 

4 Herodot. i. 146. The wives of the Ionic original settlers at Miletos were 
Karian women, whose husbands they slew. 

The violences of the Karian worship are attested by what Herodotus says 
of the Karian residents in Egypt, at the festival of Isis at Busiris. The 
Egyptians at this festival manifested their feeling by beating themselves, the 
Karians by cutting their faces with knives (ii. 61). The Καρικὴ μοῦσα 
became prov rbial for funeral wailings (Plate, Legg. vii. p. 800): the ur 


δὴ HISTORY OF GREECE. 


sos,' whom the legends described as clothed in feminine attire, ana 
leading a troop of .renzied women, inspired a temporary ecstasy, 
and those who resisted the inspiration, being supposed to disobey 
his will, were punished either by particular judgments or by 
mental terrors; while those who gave full loose to the feeling, in 
the appropriate season and with the received solemnities, satisfied 
his exigencies, and believed themselves to have procured immu- 
nity from such disquietudes for the future.2 Crowds of women, 
clothed with fawn-skins and bearing the sanctified thyrsus, flocked 
to the solitudes of Parnassus, or Kitheron, or Taygetus, during 
the consecrated triennial period, passed the night there with 
torches, and abandoned themselves to demonstrations of frantic 
excitement, with dancing and clamorous invocation of the god: 
they were said to tear animals limb from limb, to devour the raw 


measured effusions and demonstrations of sorrow for the departed, some 
times accompanied by cutting and mutilation self-inflicted by the mournet 
was a distinguishing feature in Asiatics and Egyptians as compared with 
Greeks. Plutarch, Consolat. ad Apollon. c. 22, p. 123. Mournful feeling 
was, in fact, a sort of desecration of the genuine and primitive Grecian fes- 
tival, which was a season of cheerful harmony and social enjoyment, where 
in the god was believed to sympathize (εὐφροσύνη). See Xenophanés ap. 
Aristot. Rhetor. ii. 25; Xenophan. Fragm. 1. ed. Schneidewin ; Theognis, 
776; Plutarch, De Superstit. p. 169. The unfavorable comments of Diony 
sius of Halicarnassus, in so far as they refer to the festivals of Greece, apply 
to the foreign corruptions, not to the native character, of Grecian worship. | 

' The Lydian Héraklés was conceived and worshipped as ἃ man in 
female attire: this idea occurs often in the Asiatic religions. Mencke, 
Lydiaca, c. 8, p. 22. Διόνυσος ἄῤῥην καὶ ϑῆλυς. Aristid. Or. iv. p. 28; 
#Eschyl. Fragm. Edoni, ap. Aristoph. Thesmoph. 185. Ποδαπὸς ὁ γύννις ; 
τίς πάτρα ; τίς ἡ στολῆ ; ' 

* Melampos cures the women (whom Dionysos has struck mad for their 
resistance to his rites), παραλαβὼν τοὺς δυνατωτάτους TOV νεανίων μετ ἀλα- 
λαγμοῦ καί τινος ἐνθέου χορείας. .Apollodér. ii. 2, 7. Compare Eurip 
Bacch. 861. 

Plato (Legg. vii. p. 790) gives a similar theory of the healing effect of the 
Korybantic rites, which cured vague and inexplicable terrors of the mind by 
means of dancing and music conjoined with religious ceremonies — αἱ τὰ 
τῶν Κορυβάντων ἰώματα τελοῦσαι (the practitioners were women), ai τῶν 
éx@pover Βακχείων ἰάσεις ---- ἡ τῶν ἔξωϑεν κρατεὶ κίνησις προσφερομέψνῃ τὴν 
ἐντὸς φοβερὰν οὖσαν καὶ μανικὴν κίνησιν — ὀρχουμένους δὲ καὶ αὐλουμένους 
μετὰ ϑεῶν, οἷἰς ἂν καλλιερήσαντες ἕκαστοι ϑύωσιν, κατειργάσατο ἀντὶ μανικῶν 
ῥωῖν διαϑέσεων ἕξεις ἔμφροναι ἔχειν. 


DIONYSIA, KORYBANTES, ETC. a1 


flesh, and to cut themselves without feeling the wound.! The 
men yielded to a similar impulse by noisy revels in the streets, 
sounding the cymbals and tambourine, and carrying the image of 
the god in procession.2 It deserves to be remarked, that the 
Athenian women never practised these periodical mountain excur- 
sions, so common among the rest of the Greeks: they had their 
feminine solemnities of the Thesmophoria,? mournful in their 
character and accompanied with fasting, and their separate con- 
gregations at the temples of Aphrodité, but without any extreme 
or unseemly demonstrations. The state festival of the Dyonysia, 
in the city of Athens, was celebrated with dramatic entertain. 
ments, and the once rich harvest of Athenian tragedy and comedy 
was thrown up under its auspices. The ceremonies of the Kuré- 
tes in Kréte, originally armed dances in honor of the Idean Zeus, 
seem also to have borrowed from Asia so much of fury, of self- 
infliction, and of mysticism, that they became at last inextricably 
confounded with the Phrygian Korybantes or worshippers of the 
Great Mother; though it appears that Grecian reserve always 
stopped short of the irreparable self-mutilation of Atys. 

The influence of the Thracian religion upon that of the Greeks 
cannot be traced in detail, but the ceremonies contained in it were 
of a violent and fierce character, like the Phrygian, and acted 
upon Hellas in the same general direction as the latter. And the 
like may be said of the Egyptian religion, which was in this case 
the more operative, inasmuch as all the intellectual Greeks were 
naturally attracted to go and visit the wonders on the banks of the 


' Described in the Bacche of Euripidés (140, 735, 1135, ete.). Ovid, 
Trist. iv. i. 41. “Utque suum Bacchis non sentit saucia vulnus, Cum furit 
Edonis exululata jugis.” In a fragment of the poet Alkman, a Lydian by birth, 
the Bacchanal nymphs are represented as milking the lioness, and making 
cheese of the milk, during their mountain excursions and festivals. ( Alk- 
man. Fragm. 14. Schn. Compare Aristid. Orat. iv. Ρ. 29). Clemens 
Alexand. Admonit. ad Gent. p. 9, Sylb.; Lucian, Dionysos, c. 3, T. iii. p. Fr, 
Hemsterh. 

* See the tale of Skylés in Herod. iv. 79, and Athenzus, x. p. 445. Hero 
dotus mentions that the Scythians abhorred the Bacchic ceremonies, account 
ing the frenzy which belonged to them to be disgraceful and monstrous. 

* Plutarch, De Isid. et Osir. c. 69, p. 378; Schol. ad Aristoph. Thesmoph 
There were however Bacchic ceremonies practised to a certain extent by the 
Athenian women. (Aristoph. Lysist. 388). 


Bs MISTORY OF GREECE. 


Niie ; the powerful effect produced upon them is attested by n-atey 
evidences, but especially by the interesting narrative of Herodo- 
tus. Now the Egyptian ceremonies were at once more licentious, 
and more profuse in the outpouring both of joy and sorrow, than 
the Greek :! but a still greater difference sprang from the extra- 
ordinary power, separate mode of life, minute observances, and 
elaborate organization, of the priesthood. The ceremonies of 
Egypt were multitudinous, but the legends concerning them were 
framed by the priests, and as a general rule, seemingly, known to 
the priests alone: at least they were not intended to be publicly 
talked of, even by pious men. They were “holy stories,” which 
it was sacrilege publicly to mention, and which from this very 
prohibition only took firmer hold of the minds of the Greek vis- 
itors who heard them. And thus the element of secrecy and 
mystic silence — foreign to Homer, and only faintly glanced at in 
Hesiod — if it was not originally derived from Egypt, at least 
received from thence its greatest stimulus and diffusion. The 
character of the legends themselves was naturally affected by 
this change from publicity to secrecy : the secrets when revealed 
would be such as to justify by their own tenor the interdict on 
public divulgation: instead of being adapted, like the Homeric 
mythe, to the universal sympathies and hearty interest of a 
crowd of hearers, they would derive their impressiveness from 
the tragical, mournful, extravagant, or terror-striking character 
of the incidents.2 Such a tendency, which appears explicable 
and probable even on general grounds, was in this particular case 
rendered still more certain by the coarse taste of the Egyptian 
priests. That any recondite doctrine, religious or philosophical, 
was attached to the mysteries or contained in the holy stories, 


ες 2Egyptiaca numina fere plangoribus gaudent, Greca plerumque chor 
eis, barbara autem strepitu cymbalistarum et tympanistarum et choraula- 
rum.” (Apuleius, De Genio Socratis, v. ii. p. 149, Oudend). 

3 The legend of Dionysos and Prosymnos, as it stands in Clemens, could 
never have found place in an epic poem (Admonit. ad Gent. p. 22, Sylb.). 
Compare page 11 of the same work, where however he so confounds together 
Phrygian, Bacchic, and Eleusinian mysteries, that one cannot distinguish 
them apart. 

Demetrius Phaléreus says about the legends belonging to these cererronies 
— Aid καὶ τὰ μυστήρια λέγεται ἐν ἀλληγορίαις πρὸς ἔκπληξιν wat φρέ 
κην. ὥσπερ ἐν σκότῳ καὶ νυκτί. (De Interpretatione, c. 101). 


EGYPTIAN AND THRACIAN RELYGION. 88 


has never been shown, and is to the last degree improbaole 
though the affirmative has been asserted by many learned men 
Herodotus seems to have believed that the worship and rere. 
monies of Dionysos generally were derived by the Greeks from 
Egypt, brought over by Kadmus and taught by him to Melampus. 
and the latter appears in the Hesiodic Catalogue as having cured 
th: daughters of Proetus of the mental distemper with which they 
had been smitten by Dionysos for rejecting his ritual. He cured 
them by introducing the Bacchic dance and fanatical excitement: 
this mythical incident is the most ancient mention of the Diony- 
siac solemnities presented in the same character as they bear in 
Euripidés. It is the general tendency of Herodotus to apply the 
theory of derivation from Egypt far too extensively to Grecian 
institutions: the orgies of Dionysos were not originally borrowed 
from thence, though they may have been much modified by con- 
nection with Egypt as well as with Asia. The remarkable mythe 
composed by Onomakritus respecting the dismemberment of 
Zagreus was founded upon an Egyptian tale very similar respect- 
ing the body of Osiris, who was supposed to be identical with 
Dionysos :! nor was it unsuitable to the reckless fury of the Bac- 
chanals during their state of temporary excitement, which found 
a still more awful expression in the mythe of Pentheus, — torn 
in pieces by his own mother Agavé at the head of her compan- 
tons in the ceremony, as an intruder upon the feminine rites as 
well as a scoffer at the god.2 A passage in the Iliad (the authen- 
ticity of which has been contested, but even as an interpolation it 
must be old)% also recounts how Lykurgus was struck blind by 
Zeus for having chased away with a whip “the nurses of the mad 
Dionysos,” and frightened the god himself into the sea to take 


' See the curious treatise of Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. c. 11-14 p 
356, and his elaborate attempt to allegorize the legend. He seems to have 
conceived that the Thracian Orpheus had first introduced into Greece the 
mysteries both of Démétér and Dionysos, copying them from those of Isis 


and Osiris in Egypt. See . 84. fro . 
891, ed. Wyttenb. Fragm. 84, from one of his lost works, tom, v. p 


* ZEschylus had dramatized the story of Pentheus as well as that of Ly. 
kurgus: one of his tetralogies was the Lykurgeia (Dindorf, Asch Fragms 
115}. Ashort allusion to the story of Pentheus appears in Eamenid 28 
Compare Sophocl. Antigon. 985, and the Scholia. 

* Iliad, vi. 130. See the remarks of Mr. Payne Knight ad loc. 

VaL. t 2* Rane 


ie 


rs 


ge eel “πο νὦ»“--»..........ὕὔὦὍὌὕἧὡς.β. 


ππο---- 


~ 


Pg ey age 


— 2 Se ee oe Se 


πῶς. 


84 HISTORY OF GREECE 


refuge in the arms of Thetis: and the fact, that Dionysos is s¢ 
frequently represented in his mythes as encountering opposition 
and punishing the refractory, seems to indicate that his worship 
under its ecstatic form was a late phenomenon and introduced not 
without difficulty. The mythical Thracian Orpheus was attached 
as Eponymos to a new sect, who seem to have celebrated the cere- 
monies of Dionysos with peculiar care, minuteness and fervor, 
besides observing various rules in respect to food and clothing. 
st was the opinion of Herodotus, that these rules, as well as the 
Pythagorean, were borrowed from Egypt. But whether this be 
the fact or not, the Orphic brotherhood is itself both an evidence, 
and a cause, of the increased importance of the worship of Dion- 
ysos, which indeed is attested by the great dramatic poets of 
Athens. 

The Homeric Hymns present to us, however, the religious 
ideas and legends of the Greeks at an earlier period, when the 
enthusiastic and mystic tendencies had not yet acquired their full 
development. Though not referable to the same age or to the 
same author as either the Iliad or the Odyssey, they do to a cer- 
tain extent continue the same stream of feeling, and the same 
mythical tone and coloring, as these poems — manifesting but 
little evidence of Egyptian, Asiatic, or Thracian adulterations. 
The difference is striking between the god Dionysos as he appears 
in the Homeric hymn and in the Bacche of Euripidés. The 
hymnographer describes him as standing on the sea-shore, in the 
guise of a beautiful and richly-clothed youth, when Tyrrhenian 
pirates suddenly approach: they seize and bind him and drag 
him on board their vessel. But the bonds which they employ 
burst spontaneously, and leave the god free. The steersman, per- 
ceiving this with affright, points out to his companions that they 
have unwittingly laid hands on a god, — perhaps Zeus himself, 
or Apollo, or Poseidén. He conjures them to desist, and to re- 
place Dionysos respectfully on the shore, lest in his wrath he 
should visit the ship with wind and hurricane: but the crew de- 
ride his scruples, and Dionysos is carried prisoner out to sea with 
the ship under full sail. Miraculous circumstances soon attest 
both his presence and his power. Sweet-scented wine is seen to 
flow spontaneously about the ship, the sail and mast appear 
adorned with vine and ivy-leaves, and the oar-pegs with garlands 


HOMERIC HYMN TO DIONYSOS. 85 


fhe terrified crew now too late entreat the helmsman to steer his 
course for the shore, and crowd round him for protection on the 
poop. But their destruction is at hand: Dionysos assumes the 
form of a lion—a bear is seen standing near him — this bear 
rushes with a loud roar upon the captain, while the crew leap 
overboard in their agony of fright, and are changed into dolphins. 
Ther: remains none but the discreet and pious steersman, to whom 
Dionysos addresses words of affectionate encouragement, reveal- 
ing his name, parentage and dignity.! 

This hymn, perhaps produced at the Naxian festival of Dion- 
ysos, and earlier than the time when the dithyrambic chorus be- 
came the established mode of singing the praise and glory of that 
god, is conceived in a spirit totally different from that of the Bac- 
chic Telate, or special rites which the Bacchex of Euripidés so 
abundantly extol,— rites introduced from Asia by Dionysos him- 
self at the head of a thiasus or troop of enthusiastic women,— in- 
flaming with temporary frenzy the minds of the women of Thebes, 
—not communicable except to those who approach as pious com- 
municants,— and followed by the most tragical results to all those 
who fight against the god.2 The Bacchic Teletw, and the Bac- 
chic feminine frenzy, were importations from abroad, as Euripides 
represents them, engrafted upon the joviality of the primitive 
Greek Dionysia; they were borrowed, in all probability, from 
more than one source and introduced through more than one 


* See Homer, Hymn 5, Διόνυσος ἢ Ajora:. — The satirical drama of Euri- 
pidés, the Cyclops, extends and alters this old legend. Dionysos is carried 
away by the Tyrrhenian pirates, and Silénus at the head of the Bacchanals 
goes everywhere in search of him (Eur. Cyc. 112). The pirates are instiga- 
ted against him hy the hatred of Héré, which appears frequently as a cause 
of mischief to Dionysos (Bacchx, 286). Héré in her anger had driven him 
mad when a child, and he had wandered in this state over Egypt and Syria; 
at length he came to Cybela in Phrygia, was purified (καϑαρϑεὶς) by Rhea, 
and received from her female attire (Apollod6r. iii. 5, 1, with Heyne’s note). 
This seems to have been the legend adopted to explain the old verse of the 
Iliad, as well as the maddening attributes of the god generally. 

There was a standing antipathy between the priestesses and the religious 
establishinents of Héré and Dionysos (Plutarch, Περὶ τῶν ἐν Πλαταίαις 
Δαιδάλων, c. 2, tom. v. p. 755,ed. Wytt.). Plutarch ridicules the legendary 
reason commonly assigned for this, and provides a symbolical explanatior 
which he thinks very satisfactory. 

* Eurip. Bacch. 325, 464, ete. 


86 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


channel, the Orphic life or brotherhood being one of the varieties 
Strabo ascribes to this latter a Thracian original, considering Or- 
pheus, Muszeus, and Eumolpus as having been all Thracians.! It 
is curious to observe how, in the Bacche of Euripidés, the two 
distinct and even conflicting ideas of Dionysos come alternately 
forward ; sometimes the old Grecian idea of the jolly and exhil- 
arating god of wine — but more frequently the recent and import- 
ed idea of the terrific and irresistible god who unseats the reason, 
and whose @strus can only be appeased by a willing, though tem- 
porary obedience. In the fanatical impulse which inspired the 
votaries of the Asiatic Rhea or Cybelé, or of the Thracian Kotys, 
there was nothing of spontaneous joy; it was a sacred madness, 
during which the soul appeared to be surrendered to a stimulus 
from without, and accompanied by preternatural strength and tem- 
porary sense of power, — altogether distinct from the unrestrain- 
ed hilarity of the original Dionysia, as we see them in the rural 
demes of Attica, or in the gay city of Tarentum. ‘There was 
indeed a side on which the two bore some analogy, inasmuch as, 


1 Strabo, x p. 471. Compare Aristid. Or. iv. p. 28. 

2 In the lost Xantrie of /Eschylus, in which seems to have been included 
the tale of Pentheus, the goddess Avoca was introduced, stimulating the Bac- 
ch, and creating in them spasmodic excitement from head to foot: ἐκ πο- 
δῶν δ' ἄνω Ὕπέρχεται σπαραγμὸς εἰς ἄκρον κάρα, etc. (Fragm. 155, Dindorf). 
His tragedy called Edoni also gave a terrific representation of the Bacchan- 
als and their fury, exaggerated by the maddening music: Πίμπλησι μέλος, 
Μανίας ἐπαγωγὸν ὁμοκλάν (Fr. 54). 

Sach also is the reigning sentiment throughout the greater part of the 
Bacchex of Euripidés ; it is brought out still more impressively in the mourn- 
ful Atys of Catullus :— 

“ Dea magna, Dea Cybele, Dindymi Dea, Domina, 
Procul a mea tuus sit furor omnis, hera, domo : 
Alios age incitatos : alios age rabidos! ” 

We have only to compare this fearful influence with the description οἱ 
Dikezopolis and his exuberant joviality in the festival of the rural Dionysia 
(Aristoph. Acharn 1051 seq.; see also Plato. Legg. i. p. 637), to see how com 
pletely the foreign innovations recolored the old Grecian Dionysos, — Acdv- 
voog πολυγηϑῆς,--- who appears also in the scene of Dionysos and Ariadné 
in the Symposion of Xenophon, c. 9. The simplicity of the ancient Diony-. 
siac processions is dwelt upon by Plutarch, De Cupidine Divitiarum, p. 527 
and the riginal dithyram) addressed by Archilochus to Dionysos is an 
effusion of drunken hilaritv - Archiloch. Frag. 69, Schneid. ). 


a tI il I ie) καὶ 


DIFFERENCES IN THE WORSHIP OF DIONYSOS Si 


according to the religious point of view of the Greeks, even the 
spontaneous joy of the vintage feast was conferred by the favor 
and enlivened by the companionship of Dionysos. It was upon 
this analogy that the framers of the Bacchic orgies proceeded 
but they did not the less distigure the genuine character of the 
old Grecian Dionysia. 

Dionysos is in the cor ception of Pindar the Paredros or com- 
panion in worship of Démétér:! the worship and religious esti- 
mate of the latter has by that time undergone as great a change 
as that of the former, if we take our comparison with the brief 
description of Homer and Hesiod: she has acquired 2 much of the 
awful and soul-disturbing attributes of the Phrygian Cybelé. In 
Homer, Démétér is the goddess of the corn-field, who becomes 
attached to the mortal man Jasién; an unhappy passion, since 
Zeus, jealous of the connection between goddesses and men, puts 
him to death. In the Hesiodic Theogony, Démétér is the mother 
of Persephoné by Zeus, who permits Hadés to carry off the latter 
as his wife: moreover Démétér has, besides, by Jasion a son call- 
ed Plutos, born in Kréte. Even from Homer to Hesiod, the 
legend of Démétér,has been expanded and her dignity exalted ; 
according to the usual tendency of Greek legend, the expansion 
goes on still further. Through Jasién, Démétér becomes connect 
ed with the mysteries of Samothrace ; through Persephoné, with 
those of Eleusis. The former connection it is difficult to follow 
out in detail, but the latter is explained and traced to its origin in 
the Homeric Hymn to Démétér. 


ὁ Pindar, Isthm. vi. 3. χαλκοκρότου πάρεδρον Anuntepoc, —the epithet 
marks the approximation of Démétér to the Mother of the Gods. ἦ κροτάλων 
τυπάνων τ᾽ ἰαχὴ, σύν τε βρόμος αὐλῶν Εὕὔαδεν (Homer. Hymn. xiii.), — the 
Mother of the Gods was worshipped by Pindar himself along with Pan; she 
nad in his time her temple and ceremonies at Thébes (Pyth. iii. 78; Fragm. 
reg 5, and the Scholia ad /.) as well as, probably, at Athens (Pausan. ἢ, 
3. 3). 

Dionysos and Démétér are also brought together in the chorus of Sopho- 
kiés, Antigoné, 1072. μέδεις δὲ παγκοίνοις ᾿Ελευσινίας Δηοῦς ἐν κόλποις, 
and in Kallimachus, Hymn. Cerer. 70. Bacchus or Dionysos are in the Attie 
tragedians constantly confounded with the Démétrian Iacchos, originally 80 
different, — a personification of the mystic word shouted by the Eleusiniaa 
communicants. See Strabo, x. p. 468. 

* Euripidés in his Chorus in the Helena (1320 seg.) assigns to Démétér all 
the attributes of Rhea, and blends the two completely into one. 


΄ 


΄ος .- ‘ 


-- τῖ-- 


eS σὰ 
a 


es 


38 HISTORY OF GREECE 


Though we find different statements respectirg the date as 
well as the origin of the Eleusinian mysteries, yet the popular 
belief of the Athenians, and the story which found favor at Eleu- 
sis, ascribed them to the presence and dictation of the goddess 
Démétér herself; just as the Bacchic rites are, according to the 
Bacche of Euripidés, first communicated and enforced on the 
Greeks by the personal visit of Dionysos to Thébes, the metro- 
polis of the Bacchic ceremonies.'! In the Eleusinian legend, pre- 
served by the author of the Homeric Hymn, she comes volun- 
tarily and identifies herself with Eleusis; her past abode in 
Kréte being briefly indicated.2_ Her visit to Eleusis is connected 
with the deep sorrow caused by the loss of her daughter Perse- 
phoné, who had been seized by Hadés, while gathering flowers 
ina meadow along with the Oceanic Nymphs, and carried off 
to become his wife in the under-world. In vain did the reluctant 
Persephoné shriek and invoke the aid of her father Zeus: he had 
consented to give her to Hades, and her cries were heard only by 
Hekaté and Hélios. Démétér was inconsolable at the disappear- 
ance of her daughter, but knew not where to look for her: she 
wandered for nine days and nights with torches in search of the 
lost maiden without success. At length Hélios, the “spy of gods 
and men,” revealed to her, in reply to her urgent prayer, the 
rape of Persephoné, and the permission given to Hadés by Zeus. 
Démétér was smitten with anger and despair: she renounced Zeus 
and the society of Olympus, abstained from nectar and ambro- 
sia, and wandered on earth in grief and fasting until her form 
could no longer be known. In this condition she came to Eleusis, 
then governed by the prince Keleos. Sitting down by a well at 
the wayside in the guise of an old woman, she was found by the 
daughters of Kelees, who came hither with their pails of brass 
for water. In reply to their questions, she told them that she had 
been brought by pirates from Kréte to Thorikos, and had made 
her escape; she ther solicited from them succor and employment 
a8 a servant or as anurse. The damsels prevailed upon their 
mother Metaneira to receive her, and to entrust her with the 


' Sophocl. Antigon. Baxydv μητρόπολιν Θήβαν. 
* Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 123. The Hymn to Démétér has oeen translated 
accompanied with valuable illustrative notes, hy J. H. Voss (Heidelb. 1826) 


HOMERIC HYMN TO DEMETER. 39 


nursing of the young Démophoon, their late-born brother, the 
snly son of Keleos. Démétér was received into the house of 
Metaneira, her dignified form still borne down by grief: she sat 
long silent and could not be induced either to smile or to taste 
food, until the maid-servant lambé, by jests and playfulness, suc- 
ceeded in amusing and rendering her cheerful. She would not 
taste wine, but requested a peculiar mixture of barley-meal with 
water and the herb mint.! 

The child Démopho6n, nursed by Démétér, throve and grew 
up like a god, to the delight and astonishment of his parents: she 
gave him no food, but anointed him daily with ambrosia, and 
plunged him at night in the fire like a torch, where he remained 
unburnt. She would have rendered him immortal, had she not 
been prevented by the indiscreet curiosity and alarm of Meta- 
neira, who secretly looked in at night, and shrieked with horror at 
the sight of her child in the fire? The indignant goddess, setting 
the infant on the ground, now revealed her true character to 
Metaneira: her wan and aged look disappeared, and she stood 
confest in the genuine majesty of her divine shape, diffusing a 
dazzling brightness which illuminated the whole house. “ Foolish 
mother,” she said, “thy want of faith has robbed thy son of im- 
mortal life. I am the exalted Démétér, the charm and comfort 
both of gods and men: I was preparing for thy son exemption 
from death and old age; now it cannot be but he must taste of 
both. Yet shall he be ever honored, since he has sat upon my 
knee and slept in my arms. Let the people of Eleusis erect for 
me a temple and altar on yonder hill above the fountain; I will 
myself prescribe to them the orgies which they must religiously 
perform in order to propitiate my favor.” 3 


1 Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 202-210. 

ἢ This story was also told with reference to the Egyptian goddess Isis in 
her wanderings. See Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. c. 16, p. 357. 

* Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 274.— 

Ὄργια δ᾽ οὐτὴ ἐγὼν ὑποϑῆσομαι, ὡς ἂν ἔπειτα 
Εὐαγέως ἔρδοντες ἐμὸν νόον ἱλάσκησϑε. 

The same story is told in regard to the infant Achilles. His mother Thetis 
was taking similar measures to render him immortal, when his father Peleus 
interfered and y;revented the consummation. Thetis immediately left him 
in great wrath ( Apollon. Bhod. iv. 866). 


10 HISTORY OF GREECE 


The terrified Metaneira was incapable even of lifting up her 
child from the ground; her daughters entered at her cries, and 
began to embrace and tend their infant brother, but he sorrowed 
and could not be pacified for the loss of his divine nurse. ΑἹ] 
night they strove to appease the goddess.1 

Strictly executing the injunctions of Démétér, Keleos convoked 
the people of Eleusis and erected the temple on the spot which 
she had pointed out. [t was speedily completed, and Démétér 
took up her abode in it,— apart from the remaining gods, still 
pining with grief for the loss of her daughter, and withholding 
her beneficent aid from mortals. And thus she remained a whole 
year,—a desperate and terrible year:2 in vain did the oxen 
draw the plough, and in vain was the barley-seed cast into the 
furrow, — Démétér suffered it not to emerge from the earth. 
The human race would have been starved, and the gods would 
have been deprived of their honors and sacrifice, had not Zeus 
found means to conciliate her. But this was a hard task; for 
Déméter resisted the entreaties of Iris and of all the other god- 
desses and gods whom Zeus successively sent to her. She would 
be satisfied with nothing less than the recovery of her daughter. 
At length Zeus sent Hermés to Hadés, to bring Persephoné 
away: Persephoné joyfully obeyed, but Hadés prevailed upon 
her before she departed to swallow a grain of pomegranate, which 
rendered it impossible for her to remain the whole year away 
from him.* 

With transport did Démétér receive back her lost daughter, 
and the faithful Hekaté sympathized in the delight felt by both 
at the reunion. It was now an easier undertaking to reconcile 
her with the gods. Her mother Rhea, sent down expressly by 
Zeus, descended from Olympus on the fertile Rharan plain, then 
smitten with barrenness like the rest of the earth: she succeeded 
in appeasing the indignation of Démétér, who consented again te 


' Homer, Hymn. 290. — 
τοῦ 8 ob μειλίσσετο ϑυμὸς, 
Χειρότεραι γὰρ δῇ μιν ἔχον τρόφοι ἠδὲ τιϑῆναι, 
3 Homer, H. Cer. 305.— 
Alvorarov δ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸν ἐπὶ γϑόνα πουλυβότειραν 
Tloina’ ἀνθρώποις, ἰδὲ κύντατον. 


® Hymn, v. $75. 4 Hymn, v. 443 


DYMETER AT ELEUSIS. 41 


put forth her relieving hand. The buried seed came up in abun- 
dance, and the earth was covered with fruit and flowers. She 
would have wished to retain Persephoné constantly with her, but 
this was impossible; and she was obliged to consent that her 
daughter should go down for one-third of each year to the house 
of Hadés, departing from her every spring at the time when the 
seed is sown. She then revisited Olympus, again to dwell with 
the gods; but before her departure, she communicated to the 
daughters of Keleos, and to Keleos himself, together with Trip- 
tolemus, Dioklés and Eumolpus, the divine service and the so- 
lemnities which she required to be observed in her honor.! And 
thus began the venerable mysteries of Eleusis, at her special com- 
mand: the lesser mysteries, celebrated in February, in honor of 
Persephoné; the greater, in August, to the honor of Démétér 
herself. Both are jointly patronesses of the holy city and 
temple. 

Such is a brief sketch of the temple legend of Eleusis, set 
forth at length in the Homeric Hymn to Démétér. It is interest- 
ing not less as a picture of the Mater Dolorosa (in the mouth of 
an Athenian, Démétér and Persephoné were always the Mother 
and Daughter, by excellence), first an agonized sufferer, and then 
finally glorified,—the weal and woe of man being dependent 
upon her kindly feeling, — than as an illustration of the nature 
and g. ΜῈ of Grecian legend generally. Though we now read 
this Hymn as pleasing poetry, to the Eleusinians, for whom it 
was composed, it was genuine and sacred history. They believ- 
ed in the visit of Démétér to Eleusis, and in the mysteries as a 
revelation from her, as implicitly as they believed in her existence 
and power as a goddess. The Eleusinian psalmist shares this be- 
lief in common with his countrymen, and embodies it in a contin- 
uous narrative, in which the great goddesses of the place, as well 
as the great heroic families, figure in inseparable conjunction 


' Hymn, v. 475. — 
‘H δὲ κίουσα ϑεμιστοπόλοις βασιλεῦσι 
Acifev, Τριπτολέμῳ τε, Διοκλόϊ τε πληξίππῳ, 
Εὐμόλπου τε βίῃ, Κελέῳ ϑ᾽ ἡγήτορι λαῶν 
Δρήσμοσύνην ἱερῶν " καὶ ἐπέφραδεν ὄργια παισὲν 
Πρεσβυτέρῳς Κελέοιο, etc. 


πῆ ὦᾧΦ - ee ae 


49 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Keleos is the son of the Eponymous hero Eleusis, and his daugh- 
ters, with the old epic simplicity, carry their basins to the well 
for water. Eumolpus, Triptolemus, Dioklés, heroic ancestors of 
the privileged families who continued throughout the historical 
times of Athens to fulfil their special hereditary functions in the 
Eleusinian solemnities, are among the immediate recipients of in- 
spiration from the goddess ; but chiefly does she favor Metaneira 
and her infant son Démophoon, for the latter of whom her great- 
est boon is destined, and intercepted only by the weak faith of 
the mother. Moreover, every incident in the Hymn has a local 
coloring and a special reference. The well, overshadowed by 
an olive-tree near which Démétér had rested, the stream Kalli- 
chorus and the temple-hill, were familiar and interesting places in 
the eyes of every Eleusinian; the peculiar posset prepared from 
barley-meal with mint was always tasted by the Mysts (or com- 
municants) after a prescribed fast, as an article in the ceremony, 
— while it was also the custom, at a particular spot in the pro- 
cessional march, to permit the free interchange of personal jokes 
and taunts upon individuals for the general amusement. And 
these two customs are connected in the Hymn with the incidents, 
that Démétér herself had chosen the posset as the first interrup- 
tion of her long and melancholy fast, and that her sorrowful 
thoughts had been partially diverted by the coarse playfulness of 
the servant-maid Iambé. In the enlarged representation of the 
Eleusinian ceremonies, which became established after the incor- 
poration of Eleusis with Athens, the part of Iambeé herself 
was enacted by a woman, or man in woman’s attire, of suitable 
wit and imagination, who was posted on the bridge over the Ke- 
phissos, and addressed to the passers-by in the procession, ! espe- 
cially the great men of Athens, saucy jeers, probably not less 
piercing than those of Aristophanés on the stage. The torch- 
bearing Hekaté received a portion of the worship in the nocturnal 
ceremonies of the Eleusinia: this too is traced, in the Hymn, to 
her kind and affectionate sympathy with the great goddesses. 


' Aristophanés, Vesp. 1363. Hesych. v. Γεφυρίς. Suidas, v. Γεφυρέζων 
Compare about the details of the ceremony, Clemens Alexandr. Admon. ad 
Gent. p. 13. A similar license of unrestrained jocularity appears in the 
rites of Démétér in Sicily (Diodér. v. 4; see also Pausan. vii. 27, 4), and in 
the worship of Damia and Auxesia at Av¢gina (Herodot. v. 83). 


CONSECRATION OF ELEUSIS. 43 


Though all these incidents were sincerely believed by the 
Eleusinians asa true history of the past, and as having been the real 
initiatory cause of their own solemnities, it is not the less certain 
that they are simply mythes or legends, and not to be treated as 
history, either actual or exaggerated. They do not take their 
start from realities of the past, but from realities of the present, 
combined with retrospective feeling and fancy, which fills up the 
blank of the aforetime in a manner at once plausible and im- 
pressive. What proportion of fact there may be in the legend, 
or whether there be any at all, it is impossible to ascertain and 
useless to inquire ; for the story did not acquire belief from its 
approximation to real fact, but from its perfect harmony with 
Eleusinian faith and feeling, and from the absence of any standard 
of historical credibility. The little town of Eleusis derived all 
its importance from the solemnity of the Démétria, and the 
Hymn which we have been considering (probably at least as old 
as 600 B. 0.) represents the town as it stood before its absorption 
into the larger unity of Athens, which seems to have produced 
an alteration of its legends and an increase of dignity in its great 
festival. In the faith of an Eleusinian, the religious as well as 
the patriotic antiquities of his native town were connected with 
this capital solemnity. The divine legend of the sufferings of 
Démétér and her visit to Eleusis was to him that which the heroic 
legend of Adrastus and the Siege of Thébes was to a Sikyonian, or 
that of Erechtheus and Athéné to an Athenian grouping together 
in the same scene and story the goddess and the heroic tathers 
of the town. If our information were fuller, we should probably 
find abundance of other legends respecting the Démeétria: the 
Gephyrei of Athens, to whom belonged the celebrated Harmodi- 
os and Aristogeitén, and who possessed special Orgies of Dé- 
métér the Sorrowful, to which no man foreign to their Gens was 
ever admitted,! would doubtless have told stories not only different 
but contradictory; and even in other Eleusinian mythes we dis- 
cover Eumolpus as king of Eleusis, son of Poseidén, and a 
Thracian, completely different from the character which he bears 
in the Hymn before us.2 Neither discrepancies nor want of 


1 Herodot, v, 61. 
3 Pausan. i. 38,3; Apollodor. iii. 15,4. Heyne in his Note admits seve 


“4 HISTORY OF GREECE 


evidence, in reference to alleged antiquities, socked the faith of 
@ non-historical public. What they wanted was a picture of the 
past, impressive to their feelings and plausible to their imagina- 
tion; and it 1s important to the reader to remember, while he 
reads either the divine legends which we are now illustrating or 
the heroic legends to which we shall soon approach, that he is 
dealing with a past which never was present,—a region essen- 
tially mythical, neither approachable by the critic nor mensurable 
by the chronologer. 

The tale respecting the visit of Démétér, which was told by the 
ancient Gens, called the Phytalids,' in reference to another tem- 
ple of Démétér between Athens and Eleusis, and also by the 
Megarians in reference to a Démétrion near their city, acquired 
under the auspices of Athens still further extension. The god- 
dess was reported to have first communicated to Triptolemus at 
Eleusis the art of sowing corn, which by his intervention was 
disseminated all over the earth. And thus the Athenians took 
credit to themselves for having been the medium of communica: 
tion from the gods to man of all the inestimable blessings of 
agriculture, which they affirmed to have been first exhibited on 
the fertile Rharian plain near Eleusis. Such pretensions are not 
to be found in the old Homeric hymn. The festival of the Thes- 
mophoria, celebrated in honor of Démétér Thesmophoros at 
Athens, was altogether different from the Eleusinia, in this mate- 
rial respect, as well as others, that all males were excluded, and 
women only were allowed to partake in it: the surname Thesmo- 
phorus gave occasion to new legends in which the goddess was 
glorified as the first authoress of laws and legal sanctions te 
mankind.2 This festival, for women apart and alone, was also 


ral persons named Eumolpus. Compare Isokratés, Panegyr. p. 55. Philo- 
chorus the Attic antiquary could not have received the legend of the 
Eleusinian Hymn, from the different account which he gave respecting the 
rape of Persephoné (Philoch. Fragm. 46, ed. Didot), and also respecting 
Keleos (Fr. 28, ibid.). 

! Phytalus, the Eponym or godfather of this gens, had received Démétér 
as a guest in his house, when she first presented mankind with the fruit of the 
fig-tree. (Pausan. i. 37, 2.) 

* Kallimach. Hymn. Cerer. 19. Sophoklés, Triptolemos, Frag. 1. Ciee 
to, Legg. ii. 14, and the note of Servius ad Virgil. Ain. iv. 58. 


HOMERIC HYMN TO APOLLO. 45 


celebrated at Paros, at Ephesus, and in many other parts of 


Greece.! 
Altogether, Démetér and Dionysos, as the Grecian counter. 


parts of the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, seem to have been the 
great recipients of the new sacred rites borrowed from Egypt, 
before the worship of Isis in her own name was introduced into 
Greece: their solemnities became more frequently recluse and 
mysterious than those of the other deities, The importance of 
Démétér to the collective nationality of Greece may be gathered 
from the fact that her temple was erected at Thermopyl, the 
spot where the Amphiktyonic assemblies were held, close by the 
temple of the Eponymous hero Amphikty6n himself, and under 
the surname of the Amphiktyonic Démétér.2 

We now pass to another and not less important celestial per- 
sonage — Apollo. 

The legends of Délos and Delphi, embodied in the Homeric 
Hymn to Apollo, indicate, if not a greater dignity, at least a more 
widely diffused worship of that god than even of Démétér. The 
Hymn is, in point of fact, an aggregate of two separate com- 
positions, one emanating from an Ionic bard at Délos, the other 
from Delphi. The first details the birth, the second the mature 
divine efficiency, of Apollo; but both alike present the unaffected 
charm as well as the characteristic peculiarities of Grecian 
mythical narrative. The hymnographer sings, and his hearers 
accept in perfect good faith, a history of the past; but it is a past, 
imagined partly as an introductory explanation to the present, 
partly as a means of glorifying the god. The island of Délos 
was the accredited birth-place of Apollo, and is also the place in 
which he chiefly delights, where the great and brilliant Ionic fes- 
tival is periodically convened in his honor. Yet it is a rock 
uarrow, barren, and uninviting: how came so glor:ous a privilege 
to be awarded to it? This the poet takes upon himself to 
explain. Lété, pregnant with Apollo, and persecuted by the 
jealous Héré, could find no spot wherein to give birth to her 
offspring. In vain did she address herself to numerous places in 
Greece, the Asiatic coast and the intermediate islands; all were 


" Herodot. vi. 16,134. ἕρκος Θεσμοφόρου Δήμητρος --- τὰ ἐς ἔρσενα γόνον 
ἄῤῥητα ἱερά. 
* Herodot. vii. 200. 


—— ee ΘΠ ἀρ» ον τὸ : 


46 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


terrified at the wrath of Héré, and refused to harbor her. Asa 
last resort, she approached the rejected and repulsive island of 
Délos, and promised that, if shelter were granted to her in her 
forlorn condition, the island should become the chosen resort of 
Apollo as well as the site of his temple with its rich accompanying 
solemnities.'_ Délos joyfully consented, but not without many 
apprehensions that the potent Apollo would despise her unwor- 
thiness, and not without exacting a formal oath from Lét6,— who 
was then admitted to the desired protection, and duly accomplish- 
ed her long and painful labor. Though Didné, Rhea, Themis 
and Amphitrité came to soothe and succor her, yet Héré kept 
away the goddess presiding over childbirth, Eileithyia, and thus 
cruelly prolonged her pangs. At length Eileithyia came, and 
Apollo was born. Hardly had Apollo tasted, from the hands of 
Themis, the immortal food, nectar and ambrosia, when he burst 
at once his infant bands, and displayed himself in full divine form 
and strength, claiming his characteristic attributes of the bow and 
the harp, and his privileged function of announcing beforehand 
to mankind the designs of Zeus. The promise made by Lété 
to Délos was faithfully performed: amidst the numberless other 
temples and groves which men provided for him, he ever prefer- 
red that island as his permanent residence, and there the Ionians 
with their wives and children, and all their “bravery,” congrega- 
ted periodically from their different cities to glorify him. Dance 
and song and athletic contests adorned the solemnity, and the 
countless ships, wealth, and grace of the multitudinous Ionians 
had the air of an assembly of gods. The Delian maidens, ser- 
vants of Apollo, sang hymns to the glory of the god, as well as 
of Artemis and Lété, intermingled with adventures of foregone 
men and women, to the delight of the listening crowd. The blind 
itinerant bard of Chios (composer of this the Homeric hymn, and 
confounded in antiquity with the author of the Iliad) had found 
honor and acceptance at this festival, and commends himself, ina 


' According to another legend, Lété was said to have been conveyed from 
the Hyperboreans to Délos in twelve days, in the form of a she-wolf, to escape 
the jealous eye of Héré. In connection with this legend, it was affirmed 
that the she-wolves always brought forth their young only during these 
twelve days in the year (Aristot. Hist. Animal. vii. 35). 


DELOS AND DELPH!. 47 


touching farewell strain, to the remembrance and sympathy of 
the Delian maidens.! 

But Délos was not an oracular spot: Apollo did not manifest 
himself there as revealer of the futurities of Zeus. A place 
must be found where this beneficent function, without which man- 
kind would perish under the innumerable doubts and pefplexities 
of life, may be exercised and rendered available. Apollo himself 
descends from Olympus to make choice of a suitable site: the 
hymnographer knows a thousand other adventures of the god 
which he might sing, but he prefers this memorable incident, the 
charter and patent of consecration for the Delphian temple. 
Many different places did Apollo inspect ; he surveyed the coun- 
try of the Magnétes and the Perrhzbians, came to Iolkos, and 
passed over from thence to Eubcea and the plain of Lelanton. 
But even this fertile spot did not please him: he crossed the 
Euripus to Beeotia, passed by Teuméssus and Mykaléssus, and 
the then inaccessible and unoccupied forest on which the city of 
Thébes afterwards stood. He next proceeded to Onchéstos, but 
the grove of Poseidén was already established there ; next across 
the Képhissus to Okalea, Haliartus, and the agreeable plain and 
much-frequented fountain of Delphasa, or Tilphusa. Pleased 
with the place, Apollo prepared to establish his oracle there, but 
Tilphusa was proud of the beauty of her own site, and did not 
choose that her glory should be eclipsed by that of the god.? 
She alarmed him with the apprehension that the chariots which 
contended in her plain, and the horses and mules which watered 
at her fountain would disturb the solemnity of his oracle ; and 
she thus induced him to proceed onward to the southern side of 
Parnassus, overhanging the harbor of Krissa. Here he establish- 
ed his oracle, in the mountainous site not frequented by chariots 
and horses, and near to a fountain, which however was guarded 
by a vast and terrific serpent, once the nurse of the monster 
Typhaén. This serpent Apollo slew with an arrow, and suffered 
its body to rot in the sun: hence the name of the place, Pythé,s 
and the surname of the Pythian Apollo. The plan of his temple 
being marked out, it was built by Trophénios and Agamédés, 

1 Hom. Hymn. Apoll. i. 179. * Hom. Hymn. Apoll. 262. 

8 Hom. Hymn. 363 — πύϑεσθαι, to rot. 


Vol 1 4 


48 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


aided by a crowd of forward auxiliaries from the neighborhood. 
He now discovered with indignation, however, that Tilphusa had 
cheated him, and went back with swift step to resent it. “ ‘Thou 
shalt not thus,” he said, “succeed in thy fraud and retain thy 
beautiful water; the glory of the place shall be mine, and not 
thine alone.” Thus saying, he tumbled down a crag upon the 
fountain, and obstructed her limped current: establishing an altar 
for himself in a grove hard by near another spring, where men 
still worship him as Apollo Tilphusios, because of his severe 
vengeance upon the once beautiful Tilphusa.! 

Apollo next stood in need of chosen ministers to take care of 
his temple and sacrifice, and to pronounce his responses at Pytho. 
Descrying a ship, “containing many and good men,” bound on 
traffic from the Minoian Knossus in Kréte, to Pylus in Pelopon- 
nésus, he resolved to make use of the ship and her crew for his 
purpose. Assuming the shape of a vast dolphin, he splashed 
about and shook the vessel so as to strike the mariners with ter- 
ror, while he sent a strong wind, which impelled her along the 
coast of Peloponnésus into the Corinthian Gulf, and finally to the 
harbor of Krissa, where she ran aground. The affrighted crew 
did not dare to disembark: but Apollo was seen standing on the 
shore in the guise of a vigorous youth, and inquired who they 
were, and what was their business. The leader of the Krétans 
recounted in reply their miraculous and compulsory voyage, when 
Apollo revealed himself as the author and contriver of it, announc- 
ing to them the honorable function and the dignified post to which 
he destined them.? They followed him by his orders to the rocky 
Pytho on Parnassus, singing the solemn Io-Paian such as it is sung 
in Kréte, while the god himself marched at their head, with his 
fine form and lofty step, playing on the harp. He showed them 
the temple and site of the oracle, and directed them to worship 
him as Apollo Delphinios, because they had first seen him in the 
shape of a dolphin. “ But how,” they inquired, “are we to live in 
8 spot where there is neither corn, nor vine, nor pasturage?” 
“ Ye silly mortals,” answered the god, “ who look only for toil and 
privation, know that an easier lot is yours. Ye shall live by the 
eattle whom crowds of pious visitors will bring to the temple: ye 


‘ Hom. Hymn, Apoll. 381. * Hom. Hymn. Apoll 475 sqg 


FIRST COMMENCEMENT OF THE DELPHIAN ORACLE. 49 


ghall need only the knife to be constantly ready for sacrifice. 
Your duty will be to guard my temple, and to officiate as minis- 
ters at my feasts: bm? if , be guilty of wrong or insolence, either 
by word or deed, ~~ cha.- become the slaves of other men, and 
shall remain so forever. Take heed of the word and the warn- 
ing.” 

‘Gach are the legends of Délos and Delphi, according to the 
Homeric Hymn to Apollo. The specific functions of the god, 
and the chief localities of his worship, together with the surnames 
attached to them, are thus historically explained, being connected 
with his past acts and adventures. Though these are to us only 
interesting poetry, yet to those who heard them sung they possess- 
ed all the requisites of history, and were fully believed as such, 
not because they were partially founded in reality, but because 
they ran in complete harmony with the feelings; and, so long as 
that condition was fulfilled, it was not the fashion of the time to 
canvass truth or falsehood. The narrative is purely personal, 
without any discernible symbolized doctrine or allegory, to serve 
as a supposed ulterior purpose: the particular deeds ascribed to 
Apollo grow out of the general preconceptions as to his attributes, 
combined with the present realities of his worship. It is neither 
history nor allegory, but simple mythe or legend. 

The worship of Apollo is among the most ancient, capital, and 
strongly marked facts of the Grecian world, and widely diffused 
over every branch of the race. It is older than the Iliad or 
Odyssey, in the latter of which both Pytho and Délos are noted, 
though Délos is not named in the former. But the ancient Apollo 
is different in more respects than one from the Apollo of later 
times. He is in an especial manner the god of the Trojans, un- 
friendly to the Greeks, and especially to Achilles; he has, more- 
over, only two primary attributes, his bow and his prophetic 
powers, without any distinct connection either with the harp, or 
witk medicine, or with the sun, all which in later times he came 
to compreh«nd. He is not only, as Apollo Karneius, the chief 


* Homer. Hymn. Apoll. 535.— 
Δεξιτέρῃ μάλ᾽ ἕκαστος ἔχων ἐν χειρὶ μάχαιραν 
Σφάζειν αἰεὶ μῆλα" τὰ δ' ἄφϑονα πάντα πάρεσται, 
Ὅσσα ἐμοίγ᾽ ἀγάγωσι πιρίκλυτα φῦλ᾽ ἀνθρώπων. 


VOL. I 8 foc. 


30 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


god of the Doric race, but also (under the surname of Patrous) 
the great protecting divinity of the gentile tie among the Jonians:! 
he is moreover the guide and stimulus to Grecian colonization, 
scarcely any colony being ever sent out without encouragement 
and direction from the oracle at Delphi: Apollo Archégeteés is 
one of his great surnames.2 His temple lends sanctity to the 
meetings of the Amphiktyonic assembly, and he is always in 
filial subordination and harmony with his father Zeus: Delphi 
and Olympia are never found in conflict. In the Iliad, the warm 
and earnest patrons of the Greeks are Héré, Athéné, and Posei 

dén: here too Zeus and Apollo are seen in harmony, for Zeus is 
decidedly well-inclined to the Trojans, and reluctantly sacrifices 
them to the importunity of the two great goddesses.3 The wor- 
ship of the Sminthian Apollo, in various parts of the Troad and 
the neighboring territory, dates before the earliest periods of 
Z£olic colonization:4 hence the zealous patronage of Troy as- 
cribed to him in the Iliad. Altogether, however, the distribution 
and partialities of the gods in that poem are different from what 
they become in later times, — a difference which our means of 
information do not enable us satisfactorily to explain. Besides 
the Delphian temple, Apollo had numerous temples throughout 
Greece, and oracles at Abe in Phékis, on the Mount Ptdon, and 
at Tegyra in Boeotia, where he was said to have been born,® at 
Branchidz near Milétus, at Klarus in Asia Minor, and at Patara 
in Lykia. He was not the only oracular god: Zeus at Dodona 
and at Olympia gave responses also: the gods or heroes Tropho- 
nius, Amphiaraus, Amphilochus, Mopsus, etc., each at his own 


' Harpocration v. ᾿Απόλλων πωτρῶος and ‘Epxetocg Ζεύς. Apollo Delphi- 
nios also belongs to the Ionic Greeks generally. Strabo, iv. 179. 
5 Thucydid. vi. 3; Kallimach. Hymn. Apoll. 56.— 
Φοῖβος γὰρ ἀεὶ πολίεσσι φιληδεῖ 
Κτιζομέναις, αὐτὸς δὲ ϑεμείλια Φοῖβος ὑφαίνε 

3 Tliad, iv. 30-46. 

4 Tliad, i. 38, 451; Stephan. Byz. Ἴλιον, Τένεδος. See also Klausen. JEneas 
und die Penaten, b.i.p. 69. The worship of Apollo Sminthios and the fes- 
tival of the Sminthia at Alexandria Troas lasted down to the time cf Menan 
der the rhetor, at the close of the third century after Christ. 

δ Plutarch. Defect. Oracul. c. 5, p. 412; c. 8, p. 414; Steph Bys. νυ. Τεγύρα 
The temple of the Ptéan Apollo had acquired celebrity before the days of 
the poet Asius. Pausan. ix. 23, 3. 


LEGENDS RESPLCTING APOLLU. δὶ 


sanctuary and in his own prescribed manner, rendered the same 
service. 

The two legends of Delphi and Delos, above noticed, form of 
course a very insignificant fraction of the narratives which once 
existed respecting the great and venerated Apollo. They serve 
only as specimens, and as very early specimens,! to illustrate 
what these divine mythes were, and what was the turnof Gre- 
eian faith and imagination. ‘The constantly recurring festivals 
of the gods caused an incessant demand for new mythes respect- 
ing them, or at least for varieties and reproductions of the old 
mythes. Even during the third century of the Christian era, in 
the time of the rhétor Menander, when the old forms of Pagan- 
ism were waning and when the stock of mythes in existence was 
extremely abundant, we see this demand in great force; but it 
was incomparably more operative in those earlier times when 
the creative vein of the Grecian mind yet retained its pristine 
and unfaded richness. Each god had many different surnames, 
temples, groves, and solemnities; with each of which was con- 
nected more or less of mythical narrative, originally hatched in 
the prolific and spontaneous fancy of a believing neighborhood, 
to be afterwards expanded, adorned and diffused by the song of 
the poet. The earliest subject of competition? at the great Pyth- 
ian festival was the singing of a hymn in honor of Apollo: other 
agones were subsequently added, but the ode or hymn constitu- 


1 The legend which Ephorus followed about the establishment of the Del- 
phian temple was something radically different from the Homeric Hymn 
(Ephori Fragm. 70, ed. Didot): his narrative went far to politicize and ration- 
alize the story. The progeny of Apollo was very numerous, and of the 
most diverse attributes ; he was father of the Korybantes (Pherekydes, Fragm 
6, ed. Didot), as well as of Asklépios and Aristzeus (Schol. Apollon. Rhod. ii. 
500 ; Apollod6r. iii. 10, 3). 

* Strabo, ix. p. 421. Memander the Rhetor (Ap. Walz. Coll. Rhett. t. ix. 
p. 136) gives an elaborate classification of hymns to the gods, distinguishing 
them into nine classes, —«Antixol, ἀποπεμπτικοὶ, φυσικοὶ, μυϑικοὶ, γενεα» 
λογικοὶ, πεπλασμένοι, ebxtixol, ἀπευκτικοὶ, μικτοί : — the second class had ref- 
erence to the temporary absences or departure of a god to some distant place, 
which were often admitted in the ancient religion. Sappho and Alkman 
in their ketic hymns invoked the gods from many different places, —T7v μὲν 
yap "Apréucy ἐκ μυρίων μὲν ὄρεων, μυρίων δὲ πόλεων, ἔτι δὲ ποτάμων, ἀνακα- 
det, —also Aphrodité and Apollo, etc. All these songs were full of adven- 
tures and details respecting the gods,—in other words of l»gendary matter 


89 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ted the fundamental attribute of the solemnity: the Pythia at 
Sikyon and elsewhere were probably framed on a similar footing. 
So too at the ancient and celebrated Charitésia, or festival of the 
Charites, at Orchomenos, the rivalry of the poets in their various 
modes of composition both began and continued as the predomi- 
nant feature:! and the inestimable treasures yet remaining to us 
of Attic tragedy and comedy, are gleanings from the once numer- 
ous dramas exhibited at the solemnity of the Dionysia. The 
Ephesians gave considerable rewards for the best hymns in honer 
of Artemis, to be sung at her temple. And the early lyric 
poets of Greece, though their works have not descended to us, 
devoted their genius largely to similar productions, as may be 
seen by the titles and fragments yet remaining. 

Both the Christian and the Mahomedan religions have begun 
during the historical age, have been propagated from one common 
centre, ard have been erected upon the ruins of a different pre- 
existing faith. With none of these particulars did Grecian Pa- 
ganism correspond. It took rise in an age of imagination and 
feeling simply, without the restraints, as well as without the 
aid, of writing or records, of history or philosophy: it was, as a 
general rule, the spontaneous product of many separate tribes 
and localities, imitation and propagation operating as subordinate 
causes ; it was moreover a primordial faith, as far as our means 
of information enable us to discover. These considerations ex- 
plain to us two facts in the history of the early Pagan mind: first, 
the divine mythes, the matter of their religion, constituted also 
the matter of their earliest history ; next, these mythes harmon- 
ized with each other only in their general types, but differed in- 
curably in respect of particular incidents. The poet who sung a 
new adventure of Apollo, the trace of which he might have heard 
in some remote locality, would take care that it should be agree- 
able to the general conceptions which his hearers entertained re- 
specting the god. He would not ascribe the cestus or amorous 
influences to Athéné, ror armed interference and the xgis to 
Aphrodité ; but, provided he maintained this general keeping, 
he might indulge his fancy without restraint in the particular 


Pindar, Olymp. xiv.; Boeckh, Staatshaushaltung der Athener, Appem 


fix, ὁ xx. p. 357. 
* Alexander Etolus. apud Macrobium, Saturn. v. 22. 


APHRODITB 58 


events of the story.! The feelings and faith of hts hearers went 
along with him, and there were no critical scruples to hold them 
back : to scrutinize the alleged proceedings of the gods was re- 
pulsive, aud to dishelieve them impious. And thus these divine 
mythes, though they had their root simply in religious feelings, 
and though they presented great discrepancies of fact, served 
nevertheless as primitive matter of history to an early Greek: 
they were the only narratives, at once publicly accredited and 
interesting, which he possessed. To them were aggregated the 
heroic mythes (to which we shall proceed presently), — indeed 
the two are inseparably blended, gods, heroes and men almost 
always appearing in the same picture, — analogous both in their 
structure and their genesis, and differing chiefly in the circum- 
stance that they sprang from the type of a hero instead of from 
that of a god. 

We are not to be astonished if we find Aphrodité, in the Iliad, 
born from Zeus and Dioné,—and in the Theogony of Hesiod, 
generated from the foam on the sea after the mutilation of Ura- 
nos; nor if in the Odyssey she appears as the wife of Héphzstos, 
while in the Theogony the latter is married to Aglaia, and Aphro- 
dité is described as mother of three children by Arés.2_ The 
Homeric hymn to Aphrodité details the legend of Aphrodité and 
Anchisés, which is presupposed in the Iliad as the parentage of 
Eneas: but the author of the hymn, probably sung at one of 
the festivals of Aphrodité in Cyprus, represents the goddess as 
ashamed of her passion for a mortal, and as enjoining Anchi- 
sés under severe menaces not to reveal who the mother of 
ZEneas was;? while in the Iliad she has no scruple in publicly 


! The birth of Apollo and Artemis from Zeus and Lété is among the oldest 
and most generally admitted facts in the Grecian divine legends. Yet Aéschy- 
lus did not scruple to describe Artemis publicly as daughter of Démétér 
(Herodot. ii. 156; Pausan. viii. 37, 3). Herodotus thinks that he copied this 
innovation from the Egyptians, who affirmed that Apollo and Artemis were 
the sons of Dionysos and Isis. 

The number and discrepancies of the mythes respecting each god are at 
tested by the fruitless attempts of learned Greeks to escape the necessity of 
rejecting any of them by multiplying homonymous personages, — three per 
sons named Zeus; five named Athéné; six named Apollo, etc. (Cicero, de 
Natur. Deor. iii. 21: Clemen. Alexand. Admon. ad Gent. p. 17). 

3 Hesiod, Theogon. 188, 934, 945; Homer, Iliad, v. 371; Odyss. viii. 26? 

3 Homer, Hymn. Vener. 248, 286; Homer, Iliad, v. 320, 386. 


δὴ HISTORY vf GREECE. 


owning him, and he passes everywhere as her acknowledged som 
Aphrodité is described in the hymn as herself cold and unimpress 
ible, but ever active and irresistible in inspiring amorous feelings 
to gods, to men, and to animals. Three goddesses are record- 
ed as memorable exceptions to her universal empire, — Athéné, 
Artemis, and Hestia or Vesta. Aphrodité was one of the most 
important of all the goddesses in the mythical world; for the 
number of interesting, pathetic and tragical adventures deducible 
from misplaced or unhappy passion was of course very great; 
and in most of these cases the intervention of Aphrodité was 
usually prefixed, with some legend to explain why she manifested 
herself. Her range of action grows wider in the later epic and 
lyric and tragic poets than in Homer.! 

Athéné, the man-goddess,? born from the head of Zeus, with- 
out a mother and without feminine sympathies, is the antithesis 
partly of Aphrodité, partly of the effeminate or womanized god 
D*~ysos — the latter is an importation from Asia, but Athéné is 
a Greek conception — the type of composed, majestic and unre- 
lenting force. It appears however as if this goddess had been 
conceived in a different: manner in different parts of Greece. For 
we find ascribed to her, in some of the legends, attributes of in- 


dustry and home-keeping ; she is represented as the companion 


— 


' A large proportion of the Hesiodic epic related to the exploits and adven- 
tures of the heroic women, — the Catalogue of Women and the Eoiai em 
bodied a string of such narratives. Hesiod and Stesichorus explained the 
conduct of Helen and Klytemnestra by the anger of Aphrodité, caused by 
the neglect of their father Tyndareus to sacrifice to her (Hesiod, Fragm. 59, 
ed. Duntzer ; Stesichor. Fragm. 9, ed. Schneidewin): the irresistible ascen- 
dency of Aphrodité is set forth in the Hippolytus of Euripidés not less for- 
cibty than that of Dionysos in the Bacchw. The character of Daphnis the 
herdsman, well-known from the first Idvli of Theocritus, and illustrating the 
destroying force of Aphrodité, appears to have been first introduced into 
Greck poetry by Stesichorus (see Klausen, neas, und die Penaten, vol. i. 
pp. 526-529). Compare a striking piece among the Fragmenta Incerta of 
Sophoklés (Fr. 63, Brunck) and Euripid. Troad. 946, 995, 1048. Even in 
the Opp. et Di. of Hesiod, Aphrodité is conceived rather as a disturbing and 
injurious influence (v. 65). 

Adonis owes his renewn to the Alexandrine poets and their contemporary 
sovereigns (see Bion’s Idyll and the Adoniazusez of Theocritus). Tke favor- 
ites of Aphrodité, even as counted up by the diligence of Clemens Alexan- 
drinus, are however very few in number. (Admonitio ad Gent. p. 12, Sylb.) 

®’Avdpodée δῶρον ᾿Αϑάνᾳ Simmias Rhodius; IléAecvc, ap. He 
phaation. c. 9. p. 54, Gaisford. 


_ ATHENE.—ERECHTHEUS.— ARTEMIS. 55 


vf Héphestos, patronizing handicraft, and expert at the loom and 
the spindle: the Athenian potters worshipped her along with 
Prométheus. Such traits of character do not square with the 
formidable gis and the massive and crushing spear which Homer 
and most of the mythes assign to her. There probably were at first 
at least two different types of Athéné, and their coalescence haa 
partially obliterated the less marked of the two.! Athéné is the 
constant and watchful protectress of Héraklés: she is also locally 
identified with the soil and people of Athens, even in the Iliad: 
Erechtheus, the Athenian, is born of the earth, but Athéné brings 
him up, nourishes him, and lodges him in her own temple, where 
the Athenians annually worship him with sacrifice and solemni- 
ties.2 It was altogether impossible to make Erechtheus son of 
Athéné, — the type of the goddess forbade it; but the Athenian 
mythe-creators, though they found this barrier impassable, strove 
to approach to it as near as they could, and the description which 
they give of the birth of Erichthonios, at once un-Homeric and 
unseemly, presents something like the phantom of maternity. 
The huntress Artemis, in Arcadia and in Greece proper gen- 
erally, exhibits a well-defined type with which the legends 
respecting her are tolerably consistent. But the Ephesian as 
well as the Tauric Artemis partakes more of the Asiatic charac- 
ter, and has borrowed the attributes of the Lydian Great Mother 
as well as of an indigenous Tauric Virgin :4 this Ephesian Arte- 


' Apollodér. ap. Schol. ad Sophokl. Cidip. vol. 57; Pausan. i. 24,3; ix. 26, 
3; Diodor. v. 73; Plato, Legg. xi. p. 920. In the Opp. et Di. of Hesiod, 
the carpenter is the servant of Athéné (429): see also Phereklos the τέκτων 
in the Iliad, v. 61: compare viii. 385; Odyss. viii. 493; and the Homeric 
Hymn, to Aphrodité, v.12. The learned article of O. Miiller (in the Ency- 
clopedia of Ersch and Gruber, since republished among his Kleine Deutsche 
Schriften, p 134 seqg.), Pallas Athéné, brings together all that can be know% 
about this goddess. 

3 Tliad, ii. 546; viii. 362. 

* Apollodor. iii. 4,6. Compare the vague language of Plato, Kritias, c. 
iv., and Ovid, Metamorph. ii. 757. 

4 Herodot. iv. 103 ; Strabo, xii. p. 534; xiii. p. 650. About the Ephesiap 
Artemis, see Guhl, Ephesiaca (Berlin, 1843), p. 79 sqg.; Aristoph. Nub. 596; 
Autokrates in Tympanistis apud lian. Hist. Animal. xii. 9; and Spanheim 
ad Kallimach. Hymn. Dian. 36. The dances in honor of Artemis some- 
times appear to have approached to the frenzied style of Bacchanal move 
ment. See the words of Timotheus ap. Plutarch. de Audiend. Poet. p. 22 
e 4, and περὶ Δεισιδ, ς. 10, p. 170, also Aristoph. Lysist. 1314. They seem 


88 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


mis passed to the colonies of Phokza and Milétus.! ‘The 
Homeric Artemis shares with her brother Apollo in the dexterous 
nse of the far-striking bow, and sudden death is described by the 
poet as inflicted by her gentle arrow. The jealousy of the gods 
at the withholding of honors and sacrifices, or at the presumption 
of mortals in contending with them, —a point of character so 
frequently recurring in the types of the Grecian gods, — mani- 
fests itself in the legends of Artemis: the memorable Kalydoni- 
an boar,is sent by her as a visitation upon (Eneus, because he 
had omitted to sacrifice to her, while he did honor to other gods.? 
The Arcadian heroine Atalanta is however a reproduction of 
Artemis, with little or no difference, and the goddess is sometimes 
sonfounded even with her attendant nymphs. 

The mighty Poseidén, the: earth-shaker and the ruler of the 
sea, is second only to Zeus in power, but has no share in those 
imperial and superintending capacities which the Father of - gods 
and men exhibits. He numbers a numerous heroic progeny, 
usually men of great corporeal strength, and many of them 
belonging to the A®olic race: the great Neleid family of Pylus 
trace their origin up to him; and he is also the father of Poly- 
phémus the Cycléps, whose well-earned suffering he cruelly 
revenges upon Odysseus. The island of Kalaureia is his Délos,3 
and there was held in it an old local Amphiktyony, for the pur- 
pose of rendering to him joint honor and sacrifice: the isthmus 
of Corinth, Heliké in Achaia, and Onchéstos in Beeotia, are also 
residences which he much affects, and where he is solemnly wor- 
shipped. But the abode which he originally and specially se- 
lected for himself was the Acropolis of Athens, where by a blow 
of his trident he produced a well of water in the rock: Athéné 
came afterwards and claimed the spot for herself, planting in 
token of possession the olive-tree which stood in the sacred grove 
of Pandrosos: and the decision either of the autochthonous 


to have been often celebrated in the solitudes of the mountains, which were 
the favorite resort of Artemis (Kallimach. Hymn. Dian. 19), and these 
ἐρειβάσιας were always causes predisposing to fanatical excitement. 

' Strabo, iv. p. 179. * Tliad, ix, 529. 

3 Strabo, viii. p. 374. According to the old poem called Eumolpia, as- 
cribed to Muszeus, the oracle of Delphi originally belonged to Poseid6n and 
Gea, jointly: from Gsea it passed to Themis, and from her to Apollo, te 
whom Poseidén also made over his share as a compensation for the sur 


render of Kalaurcia to him. (Pausan. x. 5, 3). 


POSEIDON. δ᾽ 


Cecrops, or οἵ Erechtheus, awarded to her the preference, much 
to the displeasure of Poseidon. Either on this account, or on 
account of the death of his son Kumolpus, slain in assisting the 
Eleusinians against Erechtheus, the Attic mythes ascribed to 
Poseidon great enmity against the Erechtheid family, which he 
is asserted to have ultimately overthrown: Theseus, whose glo- 
rious reign and deeds succeeded to that family, is said to have 
been really hisson.!_ In several other places, — in AXgina, Argos 
and Naxos, — Poseidén had disputed the privileges of patron- 
god with Zeus, Héré and Dionysos: he was worsted in all, but 
bore his defeat patiently. Poseidén endured a long slavery, in 
common with Apollo, gods as they were,? under Laomedén, king 
of Troy, at the command and condemnation of Zeus: the two 
gods rebuilt the walls of the city, which had been destroyed by 
Héraklés. When their time was expired, the insolent Laome- 
don withheld from them the stipulated reward, and even accom- 
panied its refusal with appalling threats; and the subsequent 
animosity of the god against Troy was greatly determined by the 
sentiment of this injustice.4 Such periods of servitude, inflicted 
upon individual gods, are among the most remarkable of all the 
incidents in the divine legends. We find Apollo on anotber occa- 
sion condemned to serve Admétus, king of Phere, as a punish- 
ment for having killed the Cyclopes, and Héraklés also is sold as 
a slave to Omphalé. Even the fierce Arés, overpowered and 
imprisoned for a long time by the two Aldids,® is ultimately lib- 
erated only by extraneous aid. Such narratives attest the 
discursive range of Grecian fancy in reference to the gods, as 
well as the perfect commingling of things and persons, divine 
and human, in their conceptions of the past. The god who 
serves is for the time degraded: but the supreme god who com- 
mands the servitude is in the like proportion exalted, whilst the idea 
of some sort of order and government among these superhuman 
beings was never lost sight of. Nevertheless the mythes respect- 
ing the servitude of the gods became obnoxious afterwards, along 
with many others, to severe criticism on the part of philosophera 


' Apollod6r. iii. 14, 1; iii. 15, 3, 5. * Plutarch, Sympos. viii. 6, p. 741 
* Iliad, ii. 716, 766; Euripid. Alkestis, 2. See Panyasis, Fragm. 12, Ρ. 24 
ed. Diintzer. 


4 liad, vii. 452 xxi. 459. 38 5 Tliad, v. 386, 


88 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The proud, jealous, and bitter Héré,—the goddess of the 
once-wealthy Mykéna:, the fax et focus of the Trojan war, and 
the ever-present protectress of Jasén in the Argonautic expedi- 
tion, 1 — occupies an indispensable station in the mythical world. 
As the daughter of Kronos and wife of Zeus, she fills a throne 
from whence he cannot dislodge her, and which gives her a right 
perpetually to grumble and to thwart him.2 Her unmeasured 
jealousy of the female favorites of Zeus, and her antipathy 
against his sons, especially against Héraklés, has been the sug- 
gesting cause of innumerable mythes: the general type of her 
character stands here clearly marked, as furnishing both stimulus 
and guide to the mythopa@ic fancy. The “Sacred Wedding,” or 
marriage of Zeus and Héré, was familiar to epithalamic poets 
long before it became a theme for the spiritualizing ingenuity of 
critics. 

Héphestos is the son of Héré without a father, and stands to 
her in the same relation as Athéné to Zeus: her pride and want 
of sympathy are manifested by her casting him out at once in 
consequence of his deformity.’ He is the god of fire, and espe- 
cially of fire in its practical applications to handicraft, and is in- 
dispensable as the right-hand and instrument of the gods. His 
skill and his deformity appear alternately as the source of myth- 
ical stories: wherever exquisite and effective fabrication is 
intended to be designated, Héphestos is announced as the maker, 
although in this function the type of his character is reproduced 
in Dedalos. In the Attic legends he appears intimately united 
both with Prométheus and with Athéné, in conjunction with 
whom he was worshipped at Kolénus near Athens. Lemnos was 
the favorite residence of Héphestos; and if we possessed more 
knowledge of this island and its town Héphestias, we should 
doubtless find abundant legends detailing his adventures and 
interventions. 

The chaste, still, and home-keeping Hestia, goddess of the 
family hearth, is far less fruitful in mythical narratives, it spite 
of her very superior dignity, than the knavish, smooth-tor gued, 
keen, and acquisitive Hermés. His function of messenger of the 


1 Tliad, iv. 51; Odyss xii. 72. 
3 Tliad, i. 544; iv. 29-38: viii. 408. 3 Tliad, xviii. 306 


HéRMES.— HOMERIC HYMN. 59 


gods brings him perpetually on the stage, and affords ample scope 
for portraying the features of his character. The Homeric hymn 


to Hermés describes the scene and circumstances of his birth, 
and the almost instantaneous manifestation, even in infancy, of 
his peculiar attributes ; it explains the friendly footing on which 
he stood with Apollo, —the interchange of gifts and functions 
between them,— and lastly, the inviolate security of all the 
wealth and offerings in the Delphian temple, exposed as they 
were to thieves without any visible protection. Such was the 
innate cleverness and talent of Hermés, that on the day he was 
born he invented the lyre, stringing the seven chords on the shell 
of a tortoise :! and he also stole the cattle of Apollo in Pieria, 
dragging them backwards to his cave in Arcadia, so that their 
track could not be detected. To the remonstrances of his mother 
Maia, who points out to him the danger of offending Apollo, 
Hermés replies, that he aspires to rival the dignity and functions 
of Apollo among the immortals, and that if his father Zeus 
refuses to grant them to him, he will employ his powers of thiev- 
ing in breaking open the sanctuary at Delphi, and in carrying 
away the gold and the vestments, the precious tripods and ves- 
sels Presently Apollo discovers the loss of his cattle, and 
after some trouble finds his way to the Kyllénian cavern, where 
he sees Hermés asleep in his cradle. The child denies the theft 
with effrontery, and even treats the surmise as a ridiculous impos- 
sibility: he persists in such denial even before Zeus, who how- 
ever detects him at once, and compels him to reveal the place 
where the cattle are concealed. But the lyre was as yet un- 
known to Apollo, who has heard nothing except the voice of the 
Muses and the sound of the pipe. So powerfully is he fascinated 
by hearing the tones of the lyre from Hermés, and so eager to 
become possessed of it, that he is. willing at once to pardon the past 


1 Homer. Hymn. Mercur. 18.— 
ἬἭφος γεγονὼς, μέσῳ ἥματι ἐγκιϑάριζεν, 
Ἕσπέριος βοῦς κλέψεν ἑκηβόλου ᾿Απόλλωνος, ete. 
* Homer. Hymn. Merc. 177. - 
Εἰμὶ yap ἐς Πύϑωνα, μέγαν δόμον ἀντιτορήσων, 
Ἔνϑεν ἅλις τρίποδας περικαλλέας, ἠδὲ λέβητας 
Πορϑήσω καὶ χρυσὸν, etc. 


80 HISTORY OF GREECE 


theft, and even to conciliate besides the friendship of Herméa.! 
Accordingly a bargain is struck between the two gods and sane. 
tioned by Zeus. Hermés surrenders to Apollo the lyre, invent- 
ing for his own use the syrinx or panspipe, and receiving from 
Apollo in exchange the golden rod of wealth, with empire over 
flocks and herds as well as over horses and oxen and the wild 
animals of the woods. He presses to obtain the gift of prophecy, 
but Apollo is under a special vow not to impart that privilege to 
any god whatever: he instructs Hermés however how to draw 
information, to a certain extent, from the Mcere or Fates them- 
selves ; and assigns to him, over and above, the function of mes- 
senger of the gods to Hadés. 

Although Apollo has acquired the lyre, the particular object 
of his wishes, he is still under apprehension that Hermés will 
steal it away from him again, together with his bow, and he 
exacts a formal oath by Styx as security. Hermés promises 
solemnly that he will steal none of the acquisitions, nor ever 
invade the sanctuary of Apollo; while the latter on his part 
pledges himself to recognize Hermés as his chosen friend and 
companion, amongst all the other sons of Zeus, human or divine.2 

So came to pass, under the sanction of Zeus, the marked favor 
shown by Apollo to Hermés. But Hermés (concludes the 
hymnographer, with frankness unusual in speaking of a god) 
“does very little good: he avails himself of the darkness of night 
to cheat without measure the tribes of mortal men.”3 


’ Homer. Hymn. Mere. 442-454. 
* Homer. Hymn. Merc. 504-520. — 
Kal τὸ μὲν Ἑρμῆς 
Αητοΐδην ἐφίλησε διαμπερὲς, ὡς ἔτι καὶ νῦν, οἷο 
* We * * * 

Kai τότε Μαίαδος υἱὸς ὑποσχόμενος κατένευσε 

My ποτ᾽ ἀποκλέψειν, ὅσ᾽ Εκήβολος ἐκτεάώτισται, 

Μηδέ ποτ᾽ ἐμπελάσειν πυκίνῳ δόμῳ " αὐτὰρ ᾿Απόλλων 

Λητοίδης κατένευσεν ἐπ᾽ ἀρϑμῷ καὶ φιλότητι 

Μῇ τινα φίλτερ:ν ἄλλον ἐν ἀϑανάτοισιν ἔσεσϑαι 

Μήτε vedv, μήτ᾽ ἄνδρα Διὸς γόνον, ete. 
3 Homer. Hymn. Merc. 574. -- 

Παῦρα μὲ οὖν ὀνίντσι, τὸ δ᾽ ἄκριτον ἡπεροπεύφι 

Νύκτα δι᾽ dp¢ "αίην φῦλα ϑνητῶν ἀνθρώπων. 


ZEUS Ανυ HIS Al TRIBUTES. 6 


Here the general types of Hermés and Apollo, coupled with 
the present fact that no thief ever approached the rich and seem- 
ingly accessible treasures of Delphi, engender a string of exposi- 
tory incidents cast into a quasi-historical form and detailing how it 
happened that Hermés had bound himself by especial convention 
to respect the Delphian temple. The types of Apollo seem to 
kave been different in different times and parts of Greece: in 
sme places he was worshipped as Apollo Nomios,!' or the patron 
of pasture and cattle ; and this attribute, which elsewhere passed 
over to his son Aristeus, is by our hymnographer voluntarily 
surrendered to Hermés, combined with the golden rod of fruit- 
fulness. On the other hand, the lyre did not originally belong 
to the Far-striking King, nor is he at all an inventor: the hymn 
explains both its first invention and how it came into his posses- 
sion. And the value of the incidents is thus partly expository, 
partly illustrative, as expanding in detail the general preconceived 
character of the Kyllénian god. 

To Zeus more amours are ascribed than to any of the other 
gods, — probably because the Grecian kings and chieftains were 
especially anxious to trace their lineage to the highest and most 
glorious of all,— each of these amours having its representative 
progeny on earth.2 Such subjects were among the most promis- 
ing and agreeable for the interest of mythical narrative, and 
Zeus as a lover thus became the father of a great many legends, 
branching out into innumerable interferences, for which his sons, 
all of them distinguished individuals, and many of them perse- 
cuted by Héré, furnished the occasion. But besides this, the 
commanding functions of the supreme god, judicial and admin- 
istrative, extending both over gods and men, was a potent stimu- 
jus to the mythopeic activity. Zeus has to watch over his own 
dignity, — the first of all considerations with a god: moreover as 
Horkios, Xenios, Ktésios, Meilichios, (a small proportion of his 
thousand surnames,) he guaranteed oaths and punished perjurers, 
he enforced the observance of hospitality, he guarded the family 
hoard and the crop realized for the year, and he granted expia 


1 Kallimach. Hymn. Apoll. 47 
3 Kallimach. Hymn. Jov. 79. ’Ex δὲ Διὸς βασιλῆες, etc. 


62 HISIORY OF GREECE 


tion to the repentant criminal.! ΑἹ] thesz different functions 
ereated a demand for mythes, as the means of translating a dim, 
but serious, presentiment into distinct form, both self-explaining 
and communicable to others. In enforcing the sanctity of the 
oath or of the tie of hospitality, the most powerful of all argu- 
ments would be a collection of legends respecting the judgments 
of Zeus Horkios or Xenios; the more impressive and terrific 
such legends were, the greater would be their interest, and the 
less would any one dare to disbelieve them. They constituted 
the natural outpourings of a strong and common sentiment, prob- 
ably without any deliberate ethical intention : the preconceptions 
of the divine agency, expanded into legend, form a product 
analogous to the idea of the divine features and symmetry em- 
bodied in the bronze or the marble statue. 

But it was not alone the general type and attributes of the gods 
which contributed to put in action the mythopeic propensities. 
The rites and solemnities forming the worship of each god, as 
well as the details of his temple and its locality, were a fertile 
source of mythes, respecting his exploits and sufferings, which to 
the people who heard them served the purpose of past history. 
The exegetes, or local guide and interpreter, belonging to each 
temple, preserved and recounted to curious strangers these tradi- 
tional narratives, which lent a certain dignity even to the minu- 
tix of divine service. Out of a stock of materials thus ample, 
the poets extracted individual collections, such as the “ Causes ” 
(Aitia) of Kallimachus, now lost, and such as the Fasti of Ovid 
are for the Roman religious antiquities.2 

It was the practice to offer to the gods in sacrifice the bones 
of the victim only, inclosed in fat: how did this practice arise? 


1 See Herodot. i. 44. Xenoph. Anabas. vii. 8.4 Plutarch, Théseus, 
{ 12. 
* Ovid, Fasti, iv. 211, about the festivals of Apollo: — 
“ Priscique imitamina facti 
‘Era Dew comites raucaque terga movent.” 


And Lactantius, v. 19, 15. “Ipsos ritus ex rebus gestis (deorum) vel ex 
easibus vel etiam ex mortibus, natos:” to the same purpose Augustin. Dé 
Civ. Ὁ. vii. 18 ; Diodér. iii. 56. Plutarch’s Questiones Greece et Romaicse 
are full of similar tales, professing to account for existing customs, many 
wf them religivus and liturgic. See Lobeck, Orphica, p. 675. 


LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS 68 


The author of the Hesiodic Theogony has a story which explains 
it: Prométheus tricked Zeus into an imprudent choice, at the 
period when the gods and mortal men first came to an arrange- 
ment about privileges and duties (in Mekéné). Prométheus, the 
tutelary representative of man, divided a large steer into two 
portions: on the one side he placed the flesh and guts, folded up 
in the omentum and covered over with the skin: on the other, he 
put the bones enveloped in fat. He then invited Zeus to deter- 
mine which of the two portions the gods would prefer to receive 
from mankind. Zeus “with both hands” decided for and took 
the white fat, but was highly incensed on finding that he had got 
nothing at the bottom except the bones.!_ Nevertheless the choice 
of the gods was now irrevocably made: they were not entitled to 
any portion of the sacrificed animal beyond the bones and the 
white fat; and the standing practice is thus plausibly explained.2 
I select this as one amongst a thousand instances to illustrate the 
genesis of legend out of religious practices. In the belief of the 
people, the event narrated in the legend was the real producing 
cause of the practice: but when we come to apply a sound criti- 
cism, we are compelled to treat the event as existing only in its 
narrative legend, and the legend itself as having been, in the 
greater number of cases, engendered by the practice, — thur 
reversing the supposed order of production. 


' Hesiod, Theog. 550. — 
7 pa δολοφρονέων - Ζεὺς δ᾽ ἄφϑιτα μήδεα εἰδὼς 
Γνῶ ῥ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ἠγνοίησε δόλον - κακὰ δ᾽ ὄσσετο ϑυμῷ 
Θνητοις ἀνϑρώποισι, τὰ καὶ τελέεσϑαι ἔμελλεν. 
Χερσὶ δ᾽ dy’ ἀγφοτέρῃσιν ἀνείλετο λευκὸν ἄλειφαρ 
Χώσατο δὲ φρένας, ἀμφὶ χόλος δέ μιν ἵκετο ϑιμὸν, 
Ὡς idev ἵστεα λευκὰ βοὸς δολίῃ ἐπὶ τέχνῃ. 


In the second line of this citation, the poet tells us that Zeus saw through 
the trick, and was imposed upon by his own consent, foreknowing that after 
all the mischievous consequences of the proceeding would be visited on 
man. But the last lines, and indeed the whole drift of the legend, imply the 
contrary of this: Zeus was really taken in, and was in consequence very 
angry. It is curious to observe how the religious feelings of the poet drive 
him to save in words the prescience of Zeus, though in doing so he contre 
dicts aud nullifies the whole point of the story. 
3 Hesiod, Theog. 557. — 
‘Ex τοῦ δ᾽ ἀϑανάτοισιν ἐπὶ χϑονὶ φῦλ᾽ ἀνϑρώπων 
Καίουσ᾽ ὅστεα λευκὰ ϑυηέντων ἐπὶ θωμῶν. 


64 HISTOR? OF GREECE. 


In dealing with Grecian mythes generally, it fs convenient te 
distribute them into such as belong to the Gods and such ag 
belong to the Heroes, according as the one or the other are the 
prominent personages. The former class manifests, more palpa- 
bly than the latter, their real origin, as growing out of the faith 
and the feelings, without any necessary basis, either of matter 
of fact or allegory : moreover, they elucidate more directly the 
religion of the Greeks, so important an item in their character as 
a people. But in point of fact, most of the mythes present to 
us Gods, Heroes and Men, in juxtaposition one with the other 
and the richness of Grecian mythical literature arises from the 
infinite diversity of combinations thus opened out ; first by the 
three class-types, God, Hero, and Man; next by the strict keep- 
ing with which each separate class and character is handled. We 
shall now follow downward the stream of mythical time, which 
begins with the Gods, to the Heroic legends, or those which 
principally concern the Heroes and Heroines ; for the latter were 
to the full as important in legend as the former. 


CHAPTER ITI. 


LEGENDS RELATING TO HEROES AND MEN. 


Tue Hesiodic theogony gives no account of anything like a 
creation of man, nor does it seem that such an idea was muck 
entertained in the legendary vein of Grecian imagination ; which 
commonly carried back the present men by successive generations 
to some primitive ancestor, himself sprung from the soil, or from 
a neighboring river or mountain, or from a god, a nymph, ete. 
But the poet of the Hesiodic “ Wurks and Days” has given us a 
narrative conceived in a very different spirit respecting the origin 
of the human race, more in harmony with the sober and melan- 
choly ethical tone which reigns through that poem.! 


* Hesiod, as cited in the Etymologicon Magnum (probably the Hesiodis 


LEGENDS RELATING TO HEROES AND MEN. 6d 


First (he tells us) the Olympic gods made the golden race, — 
good, perfect, and happy men, who lived from the spontaneous 
abundance of the earth, in ease and tranquillity like the gods 
themselves: they suffered neither disease nor old age, and their 
death was like a gentle sleep. After death they became, by the 
award of Zeus, guardian terrestrial demons, who watch unseen 
over the proceedings of mankiad — with the regal privilege of 
dispensing to them wealth, and taking account of good and bad 
deeds. ! 

Next, the gods made the silver race, — unlike and greatly infe- 
rior, both in mind and body, to the golden. The men of this 
race were reckless and mischievous towards each other, and dis- 
dainful of the immortal gods, to whom they refused to offer either 
worship or sacrifice. Zeus in his wrath buried them in the 
earth: but there they still enjoy a secondary honor, as the Blest 
of the under-world.2 

Thirdly, Zeus made the brazen race, quite different from thr 
silver. They were made of hard ash-wood, pugnacious and ter- 
rible; they were of immense strength and adamantine soul, nor 
did they raise or touch bread. Their arms, their houses. and 
‘heir implements were all of brass: there was then no iron. 
This race, eternally fighting, perished by each other’s hands, died 
out, and descended without name or privilege to Hadés.3 


Catalogue of Women, as Marktscheffel considers it, placing it Fragm. 133 ), 
gives the parentage of a certain Brotos, who must probably be intended ag 
the first of men: Bpéroc, ὡς μὲν Εὐήμερος ὁ Μεσσήνιος, ἀπὸ Βρότου τινος 
αὐτόχϑονος " ὁ δὲ Ἡσίοδος, ἀπὸ Βρότου τοῦ Αἴϑερος καὶ Ἡμέρας. 
‘ Opp. Di. 120. — 
Αὐτὰρ ἐπειδὴ τοῦτο γένος κατὰ γαῖα κάλυψεν 
Tol μὲν δαίμονές εἰσι Διὸς μεγάλου διὰ βουλὰς 
Ἐσϑλοὶ, ἐπιχϑόνιοι, φύλακες ϑνητῶν ἀνϑρώπων" 
Οἱ ῥα φυλάσσουσίν τε δίκας καὶ σχέτλια ἔργα, 
ἮἨέρα ἑσσάμενοι, πάντη φοιτῶντες ἐπ᾽ αἷαν 
Πλουτόδοται - καὶ τοῦτο γέρας βασιληΐον ἔσχον. 
5 Opp. Di. 140. -- 
Αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ καὶ τοῦτο γένος κατὰ γαῖα κάλυψε, 
Τοὶ μὲν ὑποχϑόνιοι μάκαρες ϑνητοὶ καλέονται 
Δεύτεργι, ἀλλ᾽ ἔμπης τιμὴ καὶ τοῖσιν ὀπηδεῖ. 
3 The ash was the wood out of which spear-handles were made | Iliad, xvi 
42): the Νύμφαι Μέλιαι are born along with the Gigantes and the Erin 
VOL. 1. oec. 


66 HISTORY OF GREECR. 


Next, Zeus made a fourth race, far juster and better than the 
last preceding. These were the Heroes or demigods, who fought 
at the sieges of Troy and Thébes. But this splendid stock alse 
became extinct: some perished in war, others were removed by 
Zeus to a happier state in the islands of the Blest. There they 
dwell in peace and comfort, under the government of Kronos, 
reaping thrice in the year the spontaneous produce of the earth.! 

The fifth race, which succeeds to the Heroes, is of iron: it is 
the race to which the poet himself belongs, and bitterly does he 
regret it. He finds his contemporaries mischievous, dishonest, 
unjust, ungrateful, given to perjury, careless both of the ties of 
consanguinity and of the behesta of the gods: Nemesis and A&dés 
(Ethical Self-reproach) have left earth and gone back to Olym- 
pus. How keenly does he wish that his lot had been cast either 
earlier or later!2_ This iron race is doomed to continual guilt, 
care, and suffering, with a small infusion of good; but the time 
will come when Zeus will put an end to it. The poet does not 
venture to predict what sort of race will succeed. 

Such is the series of distinct races of men, which Hesiod, or 
the author of the “ Works and Days,” enumerates as having 
existed down to his own time. I give it as it stands, without 
placing much confidence in th various explanations which critics 
have offered. It stands out in more than one respect from the 
general tone and sentiment of Grecian legend: moreover the 
sequence of races is neither natural nor homogeneous, — the 
heroic race not having any metallic denomination, and not occu- 
pying any legitimate place in immediate succession to the brazen. 
Nor is the conception of the demons in harmony either with 
Homer or with the Hesiodic theogony. In Homer, there is 
scarcely any distinction between gods and demons, while the gods 


nyes (‘Theogon. 187), — “gensque virdm truncis et duro robore nata ” ( Vir 
gil, Mneid, viii. 315), — hearts of oak. 
δ Opp. Di. 157. — 
Ανδρῶν Ἡρώων ϑεῖον γένος, οἱ καλέονται 
Ημίϑεο. προτέρῃ yevéy κατ᾽ ἀπείρονα yaiaw. 
Opp. Di. 173. — 
Myxer’ beet’ ὥφειλον ἐγὼ πέμπτοισι μετεῖνας 
᾿Ανόράσιν, ἀλλ᾽ ἢ πρόσϑε ϑανεῖν, ἢ ἔπειτα γενέσθαι. 
Νῦν γὰρ δὴ γένος ἐστὶ σιδήρεον. ..... 


GOLDEN, S.LVER, BRAZEN, ETC. RACES 67 


are stated to go about and visit the cities of men in various dis- 
guises for the purpose of inspecting good and evil proceedings.1 
But in the poem now before us, the distinction between gods and 
dzmons is generic. The latter are invisible tenants of earth, 
remnants of the once happy golden race whom the Olympic gods 
first made: the remnants of the second or silver race are not 
dxmons, nor are they tenants of earth, but they still enjoy an 
honorable posthumous existence as the Blest of the under-world. 
Nevertheless the Hesiodic demons are in no way authors or 
abettors of evil: on the contrary, they form the unseen police 
of the gods, for the purpose of repressing wicked behavior in the 
world. 

We may trace, I think, in this quintuple succession of earthly 
races, set forth by the author of the “ Works and Days,” the con- 
fluence of two veins of sentiment, not consistent one with the 
other, yet both coéxisting in the author’s mind. The drift. of 
his poem is thoroughly didactic and ethical: though deeply pene- 
trated with the injustice and suffering which darken the face of 
human life, he nevertheless strives to maintain, both in himself 
and in others, a conviction that on the whole the just and labo- 
rious man will come off well,? and he enforces in considerable 


detail the lessons of practical prudence and virtue. This ethical 
sentiment, which dictates his appreciation of the present, also 
guides his imagination as to the past. It is pleasing to him to 
bridge over the chasm between the gods and degenerate man, by 


— 


" Odyss. xvii. 486. 

* There are some lines, in which he appears to believe that, under the present 
wicked and treacherous rulers, it is not the interest of any man to be jus¢ 
{Opp. Di. 270): — 


Nov δὴ ἐγὼ μήτ᾽ αὐτὸς ἐν ἀνϑρώποισι δίκαιος 
Εἴην, μήτ᾽ ἐμὸς υἱός - ἐπεὶ κακόν ἐστι δίκαιον 
Ἕμμεναι, εἰ μείζω γε δίκην ἀδικώτερος ἕξει - 
᾿Αλλὰ τόδ᾽ οὕπω ἔολπα τελεῖν Δία τερπικέραυνον. 


‘a the whole, however, his conviction is to the contrary. 

Plutarch rejects the above four lines, seemingly on no other ground than 
gecause he thought them immoral and unworthy of Hesiod (see Proclus ad 
be.). But they fall in perfectly with the temper of the poem: and the rule 

tarch is inadmissible, in determining the critical question of what is 
or spurious. 


88 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the supposition of previous races, — the first altogether pure, the 
second worse than the first, and the third still worse than the 
second ; and to show further how the first race passed by gentle 
death-sleep into glorious immortality ; how the second race was 
sufficiently wicked to drive Zeus to bury them in the under-world, 
yet s‘ill leaving them a certain measure of honor; while the 
third was so desperately violent as to perish by its own animosi- 
ties, without either name or honor of any kind. The conception 
of the golden race passing after death into good guardian demons, 
which some suppose to have been derived from a comparison 
with oriental angels, presents itself to the poet partly as approx- 
imating this race to the gods, partly as a means of constituting a 
triple gradation of post-obituary existence, proportioned to the 
character of each race whilst alive. The denominations of gold 
and silver, given to the first two races, justify themselves, like 
those given by Simonidés of Amorgos and by Phokylidés to the 
different characters of women, derived from the dog, the bee, the 
mare, the ass, and other animals; and the epithet of brazen is 
specially explained by reference to the material which the pugna- 
cious third race so plentifully employed for their arms and other 
implements. 

So far we trace intelligibly enough the moralizing vein: we 
find the revolutions of the past so arranged as to serve partly as 
an ethical lesson, partly as a suitable preface to the present.! But 
fourth in the list comes “the divine race of Heroes:” and here 
a new vein of thought is opened by the poet. The symmetry 
of his ethical past is broken up, in order to make way for these 
cherished beings of the national faith. For though the author of 
the “ Works and Days ” was himself of a didactic cast of thought, 


’ Aratus (Phsenomen. 107) gives only three successive races, — the golden, 
silver, and brazen; Ovid superadds to these the iron race (Metamorph. i. 
89-144): neither of them notice the heroic race. 

The observations both of Buttmaun (Mythos der Altesten Menschengesch- 
lechter, t. ii. p. 12 of the Mythologus) and of Vé6lcker (Mythologie des 
Japetischen Geschlechts, § 6, pp. 250-279) on this series of distinct races, 
are ingenious, and may be read with profit. Both recognize the disparate 
character of the fourth link in the series, and each accounts for it in a differ- 
ent manner. My own view comes nearer to that of Vélcker, with some con- 
siderable differences ; amongst which one is, that he rejects the verses respeet- 
ing the demons, which seem to me capital parts of the whole scheme. 


HESIODIC WORKS AND DAYS. 69 


like Phokylidés, or Solon, or Theognis, yet he had present to his 
feelings, in common with his countrymen, the picture of Grecian 
foretime, as it was set forth in the current mythes, and still more 
in Homer and those other epical productions which were then the 
only existing literature and history. It was impossible for him 
to exclude, from his sketch of the past, either the great persons 
or the glorious exploits which these poems ennobled; and even 
if he himself could have consented to such an exclusion, the 
sketch would have become repulsive to his hearers. But the 
chiefs who figured before Thébes and Troy could not be well 
identified either with the golden, the silver, or the brazen race: 
morover it was essential that they should be placed in immediate 
contiguity with the present race, because their descendants, real 
or supposed, were the most prominent and conspicuous of exist- 
ing men. Hence the poet is obliged to assign to them the fourth 
place in the series, and to interrupt the descending ethical move- 
ment in order to interpolate them between the brazen and the 
iron race, with neither of which they present any analogy. The 
iron race, to which the poet himself unhappily belongs, is the 
legitimate successor, not of the heroic, but of the brazen. Instead 
of the fierce and self-annihilating pugnacity which characterizes 
the latter, the iron race manifests an aggregate of smaller and 
meaner vices and mischiefs. It will not perish by suicidal 
extinction — but it is growing worse and worse, and is gradually 
losing its vigor, so that Zeus will not vouchsafe to preserve much 
longer such a race upon the earth. 

We thus see that the series of races imagined by the poet of 
the “Works and Days” is the product of two distinct and 
incongruous veins of imagination,—the didactic or ethical 
blending with the primitive mythical or epical. His poem is 
remarkable as the most ancient didactic production of the Greeks, 
and as one of the first symptoms of a new tone of sentiment 
finding its way into their literature, never afterwards to become 
extinct. The tendency of the “Works and Days” is anti- 
heroic: far from seeking to inspire admiration for adventur- 
ous enterprise, the author inculcates the strictest justice, the 
most unremitting labor and frugality, and a sober, not to say 
anxious, estimate of all the minute specialties of the future. 
Prudence and probity are his means,— practical comfort and 


70 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


happiness his end. But he deeply feels, and keenly exposes, the 
manifold wickedness and short-comings of his contemporaries, in 
reference to this capital standard. He turns with displeasure 
from the present men, not because they are too feeble to hurl 
either the spear of Achilles or some vast boundary-stone, but 
because they are rapacious, knavish, and unprincipled. 

The demons first introduced into the religious atmosphere of 
the Grecian world by the author of the “ Works and Days,” as 
generically different from the gods, but as essentially good, and 
as forming the intermediate agents and police between gods and 
men, — are deserving of attention as the seed of a doctrine 
which afterwards underwent many changes, and became of great 
importance, first as one of the constituent elements of pagan faith, 
then as one of the helps to its subversion. It will be recollected 
that the buried remnants of the half-wicked silver race, though 
they are not recognized as demons, are still considered as having 
a substantive existence, a name, and dignity, in the under-world. 
The step was easy, to treat them as demons also, but as dzemons of 
a defective and malignant character : this step was made by Empe- 
doclés and Xenocratés, and to a certain extent countenanced by 
Plato.! There came thus to be admitted among the pagan philoso- 
phers daemons both good and bad, in every degree : and these dz- 
mons were found available as a means of explaining many phe- 
nomena for which it was not convenient to admit the agency of the 
gods. They served to relieve the gods from the odium of physical 
and moral evils, as well as from the necessity of constantly med- 
dling in small affairs ; and the objectionable ceremonies of the 
pagan world were defended upon the ground that in no other way 
could the exigencies of such malignant beings be appeased. 
They were most frequently noticed as causes of evil, and thus the 
name (demon) came insensibly to convey with it a bad sense, — 
the idea of an evil being as contrasted with the goodness of a god. 
So it was found by the Christian writers when they commenced 
their controversy with paganism. One branch of their argu- 
ment led them to identify the pagan gods with demons in the 
evil sense, and the insensible change in the received meaning of 
the word lent them a specious assistance. For they could easily 


- -οὸοὸὸ..... 


ν See this subject further mentioned -- infra, chap, xvi. p, 565, 


DEMONS IN HESIOD. 71 


show that not only in Homer, but in the general language of 
early pagans, all the gods generally were spoken of as demons— 
and therefore, verbally speaking, Clemens and Tatian seemed to 
affirm nothing more against Zeus or Apollo than was employed 
in the language of paganism itself. Yet the audience of Homer 
or Sophoklés would have strenuously repudiated the proposition, 
if it had been put to them in the sense which the word demon 
pore in the age and among the circle of these Christian writers. 

In the imagination of the author of the “Works and Days,” 
the demons occupy an important place, and are regarded as 
being of serious practical efficiency. When he is remonstrating 
with the rulers around him upon their gross injustice and corrup- 
tion, he reminds them of the vast number of these immortal ser- 
vants of Zeus who are perpetually on guard amidst mankind, 
and through whom the visitations of the gods will descend even 
upon the most potent evil doers.! His supposition that the dx- 
mons were not gods, but departed men of the golden race, allowed 
him to multiply their number indefinitely, without too much 
cheapening the divine dignity. 

As this poet has been so much enslaved by the current legends 
as to introduce the Heroic race into a series to which it does not 
legitimately belong, so he has under the same influence inserted 
in another part of his poem the mythe of Pandora and Promé- 
theus,2 as a means of explaining the primary diffusion, and actual 
abundance, of evil among mankind. Yet this mythe can in no 
way consist with his quintuple scale of distinct races, and is in 
fact a totally distinct theory to explain the same problem, — the 
transition of mankind from a supposed state of antecedent hap- 
piness to one of present toil and suffering. Such an inconsistency 
is not a sufficient reason for questioning the genuineness of either 
passage; for the two stories, though one contradicts the other, 
beth harmonize with that central purpose which governs the 
autior’s mind,— a querulous and didactic appreciation of the pres- 
ent. That such was his purpose appears not only from the whole 
tenor of his poem, but also from the remarkable fact that his own 
personality, his own adventures and kindred, and his own suffer- 
ings, figure in it conspicuously. And this introduction of self 


’ Opp. Di. 252. Tpic yap pipsoi εἰσιν ἐπὶ χϑονὶ τουλυβοτείρῃ, etc. 
5 Opp. Di. 50-105. 


Vol.1 6 


72 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


imparts to it a peculiar terest. The father cf Hesiod came 
ever from the Holic Kymé, with the view of bettering his con- 
dition, and settled at Askra in Beeotia, at the foot of Mount Heli 
con. After his death his two sons divided the family inheritance: 
but Hesiod bitterly complains that his brother Persés cheated and 
went to law with him, and obtained through corrupt judges an 
unjust decision. He farther reproaches his brother witha prefer- 
ence for the suits and unprofitable bustle of the agora, at a time 
when he ought to be laboring for his subsistence in the field. 
Askra indeed was a miserable place, repulsive both in summer 
and winter. Hesiod had never crossed the sea, except once from 
Aulis to Eubeea, whither he went to attend the funeral games of 
Amphidamas, the chief of Chalkis: he sung a hymn, and pit 
as prize a tripod, which he consecrated to the muses in Helicon. 
These particulars, scanty as they are, possess 8 peculiar value, 
as the earliest authentic memorandum respecting the doing or 
suffering of any actual Greek person. There is no external tes- 
timony at all worthy of trust respecting the age of the “ Works 
and Days:” Herodotus treats Hesiod and Homer as belonging te 
the same age, four hundred years before his own time ; and there 
are other statements besides, some placing Hesiod at an earlier 
date than Homer, some at a later. Looking at the internal evi- 
dences, we may observe that the pervading sentiment, tone and 
purpose of the poem is widely different from that of the Iliad 
and Odyssey, and analogous to what we read respecting the com- 
positions of Archilochus and the Amorgian Simonidés. The au- 
thor of the “ Works and Days” is indeed a preacher and not a 
satirist: but with this distinction, we find in him the same pre- 
dominance of the present and the positive, the same disposition 
to turn the muse into an exponent of his own personal wrongs, 
the same employment of Asopic fable by way of illustration, and 
the same unfavorable estimate of the female sex,2 all of which 


δ Opp. Di. 630-650, 27-45. ᾿ ; 

3 Compare the fable (αἶνος) in the “ Works and Days, ” v. 200, with those 
in Archilochus, Fr. xxxviii. and xxxix., Gaisford, respecting the fox and the 
ape; and the legend of Pandé6ra (v. 95 and νυ. 705) with the fragment of 
Simonidés of Amorgos respecting women (Fr. viii. ed. Welcker, v. 95-115) ; 

so Phokylidés ap. Stobeum Florileg. Lxzxi. 

"Seale warts Hiss the character of the “ Works and Days” to that of 
Theognis and Phokylidés (ad Nikokl. Or. ii. p. 28). 


HESIODIC POEMS. 78 


may be traced in the two poets above mentioned, placing both of 
them in contrast with the Homeric epic. Such an internal analogy, 
in the absence of good testimony, is the best guide which we can 
follow in determining the date of the “Works and Days,” which 
we should accordingly place shortly after the year 700 B. c. The 
style of the poem might indeed afford a proof that the ancient and 
uniform hexameter, though well adapted to continuous legendary 
narrative or to solemn hymns, was somewhat monotonous when 
called upon either to serve a polemical purpose or to impress ἃ 
striking moral lesson. When poets, then the only existing com- 
posers, first began to apply their thoughts to the cut and thrust 
of actual life, aggressive or didactic, the verse would be seen to 
require a new, livelier and smarter metre; and out of this want 
grew the elegiac and the iambic verse, both seemingly contempo- 
raneous, and both intended to supplant the primitive hexameter 
for the short effusions then coming into vogue. 


CHAPTERIII. 
LEGEND OF THE IAPETIDS. 


Tue sons of the Titan god Iapetus, as described in the Hesi- 
odic theogony, are Atlas, Mencetius, Prométheus and Epimétheus.! 
Of these, Atlas alone is mentioned by Homer in the Odyssey, 
and even he not as the son of Iapetus: the latter himself is named 
in the Iliad as existing in Tartarus along with Kronos. The 
Homeric Atlas “knows the depths of the whole sea, and keeps by 


himself those tall pillars which hold the heaven apart from the 
earth.” ? 


' Hesiod, Theog. 510. 

* Hom. Odyss. i. 120.— 
Ἄτλαντος ϑυγατὴρ ὀλοόφρονος, ὅστε ϑαλάσσης 
Πάσης βένϑεα olde, ἔχει δέ τε κίονας αὑτὸς 


Μακρὰς. αἱ γαῖάν τε καὶ οὐρανὸν ἀμφὶς ἔχουσιν. 
VOL. L 4 


74 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


As the Homeric theogony generally appears much expanded 
in Hesiod, so also does the family of Iapetus, with their varied 
adventures. Atlas is here described, not as the keeper of the 
intermediate pillars between heaven and earth, but as himself 
condemned by Zeus to support the heaven on his head and hands; ! 
while the fierce Mencetius is thrust down to Erebus as a punish- 
ment for his ungovernable insolence. But the remaining two 
brothers, Prométheus and Epimétheus, are among the most in 
teresting creations of Grecian legend, and distinguished in more 
than one respect from all the remainder. 

First, the main battle between Zeus and the Titan gods is a 
contest of force purely and simply — mountains are hurled and 
thunder is launched, and the victory remains tothe strongest. But 
the competition between Zeus and Prométheus is one of craft 
and stratagem : the victory does indeed remain to the former, but 
the honors of the fight belong to the latter. Secondly, Prométheus 
and Epimétheus (the fore-thinker and the after-thinker 3) are char- 
acters stamped at the same mint and hy the same effort, the express 
contrast and antithesis of each other. Thirdly, mankind are here 
expressly brought forward, not indeed as active partners in the 
struggle, but as the grand and capital subjects interested, — as 
gainers or sufferers by the result. Prométheus appears in the 
exalted character of champion of the human race, even against 

ihe forn..dable superiority of Zeus. 

In the primitive or Hesiodic legend, Prométheus is not the 
creator or moulder of man; it is only the later additions which 
invest him with this characters The race are supposed as exist- 


4 Hesiod, Theog. 516.—- 
"ArAag δ᾽ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχει κρατερῆς ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης 
Ἐστηὼς, κεφαλῇ τε καὶ ἀκαμάτοισι χέρεσσι. 


Hesiod stretches far beyond the simplicity of the Homeric conception. 
2 Pindar extends the family of Epimétheus and gives him a daughter, 


Πρόφασις (Pyth. v. 25), Excuse, the offspring of After-thought. 
3 Apollodér. i. 7. 1. Nor is he such either in Aschylus, or in the Platonie 


fable (Protag. c. 30), though this version became at last the mort popuiar. 


Some hardened lumps of clay, remnants of that which had been employed 
by Prométheus in moulding man, were shown to Pausanias at Panopeus in 


Phokis (Paus. x 4, 3). 


The first Epigram of Erinna (Anthol. i, p. 58, ed. Brunck) seems te allude 


LEGEND OF THE IAPETIDS. 5 


ing, and Prométheus, a member of the dispossessed body of Titan 
gods, comes forward as their representative and defender. The 
advantageous bargain which he made with Zeus on their behalf. 
in respect to the partition of the sacrificial animals, has been oy 
counted in the preceding chapter. Zeus felt that he had been 
outwitted, and was exceeding wroth. In his displeasure he with- 
held from mankind the inestimable comfort of fire, so that the 
race would have perished, had not Prométheus stolen fire, in de- 
fiance of the command of the Supreme Ruler, and brought it to 
men in the hollow of a ferule.! 
Zeus was now doubly indignant, and determined to play off 

a still more ruinous stratagem. Héphzstos, by his direction 
moulded the form of a beautiful virgin; Athéné dressed hen 
Aphrodité and the Charities bestowed upon her both cxuminetins 
and fascination, while Hermés infused into her the mind of a 
dog, a deceitful spirit, and treacherous words.2, The messenger 
of the gods conducted this “fascinating mischief” to mankind, at 
a time when Prométheus was not present. Now Epimétheus had 
received from his brother peremptory injunctions not to accept 
from the hands of Zeus any present whatever; but the beauty 
of Pandora (so the newly-formed female was called) was not to 
be resisted. She was received and admitted among men, and 
from that moment their comfort and tranquillity was exchanged 

for suffering of every kind. The evils to which mankind are 

liable had been before enclosed in a cask in their own keeping: 

Pandora in her malice removed the lid of the cask, and out flew 

these thousand evils and calamities, to exercise forever their de 

stroying force. Hope alone remained imprisoned, and therefore 

without efficacy, as before —the inviolable lid being replaced 

before she could escape. Before this incident (says the legend) 

men had lived without disease or suffering ; but now both earth 
and sea are full of mischiefs, while maladies of every description 
stalk abroad by day as well as by night, without any hope for 
man of relief to come. 


5 ae as moulder of man. The expression of Aristophanés (Aves, 
a yg ig ton πηλοῦ — does not necessarily refer to Prométheus. 
esiod, Theog. 566; Opp. Di. 52. 3 Theog. 580 ; i 

® Opp. Di. 81-90. fi ee 

* Opp. Di. 93. Pandéra does no; bring with her the cask, as the common 


Fé HISTORY OF GRE«Cé. 


The Theogony gives the legend here recounted, with some va 
riations — leaving out the part of Epimétheus altogether, as well 
as the cask of evils. Pandora is the ruin of man, simply as the 
mother and representative of the female sex.' And the varia- 
tions are thus useful, as they enable us to distinguish the essential 
from the accessory circumstances of the story. 

“Thus (says the poet, at the conclusion of his narrative) it is 
not possible to escape from the purposes of Zeus.”2 His mythe, 
connecting the calamitous condition of man with the malevolence 
of the supreme god, shows, first, by what cause such an unfriendly 
feeling was raised; next, by what instrumentality its deadly re- 
sults were brought about. The human race are not indeed the 
creation, but the protected flock of Prométheus, one of the elder 
or dispossessed Titan gods: when Zeus acquires supremacy, man- 
kind along with the rest become subject to him, and are to make 
the best bargain they can respecting worship and service to be 
yielded. By the stratagem of their advocate Prométheus, Zeus 


version of this sory would have us suppose: the cask exists fast closed in 
the custody of Epimétheus, or of man himself, and Pandéra commits the 
fatal treachery of removing the lid. The case is analogous to that of the 
closed bag of unfavorable winds which Zolus gives into the hands of 
Odysseus, and which the guilty companions of the latter force open, to the 
entire ruin of his hopes (Odyss. x. 19-50). The idea of the two casks on 
the threshhold of Zeus, lying ready for dispensation —-one full of evils the 
ather of benefits — is Homeric (Iliad, xxiv. 527):— 
Aoiot yap τε πίϑοι κατακείαται ἐν Διὸς οὔδει, ete. 
Plutarch assimilates to this the πέϑος opened by Pandéra, Consolat. ad Apol- 
lon. c. 7. p. 105. The explanation here given of the Hesiodic passage re- 
lating to Hope, is drawn from an able article in the Wiener Jahrbucher, vol. 
109 (1845), p. 220, Ritter; a review of SchOmmann’s translation of the Pro- 
métheus of Aischylus. The diseases and evils are inoperative so long as they 
remain shut up in the cask: the same mischief-making influence which lets 
them out to their calamitous work, takes care that Hope shall still zontinue 
& powerless prisoner in the inside. 
' Theog. 590. — 

Ἔκ τῆς yap γένος ἐστὶ γυναικῶν ϑηλυτεράων, 

Τῆς γὰρ ὀλώιόν ἐστι γένος" καὶ φῦλα γυναικῶν 

Πῆὴμα μέγα ϑνητοῖσι μετ᾽ ἀνδράσι ναιετάουσι, ete 

*Opp Di 105.— 
Οὕτως οὔτι πῆ ἐστὶ Διὸς νόον ἐξαλέασθαι. 


ZEUS AND PROMETHEUS, 71 


is cheated into such a partition of the victims as is eminently un- 
profitable to him ; whereby his wrath is so provoked, that he tries 
to subtract from man the use of fire. Here however his scheme 
is frustrated by the thett of Prométheus: but his second attempt 
is more successful, and he in his turn cheats the unthinking Epimé- 
theus into the acceptance of a present (in spite of the peremptory 
interdict of Prometheus) by which the whole of man’s happiness 
is wrecked This legend grows out of two feelings; partly as to 
the relations of the gods with man, partly as to the relation of 
the female sex with the male. The present gods are unkind to- 
wards man, but the old gods, with whom man’s lot was originally 
cast, were much kinder — and the ablest among them stands for- 
ward as the indefatigable protector of the race. Nevertheless, 
the mere excess of his craft proves the ultimate ruin of the cause 
which he espouses. He cheats Zeus out of a fair share of the 
sacrificial victim, so as both to provoke and justify a retaliation 
which he cannot be always at hand to ward off: the retaliation 
is, in his absence, consummated by a snare laid for Epimétheus 
and voluntarily accepted. And thus, though Hesiod ascribes the 
calamitous condition of man to the malevolence of Zeus, his piety 
suggests two exculpatory pleas for the latter: mankind have been 
the first to defraud Zeus of his legitimate share of the sacrifice — 
and they have moreover been consenting parties to their own 
ruin. Such are the feelings, as to the relation between the gods 
and man, which have been one of the generating elements of 
this legend. The other element, a conviction of the vast mischief 
arising to man from women, whom yet they cannot dispense with, 
is frequently and strongly set forth in several of the Greek poets 
— by Simonidés of Amorgos and Phokylidés, not less than by 
the notorious misogynist Euripidés. 

But the miseries arising from woman, however great they 
might be, did not reach Prométheus himself. For him,the rash 
champion who had ventured “to compete in sagacity”! with 
Zeus, a different punishment was in store. Bound by heavy 
chains to a pillar, he remained fast imprisoned for several gene- 
rations: every day did an eagle prey upon his liver, and every 
night did the liver grow afresh for the next day’s suffering. At 


? Theog 534. Obver’ épilero βουλὸς ὑπερμενέι Κρονίωνι. 


78 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


length Zeus, eager to enhance the glory of his favorite sou Hérs- 
clés, permitted the latter to kill the eagle and rescue the cap 
ive.! 

"oo is the ‘Prométhean mythe as it stands in the Hesiodic 
poems; its earliest form, as far as we can trace. Upon it was Gontet 
the sublime tragedy of Aschylus, “The Enchained Prométheus, 

together with at least one more tragedy, now lost, by the same 
author.2 és:hylus has made several important alterations ; de- 
scribing the human race, not as having once enjoyed and subse- 
quently lost a state of tranquillity and enjoyment, but as originally 
feeble and wretched. He suppresses both the first trick played 
off by Prométheus upon Zeus respecting the partition of the vie- 
tim — and the final formation and sending of Pandora — which 
are the two most marked portions of the Hesiodic story; while 
on the other hand he brings out prominently and enlarges upon 
the theft of fire,? which in Hesiod is but slightly touched. If he 
has thus relinquished the antique simplicity of the story, he has 
rendered more than ample compensation by imparting to it a gran- 
deur of idéal, a large reach of thought combined with appeals to 
our earnest and admiring sympathy, and a pregnancy of sugges- 
tion in regard to the relations between the gods and man, .which 
soar far above the Hesiodic level — and which render his tragedy 
the most impressive, though not the most artistically composed, of 
all Grecian dramatic productions. Prométheus there appears not 
only as the heroic champion and sufferer in the cause and for the 
protection of the human race, but also as the gifted teacher of all the 
arts, helps, and ornaments of life, amongst which fire is only one 
all this against the will and in defiance of the purpose of Zeus, who, 
on acquiring his empire, wished to destroy the human race and to 


1 Theog. 521-532. 

τ Of the tragedy called Προμηϑεὺς Λυόμενος some few fragments yet re 
muin: Προμηϑεὺς Πύρφορος was ἃ satyric drama, according to Dindorf 
Welcker recognizes a third tragedy, Προμηϑεὺς Πύρφορος, and ἃ satyric dra- 
ma, [pounded Πυρκαεύς (Die Griechisch. Tragédien, vol. i. p. 30). The 
story of Prométheus had also been — by Sapphé in one of her lost 

Servius ad Virgil. Eclog. vi. 42). 
‘Faces v0o tan the theft of fire (i. 7. 1). 

¢ Bach. Prom. 442-506.— 

Πᾶσαι τέχναι Bporoiosy ἐκ Προμηϑέως. 


PROMETHEUS AND HIS SUFFERINGS. 49 


θορθύ somo new breed.! Moreover, new relations between Ῥχοιηᾷ.- 
theus and Zeus are superadded by Aeschylus. At the commence- 
ment of the struggle between Zeus and the Titan gods, Prométheus 
had vainly attempted to prevail upon the latter to conduct it with 
prudence; but when he found that they obstinately declined all 
wise counsel, and that their ruin was inevitable, he abandoned their 
causeand joined Zeus. To him and to his advice Zeus owed the 
victory : yet the monstrous ingratitude and tyranny of the latter is 
now manifested by nailing him to a rock, for no other crime than 
because he frustrated the purpose of extinguishing the human race, 
and furnished to them the means of living with tolerable comfort.2 
The new ruler Zeus, insolent with his victory over the old gods, 
tramples down all right, and sets at naught sympathy and obliga- 
tion, as well towards gods as towards man. Yet the prophetic 
Prometheus, in the midst of intense suffering, is consoled by the 
foreknowledge that the time will come when Zeus must again 
send for him, release him, and invoke his aid, as the sole means 
of averting from himself dangers otherwise insurmountable. The 
security and means of continuance for mankind have now been 
placed beyond the reach of Zeus — whom Prométheus proudly 
defies, glorying in his generous and successful championship,? de- 
spite the terrible price which he is doomed to pay for it. 

As the Aischylean Prométheus, though retaining the old linea- 
ments, has acquired a new coloring, soul and character, so he has 
also become identified with a special locality. In Hesiod, there 
is no indication of the place in which he is imprisoned ; but .2818- 
chylus places it in Scythia,‘ and the general belief of the Greeks 
supposed it to be on Mount Caucasus. So long and so firmly did 


δ Zésch. Prom. 231.— 
βροτῶν δὲ τῶν ταλαιπώρων λόγον 
Οὐκ ἔσχεν οὐδέν᾽, ἀλλ᾽ ἀϊστώσας γένος 
Τὸ πᾶν, ἔχρῃζεν ἄλλο φιτῦσαι νόον. 
* ZEsch. Prom. 198-222. 123.— 
διὰ τὴν λίαν φιλότητα βροτῶν. 

* Zsch. Prom. 169-770. 

* Prometh. 2. See also the Fragments of the Prométheus Solutus, 177 
179, ed. Dindorf, where Caucasus is specially named ; but v. 719 of the Pro- 
métheus Vinctus seems to imply that Mount Caucasus is a place different 
from that to which the suffering prisoner is chained. 


80 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


this belief continue, that the Roman general Pompey, when in 
command of an army in Kolchis, made with his companion, the lit- 
erary Greek Theophanés, a special march to view the spot im 
Caucasus where Prométheus had been transfixed.! 


CHAPTER IV. 


HEROIC LEGENDS.— GENEALOGY OF ARGOS. 


Havine briefly enumerated the gods of Greece, with their 
shief attributes as described in legend, we come to those geneal- 
ogies which connected them with historical men. 

In the retrospective faith of a Greek, the ideas of worship and 
ancestry coalesced. Every association of men, large or small, in 
whom there existed a feeling of present union, traced back that 
union to some common initial progenitor; that progenitor being 
either the common god whom they worshipped, or some semi-divine 
person closely allied to him. What the feelings of the commu- 
nity require is, a continuous pedigree to connect them with this 
respected source of existence, beyond which they do not think of 
looking back. A series of names, placed in filiation or fraternity, 
together with a certain number of family or personal adventures 
ascribed to some of the individuals among them, constitute the 
ante-historical past through which the Greek looks back to his 
gods. The names of this genealogy are, to a great degree, gen- 
tile or local names familiar to the people,— rivers, mountains, 
springs, lakes, villages, demes, etc.,— embodied as persons, and 
introduced as acting or suffering. ‘They are moreover called 
kings or chiefs, but the existence of a body of subjects surround- 
ing them is tacitly implied rather than distinctly set forth; for 
their own personal exploits or family proceedings constitute for 
the most part the whole matter of narrative. And thus the gene 


' Appian, Bell. Mithridat. c. 103. 


HERVIC LEGENDS.— GENEALOGY OF ARGOS. 81 


alogy was made to satisfy at once the appetite of the Greeks for 
romantic adventure, and their demand for an unbroken line of fil- 
iation between themselves and the gods. The eponymous person- 
age, from whom the community derive their name, is sometimes 
the begotten son of the local god, sometimes an indigenous man 
sprung from the earth, which is indeed itself divinized. 

It will be seen from the mere description of these genealogies 
that they included elements human and historical, as well as ele- 
ments divine and extra-historical. And if we could determine 
the time at which any genealogy was: first framed, we should be able 
to assure ourselves that the men then represented as present, to- 
gether with their fathers and grandfathers, were real persons οἱ 
flesh and blood. But this is a point which can seldom be ascertain- 
ed ; moreover, even if it could be ascertained, we must at once set it 
aside, if we wish to look at the genealogy in the point of view of 
the Greeks. For to them, not only all the ~embers were alike 
real, but the gods and heroes at the commencement were in a cer- 
tain sense the most real; at least, they were the most esteemed 
and indispensable of all. The value of the genealogy consisted, 
not in its length, but in its continuity ; not (according to the feel- 
ing of modern aristocracy) in the power of setting out a prolong- 
ed series of human fathers and grandfathers, but in the sense of 
ancestral union with the primitive god. And the length οἱ the 
series is traceable rather to humility, inasmuch as the same per- 
son who was gratified with the belief that he was descended from 
a god in the fifteenth generation, would have accounted it crimi- 
nal insolence to affirm that a god was his father or grandfather. 
In presenting to the reader those genealogies which coastitute the 
supposed primitive history of Hellas, I make no pretence to dis- 
tinguish names real and historical from fictitious creations ; partly 
because I have no evidence upon which to draw the line, and part- 
ly because by attempting it I should altogether depart from the 
genuine Grecian point of view. 

Nor is it possible to do more than exhibit a certain selection of 
such as were most current and interesting; for the total number 
of them which found place in Grecian faith exceeds computation. 
As a general rule, every deme, every gens, every aggregate of 
men accustomed to combined action, religious or political, had its 


own. The small and unimportant demes into which Attica was 
vol τ 4" βου. 


o® HISTORY Of GREECE. 


divided had each its ancestral god and heroes, just as much as 
the great Athens herself. Even among the villages of Phokis, 
which Pausanias will hardly permit himself to call towns, deduc- 
tions of legendary antiquity were not wanting. And it is impor- 
tant to bear in mind, when we are reading the legendary geneal- 
ogies of Argos, or Sparta, or Thébes, that these are merely 
samples amidst an extensive class, all perfectly analogous, and 
all exhibiting the religious and patriotic retrospect of some frac- 
tion of the Hellenic world. They are no more matter of his- 
torical tradition than any of the thousand other legendary genealo- 
gies which men delighted to recall to memory at the periodical 
festivals of their gens, their deme, or their village. 

With these few prefatory remarks, I proceed to notice the most 
conspicuous of the Grecian heroic pedigrees, and first, that of 
Argos. 

The earliest name in Argeian antiquity is that of Inachus, the 
son of Oceanus and Téthys, who gave his name to the river flow- 
ing under the walls of the town. According to the chronological 
computations of those who regarded ihe mythical genealogies ‘as 
substantive history, and who allotted a given number of years to 
each generation, the reign of Inachus was placed 1986 B. c., or 
about 1100 years prior to the commencement of the recorded 
Olympiads.! 

The sons of Inachus were Phoréneus and 4Egialeus ; both of 
whom however were sometimes represented as autochthonous 
men, the one in the territory of Argos, the other in that of Sik- 
yon. ®gialeus gave his name to the north-western region of 
the Peloponnésus, on the southern coast of the Corinthian Gulf2 
The name of Phoréneus was of great celebrity in the Argeian 
mythical genealogies, and furnished both the title and the sub- 
ject of the ancient poem called Phorénis, in which he is styled 
“the father of mortal men.”3 He is said to have imparted to 


' Apollodér. ii. 1. Mr. Fynes Clinton does not admit the historical reality 
of Inachus ; tut he places Phoréneus seventeen generations, or 570 years 
prior to the Trojan war, 978 years earlier than the first recorded Olympiad 
See Fasti Hellenici, vol. iii. ς. 1. p. 19. 

* Pausan. ii. 5, 4. 

* See Diintzer, Fragm. Epic. Gree. p. 57. The Argeian author Akusilaus 
treated Phoroneus as the first of men, Fragm. 14. Didot av. Clem. Alez 


10.-- HERE. —THE HEREON. 88 


mankind, who had before him lived altogether isolated, the first 
potion and habits of social existence, and even the first knowl- 
edge of fire: his dominion extended over the whole Peloponné- 
sus. His tomb at Argos, and seemingly also the place called the 
Phoronic city, in which he formed the first settlement of man- 
kind, were still shown in the days of Pausanias.!_ The offspring 
of Phoréneus, by the nymph Telediké, were Apis and Niobé. 
Apis, a harsh ruler, was put to death by Thelxién and Telchin, 
having given to Peloponnésus the name of Apia:2 he was suc- 
ceeded by Argos, the son of his sister Niobé by the god Zeus. 
From this sovereign Peloponnésus was denominated Argos. By 
his wife Evadné, daughter of Strymén,3 he had four sons, Ekba- 
sus, Peiras, Epidaurus, and Kriasus. Ekbasus was succeeded by 
his son Agénor, and he again by his son Argos Panoptés, —a 


Stromat. i. p. 321. Φορωνῆες, a synonym for Argeians; Theocrit. Idyll. 
xxv. 200. 

' Apollodor. ii. 1, 1; Pausan. ii. 15,5; 19,5; 20, 3. 

* Apis in Aschylus is totally different: ἰατρόμαντις or medical charmer, 
son of Apollo, who comes across the gulf from Naupactus, purifies the ter- 
ritory of Argos from noxious monsters, and gives to it the name of Apia 
(schyl. Suppl. 265). Compare Steph. Byz. v. ᾿Απίη; Soph. C&dip. 
Colon. 1303. The name ᾿Απία for Peloponnésus remains still a mystery, 
even after the attempt of Buttmann (Lexilogus, s. 19) to throw light upon 
it. 

Eusebius asserts that Niobé was the wife of Inachus and mother of Pho- 
réneus, and pointedly contradicts those who call her daughter of Phoréneus 
— φασὶ dé τινες Νιόβην Φορωνέως εἶναι ϑυγατέρα, ὅπερ οὐκ ἀληϑές (Chronic. 
p. 23, ed. Scalig.): his positive tone is curious, upon such a matter. 

Hellanicus in his Argolica stated that Phoréneus had three sons, Pelasgus, 
Iasus and Agéndr, who at the death of their father divided his possessions 
by lot. Pelasgus acquired the country near the river Erasinus, and built the 
citadel of Larissa: Iasus obtained the portion near to Elis. After their 
decease, the younger brother Agénér invaded and conquered the country, at 
the head of a large body of horse. It was from these three persons that 
Argos derived three epithets which are attached to it in the Homeric 
poems —"Apyoc Πελασγικὸν, Ἴασον, Ἱππόβοτον (Hellanik. Fr. 38, ed. Didot ; 
Phavorin. v."Apyoc). This is a specimen of the way in which legendary 
persons as well as legendary events were got up to furnish an explanation 
of Homeric epithets: we may remark as singular, that Hellanicus seems to 
apply Πελασγικὸν “Apyo¢ to a portion of Peloponnésus, while the Homeric 
Catalogue applies it to Thessaly. 

* Apollod. 1. c. ‘The mention of Strymén seems connected with Aechylus 
Sappl 255. 


84 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


very powerful prince who is said to have had eyes distributed 
over all his body, and to have liberated Peloponnésus from sev- 
eral monsters and wild animals which infested it :! Akusilaus and 
ZEschylus make this Argos an earth-born person, while Phere- 
kydés reports him as son of Arestér. asus was the son of Argos 
Panoptés by Isméné, daughter of Asopus. According to the 
authors whom Apollodérus and Pausanias prefer, the celebrated 
I6 was his daughter: but the Hesiodic epic (as well as Akusilaus) 
represented her as daughter of Peiras, while ASschylus and 
Kastor the chronologist affirmed the primitive king Inachus to 
have b2en her father. A favorite theme, as well for the ancient 
genealogical poets as for the Attic tragedians, were the adven- 
tures of Io, of whom, while priestess of Héré, at the ancient 
and renowned Heérwon between Mykénw and Argos, Zeus 
became amorous. When Héré discovered the intrigue and 
taxed him with it, he denied the charge, and metamorphosed [ὃ 
into a white cow. Héré, requiring that the cow should be sur- 
rendered to her, placed her under the keeping of Argos Panop- 
tés; but this guardian was slain by Hermés, at the command of 
Zeus: and Héré then drove the cow I6 away from her native 
land by means of the incessant stinging of a gad-fly, which com- 
pelled her to wander without repose or sustenance over an 
immeasurable extent of foreign regions. The wandering I6 gave 
her name to the lonian Gulf, traversed Epirus and Illyria, passed 
the chain of Mount Hemus and the lofty summits of Caucasus, 
and swam across the Thracian or Cimmerian Bosporus (which 
also from her derived its appellation) into Asia. She then went 
through Scythia, Cimmeria, and many Asiatic regions, until she 
arrived in Egypt, where Zeus at length bestowed upon her rest, 
restored her to her original form, and enabled her to give birth 
to his black son Epaphos.3 


' Akusil. Fragm. 17, ed. Didot; isch. Prometh. 568 ; Pherekyd. Fragm. 
22, ed. Didot; Hesiod. Agimius. Fr. 2, p. 56, ed. Dantzer: among the 
varieties of the story, one was that Argos was changed into a peacock 
(Schol. Aristoph. Aves, 102). Macrobius (i. 19) considers Argos as an alle- 
gorical expression of the starry heaven: an idea which Panofska alse 
upholds in one of the recent Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy, 1837, p, 
121 seq. 

* Apollod. ii. 1,1; Pausan. ii. 16,1; Alsch. Prom. νυ. 590-663. 
* #schyl. Prom. v. 790-850; Apollod. ii. 1. Eschylus in the Supplices 


WANDERINGS OF 10. % 


Such is a general sketch of the adventures which the ancient 
poets, epic, lyric, and tragic, and the logographers after them, 
connect with the name of the Argeian 10, --- one of the numerous 
tales which the fancy of the Greeks deduced from the amorons 
dispositions of Zeus and the jealousy of Héré. That the scena 
should be laid in the Argeian territory appears natural, when we 
recollect that both Argos and Mykénz were under the special 
guardianship of Héré, and that the Héreon between the two 
was one of the oldest and most celebrated temples in which she 
was worshipped. It is useful to compare this amusing fiction 
with the representation reported to us by Herodotus, and derived 
by him as well from Pheenician as from Persian antiquarians, of 
the circumstances which occasioned the transit of 16 from Argos 
to Egypt,—an event recognized by all of them as historical 
matter of fact. According to the Persians, a Pheenician vessel 
had arrived at the port near Argos, freighted with goods intended 
for sale to the inhabitants of the country. After the vessel had 
remained a few days, and disposed of most of her cargo, several 


gives a different version of the wanderings of 1ὃ from that which appears in 
the Prométheus: in the former drama he carries her through Phrygia, Mysia, 
Lydia, Pamphylia and Cilicia into Egypt (Supplic. 544-566) : nothing is 
there said about Prométheus, or Caucasus or Scythia, ete. 

The track set forth in the Supplices is thus geographically intelligible. 
that in the Prométheus (though the most noticed of the two) defies all com- 
prehension, even as a consistent fiction; nor has the erudition of the com- 
mentators been successful in clearing it up. See Schutz, Excurs. iv. ad 
Prometh. Vinct. pp. 144-149; Welcker, ZEschylische Trilogie, pp. 127-146, 
and especially Vélcker, Mythische Geographie der Griech. und Romer, part 
i. pp. 3-158. 

The Greek inhabitants at Tarsus in Cilicia traced their origin to Argos: 
their story was, that Triptolemus had been sent forth from that town in 
quest of the wandering I6, that he had followed her to Tyre, and then 
renounced the search in despair. He and his companions then settled partly 
at Tarsus, partly at Antioch (Strabo, xiv. 673; xv. 750). This is the 
story of Kadmos and Eurépé inverted, as happens - th the Grecian 
mythes. 

Homer calls Hermés ᾿Αργειφόντης ; but this epithet hardly affords suffi 
cient proof that he was acquainted with the mythe of I6, as Vélcker sup 
poses : it cannot be traced higher than Hesiod. According to some authors, 
whom Cicero copies, it was on account of the murder of Argos that Hermés 
was obliged to leave Greece and go into Egypt: then it was that he tangh. 
the Egyptians laws and letters (De Natur. Deor. iii. 22). 


86 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Argeian women, ani among them [ὃ the king’s daughter, coming 
on board to purchase, were seized and carried off by the crew, 
who sold 16 in Egypt.!. The Pheenician antiquarians, however, 
while they admitted the circumstance that I6 had left her own 
ccuntry in one of their vessels, gave a different color to the whole 
by affirming that she emigrated voluntarily, having been engaged 
in an amour with the captain of the vessel, and fearing that her 
parents might come to the knowledge of her pregnancy. Both 
Persians and Phoenicians described the abduction of 16 as the 
first of a series of similar acts between Greeks and Asiatics, 
committed each in revenge for the preceding. First came the 
rape of Eurépé from Phoenicia by Grecian adventurers, — per- 
haps, as Herodotus supposed, by Krétans: next, the abduction 
of Médeia from Kolchis by Jasén, which occasioned the retaliatory 
act of Paris, when he stole away Helena from Menelaos. Up to 
this point the seizures of women by Greeks from Asiatics, and 
by Asiatics from Greeks, had been equivalents both in number 
and in wrong. But the Greeks now thought fit to equip a vast 
conjoint expedition to recover Helen, in the course of which they 
took and sacked Troy. The invasions of Greece by Darius and 
Xerxes were intended, according to the Persian antiquarians, as 
a long-delayed retribution for the injury inflicted on the Asiatics 
by Agamemnon and his followers.2 

The account thus given of the adventures of I6, when con- 
trasted with the genuine legend, is interesting, as it tends to illus- 


* The story in Parthénius (Narrat. 1) is built upon this version of I6’s 
adventures. 

* Herodot. i. 1-6. Pausanias (ii. 15, 1) will not undertake to determine 
whether the account given by Herodotus, or that of the old legend, respect- 
ing the cause which carried I6 from Argos to Egypt, is the true one: Ephorus 
(ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ij. 168) repeats the abduction of I6 to Egypt, by the 
Pheenicians, subjoining a Strange account of the Etymology of the name 
Bosporus. The remarks of Plutarch on the narrative of Herodotus are 
curious : he adduces as one proof of the κακοήϑεια (bad feeling) of Herod- 
Otus, that the latter inserts so discreditable a narrative respecting Id, daugh- 
cer of Inachus, “ whom all Greeks believe to have been divinized by foreign- 
ers, to have given name to seas and straits, and to be the source of the most 
Mlustrious regal families.” He also blames Herodotus for rejecting Epaphas, 
16, Iasas and Argos, as highest members of the Perseid genealogy. He 
calls Herodotus φελοϑάρβαρος (Plutarch, De Malign. Herodoti, c. xi. xii. xiv 
ep. 856, 857). 


ABDUCTIONS OF HEROIC WOMEN. af 


ézate the phznomenon which early Grecian history is constantly 
presenting to us, —- the way in which the epical furniture of aa 
unknown past is recast and newly colored so as to meet those 
changes which take place in the retrospective feelings of the 
present. The religious and poetical character of the old legend 
disappears: nothing remains except the names of persons and 
places, and the voyage from Argos to Egypt: we have in exchange 
a sober, quasi-historical narrative, the value of which consists in 
its bearing on the grand contemporary conflicts between Persig 
and Greece, which filled the imagination of Herodotus and his 
readers. 

To proceed with the genealogy of the kings of Argos, lasus 
was succeeded by Krotépus, son of his brother Agénor; Kroté- 
pus by Sthenelas, and he again by Gelanor.! In the reign of the 
latter, Danaos came with his fifty daughters from Egypt to 
Argos; and here we find another of those romantic adventures 
which so agreeably decorate the barrenness of the mythical gen- 
ealogies. Danaos and A‘égyptos were two brothers descending 
from Epaphos, son of 16: Aigyptos had fifty sons, who were 
eager to marry the fifty daughters of Danaos, in spite of the 
strongest repugnance of the latter. To escape such a necessity, 
Danaos placed his fifty daughters on board of a penteconter (or 
vessel with fifty oars) and sought refuge at Argos; touching in 
his voyage at the island of Rhodes, where he erected a statue af 
Athéné at Lindos, which was long exhibited as a memorial of his 


! It would be an unprofitable fatigue to enumerate the multiplied and irre- 
concilable discrepancies in regard to every step of this old Argeian geneal.- 
ogy. Whoever desires to see them brought together, may consult Schubart, 
Quzstiones in Antiquitatem Heroicam, Marpurg, 1832, capp. 1 and 2. 

The remarks which Schubart makes (p. 35) upon Petit-Radel’s Chrono- 
logical Tables will be assented to by those who follow the unceasing string 
of contradictions, without any sufficient reason to believe that any one of 
them is more worthy of trust than the remainder, which he has cited: — 
“ Videant alii, quaomodo genealogias heroicas, et chronologiw rationes, in 
concordiam redigant. Ipse abstineo, probe persuasus, stemmata vera, his- 
toriz fide comprobata, in systema chronologie redigi posse: at ore per 
szecula tradita, a poetis reficta, s#pe mutata, prout fabula postulare +ideba 
tur, ab historiarum deinde conditoribus restituta, scilicet, brevi qualia 
prostant stemmata — chronologis secundum unnos distributes vincul: semper 


recusatura esse.” 


88 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


passage. gyptos and his sons followed them to Argos and still 
pressed their suit, to which Danaos found himself compelled to 


assent; but on the wedding night he furnished each of his daugh- 
ters with a dagger, and enjoined them to murder their husbands 
during the hour of sleep. His orders were obeyed by all, with 
the single exception of Hypermnéstra, who preserved her hus- 
band Lynkeus, incurring displeasure and punishment from her 
father. He afterwards, however, pardoned her; and when, by 
the voluntary abdication of Gelanér, he became king of Argos, 
Lynkeus was recognized as his son-in-law and ultimately suc- 
ceeded him. The remaining daughters, having been purified by 
Athéné and Hermés, were given in marriage to the victors in a 
gymnic contest publicly proclaimed. From Danaos was derived 
the name of Danai, applied to the inhabitants of the Argeian 
territory,' and to the Homeric Greeks generally. 

From the legend of the Danaides we pass to two barren names 
of kings, Lynkeus and his son Abas. The two sons of Abas 
were Akrisios and Preetos, who, after much dissension, divided 
between them the Argeian territory ; Akrisios ruling at Argos, 
and Proetos at Tiryns. The families of both formed the theme 
of romantic stories. To pass over for the present the legend of 
Bellerophén, and the unrequited passion which the wife of Proetos 
conceived for him, we are told that the daughters of Preetos, 
beautiful, and solicited in marriage by suitors from all Greece. 
were smitten with leprosy and driven mad, wandering in unseemly 
guise throughout Peloponnésus. ‘The visitation had overtaken 
them, according to Hesiod, because they refused to take part in 
the Bacchic rites; according to Pherekydés and the Argeian 
Akusilaus,? because they had treated scornfully the wooden statue 


* Apollod. ii. 1. The Supplices of 4Eschylus is the commencing drama 
of a trilogy on this subject of the Danaides, — Ἱκετίδες, Αἰγύπτιοι, Δαναΐ- 
dec. Welcker, Griechisch. Tragédien, vol. i. p. 48: the two latter are lost. 
The old epic poem called Danais or Danatdes, which is mentioned in the 
Tabula Iliaca as containing 5000 verses, has perished, and is unfortunately 
very little alluded to: see Dantzer, Epic. Gree. Fragm. p. 3; Welcker, Der 
Episch. Kyklus, p. 35. 

* Apollod. 1.c.; Pherekyd. ap. Schol. Hom. Odyss. xv. 225; Hesiod, 
Fragm. Marktsch. Fr. 36, 37, 38. These Fragments belong to the Hesiodic 
Catalogue of Women: Apollodérus seems to refer to some other of the 
aumerous Hesiodic poems. Dioddrus (iv. 68) assigns the anger of iony 
606 as the Cause. 


DANAE AND PERSEUS. 88 


and simpie equipments of Héré: the religious character of the 
old legend here displays itself in a remarkable manner. Unable 
to cure his daughters, Preetos invoked the aid of the renowned 
Pylian prophet and leech, Melampus son of Amythaon, who 
undertook to remove the malady on condition of being rewarded 
with the third part of the kingdom. Preetos indignantly refused 
these conditious: but the state of his daughters becoming agera- 
vated and intolerable, he was compelled again to apply to 
Melampus ; who, on the second request, raised his demands still 
higher, and required another third of the kingdom for his brother 
Bias. These terms being acceded to, he performed his part of 
the covenant. He appeased the wrath of Héré by prayer and 
sacrifice; or, according to another account, he approached the 
deranged women at the head of a troop of young men, — 
shouting and ecstatic dance, — the ceremonies appropriate to t 1e 
Bacchic worship of Dionysos, — and in this manner angen their 
cure. Melampus, a name celebrated in many different sere 
mythes, is the legendary founder and progenitor of a great an 
long-continued family of prophets. He and his brother Bias 
became kings of separate portions of the Argeian territory fhe 
is recognized as ruler there even in the Odyssey, and the pop et 
Theoklymenos, his grandson, is protected and carried to ; 
by Telemachus.! Herodotus also alludes to the cure Οἱ the 
women, and to the double kingdom of Melampus and Bias in the 
Argeian land: he recognizes Melampus as the first person who 
introduced to the knowledge of the Greeks the name and wor- 
ship of Dionysos, with its appropriate sacrifices and phallic pro- 
cessions. Here again he historicizes various features of the old 
legend in a manner not unworthy of notice.” 

But Danaé, the daughter of Akrisios, witn her son Perseus 


1 Odyss. xv. 240-256. 
® Herod. ix. 34; ii. 49: compare Pausan. ii. 18,4. Instead of the Proe- 


it i Argei rally whom he 
tides, or daughters of Proetos, it is the Argeian women gene 
represents Melampus as having cured, and the A. geians generully who send 
to Pylus to invoke his aid: the heroic personality wuich pervades the prim- 
itive story lias disappeared. Τί αι : ; 
Kallimachus notices the Prostid virgins as the parties suffering from 
madness, but he treats Artemis as the healing influence (Hymn. ad Dianam 


235). 


90 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


acquired still greater celebrity than her cousins the Proetides 
An oracle had apprized Akrisios that his daughter would give 
birth to a son by whose hand he would himself be slain. Te 
guard against this danger, he imprisoned Danaé in a chamber of 
brass under ground. But the god Zeus had become amorous of 
her, and found means to descend through the roof in the form of 
a shower of gold: the consequence of his visits was the birth of 
Perseus. When Akrisios discovered that his daughter had given 
existence to a son, he énclosed both the mother and the child in a 
coffer, which he cast into the sea.! The coffer was carried to the 
isle of Seriphos, where Diktys, brother of the king Polydektés, 
fished it up, and rescued both Danaé and Perseus. The exploits 
of Perseus, when he grew up, against the three Phorkides or 
daughters of Phorkys, and the three Gorgons, are among the 
most marvellous and imaginative in all Grecian legend: they 
bear a stamp almost Oriental. I shall not here repeat the details 
of those unparalleled hazards which the special favor of Athéné en- 
abled him to overcome, and which ended in his bringing back from 
Libya the terrific head of the Gorgon Medusa, endued with the 
property of turning every one who looked upon it into stone. In 
his return, he rescued Andromeda, daughter of Képheus, who 
had been exposed to be devoured by a sea-monster, and brought 
her back as his wife. Akrisios trembled to see him after this 
victorious expedition, and retired into Thessaly to avoid him ; but 
Perseus followed him thither, and having succeeded in calming 
his apprehensions, became competitor in a gymnic contest where 
his grandfather was among the spectators. By an incautious 
swing of his quoit, he unintentionally struck Akrisios, and caused 
his death : the predictions of the oracle were thus at last fulfilled. 
Stung with remorse at the catastrophe, and unwilling to return to 
Argos, which had been the principality of Akrisios, Perseus 
made an exchange with Megapenthés, son of Proetos king of 
Tiryns. Megapenthés became king of Argos, and Perseus of 
Tiryns: moreover, the latter founded, within ten miles of Argos, 
the far-famel city of Mykénz. The massive walls of this city, 


* The beautiful fragment of Simonidés (Fragm. vii. ed. Gaisford. Poet. 
Min.), describing Danaé and the child thus exposed. is familiar to every 
elassica] reader. 


PERSEIDS AT MYKEV£. 91 


like those of Tiryns, of which remains are yet to be seen, were 
built for him by the Lykian Cyclépes.! 

We here reach the commencement of the Perseid dynasty of 
Mykénz. It should be noticed, however, that there were among 
the ancient legends contradictory accounts of the foundation of 
this city. Both the Odyssey and the Great Eoiai enumerated, 
among the heroines, Mykéné, the Eponyma of the city; the 
former poem classifying her with Tyro and Alkméné, the latter 
describing her as the daughter of Inachus and wife of Arestor. 
And Akusilaus mentioned an Eponymus Mykéneus, the son of 
Spart6n and grandson of Phoréneus.? 

The prophetic family of Melampus maintained itself in one 
of the three parts of the divided Argeian kingdom for five gene- 
rations, down to Amphiaraos and his sons Alkmezon and Amphi 
lochos. The dynasty of his brother Bias, and that of Megapen- 
thés, son of Proetos, continued each for four generations: a list 
of barren names fills up the interval.3 The Perseids of Mykénz 
boasted a descent long and glorious, heroic as well as historical, 
continuing down to the last sovereigns of Sparta.4 The issue of 
Perseus was numerous: his son Alkzos was father of Amphi- 
try6n ; another of his sons, Elektry6n, was father of Alkméné ;5 a 
third, Sthenelos, father of Eurystheus. 

After the death of Perseus, Alkzeos and Amphitryén dwelt at 
Tiryns. The latter became engaged in a quarrel with Elektry6n 


* Paus. ii. 15, 4; ii. 16,5. Apollod. ii. 2. Pherekyd. Fragm. 26, Dind. 

* Odyss. ii. 120. Hesiod. Fragment. 154. Marktscheff. — Akusil. Fragm. 
16. Pausan. ii. 16,4. Hekatseus derived the name of the town from the 
μύκης of the sword of Perseus (Fragm. 360, Dind.). The Schol. ad Eurip. 
Orest. 1247, mentions Mykéneus as son of Spartén, but grandson of Phégeus 
the brother of Phoréneus. 

3 Pausan. ii. 18, 4. * Herodot. vi 53. 

* In the Hesiodic Shield of Héraklés, Alkméné is distinctly mentioned as 
daughter of Elektryén; the genealogical poet, Asios, called her the daugh- 
ter of Amphiaraos and Eriphyle (Asii Fragm. 4, ed. Markt. p. 412). The 
date of Asios cannot be precisely fixed; but he may be probably assigned to 
an epoch between the 30th and 40th Olympiad. 

Asios must have adopted a totally different legend respecting the birth 
of Héreklés and the circumstances preceding it, among which the deaths of 
her father and brothers are highly influential. Nor could he have accepted 
the received chronology of the sieges of Thébes and Troy. 


ΩΣ HISTORY OF GREECE. 


respecting cattle, and in a fit of passion killed him :} moreover 
the piratical Taphians from the west coast of Akarnania invaded 
the country, and slew the sons of Elektry6n, so that Alkméné 
alone was left of that family. She was engaged to wed Amphi- 
tryén ; but she bound him by oath not to consummate the mar- 
riage until he had avenged upon the Télebox the death of her 
brothers. Amphitryén, compelled to flee the country as the 
murderer of his uncle, took refuge in Thébes, whither Alkméné 
accompanied him: Sthenelos was left in possession of Tiryns. 
The Kadmeians of Tk2bes, together with the Locrians and Pho- 
cians, supplied Amphitry6n with troops, which he conducted 
against the Télebow and the Taphians:* yet he could not have 
subdued them without the aid of Komethé, daughter of the 
Taphian king Pterelaus, who conceived a passion for him, and 
cut off from her father’s head the golden lock to which Poseidon 
had attached the gift of immortality. Having conquered and 
expelled his enemies, Amphitryén returned to Thébes, impatient 
to consummate his marriage: but Zeus on the wedding-night 
assumed his form and visited Alkméné before him: he had deter- 
mined to produce from her a son superior to all his prior offspring, 
—“aspecimen of invincible force both to gods and men.”4 At the 
proper time, Alkméné was delivered of twin sons: Héraklés 
the offspring of Zeus, —the inferior and unhonored Iphiklés, 
offspring of Amphitryén.5 

When Alkméné was on the point of being delivered at Thébes, 
Zeus publicly boasted among the assembled gods, at the instiga 
tion of the mischief-making Até, that there was on that day about 


1 So runs the old legend in the Hesiodie Shield of Héraklés (12-82). 
Apollodérus (or Pherekydés, whom he follows) softens it down, and repre- 
sents the death of Elektryén as accidentally caused by Amphitryén 
(Apollod. i. 4, 6. Pherekydés, Fragm. 27, Dind.) 

3 Hesiod, Scut. Herc. 24. Theocrit. Idyll. xxiv. 4. Teleboas, the Epo 
nym of these marauding people, was son of Poseid6n (Anaximander ap. 
Athene. xi. p. 498). 

3 Apolled. ii. 4,7. Compare the fable of Nisus at Megara, infra, chap 
xii. p. 392. 

4 Hesiod, Scut. Here. 29. ὄώρα Beoiow ‘Avdpac: τ᾽ GAgvorocy ἀρῆς 
ἀλκτῆρα φυτεύσῃ. 

* Hesiod. Sc. H. 50-56. 


ZEUS.— ALKMENE. — HERAKLES. 38 


be born on earth, from his breed, a son who should rule over 
all his neighbors. Héré treated this as an empty boast, calling 
upon him to bind himself by an irremissible oath that the pre- 
diction should be realized. Zeus incautiously pledged his sol- 
emn word; upon which Héré darted swiftly down from Olympus 
to the Achaic Argos, where the wife of Sthenelos (son of Per- 
seus, and therefore grandson of Zeus) was already seven months 
gone with child. By the aid of the Eileithyix, the special god- 
desses of parturition, she caused Eurystheus, the son of Sthene- 
los, to be born before his time on that very day, while she 
retarded the delivery of Alkméné. Then returning to Olympus, 
she announced the fact to Zeus: “The good man Eurystheus, 
son of the Perseid Sthenelos, is this day born of thy loins: the 
sceptre of the Argeians worthily belongs to him.” Zeus was 
thunderstruck at the consummation which he had improvidently 
bound himself to accomplish. He seized Até his evil counsellor 
by the hair, and hurled her forever away from Olympus: but he 
had no power to avert the ascendency of Eurystheus and the 
servitude of Héraklés. “ Many a pang did he suffer, when he 
saw his favorite son going through his degrading toil in the tasks 
imposed upon him by Eurystheus.”! 

The legend, of unquestionable antiquity, here transcribed from 
the Iliad, is one of the most pregnant and characteristic in the 
Grecian mythology. It explains, according to the religious ideas 
familiar to the old epic poets, both the distinguishing attributes 
and the endless toil and endurances of Héraklés,—the most 
renowned and most ubiquitous of all the semi-divine personages 
worshipped by the Hellénes, —a being of irresistible force, and 
especially beloved by Zeus, yet condemned constantly to labor 
for others and to obey the commands of a worthless and cowardly 
persecutor. His recompense is reserved to the close of his career 
when his afflicting trials are brought to a close: he is then 
admitted to the godhead and receives in marriage Hébé.2 The 


Homer, Iliad, xix. 90-133 ; also viii. 361. — 


Τὴν αἰεὶ στενάχεσχ᾽, ὅϑ᾽ ἑὸν φίλον υἱὸν ὁρῷτο 
Ἕργον ἀεικὲς ἔχοντα, in’ Εὐρυσϑῆος ἀέϑλων. 
᾿ Hesiod, Theogon. 951, τελέσας orovéevrac ἀέϑλους. Hom. Odyss. xe 
620; Hesiod, Eos, Fragm. 24, Diintzer, p. 36, πονηρότατον καὶ ἄριστον 


94 HISTORY OF GREECE 


twelve labc:=, as they are called, too notorious to be here detailed, 
form a very small fraction of the exploits of this mighty being, 
which filled the Hérakleian epics of the ancient poets. He is 
fyund not only in most parts of Hellas, but throughout all the 
-ther regions then known to the Greeks, from Gadés to the river 
Thermodon in the Euxine and to Scythia, overcoming all diffi- 
culties and vanquishing all opponents. Distinguished families 
are everywhere to be traced who bear his patronymic, and glory in 
the belief that they are his descendants. Among Achzans, Kad- 
meians, and Dorians, Héraklés is venerated: the latter especially 
reat him as their principal hero, — the Patron Hero-God of the 
race: the Hérakleids form among all Dorians a privileged gens, 
in which at Sparta the special lineage of the two kings was 
included. 

His character lends itself to mythes countless in number as 
well as disparate in their character. The irresistible force 
remains constant, but it is sometimes applied with reckless vio- 
lence against friends as well as enemies, sometimes devoted to 
the relief of the oppressed. The comic writers often brought 
him out as a coarse and stupid glutton, while the Athénian phi- 
losopher Prodikos, without at all distorting the type, extracted 
from it the simple, impressive, and imperishable apologue still 
known as the Choice of Hercules. 

After the death and apotheosis of Héraklés, his son Hyllos 
and his other children were expelled and persecuted by Eurys- 
theus: the fear of his vengeance deterred both the Trachinian 
king Kéyx and the Thébans from harboring them, and the 
Athénians alone were generous enough to brave the risk of offer- 
ing them shelter. Eurystheus invaded Attica, but perished in 
the attempt by the hand of Hyllos, or by that of Iolaos, the old 
companion and nephew of Héraklés.!. The chivalrous courage 
which the Athénians had on this occasion displayed in behalf of 
oppressed innocence, was a favorite theme for subsequent eulogy 
by Attic poets and orators. 

All the sons of Eurystheus lost their lives in the battle along 
with him, so that the Perseid family was now represented only 
by the Hérakleids, who collected an army and endeavored to 


- 


' Apollod. ii. 8,1 Hecate. ap. Longin. ¢. 27; Dioddr. iv. δ7 


EXILE OF THE HERAKLEIDS. 96 


recover the possessions from which they had been expelled. The 
united forces of Iénians, Achzans, and Arcadians, then inhabit- 
ing Peloponnésus. met the invaders at the isthmus, when Hyllos, 
the eldest of the suas of Héraklés, proposed that the contest 
should be determined by a single combat between himself and 
any champion of the opposing army. It was agreed, that if 
Hyllos were victorious, the Hérakleids should be restored to 
their possessions —if he were vanquished, that they should 
forego all claim for the space of a hundred years, or fifty years, 
or three generations,— for in the specification of the time, 
accounts differ. Echemos, the hero of Tegea in Arcadia, ac- 
cepted the challenge, and Hyllos was slain in the encounter ; in 
consequence of which the Hérakleids retired, and resided along 
with the Dorians under the protection of Xgimios, son of Dérus.! 
As soon as the stipulated period of truce had expired, they 
renewed their attempt upon Peloponnésus conjointly with the 
Dérians, and with complete success: the great Dérian establish- 
ments of Argos, Sparta, and Messénia were the result. The 
details of this victorious invasion will be hereafter recounted. 

Sikyén, Phlios, Epidauros, and Troezen? all boasted of 
respected eponyms and a genealogy of dignified length, not 
exempt from the usual discrepancies —but all just as much 
entitled to a place on the tablet of history as the more renowned 
Z£olids or Hérakleids. I omit them here because I wish to 
impress upon the reader’s mind the salient features and character 
of the legendary world,—not to load his memory with a full 
list of legendary names. 


1 Herodot. ix. 26; Diodor. iv. 58. 

3 Pausan. ii. 5,5; 12,5; 26,3. His statements indicate how much the 
predominance of a powerful neighbor like Argos tended ὦ alter the geneal 
ogies cf these inferior towns. 


HISTORY OF GREECE. 


CHAPTER V. 
DEUKALION, HELLEN, AND SONS OF HELLEN. 


In the Hesiodic Theogony, 88 well as in the “ Works and 
Days,” the legend of Prométheus and Epimétheus presents an 
import religious, ethical, and social, and in this sense it is carried 
forward by ZEschylus ; but to neither of the characters is any 
genealogical function assigned. The Hesiodic Catalogue of 
Women brought both of them into the stream of Grecian legend- 
ary lineage, representing Deukalién as the son of Prométheus 
and Pandora, and seemingly his wife Pyrrha as daughter of 
Epimétheus.' 

Deukalion is important in Grecian mythical narrative under 
two points of view. First, he is the person specially saved at 
the time of the general deluge: next, he is the father of Hellén, 
the great eponym of the Hellenic race; at least this was the 
more current story, though there were other statements which 
made Hellén the son of Zeus. 

The name of Deukalién is originally connected with the 
Lokrian towns of Kynos and Opus, and with the race of the 
Leleges, but he appears finally as settled in Thessaly, and ruling 
in the portion of that country called Phthidtis.2 According to 
what seems to have been the old legendary account, it is the 


1 Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. iii. 1085. Other accounts of the genealogy 
of Deukalién are given in the Schol. ad Homer. Odyss. x. 2, on the author 


ity both of Hesiod and Akusilaus. 
2 Hesiodic Catalog. Fragm. Xi. ; Gaisf. lxx. Dantzer — 


Ἤτοι yap Aoxpd¢ Λελέγων ἡγήσατο λαῶν, 
Τούς ῥά ποτε Κρονίδης Ζεὺς, ἄφϑιτα μήδεα elder, 
Δεκτοὺς ἐκ γαίης λάας πόρε Δευκαλίωνι. 


The reputed lineage of Deukalién continued in Phthia down to the time 
of Diksarchus, if we may judge from the old Phthiot Pherekratés, whom 
he introduced in one of his dialogues as ἃ disputant, and whom he expressly 
announced as a descendant of Deukalién (Cicero, Tuscul. Disp. i. 10). 


2 CM Mee rn 
ZANT 


Hye 
ee 
We ~ i 


ALEXANDER THE GREAT BEFORE TYRE 


Greece, vol. one, 


DEUKALION, HELLEN AND SONS OF HELLEN. 9) 


deluge which transferred him from the one to the other; but ac 
cording to another statement, framed in more historicizing times, 
he conducted a body of Kurétes and Leleges into Thessaly, and 
expelled the prior Pelasgian occupants.! 

The enormous iniquity with which earth was contaminated — 
as Apollodorus says, by the then existing brazen race, or as 
others say, by the fifty monstrous sons of Lykaén — provoked 
Zeus to send a general deluge. An unremitting and terrible 
rain laid the whole of Greece under water, except the highest 
mountain-tops, whereon a few stragglers found refuge. Deuka- 
lion was saved in a chest or ark, which he had been forewarned 
by his father Prometheus to construct. After floating for nine 
days on the water, he at length landed on the summit of Mount 
Parnassus. Zeus having sent Hermés to him, promising to grant 
whatever he asked, he prayed that men and companions might 
be sent to him in his solitude: accordingly Zeus directed both 
him and Pyrrha to cast stones over their heads: those cast by 
Pyrrha became women, those by Deukalién men. And thus the 
“stony race of men” (if we may be allowed to translate an ety- 
mology which the Greek language presents exactly, and which 
has not been disdained by Hesiod, by Pindar, by Epicharmus, 
and by Virgil) came to tenant the soil of Greece. Deukalién 


| The latter account is given by Dionys. Halic. 1. 17; the former seems to 
have been given by Hellanikas, who affirmed that the ark after the deluge 
stopped upon Mount Othrys, and not upon Mount Parnassus (Schol. Pind. 
ut. sup.) the former being suitable for a settlement in Thessaly. 

Pyrrha is the eponymous heroine of Pyrrhzea or Pyrrha, the ancient name 
of a portion of Thessaly (Rhianus, Fragm. 18. p. 71, ed, Dantzer). 

Hellanikus had written a work, now lost, entitled Δευκαλιώνεια : all the 
fragments of it which are cited have reference to places in Thessaly, Lokris 
and Pkokis. See Preller, ad Hellanitum, p. 12 (Dérpt. 1840). Probably 
Hellanikus is the main source of the important position oceupred by Deuka- 
lion in Grecian legend. Thrasybulus and Akestodorus represented Den- 
kalién as having founded the oracle of Dédo6na, immediately after the deluge 
(Etm. Mag. v. Awdwraioc). 

2 Apollodérus connects this deluge with the wickedness of the brazen race 
in Hesiod, according to the practice general with the logographers of string- 
ing together a sequence out of legends totally unconnected with each othor 
(i. 7, 2). 

3 Hesiod, Fragm. 135. ed. Markts. ap. Strabo. vii. p. 322, where the word 
λάας, proposed by Heyne as the reading of the unintelligible text, appears te 

VOL. 1 5 Toc, 


HISTORY OF GREECR. 


on landing from the ark sacrificed a grateful offering to Zeus 
Phyxios, or the God of escape ; he also erected altars in Thessaly 
to the twelve great gods of Olympus.! 

The reality of this deluge was firmly believed throughout the 
historical ages of Greece: the chronologers, reckoning up by gen- 
ealogies, assigned the exact date of it, and placed it at the same 
time as the conflagration of the world by the rashness of Phae- 
ton, during the reign of Krotopas king of Argus, the seventh 
from Inachus.2 The meteorological work of Aristotle admits and 
reasons upon this deluge as an unquestionable fact, though he 
alters the locality by placing it west of Mount Pindus, near Do 
dona and the river Achelous.s He at the same time treats it as 


a physical phenomenon, the result of periodical cycles in the 


atmosphere, thus departing from the religious character of the 
ald legend, which described it as a judgment inflicted by Zeus 
upon a wicked race. Statements founded upon this event were 
in circulation throughout Greece even to a very late date. The 
Megarians affirmed that Megaros, their hero, son of Zeus by a 
local nymph, had found safety from the waters on the lofty sum- 


me preferable to any of the other suggestions. Pindar, Olymp. ix. 47. 
arsp δ᾽ Ebvac ὁμόδαμον Κτησάσϑαν λίϑινον γόνον. Λαοὶ δ᾽ ὠνόμασϑεν, 
Virgil, Georgic i. 63. “Unde homines nati, durum genus.” Epicharmus ap. 
Schol. Pindar. Olymp. ix. 56. Hygin. f. 153. Philochorus retained the ety 
mology, though he gave a totally different fable, nowise connected with 
Deukalién, to account for it; a carious proof how pleasing it was to the 
fancy of the Greek (see Schol. ad Pind. |. c. 68). 

1 Apollod. i. 7,2. Hetlanic. Fragm. 15. Didot. Hellanikus affirmed that 
the ark rested on Mount Othrys, not on Mount Parnassus (Fragm. 16. Didot). 
Servius (ad Virgil. Eclog. vi. 41) placed it on Mount Athés — Hyginus (f. 
153) on Mount tna. 

* Tatian adv. Graec. c. 60, adopted both by Clemens and Eusebius. The 
Parian marble placed this deluge in the reign of Kranaos at Athens, 752 
years before the first recorded Olympiad, and 1528 years before the Christian 
sera; Apollodérus also places it in the reign of Kranaos, and in that of 
Nyctimus in Arcadia (iii. 8, 2; 14, 5). 

The deluge and the etpyrosis or conflagration are connected together also 
in Servius ad Virgil. Bucol. vi. 41: he refines both of them into a “muta 
tionem temporam.” 

3 Aristot. Meteorol. i. 14. Justin rationalizes the fable by telling us that 
Deukalién was king of ‘Thessaly, who provided shelter and protection te 


the fugitives from the deluge (ii. 6, 17) 


π΄» 


HELLEN AND HIS SONS. 98 


mit of their mountain Geraneia, which had not beea completely 
submerged. And in the magnificent temple of the Olympian 
Zeus at Athens, a cavity in the earth was shown, through which 
it was affirmed that the waters of the deluge had retired. Even in 
the time of Pausanias, the priests poured into this cavity holy 
offerings of meal and honey.!' In this, as in other parts of Greece, 
the idea of the Deukalionian deluge was blended with the reli- 
gious impressions of the people and commemorated by their sa- 
cred ceremonies. 

The offspring of Deukalién and Pyrrha were two sons, Hellén 
and Amphiktyoén, and a daughter, Protogeneia, whose son by 
Zeus was Aethlius: it was however maintained by many, that 
Hellén was the son of Zeus and not of Deukalién. Hellén had 
by a nymph three sons, Dérus, Xuthus, and A®olus. He gave 
to those who had been before called Greeks,? the name of Hel- 
lénes, and partitioned his terrritory among his three children. 
/Kolus reigned in Thessaly; Xuthus received Peloponnésus, 
and had by Creiisa as his sons, Achzeus and I6n; while Dérus 
occupied the country lying opposite to the Peloponnésus, on the 
northern side of the Corinthian Gulf. These three gave to the 
inhabitants of their respective countries the names of A®olians, 
Achezans and Ionians, and Dérians.3 

Such is the genealogy as we find it in Apollodérus. In so far 
as the names and filiation are concerned, many points in it are 
given differently, or implicitly contradicted, by Euripidés and 
other writers. ‘Though as literal and personal history it deserves 


' Pausan. i. 18,7; 40,1. According to the Parian marble (s. 5), Deuka- 
lién had come to Athens after the deluge, and had there himself founded the 
temple of the Olympian Zeus. The etymology and allegorization of the 
names of DeukaliOn and Pyrrha, given by Volcker in his ingenious Mytho- 
logie des Iapetischen Geschlechts (Giessen, 1824), p. 343, appears to me not 
at all convincing. 

? Such is the statement of Apollodorus (i. 7,3); but I cannot bring my- 
self to believe that the name (Τραϊκοὶ) Greeks is at all old in the legend, or 
that the passage of Hesiod, in which Greecus and Latins purport to be 
mentioned, is genuine. 

See Hesiod, Theogon. 1013. and Catalog. Fragm. xxix. ed. Gottling 
with the note of Gottling ; also Wachsmuth, Hellen. Alte:th. i. 1. p. 311, and 
Bernhardy, Griech, Literat. + ~L i, p, 167 

* Apollod. i. 7, 4. 


100 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


no notice, its import is both intelligible and comprehensive. It 
expounds and symbolizes the first fraternal aggregation of Hel- 
lénic men, together with their territorial distribution and the in- 
stitutions which they collectively venerated. 

There were two great holding-points in common for every sec- 
tion of Greeks. One was the Amphiktyonic assembly, which 
met half-yearly, alternately at Delphi and at Thermopytz ; ori- 
ginally and chiefly for common religious purposes, but indirectly 
and occasionally embracing political and social objects along with 
them. ‘The other was, the public festivals or games, of which 
the Olympic came first in importance; next, the Pythian, Ne- 
mean and Isthmian, — institutions which combined religious so- 
lemnities with recreative effusion and hearty sympathies, in a man- 
ner so imposing and so unparalleled. Amphikty6n represents the 
first of these institutions, and Aéthlius the second. As the Am- 
phiktyonic assembly was always especially connected with Ther- 
mopylew and Thessally, Amphiktyon is made the son of the Thes- 
salian Deukalién; but as the Olympic festival was nowise locally 
sonnected with Deukalion, Aéthlius is represented as having Zeus 
jor his father, and as touching Deukalién only through the mater- 
nal line. It will be seen presently, that the only matter predi- 
sated respecting Aéthlius is, that he settled in the territory of 
Elis, and begat Endymién: this brings him into local contact with 
‘he Olympic games, and his function is then ended. 

Having thus got Hellas as an aggregate with its main cement- 
ing forces, we march on to its subdivision into parts, through 
olus, Dérus and Xuthus, the three sons of Hellen;! a distribu- 
‘ion which is far from being exhaustive: nevertheless, the gene- 
alogists whom Apollodérus follows recognize no more than three 
sons. 

The genealogy is essentially post-Homeric ; for Homer knows 
Hellas and the Hellénes only in connection with a portion of 


' How literally and implicitly even the ablest Greeks believed in epony- 
mous persons, such as Hellén and Id6n, as the real progenitors of the races 
called after him, may be seen by this, that Aristotle gives this common de 
scemt as the detinition of γένος (Metaphysic. iv. p. 118, Brandis) :— 

Γένος λέγεται, τὸ wiv ...... τὸ δὲ, ἀφ᾽ οὗ ἂν Gow πρώτου κινῆσαντος εἰς 
τὸ εἶναι. Οὕτω γὰρ λέγονται οἱ μὲν, Ἕλληνες τὸ γένος, οἱ δὲ, Ἴωνες" τῷ, οἱ 
νὸν ἀπὸ Ἑλληνος, οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ Ἴωνος, εἶναι πρώτου γεννήσαντος. 


ZOLUS, DORUS, AND XUTHUS. 10) 


Achaia Phthiotis. But as it is recognized in the Hesiodic Cata 
sogue!—ctmposed probably within the first century after the 
commencement of recorded Olympiads, or before 676 B. c.— the 
peculiarities of it, dating from so early a period, deserve much 
attention. We may remark, first, that it seems to exhibit to us 
Dorus and A£olus as the only pure and genuine offspring of Hel- 
len. For their brother Xuthus is not enrolled as an eponymus; he 
neither founds nor names any people; it is only his sons Achewus 
and lon, after his blood has been mingled with that of the 
Erechtheid Kreusa, who become eponyms and founders, each of 
his own separate people. Next, as to the territorial distribution, 
Xuthus receives Peloponnésus from his father, and unites him- 
self with Attica (which the author of this genealogy seems to 
have conceived as originally unconnected with Hellén) by his 
marriage with the daughter of the indigenous hero, Erechtheus. 
The issue of this marriage, Acheus and I6n, present to us the 
population of Peloponnésus and Attica conjointly as related 
among themselves by the tie of brotherhood, but as one degree 
more distant both from Dorians and AXolians. Aolus reigns over 
the regions about Thessaly, and called the people in those parts 
olians ; while Dorus occupies “the country over against Pelo- 
ponnésus on the opposite side of the Corinthian Gulf,” and calls 
the inhabitants after himself, Dérians.2_ It is at once evident that 


? Hesiod, Fragm. 8. p. 278, ed. Marktsch.— 


“Ἕλληνος δ᾽ ἐγένοντο ϑεμιστόπολοι βασιλῆες 
Δῶρύς te, Ξοῦϑός τε, καὶ Αἴολος ἱππιοχώρμης 
Αἰολίδαι δ' ἐγένοντο ϑεμεστόπολοι βασιλῆες 
Κρηϑεὺς ἠδ' ᾿Αϑάμας καὶ Σίσυφος αἰολομήτης 
Σαλμωνεύς τ᾽ ἄδικος καὶ ὑπέρϑυμος ἹΠεριῆρης. 

* Apollod. i. 7,3. “Ἕλληνος δὲ καὶ Νύμφης ᾿Ορσῆϊδος (1), Adpog, Ξοῦϑος, 
Αἴολος. Αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν ἀφ᾽ αὑτοῦ τοὺς καλουμένους Τραϊκοὺς προσηγόρευσεν 
Ἕλληνας, τοῖς δὲ παῖσιν ἐμέρισε τὴν χώραν. Καὶ Ξοῦϑος μὲν λαβὼν τὴν 
Πελοπόννησον, ἐκ Κρεούσης τῆς ᾿Ερεχϑέως ᾿Αχαιὸν ἐγέννησε καὶ Ἴωνα, ἀφ᾽ 
ὦν ᾿Αχαιοὶ καὶ Ἴωνες καλοῦνται. Δῶρος δὲ, τὴν πέραν χώραν Πελο- 
ποννήσου λαβὼν, τοὺς κατοίκους ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ Δωριεῖς ἐκά- 
λεσεν. Αἴολος δὲ, βασιλεύων τῶν περὶ Θετταλίαν τόπων, τοὺς ἐνοικοῦντας 
Αἰολεῖς προσηγόρευσε. 

Strabo (viii. p. 383) and Con5n (Narr. 27), who evidently copy from the 
same source, represent Dorus as going to settle in the territory properly 
kuown as Doris. 


102 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


this designation is in no way applicable to the contined district 
between Parnassus and (Eta, which alone is known by the name 
of Doris, and its inhabitants by that of Dérians, in the historical 
agus. In the view of the author of this genealogy, the Dérians 
are the original occupants of the large range of territory north 
of the Corinthian Gulf, comprising A®tolia, Phdékis, and the 
territory of the Ozolian Lokrians. And this farther harmonizes 
with the other legend noticed by Apollodérus, when he states 
that AZtolus, son of Endymién, having been forced to expatriate 
from Peloponnésus, crossed into the Kurétid territory,' and was 
there hospitably received by Dérus, Laodokus and Polypetés, 
sons of Apollo and Phthia. He slew his hosts, acquired the ter- 
ritory, and gave to it the name of A®tolia: his son Pleurén mar- 
ried Xanthippé, daughter of Dérus; while his other son, Kalydon, 
marries AXolia, daughter of Amythaén. Here again we have the 
name of Dorus, or the Dorians, connected with the tract subse- 
quently termed A®télia, That Dérus should in one place be 
called the son of Apollo and Phthia, and in another place the son 
of Hellén by a nymph, will surprise no one accustomed to the 
fluctuating personal nomenclature of these old legends: moreover 
the name of Phthia is easy to reconcile with that of Hellén, as 
both are identified with the same portion of Thessaly, even from 
the days of the Iliad. 

This story, that the Dérians were at one time the occupants, or 
the chief occupants, of the range of territory between the river 
Acheléus and the northern shore of the Corinthian Gulf, is at 
least more suitable to the facts attested by historical evidence 
than the legends given in Herodotus, who represents the Dorians 
as originally in the Phthidtid; then as passing under Dorus, the 
son of Hellén, into the Histizdétid, under the mountains of Ossa and 
Olympus; next, as driven by the Kadmeians into the regions of 
Pindus; from thence passing into the Dryopid territory, on Mount 
(Eta; lastly, from thence into Peloponnésus.2 The received 


' Apollod. i. 7,6. AitwAd¢........+.gvyav εἰς τὴν Kovonrida χώραν, 
κτείνας τοὺς ὑποδεξαμένους Φϑίας καὶ ᾿Απόλλωνος υἱοὺς, Δῶρον καὶ Λαόδοκον 
καὶ Πολυποίτην, ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ τὴν χώραν Αἰτωλέαν ἐκάλεσε. Again, i. 8, 1, 
Πλευρὼν (son of Atélus) γήμας Ξανϑίππην τὴν Δώρου, παῖδα ἐγέννησει 
Aynvepa. 

5 Herod. i. 56 


DORIANS NORTH OF THE CORINTHIAN GULF. 108 


story was, that the great Dorian establishments in Peloponnésus 
were formed by invasion from the north, and that the invaders 
erossed the gulf from Naupaktus, — a statement which, however 
disputable with respect to Argos, seems highly probable in regard 
both to Sparta and Messénia. That the name of Dérians com- 
prehended far more than the inhabitants of the insignificant 
tetrapolis of Doris Proper, must be assumed, if we believe that 
they conquered Sparta and Messénia: both the magnitude of the 
conquest itself, and the passage of a large portion of them from 
Naupaktus, harmonize with the legend as given by Apollodérus, 
in which the Dorians are represented as the principal inhabitants 
of the northern shore of the gulf. The statements which we find 
in Herodotus, respecting the early migrations of the Dorians, 
have been considered as possessing greater historical value than 
those of the fabulist Apollodérus. But both are equally matter 
of legend, while the brief indications of the latter seem to be most 
m harmony with the facts which we afterwards find attested by 
history. 

It has already been mentioned that the genealogy which makes 
/Eolus, Xuthus and Dérus sons of Hellén, is as old as the 
Hesiodic Catalogue; probably also that which makes Hellén son 
of Deukalién. Aéthlius also is an Hesiodic personage: whether 
Amphikty6n be so or not, we have no proof.! They could not 
have been introduced into the legendary genealogy until after the 
Jlympic games and the Amphiktyonic council had acquired an 


? Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iv. 57. Tov δὲ ᾿Ενδυμίωνα ᾿Ησίοδος μὲν ᾿Αεϑλίου 
tov Διὸς καὶ Καλύκης παῖδα λέγει Καὶ Πείσανδρος δὲ τὰ αὐτῷ 
φησι, καὶ ᾿Ακουσίλαος, καὶ Φερεκύδης, καὶ Νίκανδρος ἐν δευτέρῳ Αἰτωλικῶν, 
καὶ Θεόπομπος ἐν ᾿Εποποιΐαις. 

Respecting the parentage of Hellén, the references to Hesiod are very con- 
fused. Compare Schol. Homer. Odyss. x. 2, and Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iii 
1086. See also Hellanic. Frag. 10. Didot. 

Apollodorus, and Pherekydés before him (Frag. 51. Didot), called Proto- 
geneia daughter of Deukalién; Pindar (Olymp. ix. 64) designated her as 
daughter of Opus. One of the stratagems mentioned by the Scholiast to get 
rid of this genealogical discrepancy was, the supposition ‘hat Deukalién had 
a names (διώνυμος) ; that he was also named Opus. (Schol. Pind. Olymp 

. 85). 

That the Deukalide or posterity of Deukalién reigned in Thessaly, waa 
menticned by Ἢ) by Hesiod and Hekateus, ap. Schol, Apollon. Rhcd. iv. 265 


104 HISTORY OF GREECE 


established ascendancy and universal reverence throughont 
Greece. 

Respecting Dorus the son of Hellén, we find neither legends 
nor legendary genealogy ; respecting Xuthus, very little beyond 
the tale of Kreusa and lén, which has its place more naturally 
among the Attic fables. Achzus however, who is here represent- 
ed as the son of Xuthus, appears in other stories with very 
different parentage and accompaniments. According to the state- 
ment which we find in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Acheeus, 
Phthius and Pelasgus are sons of Poseid6n and Larissa. They 
migrate from Peloponnésus into Thessaly, and distribute the 
Thessalian territory between them, giving their names to its 
principal divisions: their descendants in the sixth generation 
were driven out of that country by the invasion of Deukalién at 
the head of the Kurétes and the Leleges.!- This was the story 
of those who wanted to provide an eponymus for the Achwans in 
the southern districts of ‘Thessaly: Pausanias accomplishes the 
same object by different means, representing Achzus, the son of 
Xuthus as having gone back to Thessaly and occupied the portion 
of it to which his father was entitled. Then, by way of explain- 
ing how it was that there were Achzans at Sparta and at Argos, 
he tells us that Archander and Architelés, the sons of Archwus, 
came back from Thessaly to Peloponnésus, and married two 
daughters of Danaus: they acquired great influence at Argos and 
Sparta, and gave to the people the name of Achwans after their 
father Achwus.2 

uripidés also deviates very materially from the Hesiodic 


᾿ Dionys. Hi. A. R. i. iT. 
2 P 


ausan. vil. 1, 1-3. Herodotus also mentions (ii. 97) Archander. son of 
Phthius and grandson of Achwus, who married the daughter of Danaus. 
Larcher (Essai sur la Chronologie d’Herodote, ch. x. p. 321) tells us that 
this cannot be the Danaus who came from Egypt, the father of the fifty 
daughters, who must have lived two centuries earlier, as may be proved by 
chronological arguments: this must be another Danaus, according to him 
Strabo seems to give a ditferent story respecting the Achwans in Pelepon- 
nésus: he says that they were the original population of the peninsula, that 
they came in from Phthia with Pelops, and inhabited Laconia, which was 
from them called Argos Achaicum, and that on the conquest of the Dorians, 
they moved into Achaia properly so called, expelling the lénians therefrom 
(Strabo, viii p 365). This narrative is, I presume, borrowed from Ephoras 


THE ZOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ZXOLUS.§ 106 


genealogy in respect to these eponymous persons. In the drama 
called Τὸ, he describes I6n as son of Kretisa by Apollo, but 
adopted by Xuthus: according to him, the real sons of Xuthus 
and Kreusa are Dorus and Achzus,! — eponyms of the Dérians 
and Acheans in the interior of Peloponnésus. And it is a still 
more capital point of difference, that he omits Hellén altogether 
— making Xuthus an Achwan by race, the son of A®olus, who 
ws the son otf Zeus.2. This is the more remarkable, as in the 
fragments of two other dramas of Euripidés, the Melanippé and 
the Aolus, we find Hellén mentioned both as father of A®olus 
and son of Zeus.’ To the general public even of the most 
instructed city of Greece, fluctuations and discrepancies in these 
mythical genealogies seem to have been neither surprising nor 
offensive. 


CHAPTER VI. 
THE ZOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ZOLUS. 


Ir two of the sons of Hellén, Dorus and Xuthus, present to us 
families comparatively unnoticed in mythical narrative, the third 
son, Zolus, richly makes up for the deficiency. From him we 
pass to his seven sons and five daughters, amidst a great abun- 
dance of heroic and poetical incident. 

In dealing however with these extensive mythical families, it 
is necessary to observe, that the legendary world of Greece, in 
the manner in which it is presented to us, appears invested with 
a degree of symmetry and coherence which did not originally 
belong to it. For the old ballads and stories which were sung or 


' Eurip. Ion, 1590. ? Eurip. Ion, 64. 

* See the Fragments of these two plays in Matthiae’s edition ; compare 
Welcker, Griechisch. Tragéd. vy. ii. p. 842. If we may judge from the Frag- 
ments of the Latin Melanippé of Ennius (see Fragm. 2, "ἃ, Bothe), Hellés 
vas introduced as ons of the characters of the piece. 


δὲ 


106 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


recounted at the multiplied festivals of Greece, each on its own 
special theme, have been lost: the religious narrati, és, which the 
Exegétés of every temple had present to his memcry, explana- 
tory of the peculiar religious ceremonies and local customs in his 
own town or Déme, have passed away: all these primitive ele- 
ments, originally distinct and unconnected, are removed out of 
our sight, and we possess only an aggregate result, formed by 
many confluent streams of fable, and connected together by the 
agency of subsequent poets and logographers. Even the earliest 
agents in this work of connecting and systematizing — the Hesio- 
dic poets — have been hardly at all preserved. Our information 
respecting Grecian mythology is derived chiefly from the prose 
logographers who followed them, and in whose works, since a 
continuous narrative was above all things essential to them, the 
fabulous personages are woven into still more comprehensive 
pedigrees, and the original isolation of the legends still better 
disguised. Hekatwus, Pherekydés, Hellanikus, and Akusilaus 
lived at a time when the idea of Hellas as one great whole, com- 
posed of fraternal sections, was deeply rooted in the mind of 
every Greek; and when the fancy of one or a few great families, 
branching out widely from one common stem, was more popular 
and acceptable than that of a distinct indigenous origin in each of 
the separate districts. These logographers, indeed, have them- 
selves been lost; but Apollodérus and the various scholiasts, our 
great immediate sources of information respecting Grecian mytho- 
logy, chiefly borrowed from them : so that the legendary world of 
Greece is in fact known to us through them, combined with the 
dramatic and Alexandrine poets, their Latin imitators, and the 
still later class of scholiasts — except indeed such occasional 
glimpses as we obtain from the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the 
remaining Hesiodie fragments, which exhibit but too frequently a 
hopeless diversity when confronted with the narratives of the 
logographers. 

Though olus (as has been already stated) is himself called 
the son of Hellén along with Dorus and Xuthus, yet the legends 
concerning the Molids, far from being dependent upon this 
genealogy, are not all even coherent with it: moreover the name 
of 4dEolus in the legend is older than that ot Hellen, inasmuch as 


EOLIVS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF AOLUS. 107 


it occurs both in the Iliad and Odyssey.! Odysseus sees in the 
under-world the beautiful Tyré, daughter of Salmoneus, and wife 
of Krétheus, son of AXolus. 

Z£olus is represented as having reigned in Thessaly: his seven 
sons were Krétheus, Sisyphus, Athamas, Salmoneus, Deion, 
Magnés and Perieres: his five daughters, Canace, Alcyone, 
Peisidiké, Calycé and Perimédé. The fables of this race seem 
to be distinguished by a constant introduction of the god Posei- 
don, as well as by an unusual prevalence of haughty and pre- 
sumptuous attributes among the A£olid heroes, leading them to 
affront the gods by pretences of equality, and sometimes even by 
defiance. The worship of Poseidon must probably have been 
diffused and preeminent among a people with whom these legends 


originated. 


SECTION L.—SONS OF ΟΠ. 


Salméneus is not described in the Odyssey as son of Xolus, 
but he is so denominated both in the Hesiodic Catalogue, and by 
the subsequent logographers. His daughter Tyro became ena- 
moured of the river Enipeus, the most beautiful of all streams 
that traverse the earth: she frequented the banks assiduously. 
and there the god Poseidén found means to indulge his passion 
for her, assuming the character of the river god himself. ‘The 
fruit of this alliance were the twin brothers, Pelias and Néleus: 
Tyré afterwards was given in marriage to her uncle Krétheus, 
another son of Aeolus, by whom she had Es6n, Pherés and Amy- 
thadn —all names of celebrity in the heroic legends.? The 
adventures of ‘l'yro formed the subject of an affecting drama of 
Sophokles, now lost. Her father had married a second wife, 
Sidér6, whose cruel counsels induced him to punish and 
his daughter on account of her intercourse with Poseidon 


named 


torture 
She was shorn of her magnificent hair, beaten and ill-used in 


' liad, vi. 154. Σίσυφος Αἰολίδης, ete. 

Again Odyss. xi. 234. — 
Ἔνϑ᾽ ἤτοι πρώτην Τυρὼ ἴδον εὐπατέρειαν, 
Ἢ φάτο Σαλμωνῆος ἀμύμονος ἔκγονος εἶναε, 
Φὴ δὲ Κρηϑῆος γυνὴ ἔμμεναι Αἰολίδαο 

® Homer, Odyss. xi. 234-257; xv. 226. 


108 HISTURY OF GREECE. 


various ways, and confined in a loathsome dungecn. Unable to 
take care of her two children, she had been compelled to expose 
them immediately on their birth in a little boat on the river 


Enipeus; they were preserved by the kindness ot a herdsman 


and when 
revenged her wrongs by putting to de 
This pathetic tale respecting the long imprisonment of ‘Tyro is 
aubstituted by Sophoklés in place of the Homeric legend, which 
to have become the wife of Krétheus and mother 


grown up to manhood, rescued their mother, and 
ath the iron-hearted Sidéro.! 


represented her 
of a numerous offspring.® 
Her father, the anjust Salmoneus, exhibited in his conduct the 


most insolent impiety towards the gods. He assumed the name 


and title even of Zeus, and caused to be offered to himself the 
sacrifices destined for that god: he also imitated the thunder and 
lightning, by driving about with brazen ealdrons attached to his 
chariot and casting lighted torches towards heaven. Such wicked- 
ness finally drew upon him the wrath of Zeus, who smote him 
with a thunderbolt, and effaced from the earth the city which he 
had founded, with all its inhabitants.* 

Pelias and Néleus, “both stout vassals of the great Zeus,” 


became engaged in dissension respecting the kingdom of Iolkos in 


! PDioddérus, iv. 68. Sophoklés, Fragm. 1. Tupw. Lapa Σιδηρὼ Kai φέ- 


povea τοὔνομα. The genius of Sophoklés is occasionally seduced by this 
play upon the etymology of a name, even in the most impressive scenes of 
his tragedies. See Ajax, 425. Compare Hellanik, Fragm. p. 9, ed. Preller 
There was 8 first anil second edition of the Tyro — THC δευτέρας Τυροῦς. 
Schol. ad Aristoph. Av. 276. See the few fragments of the lost drama in 
Dindorf’s Collection, p. 53. The plot was in many respects analogous to the 
Antiopé of Euripidés. 

2 A third story, different both from Homer and from Sophoklés, respecting 
Tyr, is found in Hyginus (Fab. lx.): it is of a tragical cast, and borrowed, 
like so many other tales in that collection, from one of the lost Greek dramas. 

3. Apollod.i 9,7. ZaAuwvene τ᾽ ἄδικος καὶ ὑπέρϑυμος Περιήρης. Hesiod, 
Fragm. Catal. 8. Marktscheffel. 

Where the city of Salmoneus was situated, the ancient investigators were 
not agreed; whether in the Pisatid, or in Elis, or in Thessaly (see Strabo, 
viii. p. 356). Euripidés in his olus placed him on the banks of the 
Alpheius (Eurip. Fragm. ol. 1). A village and fountain in the Pisatid 
bore the name of Salraéné; but the mention of the river Enipeus seems to 
mark Thessaly as the original seat of the legend. But the natveté of the tale 
preserved by Apollodérus (Virgil in the Mneid, vi. 586, has retouched it) 


NELEUS. ~MELAMPUS. 109 


Thessaly. Pelias got possession of it, and dwelt there in plenty 
and prosperity ; but he had offended the goddess Héré by killing 
Sidéré upon her altar, and the effects of her wrath wore manifest- 
ed in his relations with his nephew Jason.! 

Néleus quitted Thessaly, went into Peloponnésus, and there 
founded the kingdom of Pylos. He purchased by immense 
marriaz? presents, the privilege of wedding the beautiful Chloria, 
Jaughter of Amphién, king of Orchomenos, by whom he had 
twelve sons and but one daughter?—the fair and captivating 
Pér6, whom suitors from all the neighborhood courted in mar- 
riage. But Néleus, “the haughtiest of living men,” refused to 
entertain the pretensions of any of them: he would grant his 
daughter only to that man who should bring to hia the oxen of 
Iphiklos, from Phylaké in Thessaly. These precious animals 
were carefully guarded, as well by herdsmen as by a dog whom 
neither man nor animal could approach. Neveitheless, Bias, the 
son of Amythaon, nephew of Néleus, being desperately enamored 
of Péré, prevailed upon his brother Melampus to undertake for 
his sake the perilous adventure, in spite of the prophetic knowl- 
edge of the latter, which forewarned him that though he would 
ultimately succeed, the prize must be purchased by severe cap- 
tivity and suffering. Melampus, in attempting to steal the oxen, 

ras seized and put in prison; from whence nothing but is 
prophetic powers rescued him. Being acquainted with the laa 
guage of worms, he heard these animals communicating to eaca 
other, in the roof over his head, that the beams were nearly eaten 
through and about to fall in. He communicated this intelligence 
to his guards, and demanded to be conveyed to another place of 
confinement, announcing that the roof would presently fall in and 
bury them, The prediction was fulfilled, and Phylakos, father of 


marks its ancient date: the final circumstance of that tale was, that the city 
and its inhabitants were annihilated. 

Ephorus makes Sailméneus king of the Epeians and of the Pisate (Fragm 
.5, ed. Didot). 

The lost drama of Sophoklés, called Σαλμωνεὺς, was a δρᾶμα σατυεικὺν 
See Dindorf’s Fragm. 483. 

' Hom. Od. xi 280. Apollod. i. 9,9. κρατέρω ϑεραπόντε Διὸς, ete. 

* Diodor. iv. 68. 

3. Νηλέα re μεγάϑυμον, ἀγαυότατον ζωόντων (Hom. Odyss, xv. 282). 


110 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Iphiklos, full of wonder at this specimen ef prophetic power, 
mmediately caused him to be released. He further consulted 
him respecting the condition of his son Iphiklos, who was child- 
less; and pronised him the possession of the oxen on condition 
of his suggesting the means whereby offspring might be ensured. 
A vulture having communicated to Melampus the requisite 
information, Podarkés, the son of Iphiklos, was born shortly 
afterwards. In this manner Melampus obtained possession of the 
oxen, and conveyed them to Pylos, obtaining for his brother Bias 
the hand of Péro.' How this great legendary character, by mi- 
raculously healing the deranged daughters of Preetos, procured 
both for himself and for Bias dominion in Argos, has been re- 
counted in a preceding chapter. Νὰ 

Of the twelve sons of Néleus, one at least, Periklymenos, — he- 
sides the ever-memorable Nestor, — was distinguished for his ex 
ploits as well as for his miraculous gifts. Poseidén, the divine father 
of the race, had bestowed upon him the privilege of changing his 
form at pleasure into that of any bird, beast, reptile, or insect. He 
had occasion for all these resources, and he employed them for a 
time with success in defending his family against the terrible indig- 
nation of Héraklés, who, provoked by the refusal of Néleus to per- 
form for him the ceremony of purification after his murder of Iphi- 
tus, attacked the Néleids at Pylos. Periklymenos by his extraor- 
dinary powers prolonged the resistance, but the hour of his fate 
was at length brought upon him by the intervention of Athéné, 
who pointed him out to Héraklés while he was perched as a bee 
upon the hero’s chariot. He was killed, and Heéraklés became 
completely victorious, overpowering Poseidon, Here, Arés, and 
Hadés, and even wounding the three latter, who assisted in the 


' Hom. Od. xi. 278; xv. 234. Apollod. i. 9,12. The basis of this curi- 
ous romance is in the Odyssey, amplified by subsequent poets. There are 
points however in the old Homeric legend, as it is briefly sketched in the 
fifteenth book of the Cdyssey, which seem to have been subsequently left 
out or varied. Néleus seizes the property of Melampus during his absence ; 
the latter, returning with the oxen from Phylaké, revenges himself upon 
Néleus for the injury. Odyss. xv. 233. 

* Hesiod, Catalog. ap Schol. Apollon. Rhod. i. 156; Ovid, Metam. xii. p. 
556; Eustath.ad Odyss. xi. p. 284. Poseid6én carefully protects Antilochus 
son of Nestor, in the Iliad, xiii. 554-563. 


NESTOR AND THE NELEIDS ili 


defenca. Eleven of the sons of Néleus perished by his hand, 
while Nestér, then a youth, was preserved only by his accidental 
ab=ence at Geréna, away from his father’s residence.! 

The proud house of the Néleids was now reduced to Nester; 
but Nestér singly sufficed to sustain its eminence. He appears 
not only as the defender and avenger of Pylos against the inso 
lence and rapacity of his Epeian neighbors in Elis, but also as 
aiding the Lapithz in their terrible combat against the Centaurs, 
and as companion of Théseus, Peirithous, and the other great 
legendary heroes who preceded the Trojan war. In extreme old 
age his once marvellous power of handling his weapons has in- 
deed passed away, but his activity remains unimpaired, and his 
sagacity as well as his influence in counsel is greater than ever. 
He not only assembles the various Grecian chiefs for the arma- 
ment against Troy, perambulating the districts of Hellas along 
with Odysseus, but takes a vigorous part in the siege itself, and 
is of preéminent service to Agamemnon. And after the conclu- 
sion of the siege, he is one of the few Grecian princes who re- 
turns to his original dominions, and is found, in a strenuous and 
honored old age, in the midst of his children and subjects, — sit- 
ting with the sceptre of authority on the stone bench before h‘s 
house at Pylos,— offering sacrifice to Poseidon, as his father 
Néleus had done before him,— and mourning only over the desth 


' Hesiod, Catalog. ap. Schol. Ven. ad Iliad. ii. 336; and Steph. Byz. v. 
Tepqvia; Homer, Il. v. 392; xi. 693; Apollodér. ii.7, 3; Hesiod, Seut. Here. 
360; Pindar, Ol. ix. 32. 

According to the Homeric legend, Néleus himself was not killed by Hé- 
raklés: subsequent poets or logographers, whom Apollodérus follows, seem 
to have thought it an injustice, that the offence given by Néleus himself 
should have been avenged upon his sons and not upon himself; they there- 
fore altered the legend upon this point, and rejected the passage in the Iliad 
as spurious (see Schol. Ven. ad Iliad. xi. 682). 

The refusal of purification by Néleus to Héraklés is a genuine legendary 
eanse: the commentators, who were disposed to spread a coating of history 
over these transactions, introduced another cause, — Néleus, as king of Pylos, 
had aiced the Orchomenians in their war against Héraklés and the Th*bans 
(see Sch. Ven. ad Iliad. xi. 689). 

The neighborhood of Pylos was distinguished for its ancient worship both 
δὲ Poseidon and of Hadés: there were abundars local legends respecting 


them (see Strabo, viii. pp. 344, 345). 


112 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


of his favorite son Antilochus, who had fallen, along with so many 
brave companions in arms, in the Trojan war.! 

After Nestor the line of the Néleids numbers undistinguished 
names, — Borus, Penthilus, and Andropompus, — three succes: 
sive generations down to Melanthus, who on the invasion of Pelo- 
ponnésus by the Herakleids, quitted Pylos and retired to Athens, 
where he became king, in a manner which I shall hereafter re- 
count. His son Kodrus was the last Athénian king; and Néleus, 
one of the sons of Kodrus, is mentioned as the principal conduc. 
tor of what is called the Ionic emigration from Athens to Asia 
Minor.? It is certain that during the historical age, not merely 
the princely family of the Kodrids in Milétus, Ephesus, and other 
Ionic cities, but some of the greatest families even in Athens 
itself, traced their heroic lineage through the Néleids up to Po- 
seidon: and the legends respecting Nestor and Periklymenos 
would find especial favor amidst Greeks with such feelings and 
belief. The Kodrids at Ephesus, and probably some ot her Ionic 
towns, long retained the title and honorary precedence of kings, 
even after they had lost the substantial power belonging to the 
office. They stood in the same relation, embodying both religious 
worship and supposed ancestry, to the Néleids and Poseidén, as 
the chiefs of the Kolic colonies to Agamemnon and Orestés. 
The Athenian despot Peisistratus was named after the son of 
Nestor in the Odyssey; and we may safely presume that the 
heroic worship of the Néleids was as carefully cherished at the 
Tonic Milétus as at the Italian Metapontum.® 

Having pursued the line of Salméneus and Néleus to the end 
of its lengendary career, we may now turn back to that of another 
son of Aolus, Kretheus,— a line hardly less celebrated in respect 
of the heroic names which it presents. Alkéstis, the most beau- 
tiful of the daughters of Pelias,4 was promised by her father in 

* About Nestor, Iliad, i. 260-275; ii. 370; xi. 670-770: Orlyss. iii. 5, 110, 
409 

* Hellanik. Fragm. 10, ed. Didot; Pausan. vii. 2, 3; Herodot. vy. 65: 
Strabo, xiv. p. 633. Hellanikus, in giving the genealogy from Néleus ts 
Melanthus, traces it through Periklymenos and not through Nestor: the 
words of Herodotus imply that he must have included Nestor. 

jae ns - ; Strabo, vi. p. 264; Mimnermus, Fragm. 9, Schneidewin. 


ALKESTIS AND ADMETUS. 118 


mart‘age to the man that could bring him a lion and a boar tamed 
to the yoke and drawing together. Admétus, son of Pherés, the 
epoliymus of Phere in Thessaly, and thus grandson of Kretheus, 
was enabled by the aid of Apollo to fulfil this condition, and to 
win her;! for Apollo happened at that time to be in his service 
as a slave (condemned to this penalty by Zeus for having put to 
death the Cyclopes), in which capacity he tended the herds and 
horses with such success, as to equip Eumélus (the son of Admé- 
tus) to the Trojan war with the finest horses in the Grecian 
army. Though menial duties were imposed upon him, even to 
the drudgery of grinding in the mill, 2 he yet carried away with 
him a grateful and friendly sentiment towards his mortal master, 
whom he interfered to rescue from the wrath of the goddess Ar- 
temis, when she was indignant at the omission of her name in his 
wedding sacrifices. Admétus was about to perish by a premature 
death, when Apollo, by earnest solicitation to the Fates, obtained 
for him the privilege that his life should be prolonged, if he could 
find any person to die a voluntary death in his place. His father 
and his mother both refused to make this sacrifice for him, but 
the devoted attachment of his wife Alkéstis disposed her to eme- 
brace with cheerfulness the condition of dying to preserve her 


' Apollodor. i. 9, 15; Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. 711. 

? Euripid. Alkést. init. Welcker ; Griechisch. Tragoed. (p. 344) on the 
lost play of Sophokiés called Admetus or Alkéstis; Hom. Iliad. ii. 766 ; 
Hygin. Fab. 50-51 (Sophoklés, Fr. Inc. 730; Dind. ap. Plutarch. Defect. 
Orac. p. 417). This tale of the temporary servitude of particular gods, by 
order of Zeus as a punishment for misbehavior, recurs not unfrequently 
among the incidents of the mythical world. The poet Panyasis (ap. Clem. 
Alexand. Adm. ad Gent. p. 23) — 

TAR μὲν Δημήτηρ, τλῆ δὲ κλυτὸς ᾿Αμφιγυήεις, 

Τλὴ δὲ Ποσειδάων, τλῆ δ᾽ ἀργυρότοξος ᾿Απολλὼν 

᾿Ανδρὶ παρὰ ϑνητῷ ϑητεύσεμεν εἰς ἐνιαυτόν" 

Τλὴ δὲ καὶ ὀβριμόϑυμος "Apne ὑπὸ πατρὸς ἀνάγκης. 
The old legend followed out the fundamental idea with remarkable consis- 
tency : Laémed6n, as the temporary master of Poseidén and Apollo, threat- 
ens to bind them hand and foot, to sell them in the distant islands, and to 
eut off the ears of both, when they come to ask for their stipulated wages 
(Iliad, xxi. 455). It was a new turn given to the story by the Alexandrine 
poets, when they introduced the motive of love, and made the servitude vol- 
untary on the part of Apollo (Kallimacus, Hymn. Apoll. 49; Tibullus, Eleg 


li. 3, 11-30). 
VOL. ἢ 8oc. 


414 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


husband. She had already perished, when Héraklés, the ancieni 
guest and friend of Admétus, arrived during the first hour of 
lamentation; his strength and daring enabled him to rescue the 
deceased Alkéstis even from the grasp of Thanatos (Death), and 
to restore her alive to her disconsolate husband.! 

The son of Pelias, Akastus, had received and sheltered Peleus 
when obliged to fly his country in consequence of the involuntary 
murder of Eurytién. Kréthéis, the wife of Akastus, becoming 
enamored of Péleus, made to him advances which he repu- 
diated. Exasperated at his refusal, and determined to procure his 
destruction, she persuaded her husband that Péleus had attempt- 
ed her chastity: upon which Akastus conducted Péleus out upon 
a hunting excursion among the woody regions of Mount Pélion, 
contrived to steal from him the sword fabricated and given by 
Héphestos, and then left him, alone and unarmed, to perish 
by the hands of the Centaurs or by the wild beasts. By the 
friendly aid of the Centaur Cheirén, however, Péleus was pre- 
served. and his sword restored to him: returning to the city, he 
avenged himself by putting to death both Akastus and his perfid- 
ious wite.2 

But amongst all the legends with which the name of Pelias 
is connected, by far the most memorable is that of Jason and the 
Argonautic expedition. Jason was son of A&son, grandson of 
Krétheus, and thus great-grandson of Molus.  Pelias, having 
consulted the oracle respecting the security of his dominion at 
Idlkos, had received in answer a warning to beware of the man 
who should appear before him with only one sandal. He was 
celebrating a festival in honor of Poseidon, when it so happened 
that Jason appeared before him with one of his feet unsandaled : 
he had lost one sandal in wading through the swollen current of 
the river Anauros. Pelias immediately understood that this was 


- 


' Eurip. Alkéstis, Arg.; Apollod. i. 9, 15. To bring this beautiful legend 
more into the color of history, a new version of it was subsequently framed : 
Héraklés was eminently skilled in medicine, and saved the life of Alkéstis 
when she was about to perish from a desperate malady (Plutarch. Amator 
6. 17. vol. iv. p. 53, Wytt.). 

? The legend of Akastus and Péleus was given in great detail in the Cate 
logue of Hesiod (Catalog. Fragm. 20-21, Marktscheff.); Schol. Pindar 
Wem. iv. 95. Scho’ Apoll. Rhod. i. 224; Apollod. iii 13, 2. 


MEDIA AND THE DAUGHTERS OF ELIAS. 115 


the enemy against whom the oracle had forewarned him. Asa 
m2ans of averting the danger, he imposed upon Jasén the des- 


perate task of bringing back to Idélkos the Golden Fleece, — the 


fleece of that ram which had carried Phryxos from Achaia to 
Kolchis, and which Phryxos had dedicated in the latter country 
as an offering to the god Arés. The result of this injunction was 
the memorable expedition — of the ship Argo and her crew call- 
ed the Argonauts, composed of the bravest and noblest youths 
of Greece — which cannot be conveniently included among the 
legends of the Zolids, and is reserved for a separate chapter. 
The voyage of the Argo was long protracted, and Pelias, per- 
suaded that neither the ship nor her crew wou! ever return, put 
to death both the father and mother of Jason, together with their 
infant son. A°s6n, the father, being permitted to choose the manner 
of his own death, drank bull’s blood while performing a sacrifice 
to the gods. At length, however, Jason did return, bringing with 
him not only the golden fleece, but also Médea, daughter of 
Métés, king of Kolchis, as his wife, — a woman distinguished for 
magical skill and cunning, by whose assistance alone the Argo- 
nauts had succeeded in their project. Though determined to 
avenge himself upon Pelias, Jason knew he could only succeed 
by stratagem: he remained with his companions at a short dis- 
tance from Iélkos, while Médea, feigning herself a fugitive from 
his ill-usage, entered the town alone, and procured access to the 
daughters of Pelias. By exhibitions of her magical powers she 
soon obtained unqualified ascendency over their minds. For ex- 
ample, she selected from the flocks of Pelias a ram in the extrem- 
ity of old age, cut him up and boiled him in a caldron with herbs, 
and brought him out in the shape of a young and vigorous lamb:! 
the daughters of Pelias were made to believe that their old father 
could in like manner be restored to youth. In this persuasion 
they cut him up with their own hands and cast his linsbs into the 


1 This incident was contained in one of the earliest dramas of Euripidés 
the Πελιάδες, now lost. Moses of Choréné (Progymnasm. ap. Maii ad Euseb 
p. 43), who gives an extract from the argument, says that the poet‘ extremoe 
mentiendi fines attingit.” 

The “Ριζότομος of Sophoklés seems also to have turned upon the same 
ratastre phe (see Fragm. 479, Dindorf.). 


116 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


caldron, trusting that Médea would produce upon him the same 
magical effect. Médea pretended that an invocation to the moon 
was a necessary part of the ceremony: she went up to the top 
of the house as if to pronounce it, and there lighting the fire- 
signal concerted with the Argonauts, Jason and his companions 
burst in and possessed themselves of the town. Satisfied with 
having thus revenged himself, Jason yielded the principality 
ef Iélkos to Akastus, son of Pelias, and retired with Médea to 
Corinth. Thus did the goddess Héré gratify her ancient wrath 
against Pelias: she had constantly watched over Jason, and had 
carried the “all-notorious” Argo through its innumerable perils, 
in order that Jason might bring home Médea to accomplish the 
ruin of his uncle.! The misguided daughters of Pelias departed 


1The kindness of Héré towards Jasén seems to be older in the legend 
than her displeasure against Pelias ; at least it is specially noticed in the 
Odyssey, as the great cause of the escape of the ship Argé : ’AAA’ Ἥρη ra- 
ρέπεμψεν, ἐπεὶ φίλος ἧεν ᾿Ἰήσων (xii. 70). In the Hesiodic Theogony Pelias 
stands to Jason in the same relation as Eurystheus to Héraklés, — a severe 
taskmaster as well as a wicked and insolent man, — ὑβριστὴς Πελίης καὶ 
ἀτάσϑαλοις, ὀβριμόεογος (Theog. 995). Apollonius Rhodius keeps the wrath 
of Héré against Pelias in the foreground, 1.14; iii. 1134; iv. 242; see also 
Hygin, f. 13. 

There is ereat diversity in the stories given of the proximate circum- 
stances connected with the death of Pelias: Eurip. Méd. 491 ; Apollodor. i. 
9, 27: Diodor. iv, 50-52; Ovid, Metam. vii. 162, 203, 297, 347 ; Pausan. viii 
11,2; Schol. ad Lycoph. 175. 

In the legend of Akastus and Péleus as recounted above, Akastus was 
made to perish by the hand of Péleus. I do not take upon me to reconcile 
these contradictions. 

Pausanias mentions that he could not find in any of the poets, so far as 
he had read. the names of the danghters of Pelias, and that the painter Mikén 
had given to them names (ὀνόματα δ' αὐταῖς ποιητὴς μὲν ἔϑετο οὐδεὶς, ὅσα 
γ᾽ ἐπελεξάμεϑα ἡμεῖς, εἴο., Pausan. viii. 11, 1). Yet their names are given in 
the authors whom Diodérus copied; and Alkéstis, at any rate, was most 
memorable. Mikén gave the names Asteropeia and Antinoé, altogether dif- 
ferent from those in Diodérus. Both Diodérus and Hyginus exonerate Al 
k¢stis from all share in the death of her father (Hygin. f. 24). 

The old poem called the Néoro (see Argum. ad Eurip. Méd., and Schol. 
Aristophan. Equit. 1321) recounted, that Médea had boiled in a caldron the 
old As6n, father of Jasén, with herbs and incantations, and that she had 
brought him ont young and strong. Ovid copies this (Metam. vii. 162-203) 
it is singular that Pherékydés and Simonidés said that she had performed 


MEDEA AT CORINTH. 117 


as voluntary exiles t» Arcadia: Akastus his son celebrated splen- 
did funeral games in honor of his deceased father.! 

Jason and Médea retired from Iolkos to Corinth, where they 
resided ten years: their children were — Medeius, whom the 
Centaur Cheirén educated in the regions of Mount Pélion,?— 
and Mermerus and Pherds, born at Corinth. After they had 
resided there ten years in prosperity, Jason set his affections on 
Glauké, daughter of Kreén® king of Corinth; and as her father 
was willing to give her to him in marriage, he determined to 
repudiate Médea, who received orders forthwith to leave Corinth. 
Stung with this insult τι. ἃ bent upon revenge, Médea prepared a 
poisoned robe, and sent it as a marriage present to Glaukeé: it 
was unthinkingly accepted and put on, and the body of the un- 
fortunate bride was burnt up and consumed. Kreon, her father, 
who tried to tear from her the burning garment, shared her fate 
and perished. The exulting Médea escaped by means of a 
chariot with winged serpents furnished to her by her grandfather 
Hélios: she placed herself under the protection of A®géus at 
Athens, by whom she had a son named Médus. She left her 
young children in the sacred enclosure of the Arkrean Heéré, 
relying on the protection of the altar to ensure their safety ; but 
the Corinthians were so exasperated against her for the murder 


this process upon Jasén himself (Schol. Aristoph, /. c.). Diogenes (ap. Stobae. 
Florileg. t. xxix. 92) rationalizes the story, and converts Médea from an 
enchantress into an improving and regenerating preceptress. The death of 
JEs6n, as described in the text, is given from Diodérus and Apollodorus. 
Médea seems to have been worshipped as a goddess in other places besides 
Corinth (see Athenagor. Legat. pro Christ. 12; Macrobius, 1. 12, p. 247, 
Gronoy. ). 

' These funeral games in honor of Pelias were among the most renowned 
of the mythical incidents: they were celebrated in a special poem by Stesicho- 
rus, and represented on the chest of Kypselus at Olympia. Kastor, Meleager, 
Amphiaraos, Jason, Péleus, Mopsos, etc. contended in them (Pausan. v. 17. 
4; Stesichori Fragm. 1. p. 54, ed. Klewe; Athén. iv. 172). How familiar 
the details of them were to the mind of ». literary Greek is indirectly attested 
by Plutarch, Sympos. v. 2, vol. iii. p. 762, Wytt. 

” Hesiod, Theogon. 998. 

? According to the Schol. ad Eurip. Méd. 20, Jason marries the daughter 
of Hippotés the son of Kreén, who is the son of Lykathos. Lykeethos, after 
the departure of Bellerophén from Corinth, reigned twenty-seven years; then 
Kredn reigned thirty-five years ; then came Hippotés. 


118 HISTURY OF GREECE. 


of Kreén and Glauké, that they dragged the children away from 
the altar and put them to death. The miserable Jas6n perished 
by a fragment of his own ship Argo, which fell upon him while 


he was asleep under it,! being hauled on shore, according to the 
habitual practice of the ancients. 

The first establishment at Ephyré, or Corinth, had been found- 
ed by Sisyphus, another of the sons of A‘olus, brother of Saliné- 


' Apolloddr. i. 9, 27; Diodor. iv. 54. The Médea of Eurypidés, which has 
fortunately been preserved to us, is too well known to need express reference 
He makes Médea the destroyer of her own children, and borrows from this 
circumstance the most pathetic touches of his exquisite drama. Parmenis- 
kés accused him of having been bribed by the Corinthians to give this turn to 
the legend ; and we may regard the accusation as a proof that the older and 
more current tale imputed the murder of the children to the Corinthians 
(Schol. Eurip. Med. 275, where Didymos gives the story out of the old poem 
of Kreophylos). See also Ailian, V. H. v. 21; Pausan. ii. 3, 6. 

The most significant fact in respect to the fable is, that the Corinthians 
celebrated periodically a propitiatory sacrifice to Héré Akraa and to Merme- 
rus and Pherés, as an atonement for the sin of having violated the sanctuary 
of the altar. The legend grew out of this religious ceremony, and was so 
arranged as to explain and account for it (see Eurip. Méd. 1376, with the 
Schol. Diodor. iv. 55). 

Mermerus and Pherés were the names given to the children of Médea and 
Jason in the old Naupaktian Verses; in which, however, the legend must 
have been recounted quite differently, since they said that Jason and Médea 
had gone from Iélkos, not to Corinth, but to Corcyra; and that Mermerus 
had perished in hunting on the opposite continent of Epirus. Kingthdn 
again, another ancient genealogical poet, called the children of Médea and 
Jason Eriépis and Médos (Pausan. ii. 3,7). Diodorus gives them different 
names (iv. 34). Hesiod, in the Theogony, speaks only of Medeius as the son 
of JasOn. 

Médea does not appear either in the Iliad or Odyssey : in the former, we 
find Agamédé, daughter of Augeas, “ who knows all the poisons (or medi- 
cines) which the earth nourishes” (Iliad, xi. 740); in the latter, we have 
Circé, sister of ALétés, father of Médea, and living in the A.zan island (Odyss. 
x. 70). Circé is daughter of the god Hélios, as Médea is his oranddaughter. 
—~she is herself a goddess. She is in many points the parailel of Médea ; 
she forewarns and preserves Odysseus throughout his dangers, as Médea aids 
Jason: according to the Hesiodic story, she has two children by Odysseus, 
Agrius and Latinus (Theogon. 1001). 

Odysseus goes to Ephyré to Ilos the son of Mermerus, to procure poison 
for his arrows: Eustathius treats this Mermerus as the son of Médea (see 
Odyss. i. 270, and Fust.). As Ephyré is the legendary name of Corinth, we 
may presame this to be a thread of the same mythical tissue. 


SISYPHUS THE ZOLID. 119 


neus and Krétheus.!1 The olid Sisyphus was d.stinguished as 
an unexampled master of cunning and deceit. He blocked up 
the road along the isthmus, and killed the strangers who came 
aiong it by rolling down upon them great stones from the moun- 
tains above. He was more than a match even for the arch thief 
Autolycus, the son of Hermés, who derived from his father the 
gift of changing the color and shape of stolen goods, so that they 
could no longer be recognized : Sisyphus, by marking his sheep 
under the foot, detected Autolycus when he stole them, and 
obliged him to restore the plunder. His penetration discovered 
the amour of Zeus with the nymph /&gina, daughter of the river- 
god Asépus. Zeus had carried her off to the island of Ginéné 
(which subsequently bore the name of ADgina); upon which 
Asépus, eager to recover her, inquired of Sisyphus whither she 
was gone: the latter told him what had happened, on condition 
that he should provide a spring of water on the summit of the 
Acro-Corinthus. Zeus, indignant with Sisyphus for this revela- 
tion, inflicted upon him in Hadés the punishment of perpetually 
heaving up a hill a great and heavy stone, which, so soon as it 
attained the summit, rolled back again in spite of all his efforts, 
with irresistible force into the plain. 

In the application of the A®olid genealogy to Corinth, Sisyphus, 
the son of A®olus, appears as the first name: but the old Corin- 


ι See Euripid. Aol. — Fragm. 1, Dindorf; Diksarch. Vit. Greec. p. 22. 

2 Respecting Sisyphus, see Apollodér. i. 9, 3; tii. 12, 6 Pausan. ii.5,1. Schol 
ad Iliad. i. 180. Another legend about the amour of Sisyphus with Tyr9, is 
in Hygin. fab. 60, and about the manner in which he overreached even Hadés 
(Pherekydés ap. Schol. Tliad. vi. 153). The stone rolled by Sisyphus in the 
under-world appears in Odyss. xi. 592. The name of Sisyphus was given 
during the historical age to men of craft and stratagem, such as Derkyllides 
(Xenoph. Hellenic. iii. 1, 8). He passed for the real father of Odysseus, 
though Heyne (ad Apollodér. i. 9, 3) treats this as another Sisyphus, where- 
by he destroys the suitableness of the predicate as regards Odysseus. The 
duplication and triplication of synonymous personages is an ordinary 
resource for the purpose of reducing the legends into a seeming chronological 
sequence. 

Even in the days of Eumélus a religious mystery was observed respecting 
the tombs of Sisyphus and Néleus,— the lat.er had also died at Corinth, — 
no one could say where they were buried (P: san. ii. 2, 2). 

Sisyphus even overreached Persephoné, and made his escape from the 


ander-world (Theognis, 702). 
Yo Ll 7 


120 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


thian poet Eumélus either found or framed an heroic genealogy 
for his native city independent both of Molus and Sisyphus. 
According to this genealogy, Ephyré, daughter of Oceanus and 
Téthys, was the primitive tenant of the Corinthian territory, 
Asoépus of the Sikyénian: both were assigned to the god Hélios, 
in adjusting a dispute between him and Poseidon, by Briareus 
Hélios divided the territory between his two sons Avétés and 
Aléeus: to the former he assigned Corinth, to the latter Siky6n. 
JEKétés, obeying the admonition of an oracle, emigrated to Kolchis, 
leaving his territory under the rule of Bunos, the son of Hermés, 
with the stipulation that it should be restored whenever either he 
or any of his descendants returned. After the death of Bunos, 
both Corinth and Sikyén were possessed by Epépeus, son of 
Aloeus, a wicked man. His son Marathén left him in disgust 
and retired into Attica, but returned after his death and succeeded 
to his territory, which he in turn divided between his two sons 
Corinthos and Siky6én, from whom the names of the two districts 
were first derived. Corinthos died witkout issue, and the Corin- 
thians then invited Médea from Iélkos as the representative of 
fétés: she with her husband Jasén thus obtained the sovereignty 
of Corinth.! This legend of Eumélus, one of the earliest of the 
genealogical poets, so different from the story adopted by Neo- 
phrén or Euripidés, was followed certainly by Simonidés and 
seemingly by Theopompus.2 The incidents in it are imagined 
and arranged with a view to the supremacy of Médea; the 
emigration of Alétés and the conditions under which he transfer- 
red his sceptre, being so laid out as to confer upon Médea an 
hereditary title to the throne. The Corinthians paid to Médea 
and to her children solemn worship, either divine or heroic, in 
conjunction with Héré Akrza,3 and this was sufficient to give to 


* Pausan. ii. 1, 1; 3, 10. Schol. ad Pindar. Olymp. xiii. 74. Scho. 
Lycoph. 174-1024. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 1212. 

* Simonid. ap. Schol. ad Eurip. Méd. 10-20; Theopompus, Fragm. 340, 
Didot; though Welcker (Der Episch. Cycl. p. 29) thinks that this does not 
belong to the historian Theopompus. Epimenidés also followed the story of 
Ban élus in making Atétés a Corinthian (Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod. iii. 242). 

8 Περὶ δὲ τῆς εἰς Κόρινϑον μετοικήσεως, Ἵππυς ἐκτίϑεται καὶ ‘EAAavixog: 
Or: κὲ βεβασίλευκε τῆς Κορίνϑου ἡ Μήδεια, Εὔμηλος ἱστορεῖ καὶ Σιμωνίδης" 
"Or: δὲ καὶ ἀϑάνατος ἣν ἡ Μήδεια, Μουσαῖος ἐν τῷ περὶ ᾿ ᾿Ισϑμίων loropei, ἅμα 
wal περὶ τῶν tic’ Axpaiac Ἥρας ἑορτῶν ἐκτιϑείς. (Schol Eurip. Méd, 10) 


BELLEROPHON. 13) 


MMédea a prominent place in the genealogy composed by a Corin- 
thian poet, accustomed to blend together gods, heroes and men in 
the antiquities of his native city. According to the legend of 
Eumélus, Jasén became (through Médea) king of Corinth; but 
she concealed the children of their marriage in the temple of 
Héré, trusting that the goddess would render them immortal. 
Jason, discovering her proceedings, left her and retired in disgust 
to Idlkos; Médea also, being disappointed in her scheme, quitted 
the place, leaving the throne in the hands of Sisyphus, to whom, 
according to the story of Theopompus, she had become attached.! 
Other legends recounted, that Zeus had contracted a passicn for 
Médea, but that she had rejected his suit from fear of the displea- 
sure of Héré; who, as a recompense for such fidelity, rendered 
her children immortal 2 moreover Médea had erected, by special 
command of Héré, the celebrated temple of Aphrodité at Corinth. 
The tenor of these fables manifests their connection with the 
temple of Héré: and we may consider the legend of Médea as 
having been originally quite independent of that of Sisyphus, but 
titted on to it, in seeming chronological sequence, so as to satisfy 
the feelings of those Molids of Corinth who passed for his 
descendants. 

Sisyphus had for his sons Glaukos and Ornytién. From 
Glaukos sprang Bellerophén, whose romantic adventures com- 
mence with the Iliad, and are further expanded by subsequent 
poets: according to some accounts he was really the son of 
Poseidén, the prominent deity of the Aolid family. The youth 


Compare also y. 1376 of the play itself, with the Scholia and Pausan. ii. 3, 
6. Both Alkman and Hesiod represented Médea as a goddess ( Athenogoraa, 
Legatia pro Christianis, p. 54, ed. Oxon.). 

1 Pausan. ii. 3, 10; Schol. Pindar. Olymp. xiii. 74. 

2 Schol. Pindar. Olymp. xiii. 32-74 ; Plutarch. De Herodot. Malign. p. 871. 

3 Pindar. Olymp. xiii. 98. and Schol. ad 1; Schol. ad Iliad. vi. 155; this 
seems to be the sense of Iliad, vi. 191. 

The lost drama called Jobatés of Sophoklés, and the two by Euripidés 
called Sthenebea and Bellerophén, handled the adventures of this hero. See 
the collection of the few fragments remaining in Dindorf, Fragm. Sophok, 
280; Fragm. Eurip. p. 87-108; and Hygin. fab. 67. 

Welcker (Griechische Tragéd. ii. p. 777-800) has ingeniously put together 
all that can be divined respecting the two plays of Euripidés. 

Volcker seeks to make out that Bellerophén is identical with Poseidéa 
VOL. I. & 


122 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


and beauty of Bellerophén rendered him the object of a strong 
passion on the part of the Anteia, wife of Proetos king of Argos. 
binding her advances rejected, she contracted a violent hatred 
towards him, and endeavored by false accusations to prevail upon 
her husband to kill him. Proetos refused to commit the deed 
under his own roof, »ut despatched him to his son-in-law the king 
of Lykia in Asia Minor, putting into his hands a folded tablet full 
of destructive symbols. Conformably to these suggestions, the 
most perilous undertakings were imposed upon Bellerophén. He 
was directed to attack the monstér Chimzra and to conquer the 
warlike Solymi as well as the Amazons: as he returned victorious 
from these enterprises, an ambuscade was laid for him by the 
bravest Lykian warriors, all of whom he slew. At length the 
Lykian king recognized him “as the genuine son of a god,” and 
gave him his daughter in marriage together with half of his 
kingdom. ‘The grand-children of Bellerophén, Glaukos and Sar- 
pédén, — the latter a son of his daughter Laodameia by Zeus, — 
combat as allies of Troy against the host of Agamemnon ! 
Respecting the winged Pegasus, Homer says nothing; but later 
poets assigned to Bellerophén this miraculous steed, whose 
parentage is given in the Hesiodic Theogony, as the instrument 
both of his voyage and of his success.?_ Heroic worship was paid 
at Corinth to Bellerophén, and he seems to have been a favorite 
theme of recollection not only among the Corinthians themselves, 
but also among the numerous colonists whom they sent out to 
other regions.° 

From Ornytién, the son of Sisyphus, we are conducted through 
a series of three undistinguished family names, — Thoas, Damo- 
phon, and the brothers Propodas and Hyanthidas, — to the time 


Hippios, — a separate personification of one of the attributes of the god Posei- 
déa. For this conjecture he gives some plausible grounds (Mythologie des 
Japetisch. Geschlechts, p. 129 seq. ). 

' Tliad. vi. 155-210. * Hesiod, Theogon. 283. 

3 Pausan. ii. 2,4. See Pindar, Olymp. xiii. 90, addressed to Xenophén 
the Corinthian, and the Adoniazuse of the Syracusan Theocritus, a poem in 
which common Syracusan life and feeling are so graphically depicted, Idyll 
av. 91. — 

Συρακοσίαις ἐπιτάσσεις ; 
Ὡς & εἴδῃς καὶ τοῦτο, Κορίνϑιαι εἶμες ἄνωϑεν 
Ὥς καὶ ὁ BeAAcpodwv: {Πελοποννασιστὶ λαλεῦμες. 


ATHAMAS AND PHRYXUS. 128 


of the Dérian occupation of Corinth', which will be hereafter 
recounted. 

We now pass from Sisyphus and the Corinthian fables to 
another son of Zolus, Athames, whose family history is not 
less replete with mournful and tragical incidents, abundantly 
diversified by the poets. Athamas, we are told, was king of 
Orchomenos ; his wife Nephelé was a goddess, and he had by 
her two children, Phryxus and Hellé. After a certain time he 
neglected Nephelé, and took to himself as a new wife Ind, the 
daughter of Kadmus, by whom he had two sons, Learchus and 
Melikertés. Iné, looking upon Phryxus with the hatred of a 
step-mother, laid a snare for his life. She persuaded the women 
to roast the seed-wheat, which, when sown in this condition, yielded 
no crop, so that famine overspread the land. Athamas sent to 
Delphi to implore counsel and a remedy: he received for answer, 
through the machinations of [πὸ with the oracle, that the barren- 
ness of the fields could not be alleviated except by offering 
Phryxus as a sacrifice to Zeus. The distress of the people com- 
pelled him to execute this injunction, and Phryxus was led as a 
victim to the altar. But the power of his mother Nephelé 
snatched him from destruction, and procured for him from Hermés 
a ram with a fleece of gold, upon which he and his sister Hellé 
mounted and were carried across the sea. The ram took the 
direction of the Euxiné sea and Kolchis: when they were cross- 
ing the Hellespont, Hellé fell off into the narrow strait, which 
took its name from that incident. Upon this, the ram, who was 
endued with speech, consoled the terrified Phryxus, and ultimately 
carried him safe to Kolchis: A®étés, king of Kolchis son of the 
god Hélios and brother of Circeé, received Phryxus kindly, and 
gave him his daughter Chalciopé in marriage. Phryxus sacri- 
ficed the ram to Zeus Phyxios, and suspended the golden fleece 


in the sacred grove of Arés. 
Athamas — according to some both Athamas and Inéd — were 


afterwards driven mad by the anger of the goddess Héré; inso- 
much that the father shot his own son Learchus, and would also 
have put to death his other son Melikertés, if Iné had not 


snatched him away. She fled with the boy, across the Megariau 


1 Pausan. ii. 4, 3. 


194 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


territory and Mount Geraneia, to the rock Moluris, overhanging 
the Sarénic Gulf: Athamas pursued her, and in order to escape 
him she leaped into the sea. She became a sea-goddess uuder 
the title of Leukothea; while the body of Melikertes was cast 
ashore on the neighboring territory of Schcenus, and buried by 
his uncle Sisyphus, who was directed by the Nereids to pay to 
him heroic honors under the name of Palemén. The Isthmian 
games, one of the great periodical festivals of Greece, were cele- 
brated in honor of the god Poseidén, in conjunction with Pale- 
mon as ahero. Athamas abandoned his territory, and became 
the first settler of a neighboring region called from him Athman- 


tia, or the Athamantian plain.! 


‘ Eurip. Méd. 1250, with the Scholia, according to which story [πὸ killea 
both her children : — 


Ἴνω μανεῖσαν ἐκ ϑεῶν, 50 ἡ Διὸς 
Δάμαρ νιν ἐξέπεμψε δώματων ἄλῃ. 


Compare Valckenaer, Diatribe in Ἐατίρ.; Apollodér. i. 9, 1-2; Schol. ad 
Pindar. Argum. ad Isthm. p. 180. The many varieties of the fable of Atha- 
mas and his family may be seen in Hygin. fab. 1-5; Philostephanus ap. 
Schol. Iliad. vii. 86: it was a favorite subject with the tragedians, and was 
handled by Aschylus, Sophoklés and Euripidés in more than one drama 
(see Welcker, Griechische Tragéd. vol. i. p. 312-332 ; vol. ii. p.612). Heyne 
says that the proper reading of the name is Phrixus, not Phryxus, — incor- 
rectly, I think: Φρύξος connects the name both with the story of roasting the 
wheat (φρύγειν), and also with the country Φρυγία, of which it was pretended 
that Phryxus was the Fiponymus. In6, or Leukothea, was worshipped as a 
heroine at Megara as well as at Corinth (Pausan. i. 42, 3) : the celebrity of 
the Isthmian games carried her worship, as well as that of Palemon, 
throughout most parts of Greece (Cicero, De Nat. Deor. iii. 16). She is the 
only personage of this family noticed either in the Iliad or Odyssey: in the 
latter poem she is a sea-goddess, who has once been a mortal, daughter of 
Kadmus; she saves Odysseus from imminent danger at sea by presenting 
to him her κρήδεμνον (Odyss. v. 433; see the refinements of Aristidés, Orat. 
iii. p. 27). The voyage of Phryxus and Hellé to Kolchis was related in the 
Hesiodic Eoiai: we find the names of the children of Phryxus by the 
daughter of Aétés quoted from that poem (Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. ii, 
1123)" both Hesiod and Pherekydés mentioned the golden fleece of the ram 
(Eratosthen. Catasterism. 19; Pherekyd. Fragm. 53, Didot). 

Hekatzus preserved the romance of the speaking ram (Schol. Apoll. Rhod 
«. 256)- but Hellanikus dropped the story of Hellé having fallen imto she 


LEGENDS AND RITES OF THE ATHAMANTIDS. 126 


The legend of Athamas connects itself with some sanguinary 
religious rites and very peculiar family customs, which prevailed 
at Alos, in Achaia Phthidtis, down to a time! later than the his- 
torian Herodotus, and of which some remnant existed at Orcho- 
nenos even in the days of Plutarch. Athamas was worshipped 
at Alos as a hero, having both a chapel and a consecrated grove, 
attached to the temple of Zeus Laphystios. On the family of 
which he was the heroic progenitor, a special curse and disability 
stood affixed. The eldest of the race was forbidden to enter the 
prytaneion or eovernment-house ; and if he was found within the 
doors of the building, the other citizens laid hold of him on his 
ed him with garlands, and led him in solemn 
procession to be sacrificed as a victim at the altar of Zeus 
Laphystios. The prohibition carried with it an exclusion from 
all the public meetings and ceremonies, political as well as 
religious, and from the sacred fire of the state: many of the 
individuals marked out had therefore been bold enough to trans- 
gress it. Some had been seized on quitting the building and 
actually sacrificed ; others had fled the country for a long time to 
avoid a similar fate. 

The guides who conducted Xerxés and his army through 
southern Thessaly detailed to him this existing practice, coupled 
with the local legend, that Athamas, together with Iné, had 
sought to compass the death of Phryxus, who however had 
escaped to Kolchis; that the Achzans had been enjoined by aa 
oracle to off: up Athamas himself as an expiatory sacrifice to 
release the country from the anger of the gods ; but that Kytis- 
soros, son of Phryxus, coming back from Kolchis, had intercepted 
the sacrifice of Athamas, whereby the anger of the gods re- 


going out, surround 


sea: according to him sne died at Pactyé in the Chersonesus (Schol. Apoll. 


Rhod. ii. 1144). 

The poet Asius seems to have given 
misto much in the same manner as we 
33, 3). 

According to the ingenious re 
‘Sehol. ad Apo!l. Rhod. ii. 1144; Palephat. de Incred. c. 31) the ram of 


the genealogy of Athamas by The 
find it in Apollodérus (Pausan. ix. 


finements of Dionysius and Paleephatus 


ull a man named Krios, a faithful attendant who aided im 


his escape; others imagined a ship with a ram’s head at the bow. 
» Plutarch, Quest. Greec. c. 38. p. 299. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 655. 
© Of the Athamas of Sophoklés, turning upon this intended, but nox com 


Phryxus was after 


126 HISTORY OF GREECE 


mained still unappeased, and an undying curse rested upon the 
family. 

That such human sacrifices continued to a greater or less 
extent, even down to a period later than Herodotus, among the 
family who worshipped Athamas as their heroic ancestor, appears 
eertain: mention is also made of similar customs in parts of 
Areadia, and of ‘Thessaly, in honor of Péleus and Cheirén.? 
But we may reasonably presume, that in the period of greater 
humanity which Herodotus witnessed, actual sacrifice had become 
very rare. ‘The curse and the legend still remained, but were 


summated sacrifice, little is known, except from a passage of Aristophanés 
and the Scholia upon it (Nubes, 258).— 


ἐπὶ τί στέφανον ; οἶμοι, Σώκρατες, 
ὥσπερ μὲ τὸν ᾿Αϑάμανϑ᾽ ὅπως μὴ ϑύσετε. 


Athamas was introduced in this drama with a garland on his head, on the 
point of being sacrificed as an expiation for the death of his son Phryxus, 
when Héraklés interposes and rescues him. 

? Herodot. vii. 197. Plato, Minds, p. 315. 

* Plato, Minds, ¢.5. Καὶ οἱ τοῦ ᾿Αϑάμαντος ἔκγονοι, οἷας ϑυσίας ϑύουσιν, 
Ἕλληνες ὄντες. ΑΒ ἃ testimony to the fact still existing or believed to exist, 
this dialogue is quite sufficient, though not the work of Plato. 

Μόνεμος δ᾽ loropei, ἐν τῇ τῶν Bavyaciwy συναγωγῇ, ἐν Πέλλῃ τῆς Θεττα- 
λίας ᾿Αχαελν ἄνϑρωπον Πηλεῖ καὶ Χείρωνε καταϑύεσϑαι. (Clemens Alexand. 
Admon. ad Gent. p. 27, Sylb.) Respecting the sacrifices at the temple of 
Zeus Lykzus in Arcadia, see Plato, Republ. viii. p. 565. Pausanias (viii. p. 
38, 5) seems to have shrunk, when he was upon the spot, even from inquir- 
ing what they were —a striking proof of the fearful idea which he had con- 
ceived of them. Plutarch (De Defectu Oracul. c. 14) speaks of τὰς πώλαι 
ποιουμένας ἀνθρωποϑυσίας. The Schol. ad Lycophron. 229, gives a story 
of children being sacrificed to Melikertés at Tenedos; and Apollodérus 
ad Porphyr. de Abstinentia, ii. 55, see Apollod. Fragm. 20, ed. Didot) said 
that the Lacedemonians had sacrificed a man to Arés — καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους 
φησὶν ὁ ᾿Απολλόδωρος τῷ “Apes Fiery ἄνϑρωπον. About Salamis in Cyprus, 
gee Lactantius, De Falsd Religione, i. c. 21. “ Apud Cypri Salaminem, 
humanam hostiam Jovi Teucrus immolavit, idque sacrificium posteris tradi- 
dit : quod est nuper Hadriano imperante sublatum.” 

Respecting human sacrifices in historical Greece, consult a good section in 
K. F. Hermann’s Gottesdienstliche AlterthOmer der Griechen (sect. 27). 
Such sacrifices had been a portion of primitive Grecian religion, but had 
gradually become obsolete everywhere — except in one or two solitary cases 
which were spoken of with horror. Even in these cases, too, the reality of 
the fact, in later times, is not beyond suspicion. 


ATHAMANTIDS AT ALOS. 127 


not called into practical working, except during periods of intense 
national suffering or apprehension, during which the religious 
sensibilities were always greatly aggravated. We cannot at all 
doubt, that during the alarm created by the presence of the Per- 
sian king with his immense and ill-disciplined host, the minds of 
the 'Thessalians must have been keenly alive to all that was ter- 
rific in their national stories, and all that was expiatory in their 
religious solemnities. Moreover, the mind of Xerxés himself 
was so awe-struck by the tale, that he reverenced the dwelling-place 
consecrated to Athamas. The guides who recounted to him the 
romantic legend, gave it as the historical and generating cause 
of the existing rule and practice: a critical inquirer is forced 
(as has been remarked before) to reverse the order of precedence, 
and to treat the practice as having been the suggesting cause of 
its own explanatory legend. 

The family history of Athamas, and the worship of Zeus 
Laphystios, are expressly connected by Herodotus with Alos in 
Achxa Phthiétis — one of the towns enumerated in the Iliad as 
under the command of Achilles. But there was also a mountain 
called Laphystion, and a temple and worship of Zeus Laphystios 
between Orchomenos and Kordneia, in the northern portion of 
the territory known in the historical ages as Beeotia. Here also 
the family story of Athamas is localized, and Athamas is pre- 
sented to us as king of the districts of Koréneia, Haliartus and 
Mount Laphystion: he is thus interwoven with the Orchomenian 
genealogy.! Andreas (we are told), son of the river Péneios, 
was the first person who settled in the region: from him it 
received the name Andréis. Athamas, coming subsequently to 
Andreus, received from him the territory of Koréneia and Haliar 
tus with Mount Laphystion: he gave in marriage to Andreus, 
Euippé, daughter of his son Leucén, and the issue of this mar- 
riage was Eteoklés, said to be the son of the river Képhisos. 
Korénos and Haliartus, grandsons of the Corinthian Sisyphus, 
were adopted by Athamas, as he had lost all his children: but 
when his grandson Presbén, son of Phryxus, returned to him 
from Kolchis, he divided his territory in such manner that 
Koronos and Haliartus became the founders of the towns whch 


1 Pausan. ix. 34, 4. 


198 MISTORY OF GREECE. 


bore their names. Almén, the son of Sisyphus, ale received 
from Eteoklés a portion of territory, where he established the 
village Alménes.! 

With Eteoklés began, according to a statement in one of the 
Hesiodic poems, the worship of the Charites or Graces, so long 
and so solemnly continued at Orchomenos in the periodical festival 
of the Charitésia, to which many neighboring towns and districts 
seem to have contributed.2 He also distributed the inhabitants 
into two tribes— Eteokleia and Képhisias. He died childless, 
and was succeeded by Almos, who had only two daughters, 
Chrysé and Chrysogeneia. The son of Chrysé by the god Arés 
was Phlegyas, the father and founder of the warlike and preda- 
tory Phlegyz, who despoiled every one within their reach, and 
assaulted not only the pilgrims on their road to Delphi, but even 
the treasures of the temple itself. The offended god punished 
them by continued thunder, by earthquakes, and by pestilence, 
which extinguished all this impious race, except a scanty rem- 
nant who fled into Phokis. 

Chrysogeneia, the other daughter of Almos, had for issue, by 
the god Poseidén, Minyas: the son of Minyas was Orchomenos. 
From these two was derived the name both of Minyz for the 
people, and of Orchomenos for the town. During the reign of 
Orchomenos, Hyéttus came to him from Argos, having become 
an exile in consequence of the death of Molyros: Orchomenos 
assigned to him a portion of land, where he founded the village 
called Hyéitus.4 Orchomenos, having no issue, was succeeded 
by Klymenos, son of Presbén, of the house of Athamas: Kly- 
menos was slain by some Thébans during the festival of Poseidor 
at Onchéstos ; and his eldest son, Erginus, to avenge his death, 
attacked the Thébans with his utmost force ;—an attack, ip 
which he was so successful, that the latter were forced to submit, 
and to pay him an annual tribute. 


* Pausan. ix. 34, 5. ? Ephorus, Fragm. 68, Marx. 

3 Pausan. ix. 36, 1-3. See also a legend, about the three daughters of 
Minyas, which was treated by the Tanngrzan poetess Korinna, the contempo 
rary of Pindar (Antonin. Liberalis, Narr. x.). 

4 This exile of Hyéttus was recounted in the Eoiai. Hesiod, Fragm. 148 
Merkt. 


TROPHONIUS AND AGAMEDES. 129 


‘The Orchomenian power was now at its height: both Minyas 
and Orchomenos had been princes of surpassing wealth, and the 
former had built a spacious and durable edifice which he had 
filled with gold and silver. But the success of Erginus against 
Thébes was soon terminated and reversed by the hand of the 
irresistible Héraklés, who rejected with disdain the claim of 
tribute, and even mutilated the envoys sent to demand it: he 
not only emancipated Thébes, but broke down and impoverished 
Orchomenos.! Erginus in his old age married a young wife, 
from which match sprang the illustrious heroes, or gods, Tro- 
phénius and Agamédés; though many (amongst whom is Pausa- 
nius himself) believed Trophonius to be the son of Apollo.3 
Trophénius, one of the most memorable persons in Grecian 
mythology, was worshipped as a god in various places, but with 
especial sanctity as Zeus Trophonius at Lebadeia: in his temple 
at this town, the prophetic manifestations outlasted those of Del- 
phi itself Trophénius and Agamédés, enjoying matchless 
renown as architects, built’ the temple of Delphi, the thalamus 
of Amphitryén at Thébes, as well as the inaccessible vault of 
Hyrieus at Hyria, in which they are said to have left one stone 
removable at pleasure, so as to reserve for themselves a secret 
entrance. They entered so frequently, and stole so much gold 
and silver, that Hyrieus, astonished at his losses, at length spread 
a fine net, in which Agamédés was inextricably caught: Tropho- 
nius cut off his brother’s head and carried it away, so that the 


' Pausan. ix. 37,2. Apollod. ii. 4,11. Diod6r. iv. 10. The two latter 
tell us that Erginus was slain. Klymené is among the wives and daughters 
of the heroes seen by Odysseus in Hadés: she is termed by the Schol. 
daughter of Minyas (Odyss. xi. 325). 

* Pausan. ix. 37, 1-3. Aéyera: δὲ ὁ Τροφώνιος ᾿Απόλλωνος εἶναι, καὶ οὐκ 
Ἔργίνου - καὶ ἐγώ τε πείϑομαι, καὶ ὅστις παρὰ Τροφώνιον ἦλϑε δὴ μαντευσό- 
μενος. 

3 Plutarch, De Defectu Oracul. c. 5, p. 411. Strabo, ix. p. 414. The 
mention of the honeyed cakes, both in Aristophanés (Nub. 508) and Pausa- 
nias (ix. 39, 5), indicates that the curious preliminary ceremonies, for those 
who consulted the oracle of Trophénius, remained the same after a lapse of 
$50 years. Pausanias consulted it himself. There had been at one time an 
oracle of Teiresias at Orchomenos: but it had become silent at an early 
period (Plutarch. Defect. Oracul. c. 44, p. 484). 

“Homer. Hymn, Apoll. 296. Pausan. ix. 11, 1. 

VOL. 1. 6° Goc 


130 HISTORY OF GRERCE 


body, which alone remained, was insufficient to identify the thief 
Like Amphiaraos, whom he resembles in more than one respect, 
Trophonius was swallowed up by the earth near Lebadeia.! 

From Trophdénius and Agamédés the Orchomenian genealogy 
passes to Ascalaphos and Ialmenos, the sons of Arés by Astyo- 
ché, who are named in the Catalogue of the Tliad as leaders of 
the thirty ships from Orchomenos against Troy. Azeus, the 
grandfather of Astyoché in the Iliad, is introduced as the brother 
of Erginus? by Pausanias, who does not carry the pedigree 
lower. 

The genealogy here given out of Pausanias is deserving of the 
more attention, because it seems to have been copied from the 
special history of Orchomenos by the Corinthian Kallippus, who 
again borrowed from the native Orchomenian poet, Chersias: the 
works of the latter had never come into the hands of Pausanias. 
It illustrates forcibly the principle upon which these mythical 
genealogies were framed, for almost every personage in the series 
is an Eponymus. Andreus gave his name to the country, Atha- 
mas to the Athamantian plain; Minyas, Orchomenos, Kordénus, 
Haliartus, Almos and Hyéttos, are each in like manner connected 
with some name of’ people, tribe, town or village; while Chrysé 
and Chrysogeneia have their origin in the reputed ancient wealth 
of Orchomenos. Abundant discrepancies are found, however, in 
respect to this old genealogy, if we look to other accounts. Ac- 
cording to one statement, Orchomenos was the son of Zeus by 
Isioné, daughter of Danaus; Minyas was the son of Orchome- 
nos (or rather of Poseidén) by Hermippé, daughter of Beedtos ; 
the sons of Minyas were Presbon, Orchomenos, Athamas and 
Diochthéndas.? Others represented Minyas as son of Poseidén 


' Pausan. ix. 37,3. A similar story, but far more romantic and amplified, 
is told by Herodotus [ii. 121), respecting the treasury vault of Rhampsini- 
tus, king of Egypt. (harax (ap. Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 508) gives the same 
tale, but places the scene in the treasury-vault of Augeas, king of Elis, 
which he says was built by Trophénius, to whom he assigns a totally 
different genealogy. The romantic adventures of the tale rendered it emi- 
nently fit to be interwoven at some point or another of legendary history, im 
any country. 

* Pausan. ix. 38, 6; 29, 1. 

ἢ Schol. Apollén. Rhod. i. 230. Compare Schol. ad Lycophron. 873. 


ORCAOMENIAN GENEALOGY. 131 


by Kallirrhoé, an Oceanic nymph,' while Dionysius called him 
son of Arés, and Aristodémus, son of Aleas: lastly, there were 
not waiting authors who termed both Minyas and Orchomenos 
sons of Eteoklés.2 Nor do we find in any one of these gen- 
ealogies the name of Amphién, the son of Iasus, who figures 
so prominently in the Odyssey as king of Orchomenos, and whose 
beautiful daughter Chloris is married to Néleus. Pausanias 
mentions him, but not as king, which is the denomination given 
to him in Homer.? 

The discrepancies here cited are hardly necessary in order to 
prove that these Orchomenian genealogies possess no historical 
value. Yet some probable inferences appear deducible from the 
general tenor of the legends, whether the facts and persons of 
which they are composed be real or fictitious. 

Throughout all the historical age, Orchomenos is a member of 
the Beedtian confederation. But the Boedtians are said to have 
been immigrants into the territory which bore their name from 
Thessaly ; and prior to the time of their immigration, Orchome- 
nos and the surrounding territory appear as possessed by the 
Minyz, who are recognized in that locality both in the Iliad and 
in the Odyssey,‘ and from whom the constantly recurring Epon- 
ymus, King Minyas, is borrowed by the genealogists. Poetical 
legend connects the Orchomenian Minyz on the one side, with 
Pylos and Tryphylia in Peloponnésus ; on the other side, with 
Phthiétis and the town of Iélkos in Thessaly ; also with Corinth 


' Schol. Pindar, Olymp. xiv. 5. 

2 Schol. Pindar, Isthm. i. 79. Other discrepancies in Schol. Vett. ad Iliad. 
ii. Catalog. 18. 

3 Odyss. xi. 283. Pausan. ix. 36, 3. 

4 Tliad, ii. 5,11. Odyss. xi. 283. Hesiod, Fragm. Eoiai, 27, Diintz. Ἴξεν 
δ᾽ ’Opxouevov Μινυήϊον. Pindar, Olymp. xiv. 4. Παλαιγόνων Μινυᾶν ἐπίσ- 
κοποι. Herodot. i. 146. Pausanias calls them Minyz even in their 
dealings with Sylla (ix. 30,1). Buttmann, in his Dissertation (iiber die 
Minye der Altesten Zeit, in the Mythologus, Diss. xxi. p. 218), doubts 
whether the name Minyz was ever a real name; but all the passages make 
against his opinion. sont 

5 Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 1186. i. 230. Σκήψιος δὲ Δημήτρίος φησι τοὺς 
περὶ τὴν ᾿Ιωλκὸν οἰκοῦντας Μινύας καλεῖσϑαι., and i. 763. Τὴν γὰρ Ἰωλκὸν 
"ἡ Μίνυαι gic wv, ὥς φησι Σιμωνίδης ἐν Συμμικτοῖς : also Eustath. ad Hliad. ii 
512. Stepn Byz. v. Μινύα. Orchomenos and Pylos ran together in the 
mind of the poet of the Odyssey, xi. 458. 


—— > — .«- ~ ο 
ὭΣ 4 


ων πο -π--......-ὄ. ee 


J 


182 HISTORY OF GREEUs. 


through Sisyphus and his sons. Pherekydés represented Néleus, 
king of Pylos, as having also been king of Orchomenos.'! In the 
region of Triphylia, near to or coincident with Pylos, a Minyeian 
river is mentioned by Homer; and we find traces of residents 
called Miny even in the historical times, though the account 
given by Herodotus of the way in which they came thither is 
strange and unsatisfactory.? 

Before the great changes which took place in the inhabitants 
of Greece from the immigration of the Thesprotians into Thessaly, 
of the Beedtians into Beedétia, and of the Dérians and /Etdlians 
into Peloponnésus, at a date which we have no means of deter 
mining, the Minye and tribes fraternally connected with them 
seem to have occupied a large portion of the surface of Greece, 
from Iélkos in Thessaly to Pylos in the Peloponnésus. The 
wealth of Orchomenos is renowned even in the Iliad ;} and when 
we study its topography in detail, we are furnished with a proba- 
ble explanation both of its prosperity and its decay. Orchome- 
nos was situated on the northern bank of the lake K6pais, which 
receives not only the river Képhisos from the valleys of Phdkis, 
but also other rivers from Parnassus and Helicén. The waters 
of the lake find more than one subterranean egress — partly 
through natural rifts and cavities in the limestone mountains, 
partly through a tunnel pierced artificially more than a mile in 
length — into the plain on the north-eastern side, from whence 
they flow into the Eubean sea near Larymna + and it appears 


| Pherekyd. Fragm. 56, Didot. We see by the 55th Fragment of the 
same author, that he extended the genealogy of Phryxos to Phers in 
Thessaly. 

3 Herodot. iv. 145. Strabo, viii. 337-347. Hom. Iliad, xi. 721. Pausan. 
v. 1, 7. ποταμὸν Μινυήϊον, near Elis. 


: Iifad, ix. 381. 
4 See the description of these channels or Katabothra in Colonel Leake’s 


Travels in Northern Greece, vol. ii. c. 15, p. 281-293, and still more elabo- 
rately in Fiedler, Reise durch alle Theile des KGnigreichs Griechenlands, 
Leipzig, 1840. He traced fifteen perpendicular shafts sunk for the purpose 
of admitting air inte the tunnel, the first separated from the last by about 
$900 feet: they are now of course overgrown and stopped up (vol. i. p 
115). 

Forchhammer states the length of this tunnel as considerably greater than 
what is here stated. He also gives a plan of the Lake Kopais with the sam 


AMPHIKTYONY AT KALA‘RIA. 188 


éhat, 20 long as these channels were diligently watched and kepi 
clear, a large portion of the lake was in the condition of alluvial 
land, preéminently rich and fertile. But when the channels cama 
to be either neglected, or designedly choked up by an enemy, ths 
water accumulated to such a degree, as to occupy the soil of more 
than one ancient town, to endanger the position of Képs, and to 
occasion the change of the site of Orchomenos itself from the 
plain to the declivity of Mount Hyphanteion. An engineer, 
Kratés, began the clearance of the obstructed water-courses in 
the reign of Alexander the Great, and by his commission — the 
destroyer of Thébes being anxious to reéstablish the extince 
prosperity of Orchomenos. He succeeded so far as partially ὦ 
drain and diminish the lake, whereby the site of more than one 
ancient city was rendered visible: but the revival of Thébes by 
Kassander, after the decease of Alexander, arrested the progress 
of the undertaking, and the lake soon regained its former dimen- 
sions, to contract which no farther attempt was made.! 
According to the Théban legend,? Héraklés, after his defeat of 
Erginus had blocked up the exit of the waters, and converted 
the Orchomenian plain into a lake. The spreading of these 
waters is thus connected with the humiliation of the Minye ; and 
there can be little hesitation in ascribing to these ancient tenants 
of Orchomenos, before it became beeotized, the enlargement and 
preservation of these protective channels. Nor could such an 
object have been accomplished, without combined action and ac- 
knowledged ascendency on the part of that city over its neigh- 
bors, extending even to the sea at Larymna, where the river Ké- 
phisos discharges itself. Of its extended influence, as well as 
of its maritime activity, we find a remarkable evidence in the 
ancient and venerated Amphiktyony ate Kalauria. ‘The little 18. 


sounding region, which I have placed at the end of the second volume of 
this History. See also infra, vol. ii. ch. iii. p. 391. 


! We owe this interesting fact to Strabo, who is however both concise 


and unsatisfactory, viii. p. 406-407. It was affirmed that there had bees 
two ancient towns, named Eleusis and Athéne, originally foanded by Ce 
créps, situated on the lake, and thus overflowed (Steph. Byz. v. "A0iva: 
Diogen. Laért. iv. 23. Pausan. ix. 24, 2). For the plain or marsh near Or 
chomenos, see Plutarch, Sylla, c. 20-22. 

3 Diodér. iv. 18. Pausan. ix. 38, 5 


184 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


land so named, near the harbor of Troezén, in Peloponnésns, wae 
sacred to Poseidén, and an asylum of inviolable sanctity. At the 
temple of Poseid6n, in Kalauria, there had existed, from unknown 
date, a periodical sacrifice, celebrated by seven cities in common 
— Hermioné, Epidaurus, Agina, Athens, Prasiz, Nauplia, and 
the Minyeian Orchomenos. This ancient religious combination 
dates from the time when Nauplia was independent of Argos, 
and Prasiz of Sparta: Argos and Sparta, according to the usual 
practice in Greece, continued to fulfil the obligation each on the 
part of its respective dependent.! Six out of the seven states are 
at once sea-towns, and near enough to Kalauria to account for 
their participation in this Amphiktyony. But the junction of 
Orchomenos, from its comparative remoteness, becomes inexpli- 
cable, except on the supposition that its territory reached the sea, 
and that it enjoyed a considerable maritime traffic — a fact which 
helps to elucidate both its legendary connection with Idlkos, and 
its partnership in what is called the Ionic emigration.2, The my- 
thical genealogy, whereby Ptoos, Schceneus and Erythrios are 
enumerated among the sons of Athamas, goes farther to confirm 
the idea that the towns and localities on the south-east of the 
lake recognized a {fraternal origin with the Orchomenian Minye, 
not less than Kor6éneia and Haliartus on the south-west. 

The great power of Orchomenos was broken down, and the 
city reduced to a secondary and half-dependent position by the 
Beedtians of Thébes; at what time, and under what circumstances, 
history has not preserved. The story, that the Theban hero, 
Héraklés, rescued his native city from servitude and tribute to 
Orchomenos, since it comes from a Kadmeian and not from an 
Orchomenian legend, and since the details of it were favorite 
subjects of commemoration in the Thébian temples,‘ affords a 
presumption that Thébes was really once dependent on Orcho- 


' Strabo, viii. p. 374. Ἦν δὲ καὶ ᾿Αμφικτυονία τις περὲ τὸ cepdy τοῦτο, éxta 
πόλεων al μετεῖχον τῆς ϑυσίας" ἦσαν δὲ "Ἑρμιὼν, ‘Exidavpoc, Αἴγινα, ᾿Αϑῆναι, 
Πρασιεῖς, Νανπλιεῖς, ᾿Ορχόμενος ὁ Μινύειος. “Ὑπὲρ μὲν οὖν τὼν Ναυπλιεέιων 
᾿Αργεῖοι, ὑπὲρ Πρασιέων δὲ Δακεδαιμόνιοι, ξυνετέλουν. 

* Pansan. ix. 17, 1; 36,1. 

3 See Muller, Orchomenos und die Minyer, p. 214. Pausan. ix. 23, ὃ 
4,3. The genealogy is as old as the poet Asios, 

4 Hero? i. 146. Pausan. vii. 2, 2. 


THEBES AND ORCHOMENUS. 185 


menos. Moreover tbe savage mutilations inflicted by the hero 
on the tribute-seeking envoys, so faithfully portrayed in his sur 
name Rhinokoloustés, infuse into the mythe a portion of that 
bitter feehng which so long prevailed between Thébes and Or- 
chomenos, and which led the Thébans, as soon as the battle of 
Leuctra had placed supremacy in their hands, to destroy and de- 
populate their rival! The ensuing generation saw the same fate 
retorted upon Thébes, combined wita the restoration of Orcho- 
menos. The legendary grandeur of this city continued, long 
after it had ceased to be distinguished for wealth and power, im- 
perishably recorded both in the minds of the nobler citizens and 
in the compositions of the poets ; the emphatic language of Pau- 
sanias shows how much he found concerning it in the old epic.* 


SECTION Il.—DAUGHTERS OF HOLUS. 


With several of the daughters of /Zolus memorable mythical 
pedigrees and narratives are connected. Alcyéne married Kéyx, 
the son of Eésphoros, but both she and her husband displayed 
in a high degree the overweening insolence common in the A®olic 
race. The wife called her husband Zeus, while he addressed her 
as Héré, for which presumptuous act Zeus punished them by 


changing both into birds. 
Canacé had by the god Poseidén several children, amongst 
1 Theocrit. xvi. 104.— 
Ὦ 'EredxAeroe ϑύγατρες Deal, al Μινύειον 
Ὀρχόύμενον φιλέοισαι, ἀπεχϑόμενόν ποκα Θήβαις. 

The scholiast gives a sense to these words much narrower than they really 
bear. See Diodor. xv. 79; Pausan. ix. 15. In the oration which Isokratés 
places in the mouth of a Platzan, complaining of the oppressions of Thébes, 
the ancient servitude and tribute to Orchomenos is cast in the teeth of the 
Thébans (Isokrat. Orat. Plataic. vol. iii. p. 32, Auger). 

2 Pausan. ix. 34,5. See also the fourteenth Olympie Ode of Pindar, ad- 
dressed to the Orchomenian Asopikus. The learned and instructive work 
of K. O. Miiller, Orchomenos und die Minyer, embodies everything which 
can be known respecting this once-memorable city; indeed the contents of 


the work extends much farther than its title promises. 
? Apollodér. i.7, 4. A. Kéyx, —king of Trachin, — the friend of Héraklés 


and protector of the Hérakleids to the extent of his power ( Hesiod. Scut 
Bercul. 355-473 : Apollodér. ii. 7,5; Hekate. Fragm. 353, Didot.). 


136 HISTO tY OF GREECE. 


whom were Epépeus and Aldeus.! Aléeus married Imphimédea, 
who became enamored of the god Poseidén, and boasted of her 
intimacy with him. She had by him two sons, Otos and Ephi- 
altés, the huge and formidable Aloids,— Titanic beings, nine 
fathoms in height and nine cubits in breadth, even in their boy- 
hood, before they had attained their full strength. These Aldids 
deiied and insulted the gods in Olympus ; they paid their court 
to Héré and Artemis, and they even seized and bound Areés, 
confining him in a brazen chamber for thirteen months. No one 
knew where he was, and the intolerable chain would have worn 
him to death, had not Eribcea, the jealous stepmother of the 
Aldids, revealed the place of his detention to Hermés, who carried 
him surreptitiously away when at the last extremity ; nor could 
Arés obtain any atonement for such an indignity. Otus and 
Ephialtés even prepared to assault the gods in heaven, piling up 
Ossa on Olympus and Pelion on Ossa, in order to reach them. 
And this they would have accomplished had they been allowed 
to grow to their full maturity; but the arrows of Apollo put a 
timely end to their short-lived career.? 


' Canacé, daughter of Molus, is a subject of deep tragical interest both in 


Euripidés and Ovid. The eleventh Heroic Epistle of the latter, founded 
mainly on the lost tragedy of the former called Kolus, purports to be from 
Canacé to Macareus, and contains a pathetic description of the ill-fated pas- 
sion between a brother and sister: see the fragments of the AZolus in Din- 
dorf’s collection. In the tale of Kaunos and Byblis, both children of Milétos, 
the results of an incestuous passion are different but hardly less melancholy 
(Parthenios, Narr. xi.). 

Makar, the son of ‘£Zolus, is the primitive settler of the island of Lesbos 
(Hom, Hymn. Apoll. 37): moreover in the Odyssey, Holus son of Hippotés, 
the dispenser of the winds, has six sons and six daughters, and marries 
the former to the latter (Odyss.x. 7). The two persons called Molus are 
brought into connection genealogically (see Schol. ad Odyss. |. c., and Dio- 
dér. iv. 67), but it seems probable that Euripidés was the first to place the 
names of Macareus and Canacé in that relation which confers upon them 
their poetical celebrity. Sostratus (ap. Stobeum, t. 614, p. 404) can hardly 
be considered to have borrowed from any older source than Euripidés 
Welcker (Griech. Tragéd. vol. ii. p. 860) puts together all that ca1 be known 
respecting the structure of the lost drama of Euripidés. 

3 Tliad, v. 386; Odyss. xi. 306; Apol.odér.i.7.4. So Typhéeus, in the 
Hesiodic Theogony, the last enemy of the gods, is killed before he comes 
to maturity (Theog. 837). For the diffe-ent turns given tw this ancient Ho 


THE GIGANTIC ALOIDS. 187 


The genealogy assigned to Calycé, another daughter of Zolus, 
conducts us from Thessaly to Elis and AXtélia. She married 
Aéthlius (the son of Zeus by Prétogeneia, daughter of Deukalion 
and sister of Hellén), who conducted a colony out of Thessaly 
and settled in the territory of Elis. He had for his son Endy- 
midn, respecting whom the Hesiodic Catalogue and the Koiai 
related several wonderful things. Zeus granted him the privilege 
of determining the hour of his own death, and even translated 
him into heaven, which he forfeited by daring to pay court to 
Héré: his vision in this criminal attempt was cheated by a cloud, 
and he was cast out into thé under-world.' According to other 


seus does not see them in Hadés, as Heyne by mistake says; he sees their 
mother Iphimédea. Virgil (En. vi. 582) assigns to them a place among the 
sufferers of punishment in ‘Tartarus. 

Eumélus, the Corinthian poet, designated Aldeus as son of the god Hélios 
and brother of Aétés, the father of Médea (Eumeél. Fragm. 2, Marktscheffel). 
The scene of their death was subsequently laid in Naxos ( Pindar, Pyth. iv. 
88): their tombs were seen at Anthédon in Boootia (Pausan. ix. 22,4). The 
very curious legend alluded to by Pausanias from Hegesinoos, the author of 
an Atthis, — to the effect that Otos and Ephialtés were the first to establish 
the worship of the Muses in Helic6n, and that they founded Ascra along with 
(Eoklos, the son of Poseidén, — is one which we have no means of tracing 
farther (Pausan. ix. 29, 1). 

The story of the Aldids, as Diodérus gives it (v. 51, 52), diverges on 
almost every point: it is evidently borrowed from some Naxian archeologist, 
and the only information which we collect from it is, that Otos and Ephialtés 
received heroic honors at Naxos. The views of O. Maller (Orchomenos, p. 
387) appear to me unusually vague and fanciful. 

Ephialtés takes part in the combat of the giants against the gods , Apollo- 
dor. t. 6, 2), where Heyne remarks, as in so many other cases, “ Ephialtés hic 
non confundendus cum altero Aldei filio;” an observation just indeed, if we 
are supposed to be dealing with personages and adventures historically real, 
but altogether misleading in regard to these legendary characters ; for here 
the general conception of Ephialtés and his attributes is in both cases the 
same; but the particular adventures ascribed to him cannot be made to con- 
sist, as facts, one with the other. 

' Hesiod, Akusilaus and Pherekydés, ap. Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iv, 57. 
‘ly δ᾽ αὐτῷ Yavarov ταμίης. The Scholium is very full of matter, and ex 
hibits many of the diversities in the tale of Endymion: see also Apollodés 


7,5; Pausan. v. 1,2; Conon. Narr. 14. 


288 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


stories, his great beauty caused the goddess Séléne to become enw 
mored of him, and to visit him by night during his sleep: — the 
sleep of Endymién became a proverbial expression for enviable, 
undisturbed, and deathless repose.! Endymién had for issue 
(Pausanias gives us three different accounts, and Apollodérus a 
fourth, of the name of his wife) Epeios, Atélus, Peén, and a 
daughter Eurykydé. He caused his three sons to run ἃ \race on 
the stadium at Olympia, and Epeios, being victorious, was re- 
warded by becoming his successor in the kingdom: it was after 
him that the people were denominated Epeians. . 

Both the story here mentioned, and still more, the etymologi 
cal signification of the names Aéthlius and Endymion, seem 
plainly to indicate (as has before been remarked) that this gene- 
alogy was not devised until after the Olympic games had become 
celebrated and notorious throughout Greece. 

Epeios had no male issue, and was succeeded by his nephew 
Eleios, son of Euykydé by the god Poseid6én: the name of the 
people was then changed from Epeians to Eleians. ZEtolus, the 
brother of Epeios, having slain Apis, son of Phoroneus, was com 
pelled to flee from the country: he crossed the Corinthian gulf 
and settled in the territory then called Kurétis, but to which he 
gave the name of /Etolia. 

The son of Eleios,—or, according to other accounts, of the 
god Hélios, of Poseidén, or of Phorbas,’ — is Augeas, whom we 
find mentioned in the Dliad as king of the Epeians or Eleians. 
Nestér gives a long and circumstantial narrative of his own ex- 
ploits at the head of his Pylian countrymen against his neighbors 
the Epeians and their king Augeas, whom he defeated with great 
loss, slaying Mulios, the king’s son-in-law, and acquiring a vast 


ΟΝ ΝΝΕΝΟΝΝΝ 


1 Theocrit. iii. 49: xx. 35; where, however, Endymion is connected with 


Latmos in Caria (see Schol. ad loc). 

 Pausan. v. 1. 3-6; Apollodor. i. 7, 6. 

3. Apollodor. ii. 5, δ; Sehol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 172. In all probability, the 
uld legend made Augeas the son of the god Helios: Hélios, Augeas and Agar 
médé are a triple series parallel to the Corinthian genealogy, Hélios, fetes 
and Média; not to mention that the etymology of Augeas connects him 
with H3lios. Theocritus (xx. 55) designates him as the son of the god Hé 

fios, through whose favor his cattle are made to prosper and multiply with 
such astonishing success (xx. 117). 


ELEIAN GENEALOGY. 139 


booty.!| Augeas was rich in all sorts of rural wealth, and pos- 
sessed herds of cattle so numerous, that the dung of the animals 
accumulated in the stable or cattle enclosures beyond all power 
of endurance. Eurystheus, as an insult to Héraklés, imposed 
upon him the obligation of cleansing this stable: the hero, dis- 
daining to carry off the dung upon his shoulders, turned the course 
of the river Alpheios through the building, and thus swept the 
encumbrance away.2 But Augeas, in spite of so signal a ser- 
vice, refused to Héraklés the promised reward, though his son 
Phyleus protested against such treachery, and when he found that 
he could not induce his father to keep faith, retired in sorrow 
and wrath to the island of Dulichién.3 To avenge the deceit 
practised upon him, Héraklés invaded Elis; but Augeas had 
powerful auxiliaries, especially his nephews, the two Molionids 
(sons of Poseidén by Molioné, the wife of Aktér), Eurytos and 
Kteatos. ‘These two miraculous brothers, of transcendent force, 
grew together, — having one body, but two heads and four arms.‘ 


' Iliad, xi. 670-760 ; Pherekyd. Fragm. 57, Didot. 

* DiodSr. iv. 13. Ὕβρεως ἕνεκεν Εὐρυσϑεὺς προσέταξε καϑᾶραι " 5 δὲ ‘Hpa- 
κλῆς τὸ μὲν τοῖς yore ἐξενεγκεῖν αὐτὴν ἀπεδοκίμασιν, ἐκκλίνων τὴν ἐκ τῆς 
ὕβρεως αἰσχύνην, etc. (Pausan. ν. 1. 7; Apollodér. ii. δ, 5). 

It may not be improper to remark that this fable indicates a purely pasto 
ral condition, or at least a singularly rude state of agriculture; and the way 
in which Pausanias recounts it goes even beyond the genuine story: ὡς καὶ 
τὰ πολλὰ τῆς χώρας αὐτῷ ἤδη διατελεῖν ἀργὰ ὄντα ὑπὸ τῶν βοσκημάτων τῆς 
κόπρου. The slaves of Odysseus however know what use to make of the 
dung heaped before his outer fence (Odyss. xvii. 299); not so the purely 
carnivorous and pastoral Cycléps (Odyss. ix. 329). The stabling into which 
the cattle go from their pasture, is called κόπρος in Homer, —’EAVoicac ἐς 
κόπρον, ἐπὴν βοτανῆς κορέσωνται (Odyss. x. 411): compare Iliad, xviii. 575 
— Μυκηϑμῷ δ᾽ ἀπὸ κόπρου ἐπεσσεύοντο πέδονδε. 

The Augeas of Theocritus has abundance of wheat-land and vineyard, as 
well as cattle: he ploughs his land three or four times, and digs his vine- 
yard diligently (xx. 20-32). 

ὁ The wrath and retirement of Phyleus is mentioned in the Iliad (ii. 633), 
but not the cause of it. 

* These singular properties were ascribed to them both in the Hesiodic 
poems and by Pherekydés (Schol. Ven. ad Il. xi. 715-750, et ad Il. xxiii. 
688), but not in the Iliad. The poet Ibykus (Fragm. 11, Schneid. ap. Athena. 
ti. 57) calls them ἅλικας ἱσοκεφάλους, éviyviovc, ᾿Αμφοτέρους γεγαῶτας ἐν 
ὠέῳ ἀργυρέῳ. 

There were temples and divine honors to Zeus Molién (Lactanfius. de 
FalsA Religione. i. 22) 


σας 


ω "ν΄ - 


a τὸ» ὕ ὕ - 


140 HISTORY OF GREECE 


Such was their irresistible might, that Héraklés was defeated 
and repelled from Elis: but presently the Eleians sent the two 
Molionid brothers as Thedri (sacred envoys) to the Isthmian 
games, and Héraklés, placing himself 1 ambush at Kle6nz, sur- 
prised and killed them as they passed through. For this murder- 
ous act the Eleians in vain endeavored to obtain redress both at 
Corinth and at Argos; which is assigneJ as the reason for the 
self-ordained exclusion, prevalent throughout all the historical 
age, that no Eleian athléte would ever present himself as a com- 
petitor at the Isthmian games.! The Molionids being thus re- 
moved, Héraklés again invaded Elis, and kiliead Augeas along 
with his children,— all except Phyleus, whom he brought over 
from Dulichidn, and put in possession of his father’s kingdom. Ac- 
cording to the more gentle narrative which Pausanias adopts, Au- 
geas was not killed, but pardoned at the request of Phyleus.2 He 
was worshipped as a hero? even down to the time of that author. 

It was on occasion of this conquest of Elis, according to the old 
mythe which Pindar has ennobled in a magnificent ode, that 
Héraklés first consecrated the ground of Olympia, and established 
the Olympic games. Such at least was one of the many fables 
respecting the origin of that memorable institution.‘ 

Phyleus, after having restored order in Elis, retired again to 
Dulichion, and left the kingdom to his brother Agasthenés, which 
again brings us into the Homeric series. For Polyxenos, son of 
Agasthenés, is one of the four commanders of the Epeian forty 
ships in the Iliad, in conjunction with the two sons of Eurytos 


πωσιπισπον α οπτκμνηκαπη ο σπου»... --. 


' Pausan. v. 2,4. The inscription cited by Pausanias proves that this was 
the reason assigned by the Eleian athlétes themselves for the exclusion ; but 
there were several different stories. 

3. Apollodér. ii. 7,2. Diodér. iv. 33. Pausan. v. 2,2; 3,2. It seems evi- 
dent from these accounts that the genuine legend represented Héraklés as 
having been defeated by the Molionids : the unskilful evasions both of Apol- 
lod6rus and Diodérus betray this. Pindar (Olymp. xi. 25-50) gives the story 
without any flattery to Héraklés. 

* Pansan. v. 4, ll. 

‘The Amenian copy of Eusebius gives a different genealogy respecting 
Elis and Pisa: Atthlius, Epeius, Endymién, Alexinus; next (Enomaus and 
Pélops, then Héraklés. Some counted en generations, others three, betweeti 
Héraklés and Inhitus, who renewed the discontinued Olympic games (eee 


Armem. Euseb. cc py c. xxxii. p. 140). 


EPEIANS AND ELEIANS. 141 


and Kteatos, and with Diérés son of Amarynceus. Megés, the 
son of Phyleus, commands the contingent from Dulichién and the 
Kchinades.! Polyxenos returns safe from Troy, is succeeded by 
his son Amphimachos, — named after the Epeian chief who had 
fallen before Troy,—and he again by another Eleios, in whose 
time the Dorians and the Hérakleids invade Peloponnésus.2 
These two names, barren of actions or attributes, are probably 
introduced by the genealogists whom Pausanias followed, to fill 
up the supposed interval between the Trojan war and the Dorian 
imvasion. 

We find the ordinary discrepancies in respect to the series and 
the members of this genealogy. Thus some called Epeios son of 
Aéthlius, others son of Endymién :3 a third pedigree, which car 
ries the sanction of Aristotle and is followed by Cénon, designated 
Eleios, the first settler of Elis, as son of Poseidén and Eurypylé, 
daughter of Endymién, and Epeios and Alexis as the two sons of 
Eleios.t| And Pindar himself, in his ode to Epharmostus the 
Locrian, introduces with much emphasis another king of the 
Epeians named Opus, whose daughter, pregnant by Zeus, was 
conveyed by that god to the old and childless king Locrus: the 
child when born, adopted by Locrus and named Opus, became the 
eponymous hero of the city so called in Locris.5 Moreover Heka- 
tus the Milesian not only affirmed (contrary both to the Iliad 
and the Odyssey) that the Epeians and the Eleians were different 
people, but also added that the Epeians had assisted Héraklés in 
his expedition against Augeas and Elis; a narrative very differ- 
ent from that of Apollodérus and Pausanias, and indicating besides 
that he must have had before him a genealogy varying from 
theirs.® 

It has already been mentioned that Atlus, son of Endymién, 

' Tliad, ii. 615-630. 

* Schol. Pindar, Olymp. ix. 86. 


Bina Ven. ad IL. xi. 687 ; Conén, Narrat. xv. ap. Scriptt. Mythogr. West 
p. 130. 

ὁ Pindar, Olymp. ix. 62: Schol. ibid. 86. ᾿Οποῦντος hv ϑυγάτηρ ᾿Ηλείων 
βασιλέως, ἣν ᾿Αριστοτέλης Καμβύσην καλεῖ. 

* ᾿Εκαταῖος δὲ ὁ Μιλήσιος ἑτέρους λέγει τῶν ᾿Ηλείων τοὺς ᾿Ἐπείους" τῳ your 
Ηρακλεὶ συστρατεῦσαι τοὺς 'Emeiove καὶ συνανελεῖν αὐτῷ τόν τε Αὐγέαν καὶ 
τὴν "Haw (Hekat. ap. Strab. viii. p. 341). 


3 Pausan. v. 3, 4. 


— 


ee ee 


-. ΡΝ 


“προ .......... ee 


eee oe ee ee ee 
3 4 = 


142 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


quitted Peloponnésus in consequence of having slain Apis.! ‘The 
country on the north of the Corinthian gulf, between the rivere 
Fuénus and Achelous, received from him the name of A@télia 
instead of that of Kurétis. he acquired possession of it after having 
slain Dérus, Laodokus and Polypostes, sons of Apollo and Phthia, 
by whom he had been well received. He had by his wife Pronoé 
(the daughter of Phorbas) two sons, Pleuron and Kalydon, and 
from them the two chief towns in A‘toélia were named.2 Pleur6én 
married Xanthippé, daughter of Dérus, and had for his son Agé- 
nor, from whom sprang Portheus, or Porthaou, and Demoniké : 
Euénos and Thestius were children of the latter by the god 
Arés.' 

Portheus had three sons, Agrius, Melas and (που: among 
the offspring of 'Thestius were Althea and Léda,* — names which 
bring us to a period of interest in the legendary history. Léda 
marries Tyndareus and becomes mother of Helena and the Dios- 
curi: Althza marries Cineus, and has, among other children, 
Meleager and Deianeira; the latter being begotten by the god 
Dionysus, and the former by Arés.5 Tydeus also is his son, the 


' Ephorus said that A¢télus had been expelled by Salméneus king of the 
Epeians and Pisate (ap. Strabo. viii. p. 357): he must have had before him a 
different story and different genealogy from that which is given in the text. 

3. Apollodér. i. 7,6. Dérus, son of Apollo and Phthia, killed by £télus, 
after having hospitably received him, is here mentioned. Nothing at all is 
known of this ; but the conjunction of names is such as to render it probable 
that there was some legend connected with them: possibly the assistance 
given by Apollo to the Kuretes against the Aitolians, and the death of Melea- 
ger by the hand of Apollo, related both in the Eoiai and the Minyas ( Pausan. x. 
31, 2), may have ‘been grounded upon it. The story connects itself with what 
is stated by Apollodérus about Dérus son of Hellén (see supra, p. 136). 

* According to the ancient genealogical poet Asius, Thestius was son of 
Agénér the son of Pleurén (Asii Fragm. 6, p. 413,ed. Marktsch.). Compare 
the genealogy of A‘télia and the general remarks upon it, in Brandstéter, 
Geschichte des Etol. Landes, etc., Berlin, 1844, p. 23 seq. 

4 Respecting Léda, see the statements of Ibykus, Pherekydés, Hellanikus, 
ete. (Schol. Apollén. Rhod. i. 146). The reference to the Corinthiaca of 
Eumélus is curious: it is a specimen of the matters upon which these old 
genealogical poems dwelt. 

® Apollodér. i. 8, 1; Euripidés, Meleager, Frag. 1. The three sons of 
Portheus are named in the Iliad (xiv. 116) as living at Pleurén and Kalydéa 
The name CEneus doubtless brings Dionysus into the legend. 


ALTHEZEA AND MELEAGER. 148 


father of Diomédés: warlike eminence goes hand in hand with 
tragic calamity among the members of this memorable family. 
We are fortunate enongh to find the legend of Althza and 
Meleager set forth at considerable length in the Tliad, in the 
speech addressed by Phoenix to appease the wrath of Achilles. 
(ποι, king of Kalydén, in the vintage sacrifices which he offered 
to the gods, omitted to include Artemis: the misguided man either 
forgot her or cared not for her;! and the goddess, provoked by 
such an insult, sent against the vineyards of CEneus a wild boar, of 
vast size and strength, who tore up the trees by the root and laid 
prostrate all their fruit. So terrible was this boar, that nothing less 
than a numerous body of men could venture to attack him: Melea- 
ger, the son of (Eneus, however, having got together a consider- 
able number of companions, partly from the Kurétes of Pleurén, at 
length slew him. But the anger of Artemis was not yet appeased, 
and she raised a dispute among the combatants respecting the pos- 
session of the boar’s head and hide, — the trophies of victory. In 
this dispute, Meleager slew the brother of his mother Althzea, prince 
of the Kurétes of Pleurén: these Kurétes attacked the JEtélians 
of Kalydon in order to avenge their chief. So long as Meleager 
contended in the field the Atélians had the superiority. But he 
presently refused to come forth, indignant at the curses impre- 
cated upon him by his mother: for Althea, wrung with sorrow 
for the death of her brother, flung herself upon the ground in 
tears, beat the earth violently with her hands, and implored 
Hadés and Persephoné to inflict death upon Meleager, — ἃ prayer 
which the unrelenting Erinnys in Erebus heard but too well. So 
keenly did the hero resent this behavior of his mother, that he 
kept aloof from the war; and the Kurétes not only drove the 
/Etélians from the field, but assailed the walls and gates of Kaly- 
dén, and were on the point of overwhelming its dismayed [ἢ 56} τι 
tants. There was no hope of safety except in the arm of 17... 
ger; but Meleager lay in his chamber by the side of his beautifu 
wife Kleopatra, the daughter of Idas, and heeded not the necessity. 


'*H λάϑετ᾽, ἢ οὐκ ἐνόησεν - ἀάσσατο δὲ μέγα ϑυμῷ (Tliad, ix. 533). The ἐς 
structive influence of Até is mentioned before, v. 502. The piety of Xenophén 
reprot‘uces this ancient circumstance, — Οἔνεως δ᾽ ἐν γήρᾳ ἐπ αϑομένον τῆς 
βεοῦ, etc. (De Venat. c. i.) 


Va it 8 


- ~ ' ᾿ 
SS See 


a SE a Re et . 


344 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


While the shouts of expected victory were heard from the assail- 

ants at the gates, the ancient men of ABtolia and the priests οἱ the 
gods earnestly besought Meleager to come forth,' offering him his 
choice of the fattest land in the plain of Kalydon. His dearest 
friends, his father C&neus, his sisters, and even his mother herself 
added their supplications, but he remained inflexible. At length 
the Kurétes penetrated into the town and began to burn it: at 
this last moment, Kleopatra his wife addressed to him her pathetic 
appeal, to avert from her and from his family the desperate hor- 
rors impending over them all. Meleager could no longer resist 

he put on his armor, went forth from his chamber, and repelled 
the enemy. But when the danger was over, his countrymen with- 
beld from him the splendid presents which they had promised, 
because he had rejected their prayers, and had come forth only 
when his own haughty caprice dictated? 

Such is the legend of Meleager in the Iliad: a verse in the 
second book mentions simply the death of Meleager, without far- 
ther details, as a reason why Thoas appeared in command of the 
Etélians before Troy.2 Though the circumstance is indicated only 
indirectly, there seems little doubt that Homer must have con- 
ceived the death of the hero as brought about by the maternal 
curse: the unrelenting Erinnys executed to the letter the invocar 
tions of Althzea, though she herself must have been willing to re- 
goon both enlarged and altered the fable. The Hesi- 
odic Eoiai, as well as the old poem called the Minyas, represented 
Meleager as having been slain by Apollo, who aided the Kurétes 
in the war; and the incident of the burning brand, though quite 
at variance with Homer, is at least as old as the tragic poet Phry- 
nichus, earlier than Auschylus.* The More, or Fates, presenting 
themselves to Althza shortly after the birth of Meleager, pre- 
dicted that the child would die so soon as the brand then burning 
on the fire near at hand should be consumed. Althea snatched 
it from the flames and extinguished it, preserving it with the 
atmost care, until she became incensed against Meleager for the 


i ni alias formed the Chorus in the Meleager of Sophoklés(Schot 
ed Iliad. ib. 575). = 
3 Tliad, ix. 525-595. ° liad. ii. 642. 
4 Pausan. x. 31.2. The Ἰλευρώνιαι, a lost tragedy of Phrynichus 


KALYDONIAN BOAR. 148 


death of her brother. She then cast it into the fire, and as soon 
as it was consumed the life of Meleager was brought to a close. 
We know, from the sharp censure of Pliny, that Sophoklés 
heightened the pathos of this subject by his account of the mourn- 
ful death of Meleager’s sisters, who perished from excess of grief, 
They were changed into the birds called Meleagrides, and their 
never-ceasing tears ran together into amber.! But in the hands 
of Kuripidés — whether originally through him or not,2 we can- 
not tell — Atalanta became the prominent figure and motive of 
the piece, while the party convened to huni the Kalydénian boar 
was made to comprise all the distinguished heroes from every 
quarter of Greece. In fact, as Heyne justly remarks, this event 
is one of the four aggregate dramas of Grecian heroic life,3 along 
with the Argonautic expedition, the siege of Thébes, and the Tro- 
jan war. To accomplish the destruction of the terrific animal 
which Artemis in her wrath had sent forth, Meleager assembled 
not merely the choice youth among the Kurétes and AMtdlians (as 
we fine in the Iliad), but an illustrious troop, including Kastér and 
Pollux, Idas and Lynkeus, Péleus and Telamén, Théseus and 
Peirithous, Ankzus and Képheus, Jasén, Amphiaraus, Admétus, 
Eurytion and others. Nestér and Phenix, who appear as old 
men before the walls of Troy, exhibited their early prowess as 
auxiliaries to the suffering Kalydénians.4 Conspicuous amidst 


them all stood the virgin Atalanta, daughter of the Arcadian 


' Plin. H. N. xxxvii. 2, 11. 

* There was a tragedy of Aschylus called ᾿Αταλάντη, of which nothing 
remains (Bothe, Aschyli Fragm. ix. p. 18). 

Of the more recent dramatic writers, several selected Atalanta as their 
subject (See Brandstater, Geschichte toliens, p. 65). 

* There was a poem of Stesichorus, Συόϑηραι (Stesichor. Fragm. 15. p 
72). 

4 The catalogue of these heroes is in Apollodér. i. 8,2; Ovid, Metamor. 
viii. 800 ; Hygin. fab. 173. Euripidés, in his play of Meleager, gave an ena- 
meration and description of the heroes (see Fragm. 6 of that play, ed. Matth.). 
Nestér, in this picture of Ovid, however, does not appear quite so invincible 
as in his own speeches in the Iliad. The mythographers thought it neces- 
sary to assign a reason why Héraklés was not present at the Kalydonian 
adventure: he was just at that time in servitude with Omphalé in Lydia 
(Apollod. ii. 6,3). This seems to have been the idea of Ephorus, and it is 
mach in his style of interpretation (see Ephor. Fragm. 9, ed. Didot.). 

VOL. I. 7 19ec. 


146 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Schceneus ; beautiful and matchless for swiftness of fout, but living 
in the forest as a huntress and unacceptable to Aphrodité.'! Seve- 
ral of the heroes were slain by the boar, others escaped by va- 
rious stratagems: at length Atalanta first shot him in the back, 
next Amphiaraus in the eye, and, lastly, Meleager killed him. 
Enamoured of the beauty of Atalanta, Meleager made over to her 
the chief spoils of the animal, on the plea that she had inflicted 
the first wound. But his uncles, the brothers of Thestius, took 
them away from her, asserting their rights as next of kin,? if Me- 
leager declined to keep the prize for himself: the latter, exaspe- 
rated at this behavior, slew them. Althza, in deep sorrow for 
her brothers and wrath against her son, is impelled to produce 
the fatal brand which she had so long treasured up, and consign it 
to the flames.3 The tragedy concludes with the voluntary death 
both of Althza and Kleopatra. 

Interesting as the Arcadian huntress, Atalanta, is in herself, 
she is an intrusion, and not a very convenient intrusion, into the 
Homeric story of the Kalyd6énian boar-hunt, wherein another 
female Kleopatra, already occupied the foreground.4 But the 
more recent version became accredited throughout Greece, and 


‘ Euripid. Meleag. Fragm. vi. Matt. — 


Κύπριδος δὲ μίσημ᾽, ᾿Αρκὰς ᾿Αταλάντη, κύνας 
Kai τό 3 ἔχουσα, ete. 

There was a drama “ Meleager " both of Sophoklés and Euripidés : of the 
former hardly any fragments remain, — a few more of the latter. 

3 Hyginus. fab. 229. 

5 Diodér, iv. 34. Apolloddrus (i. 8; 2-4) gives first the usual narrative, in- 
eluding Atalanta; next, the Homeric narrative with some additional circum- 
stances, but not including either Atalanta or the fire-brand on which Melea- 
ger’s life depended. He prefaces the latter with the words οἱ δὲ φασι, ete 
Antoninus Liberalis gives this second narrative only, without Atalanta, from 
Nicander (Narrat. 2). 

The Latin scenic poet, Attius, had devoted one of his tragedies to this 
subject, taking the general story as given by Euripidés: “ Remanet gloria 
apud me: exuvias dignavi Atalante dare,” seems to be the speech of Melea- 
ger. (Attii Fragm. 8, ap. Poet. Scen. Lat. ed. Bothe, p. 215). The readers 
of the AEneid will naturally think of the swift and warlike virgin Camilla, δὲ 
the parallel of Atalanta. 

4The narrative of Apollodérus reads awkwardly —MeAéaypoe ἔχων 
γυναῖκα Κλεοπάτραν, SovAduevoc δὲ καὶ ἐξ ᾿Αταλάντης τεκνοποιήσασϑα!:, ete 
‘i. 8, 2). 


ATALANTA. 147 


was sustained by evidence which few persons in those days felt 
any inclination to controvert. For Atalanta carried away with her 
the spoils and head of the boar into Arcadia; and there for suc 
cessive centuries hung the identical hide and the gigantic tusks 
of three feet in length, in the temple of Athéné Alea at Tegea 
Kallimachus mentions them as being there preserved, in the third 
century before the Christian zra;! but the extraordinary value set 
upon them is best proved by the fact that the emperor Augustus 
took away the tusks from Tegea, along with the great statue of 
Athéné Alea, and conveyed them to Rome, to be there preserved 
among the public curiosities. Even a century and a half after- 
wards, when Pausanias visited Greece, the skin worn out with 
age was shown to him, while the robbery of the tusks had not 
been forgotten. Nor were these relics of the boar the only me- 
mento preserved at Tegea of the heroic enterprise. On the 
pediment of the temple of Athéné Alea, unparalleled in Pelo- 
ponnésus for beauty and grandeur, the illustrious statuary Skopas 
had executed one of his most finished reliefs, representing the 
Kalydénian hunt. Atalanta and Meleager were placed in the 
front rank of the assailants, and Ankeus, one of the Tegean 
heroes, to whom the tusks of the boar had proved fatal,? was 
represented as sinking under his death-wound into the arms of 
his brother Epochos. And Pausanias observes, that the Tegeans, 
while they had manifested the same honorable forwardness as 
other Arcadian communities in the conquest of Troy, the repulse 
of Xerxés, and the battle of Dipe against Sparta — might fairly 
claim to themselves, through Ankeus and Atalanta, that they 
alone amongst all Arcadians had participated in the glory of the 
Kalydonian boar-hunt.3 So entire and unsuspecting is the faith 


1 Kallimachus, Hymn. ad Dian. 217.— 


Οὔ μιν ἐπικλητοὶ Καλυδώνιοι ἀγρευτῆρες 
Μέμφονται κάπροιο" τὰ γὰρ σημηΐα νίκης 
᾿Αρκαδίην εἰσῆλϑεν, ἔχει δ᾽ ἐτι ϑηρὸς ὀδόντας. 


2 See Pherekyd. Frag. 81, ed. Didot. 

3 Pausan. viii. 45,4; 46, 1-3; 47, 2 Lucian, adv. Indoctum, c. 14. t. ib 
p. 111, Reiz. 

The officers placed in charge of the pablic curiosities or wonders at Rome 
(οἱ ἐπὶ τοῖς ϑαύμασιν) affirmed that one of the tusks had been accidentally 


148 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


both of the Tegeans and of Pausanias in the past historical real- 
ity of this romantic adventure. Strabo indeed tries to transform 
the romance into something which has the outward πριν θαι of 
history, by remarking that the quarrel respecting the boar’s head 
and hide cannot have been the real cause of war between the 
Kurétes and the A%télians; the true ground of dispute (he con- 
tends) was probably the possession of a portion of territory. His 
remarks on this head are analogous to those of Thucydidés and 
other critics, when they ascribe the Trojan war, not to the rape of 
Helen, but to views of conquest or political apprehensions. But 
he treats the general fact of the battle between the Kurétes and 
the /Etélians, mentioned in the Iliad, as something unquestiona- 
bly real and historical — recapitulating at the samme time a va- 
riety of discrepancies on the part of different authors, but ia 
giving any decision of his own respecting their truth or false- 
" the same manner as Atalanta was intruded into the Kaly- 
dénian hunt, so also she seems to have been introduced into the 
memorabe funeral games celebrated after the decease of Pelias 
at Idlkos in which she had no place at the time when the works 


on the chest of Kypselus were executed.2 But her native and 
genuine locality is Arcadia; where her race-course, near to the 
town of Methydrion, was shown even in the days of Pausanias.4 
This race-course had been the scene of destruction for more than 


broken in the voyage from Greece: the other was kept in the temple of Bac- 
chus in the Imperial Gardens. 

It is numbered among the memorable exploits of Théseus that he van 
quished and killed a formidable and gigantic sow, in the territory of Krom- 
my6n near Corinth. According to some critics, this Krommydénian sow was 
the mother of the Kalydonian boar (Strabo, viii. p. 380). i 

' Strabo, x. p. 466. JloAguov δ᾽ ἐμπεσόντος τοῖς θεστιάδαις πρὸς ( ivéa 
καὶ Μελέαγρον, ὁ μὲν Ποιητὴς, ἀμφὶ συὸς κεφαλῇ καὶ δέρματι. κατὰ τὴν περὶ 
τοῦ κάπρου μυϑολογίαν ὡς δὲ τὸ εἰκὸς, περὶ μέρους τῆς χώρας, etc. This 
remark is also similar to Mr. Payne Knight’s criticism on the true causes of the 
Trojan war, which were (he tells us) of a political character, independent ef 
Helen and her abduction (Prolegom: ad Homer. c. 53). 

* Compare Apollodér. iii. 9, 2, and Pausan. v. 17, 4. She is made to 
wrestle with Péleus at these funeral games, which seems foreign to her char 


acter. 
3 Pesan. viii. 35, 8 


ATALANTA, 149 


gne unsuccessful suitor. For Atalanta, averse to marriage, had 
proclaimed that her hand should only be won by the competitor 
who could surpass her in running: all who tried and failed were 
condemned to die, and many were the persons to whom her 
beauty and swiftness, alike unparalleled, had proved fatal. At 
length Meilani6n, who had vainly tried to win her affections by 
assiduous services in her hunting excursions, ventured to enter 
the perilous lists. Aware that he could not hope to outrun her 
except by stratagem, he had obtained by the kindness of Aphro- 
dité, three golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides, 
which he successively let fall near to her while engaged in the 
race. The maiden could not resist the temptation of picking 
them up, and was thus overcome: she became the wife of Mei- 
lanion and the mother of the Arcadian Parthenopzus, one of the 
seven chiefs who perished in the siege of Thébes.! 


' Respecting the varieties in this interesting story, see Apollod. iii. 9, 2; 
Hygin. f. 185; Ovid, Metam. x. 560-700 ; Propert. i. 1, 20; ftlian, V. H 
xiii. i. Μειλανίωνος σωφρονέστερος. Aristophan. Lysistrat. 786 and Schol 
In the ancient representation on the chest of Kypselus (Paus. v. 19, 1), 
ideilanion was exhibited standing near Atalanta, who was holding a fawn. 
no match or competition in running was indicated. 

There is great discrepancy in the naming and patronymic description of 
the parties in the story. Three different persons are announced as fathers 
of Atalanta, Schoeneus, Jasus and Meenalos ; the successful lover in Ovid 
(and seemingly in Euripidés also) is called Hippomenés, not Meilanién. In 
the Hesiodic poems Atalanta was daughter of Schceneus ; Hellanikus called 
her daughter of Jasus. See Apollodér. 1. ¢.; Kallimach. Hymn to Dian. 
214, with the note of Spanheim ; Schol. Eurip. Pheeniss. 150; Schol. Theoer. 
Idyll. iii. 40; also the ample commentary of Bachet de Meziriac, Sur les 
Epitres d’Ovide, vol. i. p. 366. Servius (ad Virg. Eclog. vi. 61; ARneid, iis 
113) calls Atalanta a native of Scyros. 

Both the ancient scholiasts (see Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 769) and the modern 
commentators, Spanheim and Heyne, seek to escape this difficulty by 
supposing two Atalantas,—an Arcadian and a Beeétian: assuming the 
principle of their conjecture to be admissible, they ought to suppose at least 
three. 

Certainly, if personages of the Grecian mythes are to be treated as his- 
torically real, and their adventures as so many exaggerated and miscolored 
facts, it will be necessary to repeat the process of multiplying entities to an 
infinite extent. And this is one among the many reasons for rejecting the 
fundamental supposition. 


But when we consider these personages as purely legendary, so that an 


- —— τα - -- == 
ae a a “S ———————— “΄ ... τ a τ 


a 0. .-. 0 πω ὸ’ὄὄ ον. . = Ξ a = “2 


ἂς τοῖς SS — == 


- ie .. ..ἕ «ὧν ὧς ee 


ι0 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


We have yet another female in the family of (ineus, whose 
name the legend has immortalized. His daughter Deianeira was 
sought in marriage by the river Acheléus, who presented himself 
in various shapes, first as a serpent and afterwards as a buil. 
From the importunity of this hateful suitor she was rescued be 
the arrival of Héraklés, who encountered Achelous, vanquished 
him and broke off one of his horns, which Acheléus ransomed by 
surrendering to him the horn of Amaltheia, endued with the 
miraculous property of supplying the possessor with abundance 
of any food or drink which he desired. Héraklés was rewarded 
for his prowess by the possession of Deianeira, and. he made 
over the horn of Amaltheia as his marriage-present to Gineus.! 
Compelled to leave the residence of CEneus in consequence of 
having in a fit of anger struck the youthful attendant Eunomus, 
and involuntarily killed him, Héraklés retired to Trachin, cross- 
ing the river Euénus at the place where the Centaur Nessus was 


historical basis can neither be affirmed nor denied respecting them, we es 
cape the necessity of such inconvenient stratagems. ‘The test of identity is 
then to be sought in the attributes, not in the legal description, —in the 
predicates, not in the subject. Atalanta, whether born of one father or 
another, whether belonging to one place or another, is beautiful, cold, re- 
pulsive, daring, swift of foot and skilful with the bow,— these attributes 
constitute her identity. The Scholiast on Theocritus (iii. 40), in vindicating 
his supposition that there were two Atalantas, draws a distinction founded 
upon this very principle: he says that the Beedtian Atalanta was τοξοτὶς, and 
the Arcadian Atalanta dpovaia. But this seems an over-refinement: both 
the shooting and the running go to constitute an accomplished huntress. 

In respect to Parthenopeus, called by Euripidés and by so many others 
the son of Atalanta, it is of some importance to add, that Apollodorus 
Aristarchus, and Antirachus, the author of the Thebaid, assigned to him a 
pedigree entirely different, — making him an Argeian, the son of Talaos 
and Lysimaché, and brother of Adrastus. (Apollodor. i. 9, 13; Aristarch. 
ap. Schol. Soph. Cid. Col. 1320; Antimachus ap. Schol. Aischyl. Sep. Theb. 
582: and Schol. Supplem. ad Eurip. Pheeniss. t. viii. p. 461, ed. Matth 
Apollodérus is in fact inconsistent with himself in another passage). 

' Sophokl. Trachin. 7. The horn of Amaltheia was described by Phere- 
kydés (Apollod. ii. 7, 5); see also Strabo, x. p. 458 and Diodér. iv. 35, who 
vites an interpretation of the fables ( οἱ εἰκάζοντες ἐξ αὐτῶν τἀληϑές) to the 
effect that it was symbolical of an embankment of the unraly river by Hé- 
raklés, and consequent recovery of very fertile land. 

3 Hellanikus (ap. Athen. ix. p. 410) mentioning this incident, in two differ 
sat works, called the attendant by two uifferent namer 


CENEUS. — DEIANEIRA. 151 


accustomed to carry over passengers for hire. Nessus carried 
over Deianeira, but when he had arrived on the other side, began 
to treat her with rudeness, upon which Héraklés slew him with 
an arrow tinged by the poison of the Lernzan hydra. The dying 
Centaur advised Deianeira to preserve the poisoned blood which 
flowed from his wound, telling her that it would operate asa 
philtre to regain for her the affections of Héraklés, in case she 
should ever be threatened by a rival. Some time afterwards the 
hero saw and loved the beautiful lolé, daughter of Eurytos, king 
of (Echalia: he stormed the town, killed Eurytos, and made Iolé 
his captive. The misguided Deianeira now had recourse to her 
supposed philtre: she sent as a present to Héraklés a splendid 
tunic, imbued secretly with the poisoned blood of the Centaur. 
Héraklés adorned himself with the tunic on the occasion of offer- 
ing a solemn sacrifice to Zeus on the promontory of Kénzon in 
Eubeea: but the fatal garment, when once put on, clung to-him 
indissolubly, burnt his skin and flesh, and occasioned an agony 
of pain from which he was only relieved by death. Deianeira 
slew herself in despair at this disastrous catastrophe.' 


i The beautiful drama of the Trachinize has rendered this story familiar: 
sompare Apollod. ii. 7,7. Hygin. f. 36. Diodd6r. iv. 36-37. 

The capture of CEchalia (OiyaAiag ἅλωσις) was celebrated in a very an 
vient epic poem by Kreophylos, of the Homeric and not of the Hesiodic 
character: it passed with many as the work of Homer himself. (See Diint- 
χοῦ, Fragm. Epic. Grecor. p. 8. Welcker, Der Epische Cyclus, p. 229). 
The same subject was also treated in the Hesiodic Catalogue, or in the Eoiai 
(see Hesiod, Fragm. 129, ed. Marktsch.): the number of the children of 
Eurytos was there enumerated. 

This exploit seems constantly mentioned as the last performed by Héra- 
klés, and as immediately preceding his death or apotheosis on Mount (Eta: 
but whether the legend of Deianeira and the poisoned tunic be very old, we 
cannot tell. 

The tale of the death of Iphitos, son of Eurytos, by Héraklés, is as ancient 
as the Odyssey (xxi. 19-40): but it is there stated, that Eurytos dying left 
his memorable bow to his son Iphitos (the bow is given afterwards by Iphi- 
tos to Odysseus, and is the weapon so fatal to the suitors), — ἃ statement not 
very consistent with the story that Cichalia was taken and Eurytos slain by 
Héraklés. It is plain that these were distinct and contradictory legends. 
Compare Soph. Trachin. 260-285 (where Iphitos dies before Eurytos), not 
only with the passage just cited from the Odyssey, but also with Pherekydés. 
Fragm. 34, Didot. 

Hyginus (f. 33) differs altogether in the parentage of Deianeira~ he calls 


152 HISTORY UF GREECE. 


We have not yet exhausted the eventful career of Cineus and 
his family —ennobled among the /Xtélians especially, both by 
religious worship and by poetical eulogy — and favorite themes 
not merely in some of the Hesiodic poems, but also in other 
ancient epic productions, the Alkmzénis and the Cyclic Thébais.' 
By another marriage, CEneus had for his son Tydeus, whose 
poetical celebrity is attested by the many different accounts given 
both of the name and condition of his mother. Tydeus, having 
slain his cousins, the sons of Melas, who were conspiring against 
(Eneus, was forced to become an exile, and took refuge at Argos 
with Adrastus, whose daughter Deipylé he married. The issue 
of this marriage was Diomédés, whose brilliant exploits in the 
siege of Troy were not less celebrated than those of his father at 
the siege of Thébes. After the departure of Tydeus, G&neus 
was deposed by the sons of Agrios, and fell into extreme poverty 
and wretchedness, from which he was only rescued by his grand- 
son Diomédés, after the conquest of Troy.2 The sufferings of 
this ancient warrior, and the final restoration and revenge by 
Diomédés, were the subject of a lost tragedy of Euripidés, which 
even the ridicule of Aristophanés demonstrates to have been 
eminently pathetic.* 

Though the genealogy just given of Cineus is in part Ho- 
meric, and seems to have been followed generally by the mytho- 
graphers, yet we find another totally at variance with it in 
Hekatzeus, which he doubtless borrowed from some of the old 
poets: the simplicity of the story annexed to it seems to attest 
its antiquity. Orestheus, son of Deukalién, first passed into 


her daughter of Dexamenos: his account of her marriage with Héraklés is 
in every respect at variance with Apollodorus. In the latter, Mnésimaché 
is the daughter of Dexamenos ; Héraklés rescues her from the importunities 
of the Centaur Eurytion (ii. 5, 5). 

‘ See the references in Apollod. i, 8, 4-5. Pindar, Isthm. iv. 32. MeAérav 
δὲ σοφισταῖς Διὸς ἕκατι πρόσβαλον σεβιζόμενοι Ἔν μὲν Αἰτωλῶν ϑυσίαισι 
φαενναῖς Οἰνεΐδαι κρατεροὶ, etc. 

3 Hekat. Fragm. 341, Didot. In this story Gineus is connected with the 
first discovery of the vine and the making of wine (olvoc): compare Hygin. 
f. 129, and Servius ad Virgil. Georgic. i. 9. 

3 See Welcker (Griechisch. Tragéd. ii. p. 583) on the lost tragady called 


(που. 


THE PELOPTDS. 158 


A‘tolia, and acquired the kingdom: he was father of Phytios, 
who was father of GEneus. A®télus was son of Céneus.! 

The origina] migration of A&télus from Elis to Citolia — and 
the subsequent establishment in Elis of Oxylus, his descendant 
in the tenth generation, along with the Dorian invaders of Pelo- 
ponnésus — were commemorated by two inscriptions, one in the 
agora of Elis, the other in that of the Aitdlian chief town, 
[hermum, engraved upon the statues of Aitolus and Oxylus,® 


respectively. 


CHAPTER VII. 
THE PELOPIDS. 


AmoneG the ancient legendary genealogies, there was none 
which figured with greater splendor, or which attracted to itself 


Timoklés, Comic. ap. Athenee. vii. p. 223. — 


Γέρων τις ἀτυχεῖ, κατέμαϑεν τὸν Οἰνέα. 


Ovid. Heroid. ix. 158. -- 
“ Heu! devota domus! Solio sedet Agrios alto 
(Enea desertum nuda senecta premit.” 


The account here given is in Hyginus (f. 175): but it is in many points 
different both from Apollodérus (i. 8, 6; Pausan. ii. 25) and Pherekydés 
(Fragm. 83, Didot). It seems to be borrowed from the lost tragedy of Euri- 
pidés. Compare Schol. ad Aristoph. Acharn. 417. Antonin. Liberal. c. 37. 
In the Iliad, GEneus is dead before the Trojan war (ii. 641). 

The account of Ephorus again is different (ap. Strabo. x. p. 462) ; he joins 
Alkmzx6n with Diomédés: but his narrative has the air of a tissue of quasi- 
historical conjectures, intended to explain the circumstance that the Aitolian 
Diomédés is king of Argos during the Trojan war. 

Pausanias and Apollodérus affirm that Céneus was buried at Ginoé be- 
tween Argos and Mantineia, and they connect the uame of this place with 
him. But it seems more reasonable to consider him as the eponymcas uere 


of CEniade in /Xtolia. 


* Ephor. Fragm. 29. Didot ap. Strab. x. 
ἘΝ 


τως ὡς κὰν τὰ. τ a «- a “κεῖθε 


1b4 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


8 higher degree of poetical interest and pathos, than that of the 
Pelopids — Tantalus, Pelops, Atreus and Thyestés, Agamemnon 
and Menelaus and A‘gisthus, Helen and Klyte#mnéstra, Orestés 
and Elektra and Hermioné. Each of these characters is a star 
of the first magnitude in the Grecian hemisphere: each name 
suggests the idea of some interesting romance or some harrowing 
tragedy: the curse which taints the family from the beginning 
inflicts multiplied wounds at every successive generation. So, at 
least, the story of the Pelopids presents itself, after it had been 
successively expanded and decorated by epic, lyric and tragic 
poets. It will be sufficient to touch briefly upon events with 
which every reader of Grecian poetry is more or less familiar 
and to offer some remarks upon the way in which they were col- 
ored and modified by different Grecian authors. 

Pelops is the eponym or name-giver of the Peloponnésus : to 
find an eponym for every conspicuous local name was the invaria- 
ble turn of Grecian retrospective fancy. ‘The name Peloponnésus 
is not to be found either in the Iliad or the Odyssey,nor any other 
denomination which can be attached distinctly and specially to 
the entire peninsula. But we meet with the name in one of the 
most ancient post-Homeric poems of which any fragments have 
been preserved —the Cyprian Verses—a poem which many 
(seemingly most persons) even of the contemporaries of Herodo- 
tus ascribed to the author of the Iliad, though Herodotus contra- 
dicts the opinion.! The attributes by which the Pelopid Aga- 
memnon and his house are marked out and distinguished from 
the other heroes of the Iliad, are precisely those which Grecian 
imagination would naturally seek in an eponymus — superior 
wealth, power, splendor and regality. Not only Agamemnén 


' Hesiod. ii. 117. Fragment. Epicce. Gree. Diintzer, ix. Κύπρεα, 8. -- 


Ala τε Λυγκεὺς 
Tatyerov προσέβαινε ποσὶν ταχέεσσι πεποιϑὼς, 
Ακρότατον δ᾽ ἀναβὰς διεδέρκετο νῆσον ἄπασαν 


Τανταλίδεω Πέλοπος. 
Also the Homeric Hymn. Apoll. 419, 430, and Tyrtzus, Fragm. |. — 
(Eivopia) -- Εὐρεῖαν Πέλοπος νῆσον ἀφικόμεϑα. 


The Schol. ad Iliad. ix. 246, intimates that the name Πελοπόννησος occarred 
m one or more of the Hesiodic epics. 


WEALTH AND REGALITY OF THE PELUOPIDS. 153 


pinnself, but his brother Menelaus, is “ more of a king ” even than 
Nestor or Diomédés. The gods have not given to the king of 
the “much-golden” Mykéne greater courage, OF strength, or 
ability, than to various other chiefs; but they have conferred 
upon him a marked superiority in riches, power and dignity, and 
have thus singled him out as the appropriate leader of the 
forces.! He enjoys this preéminence as belonging to a privileged 
family and as inheriting the heaven-descended sceptre of Pelops, 
the transmission of which is described by Homer in a very 
remarkable way. The sceptre was made “ by Hépheestos, whe 
presented it to Zeus; Zeus gave it to Hermés, Hermés to the 
charioteer Pelops; Pelops gave it to Atreus, the ruler of men; 
Atreus at his death left it to Thyestés, the rich cattle-owner ; 
Thyestés in his turn left it to his nephew Agamemnon to carry, 
that he might hold dominion over many islands and over all 
Argos.” 

We have here the unrivalled wealth and power of the “ king 
of men, Agamemnén,” traced up to his descent from Pelops, and 
accounted for, in harmony with the recognized epical agencies, 
by the present of the special sceptre of Zeus through the hands 
of Hermés; the latter being the wealth-giving god, whose bless 


) Iliad, ix. 37. Compare ii. 580. Diomédés addresses Agamemnon - 


Σοὶ δὲ διάνδιχα δῶκε Κρόνου παῖς ἀγκυλομῆτεω 
Σκήπτρῳ μέν τοι δῶκε τετιμῆσϑαι περὶ πάντων" 
᾿Αλκὴν δ᾽ οὔτοι δῶκεν, ὅ, TE κράτος ἐστὶ μέγιστον. 


A similar contrast is drawn by Nest6r (Il. i. 280) between Agamemnén and 
Achilles. Nestor says to Agamemnon (Il. ix. 60) — 


᾿Ατρείδη, σὺ μὲν ἄρχε" σὺ γὰρ βασιλεύτατός ἐσσι. 


And this attribute attaches to Menelaus as well as to his brother. For when 
Diomédés is about to choose his companion for the night expedition inte: 
the Trojan camp, Agamemnén thus addresses him (x. 232) : 


Τὸν μὲν δὴ Erapdv γ᾽ aiphaeat, bv κ᾽ ἐϑέλῃσϑα 
Φαινομένων τὸν ἄριστον, ἐπεὶ μεμάασί γε πολλοί" 
Μηδὲ σύ γ᾽ αἰδόμενος σῇσι φρεσὶ, τὸν μὲν ἀρείω 
Καλλείπειν σὺ δὲ χείρον᾽ ὁπάσσεαι αἰδοῖ εἴκων, 
Ἐς γενεὴν ὁρόων, εἰ καὶ βασιλεύτερός ἐστιν. 

Ὡς ἔφατ’, ἔδδεισε δὲ περὶ ξανϑῷ Μενελάῳ. 


2 Vliad. ii 101} 


156 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ing is most efficacious in furthering the process of a: quisition, 
whether by theft or by accelerated multiplication of flocks and 
herds.! The wealth and princely character of the Atreids were 
proverbial among the ancient epic poets. Paris not only carnes 
away Hellen, but much property along with her:* the house of 
Menelaus, when Télemachus visits it in the Odyssey, is so re- 
splendent with gold and silver and rare ornament,’ as to strike 
the beholder with astonishment and admiration. The attributes 
assigned to Tantalus, the father of Pelops, are in conformity with 
the general idea of the family — superhuman abundance and en- 
joyments, and intimate converse with the gods, to such a degree 
that his head is turned, and he commits inexpiable sin. But 
though Tantalus himself is mentioned, in one of the most suspi- 
cious passages of the Odyssey (as suffering punishment in the 
under-world), he is not announced, nor is any one else announced, 
as father of Pelops, unless we are to construe the lines in the 
Iliad as implying that the latter was son of Hermés. In the con- 
ception of the author of the Iliad, the Pelopids are, if not of di- 
vine origin, at least a mortal breed specially favored and enno- 
bled by the gods —- beginning with Pelops, and localized at My- 
kénz. No allusion is made to any connection of Pelops either 
with Pisa or with Lydia. 

The legend which connected Tantalus and Pelops with Mount 
Sipylus may probably have grown out of the Aolic settlements 
at Magnésia and Kymé. Both the Lydian origin and the Pisatie 
sovereignty of Pelops are adapted to times later than the Iliad, 
when the Olympic games had acquired to themselves the general 
reverence of Greece, and had come to serve as the religious and 
recreative centre of the Peloponnésus — and when the Lydian 


1 Tliad, xiv. 491. Hesiod. Theog. 444. Homer, Hymn. Mercur.-526-568 
Ὄλβου καὶ πλούτου δώσω περικάλλεα ῥάβδον. Compare Eustath. ad Iliad. 
ΧΥΪ. 182. 
2 Jliad, iii. 72; vii. 868. In the Hesiodic Eoiai was the followin, vouplet 
(Fragm. 55. p. 43, Diintzer) :— 
'᾿Αλκὴν μὲν γὰρ ἔδωκεν Ὀλύμπιος Αἰακίδῃσιν, 
Νοῦν δ᾽ ᾿Αμυϑαονίδαις, πλοῦτον δ᾽ ἔπορ' ᾿Ατρείδῃσι. 
Again, Tyrteus, Fragm. 9, 4. — , 
Οὐδ᾽ εἰ Τανταλίδεω Πέλοπος βασιλεύτερος εἴη, ete. 
“ Odves. iv. 45ὅ-Ἴ 1 


TANTALUS. 157 


and Phrygian heroic names, Midas and Gygés, were the types 
of wealta and luxury, as well as of chariot driving, in the imag. 
ination of a Greek. The inconsiderable villages of the Pisatid 
derived their whole importance from the vicinity of Olympia: 
they are not deemed worthy of notice in the Catalogue of Homer. 
Nor could the genealogy which connected the eponym of the en- 
tire peninsula with Pisa have obtained currency in Greece unless 
it had been sustained by preéstablished veneration for the locality 
of Olympia. But if the sovereign of the humble Pisa was to be 
recognized as forerunner of the thrice-wealthy princes of Mikénz, 
it became necessary to assign some explanatory cause of his 
riches. Hence the supposition of his being an immigrant, son of 
a wealthy Lydian named Tantalus, who was the offspring of Zeus 
and Plouté. Lydian wealth and Lydian chariot-driving render- 
ed Pelops a fit person to occupy his place in the legend, both as 
ruler of Pisa and progenitor of the Mykenwan Atreids. Even 
with the admission of these two circumstances there is considera- 
ble difficulty, for those who wish to read the legends as consecu- 
tive history, in making the Pelopids pass smoothly and plausibly 
from Pisa to Mykéne. 

I shall briefly recount the legends of this great heroic family 
as they came to stand in their full and ultimate growth, after the 
localization of Pelops at Pisa had been tacked on as a preface to 
Homer’s version of the Pelopid genealogy. 

Tantalus, residing near Mount Sipylus in Lydia, had twe chil- 
dren, Pelops and Niobé. He was a man of immense possessions 
and preéminent happiness, above the lot of humanity: the gods 
communicated with him freely, received him at their banquets, 
and accepted of his hospitality in return. Intoxicated with such 
prosperity, Tantalus became guilty of gross wickedness. He 
stole nectar and ambrosia from the table of the gods, and reveal- 
ed their secrets to mankind: he killed and served up to them at 
a feast his own son Pelops. The gods were horror-struck when 
they discovered the meal prepared for them: Zeus restored the 
mangled youth to life, and as Démétér, then absorbed in griet 
for the loss of her daughter Persephoné, had eaten a portion οἱ 
the shoulder, he supplied an ivory shoulder in place oi it. Tan- 
talus expiated his guilt by exemplary punishment. He was 
placed in the under-world, with fruit and water seemingly clos# 


158 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


to him, yet eluding his touch as often as he tried to grasp them 
and leaving his hunger and thirst incessant and unappeased.? 
Pindar, in a very remarkable passage, finds this old legend re- 
volting to his feelings: he rejects the tale of the flesh of Pelops 
having been served up and eaten, as altogether unworthy of the 
gods.” 

Niobé, the daughter of Tantalus, was married to Amphion, 
αὐτὶ had a numerous and flourishing offspring of seven sons and 
«ven daughters. Though accepted as the intimate friend and 
companion of Léto, the mother of Apoilo and Artemas,? she was 
presumptuous enough to triumph over that goddess, and to place 
herself on a footing of higher dignity, on account of the superior 
number of her children. Apollo and Artemas avenged this in- 
sult by killing all the sons and all the daughters: Niobé, thus 
left 2 childless and disconsolate mother, wept herself to death, 
and was turned into a rock, which the later Greeks continued 
always to identify on Mount Sipylus.4 

Some authors represented Pelops as not being a Lydian, but ἃ 
king of Paphlagonia; by others it was said that Tantalus, hav- 
ing become detested from his impieties, had been expelled from 
Asia by Ilus the king of Troy, —an incident which served the 
double purpose of explaining the transit of Pelops to Greece, 
and of imparting to the siege of Troy by Agamemnon the charac- 
ter of retribution for wrongs done to his ancestor.5 When Pe- 
lops came over to Greece, he found CE&nomaus, son of the god 
Arés and Harpinna, in possession of the principality of Pisa 


iod6r. iv. 77. Hom. Odyss. xi. 582. Pindar gives a different version 
of the punishment inflicted on Tantalus: a vast stone was perpetually im- 
pending over his head. and threatening to fall (Olymp. i.56; Isthm. vii. 20). 
3 Pindar, Olymp. i. 45. Compare the sentiment of Iphigeneia in Eurip- 
{dés, Iph. Taur. 387. 
3 Sappho (Fragm. 82, Schneidewin)— 


Aare καὶ Νιόβα μάλα μὲν φίλαι ἧσαν ἐταῖραι. 


Sapphé assigned to Niobé eighteen children (Aul. Gell. Ν. A. iv. A. xx. 7); 
Hesiod gave twenty ; Homer twelve (Apollod. iii. 5). 

The Lydian historian Xanthus gave a totally different version both of the 
genealogy and of the misfortunes of Niobé (Parthen. Narr. 33). 

* Ovid, Metam. vi. 164-311. Pausan.i. 21, 5; viii. 2, 3. 

® Apollén. Khod ii. 358, and Schol.; Ister. Fragment. 59, Dindorf; Dio 
dir. iv. 74. 


PELOPS AND €NOMAUS. 159 


immediately bordering on the district of Olympia. C&nomaus, 
having been apprized by an oracle that death would overtake him 
if he permitted his daughter Hippodameia to marry, refused to 
give her in marriage except to some suitor who should beat him 
in a chariot-race from Olympia to the isthmus of Corinth ;! the 
ground here selected for the legendary victory of Pelops deserves 
attention, inasmuch as it is a line drawn from the assumed centre 
of Peloponnésus to its extremity, and thus comprises the whole 
territory with which Pelops is connected as eponym. Any suitor 
overmatched in the race was doomed to forfeit his life ; and the 
fleetness of the Pisan horses, combined with the skill of the 
charioteer Myrtilus, had already caused thirteen unsuccessful 
competitors to perish by the lance of (Enomaus.? Pelops enter- 
ed the lists as a suitor: his prayers moved the god Poseidén to 
supply him with a golden chariot and winged horses ; or accord- 
ing to another story, he captivated the affections of Hippoda- 
meia herself, who persuaded the charioteer Myrtilus to loosen 
the wheels of CEnomaus before he started, so that the latter was 
overturned and perished in the race. Having thus won the hand 
of Hippodameia, Pelops became Prince of Pisa. He put to 
death the charioteer Myrtilus, either from indignation at his 
treachery to CEnomaus,! or from jealousy on the score of Hip- 
podameia: but Myrtilus was the son of Hermés, and though 
Pelops erected a temple in the vain attempt to propitiate that 
god, he left a curse upon his race which future calamities were 
destined painfully to work out.° 
Pelops had a numerous issue by Hippodameia : Pittheus, 
Troezen and Epidaurus, the eponyms of the two Argolic cities 


1 Diodor. iv. 74. - 

2 Pausanias (vi. 21, 7) had read their names in the Hesiodic Eoiai. 

3 Pindar, Olymp. i. 140. The chariot race of Pelops and C£nomaus was 
represented on the chest of Kypselus at Olympia: the horses of the former 
were given as having wings (Pausan, v. 17, 4). Pherekydés gave the same 
story (ap. Schol. ad Soph. Elect. 504). 

4 It is noted by Herodotus and others as a remarkable fact, that no mules 
were ever bred in the Eleian territory: an Eleian who wished to breed a 
mule sent his mare for the time out of the region. The Eleians themseives 
ascribed this phenomenon to a disability brought on the land by a curse 
‘rom the lips of Ginomaus ‘Herod. iv. 30; Plutarch, Quest. Greec. p. 303). 

5 Paus. v. 1,1; Sophok. Elektr. 508; Eurip Orest. 985, with Schol.. 


Plato, Kratyl. p. 395 


160 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


so called, are said to have been among them: Atreus and Thy 
estes were also his sons, and his daughter Nikippé married Sthe- 
nelus of Mykénz, and became the mother of Eurystheus.' We 
hear nothing of the principality of Pisa afterwards: the Pisatid 
villages became absorbed into the larger aggregate of Elis, after 
a vain struggle to maintain their separate right of presidency 
over the Olympic festival. But the legend ran that Pelops left 
his name to the whole peninsula: according to Thucycidés, he 
was enabled to do this because of the great wealth which he had 
srought with him from Lydia into a poor territory. The histo 
tian leaves out all the romantic interest of the genuine legends — 
preserving only this one circumstance, which, without being bet- 
ter attested than the rest, carries with it, from its common-place 
and prosaic character, a pretended historical plausibility.” 
Besides his numerous issue by Hippodameia, Pelops had an 
illegitimate son named Chrysippus, of singular grace and beauty, 
towards whom he displayed so much affection as to ~ouse the 
jealousy of Hippodameia and her sons. Atreus and Thyestés 
conspired together to put Chrysippus to death, for which they 
were banished by Pelops and retired to Mykénx,’— an event 
which brings us into the track of the Homeric legend. For 
Thucydidés, having found in the death of Chrysippus a suitable 
ground for the secession of Atreus from Pelops, conducts him at 
once to Mykénz, and shows a train of plausible circumstances 
to account for his having mounted the throne. Eurystheus, king 
of Mykénaw, was the maternal nephew of Atreus: when he 
engaged in any foreign expedition, he naturally entrusted the 
regency to his uncle; the people of Mykénx thus became accus- 
tomed to be governed by him, and he on his part made eiforts to 
conciliate them, so that when Eurystheus was defeated and slain 
in Attica, the Mykénzan people, apprehensive of an invasion 
from the Hérakleids, chose Atreus as at once the most powerful 


' Apollod. ii. 4,5. Pausan. ii. 30, 8; 26,3; v. 8, 1. Hesiod. ap. Schol 
ad Iliad. xx. 116. 

3 Thucyd. i. 5 

2 We find two distinct legends respecting Chrysippus: his abdnctioa by 
Laius king of Thébes, on which the lost drama of Euripidés called Chry- 
sippus turned (see Welcker, Griech. Tragédien, ii. p. 536), and his death by 
he hands of his haif-brothers. Hyginus (f. 85) blends the two together. 


ATREUS AND THYESTES. 101 


and most acceptable person for his successor.! Such was the tale 
which Thucydidés derived “ from those who had learnt ancient 
Peloponnésian matters most clearly from their forefathers.” The 
‘ntroduction of so much sober and quasi-political history, unfor- 
tunately unauthenticated, contrasts strikingly with the highly poet- 
izal legends of Pelops and Atreus, which precede and follow it. 
Atreus and Thyestés are known in the Iliad only as successive 
possessors of the sceptre of Zeus, which Thyestés at his death 
bequeathes to Agamemnon. The family dissensions among this 
fated race commence, in the Odyssey, with Agamemnon the son 
of Atreus, and gisthus the son of Thyestés. But subsequent 
poets dwelt upon an implacable quarrel between the two fathers 
The cause of the bitterness was differently represented: some al- 
leged that Thyesteés had intrigued with the Krétan Aeropé, the 
wife of his brother; other narratives mentioned that Thyestés 
procured for himself surreptitiously the possession of a lamb 
with a golden fleece, which had been designedly introduced 
among the flocks of Atreus by the anger of Hermés, as a cause 
of enmity and ruin to the whole family.2 Atreus, after a violent 


1 Thucyd. i. 9. λέγουσι δὲ οἱ τὰ Πελοποννῃσίων σαφέστατα μνήμῃ Tapa τῶν 
πρότερον δεδεγμένοι.. According to Hellanikus, Atreus the elder son re- 
turns to Pisa after the death of Pelops with a great army, and makes him- 
self master of his father’s principality (Hellanik. ap Schol. ad Iliad. ii. 105) 
Hellanikus does not seem to have been so solicitous as Thucydidés to bring 
the story into conformity with Homer. The circumstantial genealogy giv- 
en in Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 5. makes Atreus and Thyestés reside during 
their banishment at Makestus in Triphylia: it is given without any special 
authority, but may perhaps come from Hellanikus. 

2 Mschil. Agamem. 1204, 1253, 1608; Hygin. 86; Attii Fragm.19. This 
was the story of the old poem entitled Alkmzdnis ; seemingly also of Phe- 
rekydés, though the latter rejected the story that Hermés had produced the 
golden lamb with the special view of exciting discord between the two broth- 
ers, in order to avenge the death of Myrtilus by Pelops (see Schol. ad 
Eurip. Orest. 996). 

A different legend, alluded to in Soph. Aj. 1295 (see Schol. ad ἰοε.), 
recounted that Aeropé had been detected by her father Katreus in unchaste 
commerce with a lew-born person; he entrusted her in his anger tc Naa- 
plius, with directions to throw her into the sea: Nauplius however not only 
spared her life, but betrothed her to Pleisthenés, father of Agamemn6én 


and son of Atreus. 
The tragedy entitled Atreus of the Letin poet Attius, seems to hav 


VOL. I. 11 oc 


RR eS SE :,,..........Ψ — πα καεαιιιιι 


162 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


burst of indignation, pretended to be reconciled, and invited Thy 
estés to a banquet, in which he served up to him the limbs of 
bis own son, and the father ignorantly partook of the fatal meal. 
Even the all-seeing Hélios is said to have turned back his chariot 
to the east in order that he might escape the shocking spectacle 
of this Thyestéan banquet: yet the tale of Thyestéan revenge 
—the murder of Atreus perpetrated by A¢gisthus, the incestuous 
offspring of Thyestés by his daughter Pelopia— is no less replete 
with horrors.! 

Homeric legend is never thus revolting. Agamemndén and 
Menelaus are known to us chiefly with their Homeric attributes, 
which have not been so darkly overlaid by subsequent poets as 
those of Atreus and Thyestés. Agamemnén and Menelaus are 
affectionate brothers: they marry two sisters, the daughters οἱ 
Tyndareus king of Sparta, Klytamnéstra and Helen; for Helen, 
the real offspring of Zeus, passes as the daughter of Tyndarius.? 
The “king of men” reigns at Mykénz ; Menelaus succeeds ‘T'yn- 
dareus at Sparta. Of the rape of Helen, and the siege of ‘Troy 
consequent upon it, I shall speak elsewhere: I now touch only 
upon the family legends of the Atreids. Menelaus, on his return 
from Troy with the recovered Helen, is driven by storms far 
away to the distant regions of Pheenicia and Egypt, and is ex- 
posed to a thousand dangers and hardships before he again sets 
foot in Peloponnesus. But at length he reaches Sparta, resumes 
his kingdom, and passes the rest of his days in uninterrupted 
happiness and splendor: being moreover husband of the godlike 
Helen and son-in-law of Zeus, he is even spared the pangs of 
death. When the fulness of his days is past he is transported 
to the Elysian fields, there to dwell along with “the golden-haired 
Rhadamanthus” in a delicious climate and in undisturbed re 
pose. 

Far different is the fate of the king of men, Agamemnon. 


brought out, with painful fidelity, the harsh and savage features of this 
family legend (see Aul. Gell. xiii. 2, and the fragments of Attius now remain 
ing, together with the tragedy called Thyestés, of Seneca). 

' Hygin. fab. 87-88. 

* So we must say, in conformity to the ideas of antiquity: compere Hc 
mez, αι, xvi. 176 and Herodot. vi. 53. 

3 Hom. Odyss. iii. 280-300; iv. 83-560. 


AGAMEMNON AND MELNELAUS. 168 


During his absence, the unwarlike Aigisthus, son of Thyestés, 
had seduced his wife Klyteemnéstra, in spite of the special warn- 
ing of the gods, who, watchful over this privileged family, had 
sent their messenger Hermés expressly to deter him from the 
attempt.! A venerable bard had been left by Agamemnén as 
the companion and monitor of his wife, and so long as that guar 
dian was at hand, A%gisthus pressed his suit in vain. But he got 
rid of the bard by sending him to perish in a desert island, and 
then won without difficulty the undefended Klytazmnéstra. Igno- 
rant of what had passed, Agamemndén returned from Troy vic- 
torious and full of hope to his native country ; but he had scarcely 
landed when /Xgisthus invited him to a banquet, and there with 
the aid of the treacherous Klytzemnéstra, in the very hall of fes 
tivity and congratulation, slaughtered him and his companions 
“like oxen tied to the manger.” His concubine Kassandra, the 
prophetic daughter of Priam, perished along with him by the 
hand of Klytamnéstra herself.2 The boy Orestés, the only male 
offspring of Agamemnén, was stolen away by his nurse, and 
placed in safety at the residence of the Phokian Strophius. 

For seven years AXgisthus and Klytszmnéstra reigned in tran 
quillity at Mykénz on the throne of the murdered Agamemnon. 
But in the eighth year the retribution announced by the gods over- 
took them: Orestés, grown to manhood, returned and avenged 
his father by killing A2gisthus, according to Homer; subsequent 
poets add, his mother also. He recovered the kingdom of My- 
<énz, and succeeded Menelaus in that of Sparta. Hermioné, the 
only daughter of Menelaus and Helen, was sent into the realm 
of the Myrmidons in Thessaly, as the bride of Neoptolemus, son 
of Achilles, according to the promise made by her father during 
the siege of ‘Troy.* 

Here ends the Homeric legend of the Pelopids, the final act 
of Orestés being cited as one of unexampled glory.‘ Later poets 
made many additions: they dwelt upon his remorse and hardly- 


1 Odyss. i. 38 ; iii. 310.— ἀνάλκιδος Αἰγίσϑοιο. 

3 Odyss. iii. 260-275; iv. 512-537; xi 408. Deinias in his Argolica, and 
other historians of that territory, fixed the precise day of the murder of 
Agamemnén,—the thirteenth of the month Gamélién (Schol. ad Sophokl 


Elektr. 275) 
2 Odyss. iii 306; iv. 9 4 Odvas. i. 299 


164 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


earned pardon for the murder of his mother, and upon his de 
voted friendship for Pylades; they wove many interesting tales, 
too, respecting his sisters Iphigeneia and Elektra and his cousin 
Hermioné,— names which have become naturalized in every 
climate and incorporated with every form of poetry. 

These poets did not at all secruple to depart from Homer, and 
to give other genealogies of their own, with respect to the chief 
persons of the Pelopid family. In the Iliad and Odyssey, Aga- 
memnd6n is son of Atreus: in the Hesiodic Eoiai and in Stesicho- 
rus, he is son of Pleisthenés the son of Atreus.!| In Homer,he 
is specially marked as reigning at Mykénz; but Stesichorus, Si 
monidés and Pindar? represented him as having both resided 
and perished at Sparta or at Amyklae. According to the ancient 
Cyprian Verses, Helen was represented as the daughter of Zeus 
and Nemesis: in one of the Hesiodic poems she was introduced 
as an Oceanic nymph, daughter of Oceanus and Téthys.3 The 
genealogical discrepancies, even as to the persons of the principal 
heroes and heroines, are far too numerous to be cited, nor is it 
necessary to advert to them, except as they bear upon the un- 
availing attempt to convert such legendary parentage i ip 
οἵ historical ae or deniiiieaa se ies a 

The Homeric poems probably represent that form of the le- 
gend, respecting Agamemnoén and Orestés, which was current 
and popular among the A®olic colonists. Orestés was the great 
heroic chief of the AXolic emigration; he, or his sons, or his de- 
scendants, are supposed to have conducted the Achzans to seek 


' Hesiod. Fragm. 60. p. 44, ed. Dantzer; Stesichor. Fragm. 44, Kleine. 
The Scholiast ad Soph. Elektr. 539, in reference to another discrepancy be- 
tween Homer and the Hesiodic poems about the children of Helen, remarks 
that we ought not to divert our attention from that which is moral and sal- 
utary to ourselves in the poets (τὰ ἠϑικὰ καὶ χρήσιμα ἡμῖν τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσι), 
in order to cavil at their genealogical contradictions. 

Welcker in vain endeavors to show that Pileisthenés was originally intre- 
duced as the father of Atreus, not as his son (Griech. Tragéd. p. 678). 

? Schol. ad Eurip, Orest. 46. "Ὅμηρος ἐν Μυκήναις φησὶ τὰ βασιλεῖα τοῦ 
᾿Αγαμέμνονος " Στησίχορος δὲ καὶ Σιμωνίδης, ἐν Λακεδαιμονίᾳ. Pindar, Pyth, 
xi. 31; Nem. viii. 21. Stésichorus had composed an ’Opécreca, copied im 
many points from a still more ancient lyric Oresteia by Xanthus : compare 
Athen. xii. p. 513, and Elian, V. H. iv. 26. 

* Hesiod, ap. Schol. ad Pindar, Nem. x. 150. 


AGAMEMNON AND ORESTES. 165 


a new home, when they were no longer able to make head against 
the invading Dérians: the great families at ‘Tenedos and other 
clic cities even during the historical wra, gloried in tracing 
back their pedigrees to this illustrious source.! The legends con- 
necttd with the heroic worship of these mythical ancestors form 
the basis of the character and attributes of Agamemnon and his 
family, as depicted in Homer, in which Mykéne appears as the 
first place in Peloponnésus, and Sparta only as the second: the 
former the special residence of “the king of men;” the latter 
that of his younger and inferior brother, yet still the seat of a 
member of the princely Pelopids, and moreover the birth-place 
of the divine Helen. Sparta, Argos and Mykéne are all three 
designated in the Iliad by the goddess Héré as her favorite cities ;? 
yet the connection of Mykéne with Argos, though the two towns 
wee only ten miles distant, is far less intimate than the connec- 
tion of Mykéne with Sparta. When we reflect upon the very 
peculiar manner in which Homer identifies Héré with the Grecian 
host and its leader, — for she watches over the Greeks with the 
active solicitude of a mother, and her antipathy against the ‘Tro- 
jans is implacable to a degree which Zeus cannot comprehend, ὃ 
—and when we combine this with the ancient and venerated 
Héreon, or temple of Héré, near Mykénz, we may partly ex- 
plain to ourselves the preéminence conferred upon Mykéne in 
the Iliad and Odyssey. The Hérzon was situated between Argos 
and Mykénz ; in later times its priestesses were named and its 
affairs administered by the Argeians: but as it was much nearer 


! See the ode of Pindar addressed to Aristagoras of Tenedos (Nem. xi 
35; Strabo, xiii. p. 582). There were Penthilids at Mityléné, from Penthi- 
lus, son of Orestés (Aristot. Polit. v. 8, 13, Schneid.). 

® Tliad, iv. 52. Compare Euripid. Hérakleid. 350 

3 Iliad, iv. 31. Zeus says to Héré,— 

Δαιμονίη, τί νύ σε Πρίαμος, Πρίαμοιό re παῖδες 
Tocca κακὰ ῥέζεσκον ὅτ᾽ ἀσπερχὲς μενεαίνεις 
Ἰλίου ἐξαλάπαξαι ἐὐκτίμενον πτολίεϑρον ; 

Εἰ δὲ σύ γ᾽, εἰσελϑοῦσα πύλας καὶ τείχεα μακρᾶ, 
'Qudv βεβρώϑοις Πρίαμον Πριάμοιό τε παῖδας, 
"Ἄλλους τε Toaa¢, τότε κεν χόλον ἐξακέσαιο. 


Again «viii. 358,— 
ἡ ῥά νυ σοῖο 
Ἐξ αὐτῇ; ἐγένοντο καρηκομόωντες ᾿Αχαιοί- 


166 HISTORY OF GREECE 


to Mykénz than to Argos, we may with probability conclude that 
it originally belonged to the former, and that the increasing power 
of the latter enabled them to usurp to themselves a religious 
privilege which was always an object of envy and contention 
among the Grecian communities. The /®olic colonists doubtless 
took out with them in their emigration the divine and heroic 
legends, as well as the worship and ceremonial rites, of the Hé- 
reon; and in those legends the most exalted rank would be as 
signed to the close-adjoining and administering city. 

Mykénz maintained its independence even down to the Persian 
invasion. Eighty of its heavy-armed citizens, in the ranks of 
Leonidas at Thermopyle, and a number not inferior at Platza, 
upheld the splendid heroic celebrity of their city during a season 
of peril, when the more powerful Argos disgraced itself by a 
treacherous neutrality. Very shortly afterwards Mykenzw was 
enslaved and its inhabitants expelled by the Argeians. Though 
this city so long maintained a separate existence, its importance 
had latterly sunk to nothing, while that of the Dérian Argos was 
augmented very much, and that of the Dérian Sparta still more. 

The name of Mykéne is imperishably enthroned in the Iliad 
and Odyssey; but all the subsequent fluctuations of the legend 
tend to exalt the glory of other cities at itsexpense. The recog 
nition of the Olympic games as the grand religious festival of 
Peloponnésus gave vogue to that genealogy which connected Pe- 
lops with Pisa or Elis and withdrew him from Mykénz. More 
ever, in the poems of the great Athenian tragedians, Mykénz is 
constantly confounded and treated as one with Argos. If any 
one of the citizens of the former, expelled at the time of its final 
subjugation by the Argeians, had witnessed at Athens a drama of 
Eschylus, Sophoklés, or Euripidés, or the recital of an ode of 
Pindar, he would have heard with grief and indignation the city 
of his oppressors made a partner in the heroic glories of his 
own.'! But the great political ascendency acquired by Sparta 
contributed still farther to degrade Mykénz, by disposing subse- 
quent poets to treat the chief of the Grecian armament against 
Troy as having been a Spartan. It has been already mentioned 
that Stésichorus, Simonidés and Pindar adopted this version of 


— να. 


δ See the preface of Dissen to the tenth Nem. of Pindar 


AGAMEMNON AT SPARTA. 167 


the legend: we know that Zeus Agamemnén, as well as the hero 
Menelaus, was worshipped at the Dérian Sparta,! and the feeling 
of intimate identity, as well as of patriotic pride, which had grown 
up in the minds of the Spartans connected with the name of 
Agamemnin, is forcibly evinced by the reply of the Spartan Sy- 
agrus to Gelén of Syracuse at the time of the Persian invasion 
of Greece. Gelén was solicited to lend his aid in the imminent 
danger of Greece before the battle of Salamis: he offered to 
furnish an immense auxiliary force, on condition that the supreme 
command should be allotted to him. “ Loudly indeed would the 
Pelopid Agamemnon cry out (exclaimed Syagrus in rejecting this 
application), if he were to learn that the Spartans had been de- 
prived of the headship by Gel6n and the Tyracusans.”2 Nearly 
a century before this event, in obedience to the injunctions of the 
Delphian oracle, the Spartans had broughi back from Tegea to 
Sparta the bones of “the Lacdnian Orestés,” as Pindar denomi- 
nates him:3 the recovery of these bones was announced to them 
as the means of reversing a course of ill-fortune, and of procuring 
victory in their war against Tegea.t The value which they set 
upon this acquisition, and the decisive results ascribed to it, ex- 
hibit a precise analogy with the recovery of the bones of Theseus 
from Skyros by the Athenian Cimén shortly after the Persian 
invasion.5 The remains sought were those of a hero properly 
belonging to their own soil, but who had died in a foreign land, 
and of whose protection and assistance they were for that reason 
deprived. And the superhuman magnitude of the bones, which 
were contained in a coffin seven cubits long, is well suited to the 
legendary grandeur of the son of Agamemnén. 


1 Clemens Alexandr. Admonit. ad Gent. p. 24. ᾿Αγαμέμνονα γοῦν τινα 
Δία ἐν Σπάρτῃ τιμᾶσϑαι Στάφυλος ἱστορεῖ. See also GEnomaus ap. Euseb. 
Preeparat. Evangel. v. 28. 

2 Herédot. vii. 159. Ἦ xe μέγ᾽ οἰμώξειεν ὁ Πελοπίδης ᾿Αγαμέμνων, rude 
uevog SraptiArac ἀπαραιρῆσϑαι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν ὑπὸ Τέλωνός re καὶ τῶν Zope 
κουσίων : compare Homer, Iliad, vii. 125. See what appears to be an iré- 
tation of the same passage in Josephus, De Bello Judaico, iii. 8, 4 “4 
uéAaday ἂν στενάξειαν οἱ πάτριοι νόμοι, etc. 

*Pindar. Pyth. xi. 16. * Herodot. i 68. 

* Plutarch Théseus, c. 36, Cimon, c. 8; Pausan. iii. 3, 6. 


Vol. 1 9 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


CHAPTER VIII. 


LACONIAN AND MESSENIAN GENEALOGIES. 


Tue earliest names in Lacénian genealogy are, an autoca- 
thonous Lelex and a Naiad nymph Kleochareia. From this pair 
sprung a son Kurdétas, and from him a daughter Sparta, who be- 
came the wife of Lacedzmon, son of Zeus and Taygeté, daughter 
of Atlas. Amyklas, son of Lacedzemon, had two sons, Kynortas 
and Hyacinthus —the latter a beautiful youth, the favorite of 
Apollo, by whose hand he was accidentally killed while playing 
at quoits: the festival of the Hyacinthia, which the Lacedzemé- 
nians generally, and the Amyk!zans with special solemnity, cele- 
brated throughout the historical ages, was traced back to this 
legend. Kynortas was succeeded by his son Periérés, who mar- 
ried Gorgophoné, daughter of Perseus, and had a numerous issue 
— Tyndareus, Ikarius, Aphareus, Leukippus, and Hippokoon. 
Some authors gave the genealogy differently, making Periérés, 
son of /Kolus, to be the father of Kynortas, and Cébalus son of 


eee from whom sprung Tyndareus, Ikarius and Hippo- 
oon. | 


Both Tyndareus and Ikarius, expelled by their brother Hip- 
pokoon, were forced to seek shelter at the residence of Thestius, 
king of Kalydon, whose daughter, Léda, Tyndareus espoused. 
it is numbered among the exploits of the omnipresent Héraklés, 
that he slew Hippokoon and his sons, and restored Tyndareus to 
his kingdom, thus creating for the subsequent Hérakleidan kings 
a mythical title to the throne. Tyndareus, as well as his brothers, 
are persons of interest in legendary narrative: he is the father 
of Kastor, of Timandra, married to Echemus, the hero of Tegea,? 
and of Klytzmnéstra, married to Agamemnén. Pollux aud the 
ever-memorable Helen are the offspring of Léda by Zeus. Ike 


* Compare Apollod. iii. 10,4. Pausan. iii. 1, 4. 
* Hesiod. ap Schel Pindar. Olymp. xi. 79. 


LACONTAN AND MESSENIAN GENEALOGIES. 169 


gins is the father of Penelopé, wife of Odysseus: the contrast 
between her behavior and that of Klytemnéstra and Helen 
became the more striking in consequence of their being so nearly 
related. Aphareus is the father of Idas and Lynkeus, while 
Leukippus has for his daughters, Phoebé and Hlaéira. Accord- 
ing to one of the Hesiodic poems, Kastor and Pollux were both 
sens of Zeus by Léda, while Helen was neither daughter of Zeus 
nor of Tyndareus, but of Oceanus and Téthys.! 

The brothers Kastér and (Polydeukés, or) Pollux are no less 
celebrated for thir fraternal affection than for their great bodily 
accomplishment™: Kastér, the great charioteer and horse-master; 
Pollux, the first of pugilists. ‘They are enrolled both among the 
hunters of the Kalydénian boar and among the heroes of the 
Argonautic ex edition, in which Pollux represses the insolence 
of Amykus, king of the Bebrykes, on the coast of Asiatic Thrace 
—the latter, a gigantic pugilist, from whom no rival has ever 
escaped, challenges Pollux, but is vanquished and killed in the 
fight.2 

The two brothers also undertook an expedition into Attica, for 
the purpose of recovering their sister Helen, who had been 
carried off by Théseus in her early youth, and deposited by him 
at Aphidna, while he accompanied Perithous to the under-world, 
in order to assist his friend in carrying off Persephoné. The 
force of Kastér and Pollux was irresistible, and when they re- 
demanded their sister, the people of Attica were anxious to restore 
her: but no one knew where Théseus had deposited his prize. 
The invaders, not believing in the sincerity of this denial, pro- 
ceeded to ravage the country, which would have been utterly 
ruined, had not Dekelus, the eponymus of Dekeleia, been able to 
indicate Aphidna as the place of concealment. The autochtho- 
nous Titakus betrayed Aphidna to Kastor and Pollux, and Helen 


1 Hesiod. ap. Schol. Pindar. Nem. x.150. Fragm. Hesiod. Diintzer, 58. 
Ρ. 44. Tyndareus was worshipped as a god at Lacedemé6n (Varro ap. Serv 
ad Virgil. Aineid. viii. 275). 

? Apollén. Rhod. ii. 1-96. Apollod.i.9, 20. Theocrit. xxii. 26-133. In 
the account of Apollonius and Apollodérus, Amykus is slain in the contest; 
in that of Theocritus he is only conquered and forced to give in, with a 
promise to renounce for the future his brutal conduct; there were several 
different narratives. See Schol. Apollon. Rhod. ii. 106. 


VOL & 8 


».σ we Bw «4». oO eee A ne ee ὁ... ὦ...» ane 


; »" 

μην, (ν᾽ προ ον ὟΝ" “ΠΝ: 
ΑΥ̓͂. 

‘ei ἃ 


170 HISTORY UF GREECE. 


was recovered: the brothers in evacuating Attica, carried away 
into captivity Athra, the mother of Theseus. In after-days, 
when Kastér and Pollux, under the title of the Dioskuri, had 
come to be worshipped as powerful gods, and when the Athenians 
were greatly ashamed of this act of Théseus— the revelation 
made by Dekelus was considered as entitling him to the lasting 
gratitude of his country, as well as to the favorable remembrance 
of the Lacedeménians, who maintained the Dekeleians in the 
constant enjoyment of certain honorary privileges at Sparta,' and 
even spared that déme in all their invasions of Attica. Nor is it 
improbable that the existence of this legend had some weight in 
determining the Lacedzménians to select Dekelia as the place of 
their occupation during the Peleponnésian war. 

The fatal combat between Kastor and Polydeukés on the one 
side, and Idas and Lynkeus on the other, for the possession of 
the daughters of Leukippus, was celebrated by more than one 
ancient poet, and forms the subject of one of the yet remaining 
Idylls of Theocritus. Leukippus had formally betrothed his 
daughters to Idas and Lynkeus; but the Tyndarids, becoming 
enamored of them, outbid their rivals in the value of the cus- 
tomary nuptial gifts, persuaded the father to violate his promise, 
and carried off Phoebé and Ilaéira as their brides. Idas and 
Lynkeus pursued them and remonstrated against the injustice : 
according to Theocritus, this was the cause of the combat. But 
there was another tale, which seems the older, and which assigns 
a different cause to the quarrel. The four had jointly made a 
predatory incursion into Arcadia, and had driven off some cattle, 
but did not agree about the partition of the booty — Idas carried 
off into Messénia a portion of it which the Tyndarids claimed as 


1 Diodér. iv. 63. Herod. iv. 73. Δεκελέων dé τῶν τότε ἐργασαμένων ἔρ- 
γον χρήσιμον ἐς τὸν πάντα χρόνον, ὡς αὐτοὶ ᾿Αϑηναῖοι λέγουσι. According 
to other authors, it was Akadémus who made the revelation, and the spot 
called Akadémia, near Athens, which the Lacedeménians spared in con- 
sideration of this service (Plutarch, Théseus, 31, 32, 33, where he gives 
several different versions of this tale by Attic writers, framed with the view 
of exonerating Théseus). The recovery of Helen and the captivity of πος, 
were represented on the ancient chest of Kypselus, with the following curious 


iption : 
a Tuvdapida ' Ἑλέναν gépetov, Αἴϑραν δ' ᾿Αϑέναϑεν 
“Ἑλκετυν. Pausan. v. 19 1 


KASTOR AND POLLUX. 171 


éheir own. To revenge and reimburse themselves, the Tyndarids 
invaded Messénia, placing themselves in ambush in the hollow of 
an ancient oak. But Lynkeus, endued with preternatural pow- 
ers of vision, mounted to the top of Taygetus, from whence, as he 
eould see over the whole Peleponnésus, he detected them in their 
chosen place of concealment. Such was the narrative of the 
ancient Cyprian Verses. Kastér perished by the hand of Idas, 
Lynkeus by that of Pollux. Idas, seizing a stone pillar from the 
tomb of his father Aphareus, hurled it at Pollux, knocked him 
down and stunned him; but Zeus, interposing at the critical 
moment for the protection of his son, killed Idas with a thunder- 
bolt. Zeus would have conferred upon Pollux the gift of immor- 
tality, but the latter could not endure existence without his brother: 
he entreated permission to share the gift with Kastér, and both 
were accordingly pe>mitted to live, but only on every other day.! 

The Dioskuri, or sons of Zeus, — as the two Spartan heroes, 
Kastér and Pollux, were denominated, — were recognized in the 
historical days of Greece as gods, and received divine honors. 
This is even noticed in a passage of the Odyssey,? which is at any 
rate a very old interpolation, as well as in one of the Homeric 
hymns. What is yet more remarkable is, that they were invoked 
during storms at sea, as the special and all-powerful protectors of 
the endangered mariner, although their attributes and their 
celebrity seem to be of a character so dissimilar. They were 
worshipped throughout most parts of Greece, but with preéminen 
sanctity at Sparta. 

Kastor and Pollux being removed, the Spartan genealogy 
passes from Tyndareus to Menelaus, and from him to Orestés. 

Originally it appears that Messéné was a name for the western 
portion of Lacénia, bordering on what was called Pylos: it is so 
represented in the Odyssey, and Ephorus seems to have included 
it amongst the possessions of Orestés and his descendants. 


' Cypria Carm. Fragm. 8. p. 13, Diintzer. Lycophrén, 538-566 with 
Schol. Apollod. iii. 11, 1. Pindar, Nem. x. 55-90. érepyuepov adavaciay: 
also Homer, Odyss. xi. 302, with the Commentary of Nitzsch, vol. iii. p. 245. 

The combat thus ends more favorably to the Tyndarids; but probably the 
account least favorable to them is the oldest, since their dignity went on cos 
dinually increasing, until at last they became great deities. 

5 Odyss. xxi. 15. Diodor. xv. 66. 


I i A i ὦ... A “Ὁ NI iy | »΄ 
‘ 


172 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Throughout the whole duration of the Messénico-D6rian king- 
dom, there never was any town called Messéné: the town was 


first founded by Epameinondas, after the battle of Leuctra. The 
hvroic genealogy of Messénia starts from the same name as that 
of Lacénia—from the autochthonous Lelex: his younger son, 
Polykaén, marries Messéné, daughter of the Argeian Triopas, 
and settles the country. Pausanias tells us that the posterity of 
this pair occupied the country for five generations; but he in 
vain searched the ancient genealogical poems to find the names 
of their descendants.! To them succeeded Periérés, son of 
olus; and Aphareus and Leukippus, according to Pausanias, 
were sons of Periérés. Idas and Lynkeus are the only heroes, 
distinguished for personal exploits and memorable attributes, 
belonging to Messénia proper. ‘They are the counterpart of the 
Dioskuri, and were interesting persons in the old legendary 
poems. Marpéssa was the daughter of EKuénus, and wooed by 
Apollo: nevertheless [das carried her off by the aid of a winged 
chariot which he had received from Poseidén, Euénus pursued 
them, and when he arrived at the river Lykormas, he found 
himself unable to overtake them: his grief caused him to throw 
himself into the river, which ever afterwards bore his name. Idas 
brought Marpéssa safe to Messénia, and even when Apollo there 
claimed her of him, he did not fear to risk a combat with the god. 
But Zeus interfered as mediator, and permitted the maiden to 
choose which of the two she preferred. She attached herself to 
Idas, being apprehensive that Apollo would desert her in her old 
age: on the death of her husband she slew herself. Both Idas 
and Lynkeus took part in the Argonautic expedition and in 


the Kalyd6énian boar-hunt.3 


' Pausan. iv. 2, 1. 

* Tliad, ix. 553. Simonidés had handled this story in detail (Schol. Ven. 
ΤΙ. ix. p. 553). Bacchylid’s (ap, Schol. Pindar. Isthm. iv. 92) celebrated in 
one of his poems the competition among many eager suitors for the hand of 
Marpéssa, under circumstances similar to the competition for Hippodameia, 
daughter of GEnomaus. Many unsuccessful suitors perished by the hand of 
Euénas: their skulls were affixed to the wall of the temple of Poseid6n. 

* Apollod. i. 7, 9. Pausan. iv. 2,5. Apollonius Rhodius describes Idas as 
full of boast and self-confidence, heedless of the necessity of divine aid. 
Probably this was the character of the brothers in the old legend, as the 
enemies of the Dioskuri. 

The wrath of the Dioskuri against Messénia was treated, even in the 


ARCADIAN GENEALOGY. 173 


Aphareus, after the death of his sons, founded the tuwn of 
Aréné, and made over most part of his dominions to his kinsman 
Néleus, with whom we pass into the Pylian genealogy. 


CHAPTER IX. 
ARCADIAN GENEALOGY. 


ux Arcadian divine or heroic pedigree begins with Pelasgus, 
whom both Hesiod and Asius considered as an indigenous man, 
though Akusilaus the Argeian represented him as brother of 
Argos and son of Zeus by Niobé, daughter of Phordneus: this 
logographer wished to establish a community of origin between 
the Argeians and the Arcadians. 

Lykaén, son of Pelasgus and king of Arcadia, had, by different 
wives, fifty sons, the most savage, impious and wicked of man- 
kind: Meenalus was the eldest of them. Zeus, in order that he 
might himself become a witness of their misdeeds, presented 
himself to them in disguise. They killed a child and served it 
up to him for a meal; but the god overturned the table and 
struck dead with thunder Lykaén and all his fifty sons, with the 
single exception of Nyktimus, the youngest, whom he spared at 
the earnest intercession of the goddess Gea (the Earth). The 
town near which the table was overturned received the name of 
Trapezus (Tabletown). 

This singular legend (framed on the same etymological type 
as that of the ants in A.gina, recounted elsewhere) seems ancient, 
and may probably belong to the Hesiodic Catalogue. But Pau- 
sanias tells us a story in many respects different, which was 


-- = 
Ξ ἘΞ. 


——— 


»- meee 


a ae 


= 


i74 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


point — the ferocity of Lykaén’s character, as well as the crud 
rites which he practised. The latter was the first who established 
the worship and solemn games of Zeus Lykzus: he offered up a 
child to Zeus, and made libations with the blood upon the altar. 
Immediately after having perpetrated this act, he was changed 
into a wolf.! 

“Of the truth of this narrative (observes Pausanias) I feel 
persuaded: it has been repeated by the Arcadians from old times, 
and it carries probability along with it. For the men of that day, 
from their justice and piety, were guests and companions at table 
with the gods, who manifested towards them approbation when 
they were good, and anger if they behaved ill, in a palpable man- 
ner: indeed at that time there were some, who having once been 
men, became gods, and who yet retain their privileges as such — 
Aristzus, the Krétan Britomartis, Héraklés son of Alkména, Am- 
phiaraus the son of Oiklés, and Pollux and Kastér besides. We 
may therefore believe that Lykaén became a wild beast, and that 
Niobé, the daughter of Tantalus, became a stone. But in my 
time, wickedness having enormously increased, so as to overrun 
the whole earth and all the cities in it, there are no farther 
examples of men exalted into gods, except by mere title and from 
adulation towards the powerful: moreover the anger of the gods 
falls tardily upon the wicked, and is reserved for them after their 
departure from hence.” 


? Apollodor. iii. 8,1. Hygin. fab. 176. Eratosthen. Catasterism. 8. Pau 
san. viii. 2, 2-3. A different story respecting the immolation of the child is 
m Nikolaus Damask. Frag. p. 41, Orelli. Lykaén is mentioned as the first 
founder of the temple of Zeus Lykzus in Schol. Eurip. Orest. 1662; bat 
nothing is there said about the human sacrifice or its consequences. In the 
historical times, the festival and solemnities of the Lyksa do not seem to 
have been distinguished materially from the other agénes of Greece (Pindar, 
Olymp. xiii. 104; Nem. x. 46): Xenias the Arcadian, one of the generals 
in the army of Cyrus the younger, celebrated the solemnity with great mag- 
nificence in the march through Asia Minor (Xen. Anab. i. 2,10). But the 
fable of the human sacrifice, and the subsequent transmutation of the person 
who had eaten human food into a wolf, continued to be told in connection 
with them (Plato, de Republic. viii. c. 15. p. 417). Compare Pliny, H. N. 
viii. 84. This passage of Plato seems to afford distinct indication that the 
vractice ef offering human victims at the altar of the Lykw#an Zeus was 
neither prevalent nor recent, but at most ualy traditional and antiquated’ 
and it therefore limits the sense or invalidates the authority of the Pseudo 
Platonic dialogue, Minos, c. 5 


LYKAON AND HIS SONS. 178 


Pausanias then proceeds to censure those who, by multiplying 
false miracles in more recent times, tended to rob the old and 
genuine miracles of their legitimate credit and esteem. The 
passage illustrates forcibly the views which a religious and in- 
structed pagan took of his past time — how inseparably he blend- 
ed together in it gods and men, and how little he either recognized 
or expected to find in it the naked phenomena and historical 
laws of connection which belonged to the world before him. He 
treats the past as the province of legend, the present as that of 
history ; and in doing this he is more sceptical than the persons 
with whom he conversed, who believed not only in the ancient, 
but even in the recent and falsely reported minacles. It is true 
that Pausanias does not always proceed consistently with this 
position: he often rationalizes the stories of the past, as if he 
expected to find historical threads of connection ; and sometimes, 
though more rarely, accepts the miracles of the present. But in 
the present instance he draws a broad line of distinction between 
present and past, or rather between what is recent and what is 
ancient: his criticism is, in the main, analogous to that of Arrian in 
regard to the Amazons — denying their existence during times 
of recorded history, but admitting it during the early and un- 
recorded ages. 

In the narrative of Pausanias, the sons of Lykaén, instead of 
perishing by thunder from Zeus, become the founders of the 
various towns in Arcadia. And as that region was subdivided 
into a great number of small and independent townships, each 
having its own eponym, so the Arcadian heroic genealogy appears 
broken up and subdivided. Pallas, Orestheus, Phigalus, Trape- 
zeus, Menalus, Mantinéus, and Tegeatés, are all numbered among 
the sons of Lyka6n, and are all eponyms of various Arcadian 
towns.! 

The legend respecting Kallisté6 and Arkas, the eponym of 
Arcadia generally, seems to have been originally quite independ 
ent of and distinct from that of Lykaén. Eumélus, indeed, and 
some other poets made Kallisté daughter of Lykaén ; but neither 
Hesiod, nor Asius, nor Pherekydés, acknowledged any relation- 
ship between them.? The beautiful Kallisté, companion of 


--- -- --- 


* Paus. viii.3. Hygin. fab. 177. 3. Apollod. iii. 8, 2 


4. ll hence aren ag, al JO re 
a ὦ a i a ened =< ὍΝ, it 
' . 


᾿Ξ = es ~ — ___ —— 


} 


176 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Artemis in the chase, had bound herself by a vow of chastity 
Zeus, either by persuasion or by force, obtained a violation of the 
vow, to the grievous displeasure both of Héré and Artemis. The 
former changed Kallisté into a bear, the latter when she was in 
that shape killed her with an arrow. Zcus gave to the unfortu- 
nate Kallisté a place among the stars, as the constellation of the 
Bear: he also preserved the child Arkas, of which she was 
pregnant by him, and gave it to the Atlantid nymph Maia to 
bring up.! 

Arkas, when he became king, obtained from Triptolemus and 
communicated to his people the first rudiments of agriculture ; 
he also taught them to make bread, to spin, and to weave. He 
had three sons — Azan, Apheidas, and Elatus: the first was the 
eponym of Azania, the northern region of Arcadia; the second 
was one of the heroes of Tegea; the third was father of Ischys 
(rival of Apollo for the affections of Kordnis), as well as of 
Zpytus and Kyllén: the name of Aipytus among the heroes of 
Arcadia is as old as the Catalogue in the Lliad.? 

Aleus, son of Apheidas and king of Tegea, was the founder 
of the celebrated temple and worship of Athéné Alea in that 
town. lLykKurgus and Képheus were his sons, Angé his daugh- 
ter, who was seduced by Héraklés, and secretly bore to him a 
child: the father, discovering what had happened, sent Augé to 
Nauplius to be sold into slavery: Teuthras, king of Mysia in 
Asia Minor, purchased her and made her his wife: her tomb was 
shown at Pergamus on the river Kaikus even in the time of 
Pausanias.° 

1 Pausan. viii. 3,2. Apollod. iii. 8,2. Hesiod. apud Eratosthen. Catas- 
terism. 1. Fragm. 182, Marktsch. Hygin. f. 177. 


3 Homer, Iliad, ii. 604. Pind. Olymp. vi. 44-63. 
The tomb of AZpytus, mentioned in the Iliad, was shown to Pausanias 


between Pheneus and Stymphalus (Pausan. viii. 16, 2). A®pytus was a cog- 
nomen of Hermés (Pausan. viii. 47, 3). 

The hero Arkas was worshipped at Mantineia, under the special injune- 
tion of the Delphian oracle (Pausan. viii. 9, 2). 

3 Pausan. viii. 4,6. Apollod. iii. 9,1. Diodér. iv. 33. 

A separate legend respecting Augé and the birth of Télephus was current 
at Tegea, attached to the temple, statue, and cognomen of Eileithyia in the 
Tegeatic agora (Pausan. viii. 48, 5). 

Hekatzeus seems to have narrated in detail the adventures of Augé (Pan 
san. viii. 4,4; 47,3. Hekate. Fragm. 345, Didot.). 

Euripides followed a different story about Augé and the birth of Télephus 


TELEPHUS 177 


The child Télephus, exposed on Mount Parthenius, was won- 
derfully sustained by the milk of a doe: the herdsmen of Kory- 
thus brought him up, and he was directed by the Delphian oracle 
to go and find his parents in Mysia. 'Teuthras adopted him, and 
he succeeded to the throne: in the first attempt of the army of 
Agamemnén against Troy, on which occasion they mistook their 
point and landed in Mysia, his valor signally contributed to the 
repulse of the Greeks, though he was at last vanquished and 
desperately wounded by the spear of Achilles — by whom how- 
ever he was afterwards healed, under the injunction of the ora- 
cle, and became the guide of the Greeks in their renewed attack 
upon the ‘Trojans.! 

From Lykurgus,? the son of Aleus and brother of Augé, we 
pass to his son Ankewus, numbered among the Argonauts, finally 
killed in the chase of the Kalydénian boar, and father of Agape- 
nor, who leads the Arcadian contingent against Troy, — (the 
adventurers of his niece, the Tegeatic huntress Atalanta, have 
already been touched upon),— then to Echemus, son of Aéropus 
and grandson of the brother of Lykurgus, Képheus. Echemus 
is the chief heroic ornament of Tegea. When Hyllus, the son 
of Héraklés, conducted the Hérakleids on their first ex pedi- 
tion against Peloponnésus, Echemus commanded the Tegean 
troops who assembled along with the other Peloponnésians at the 
isthmus of Corinth to repel the invasion: it was agree] that the 
dispute should be determined by single combat, and E.chemus, as 
the champion of Peloponnésus, encountered and killed Hyllus. 


in his lost tragedy called Augé (See Strabo, xiii. p. 615). Respecting the 
Μυσοὶ of Aischylus, and the two lost dran.as, ᾿Αλεαδαὶ and Μυσοὶ of Sopho- 
klés, little can be made out. (See Welcker, Griechisch. Tragéd. p. 53, 
208-414). 

' Télephus and his exploits were much dwelt upon in the lost old epic 
poem, the Cyprian Verses. See argument of that poem ap. Dontzer, 
Ep. Fragm. p.10. His exploits were also celebrated by Pindar (Olymp. 
ix. 70-79); he is enumerated along with Hector, Cycnus, Memnén, the 
~~ pi oe opponents of Achilles (Isthm. iv. 46). His birth, as 
well as his adventures, became subj i i 
pth jects with most of the great Attic trage- 

* There were other local genealogies of ‘Tegea deduced from Lykurgas : 
Botachus, eponym of the Déme Bétachide at that place, was his grandsox 
(Nicolaus ap. Steph. Byz. νυ. Βωταχίδαι). 

VOL. 1. 8" 120c. 


178 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Pursuant to the stipulation by which they had bound themselves, 
the Hérakleids retired, and abstained for three generations from 
pressing their claim upon Peloponnésus. This valorous exploit of 
their yreat martial hero was cited and appealed to by the Tegeates 
before the battle of Plataa, as the principal evidence of their 
claim to the second post in the combined army, next in point of 
honor to that of the Lacedszeménians, and superior to that of the 
Athenians : the latter replied to them by producing as counter-evi- 
dence the splendid heroic deeds of Athens, — the protection of the 
Hérakleids against Eurystheus, the victory over the Kadmeians 
of Thébes, and the complete defeat of the Amazons in Attica.! 
Nor can there be any doubt that these legendary glories were 
both recited by the speakers, and heard by the listeners, with 
profound and undoubting faith, as well as with heart-stirring 
admiration. 

One other person there is— Ischys, son of Elatus and grand 
son of Arkas—in the fabulous genealogy of Arcadia whom it 
would be improper to pass over, inasmuch as his name and 
adventures are connected with the genesis of the memorable god 
or hero Asculapius, or Asklépius. Korénis, daughter of Phleg- 
yas, and resident near the lake Boebéis in Thessaly, was beloved 
by Apollo and became pregnant by him: unfaithful to the god, 
she listened to the propositions of Ischys son of Elatus, and con 
sented to wed him: a raven brought to Apollo the fatal news, 
which so incensed him that he changed the color of the bird 
from white, as it previously had been, into black. Artemis, to 


the prize of wrestling im th 
lishment by Héraklés. He also found a place in the Hesiodic Catalogue as 
husband of Timandra, the sister of Helen and Klytemnéstra (Hesiod 


Fragm. 105, p.°318, Marktscheff.). 
3 Apollodor. iii. 10, 3; Hesiod, Fragm. 141-142, Marktscheff.; Strab. is 


p. 442; Pherekydés, Fragm. 8; Akusilaus, Fragm. 25, Didot. 

Τῷ μὲν ἄρ᾽ ἄγγελος hAve κόραξ, ἱερῆς ἀπὲ δαιτὸς 

Πυϑὺὼ ἐς ἠγαϑέην, καὶ ῥ᾽ ἔφρασεν ἔργ᾽ ἀΐδηλα 

Φοίβῳ ἀκερσεκόμῃ. ὅτι “loxve γῆμε Κόρων:ν 

Εἰλατίδης, Φλεγύαο διογνήτοιο ϑύγατρα. (Hesiod, Fr.) 
The change of the color of the crow is noticed both in Ovid, Metamorph 
ἃ. 632, in Antonin. Liberal. c. 20, and in Servius ad Virgil. Mneid. vii. 761 


ASKLEPIUS. 179 


avenge the wounded dignity of her brotner, put Korénis te 
death; but Apollo preserved the male child of which she was 
about to be delivered, and consigned it to the Centaur Cheirén to 
be brought up. The child was named Asklépius or A¢sculapius, 
and acquired, partly from the teaching of the beneficent leech 
Cheirén, partly from inborn and superhuman aptitude, a knowl- 
edge of the virtues of herbs and a mastery of medicine and sur- 
gery, such as had never before been witnessed. He not only 
cured the sick, the wounded, and the dying, but even restored the 
dead to life. Kapaneus, Eriphylé, Hippolytus, Tyndareus and 
Glaukus were all affirmed by different poets and logographers to 
have been endued by him with a new life! But Zeus now found 
himself under the necessity of taking precautions lest mankind, 
thus unexpectedly protected against sickness and death, should 
no longer stand in need of the immortal gods : he smote Asklé- 
pius with thunder and killed him. Apollo was so exasperated 
by this slaughter of his highly-gifted son, that he killed the 
Cyclopes who had fabricated the thunder, and Zeus was about to 
condemn him to Tartarus for doing so; but on the intercession 
of Laténa he relented, and was satisfied with imposing upon him 
a temporary servitude in the house of Admétus at Phere. 
Asklépius was worshipped with very great solemnity at Trikka, 
at Kos, at Knidus, and in many different parts of Greece, but espe- 
cially at Epidaurus, so that more than one legend had grown up 


though the name “ Corvo custode ejus ” is there printed with a capital letter, 
as if it were a man named Corvus. 

1 Schol. Eurip. Alkést. 1; Diodér. iv. 71; Apollodér. iii. 10,3; Pindar, 
Pyth. iii. 59; Sextus Empiric. adv. Grammatic. i. 12. p. 271. Stesichorus 
named Eriphylé—the Naupaktian verses, Hippolytus — (compare Servius 
ad Virgil. Aneid. vii. 761); Panyasis, Tyndareus; a proof of the popularity 
of this tale among the poets. Pindar says that Aeculapius was “ tempted by 
gold” to raise a man from the dead, and Plato (Legg. iii. p. 408) copies 
him: this seems intended to afford some color for the subsequent punish- 
ment. “Mercede id captum (observes Boeckh. ad Pindar. 1. c.) ZEscula- 
pium fecisse recentior est fictio ; Pindari fortasse ipsius, quem tragici secuti 
sunt: haud dubie a medicorum avaris moribus profecta, qui Grecorum 
medicis nostrisque communes sunt.” ‘The rapacity of the physicians (grant- 
ing it to be ever so well-founded, both then and now) appears to me less 
likely to have operated upon the mind of Pindar, than the disposition to 
extenuate the cruelty of Zeus, by imputing guilty and sordid views to Asklé 
pius. Compare the citation from Diksearchus, ἐπ ὰ p. 249, note 1. 


180 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


sespecting the details of his birth and adventures: in particular, 
his mother was by some called Arsinoé. But a formal applica 
tion had been made on this subject (so the Epidaurians told 
Pausanias) to the oracle of Delphi, and the god in reply acknowl- 
edged that Asklépius was his son by Korénis.!' The tale above 
recounted seems to have been both the oldest and the most cur- 
rent. It is adorned by Pindar in a noble ode, wherein however 
he omits all mention of the raven as messenger — not specifying 
who or what the spy was from whom Apollo learnt the infidelity 
of Korénis. By many this was considered as an improvement in 
respect of poetical effect, but it illustrates the mode in which the 
characteristic details and simplicity of the old fables? came to be 
exchanged for dignified generalities, adapted to the altered taste 
of society. 

Machaén and Podaleirius, the two sons of Asklépius, com 
mand the contingent from ‘Trikka, in the north-west region of 
Thessaly, at the siege of Troy by Agamemndén.3 They are the 
leeches of the Grecian army, highly prized and consulted by all 
the wounded chiefs. Their medical renown was further pro- 
longed in the subsequent poem of Arktinus, the Iliu-Persis, 
wherein the one was represented as unrivalled in surgical opera- 
_ tions, the other as sagacious in detecting and appreciating morbid 
symptoms. It was Podaleirius who first noticed the glaring 

' Pausan. ii. 26, where several distinct stories are mentioned, each spring 
ing up at some one or other of the sanctuaries of the god: quite enough to 
justify the idea of these Atsculapii (Cicero, N. D. iii. 22). 

Homer, Hymn ad Atsculap. 2. The tale briefly alluded to in the Homeric 
Hymn. ad Apollin. 209. is evidently different: Ischys is there the companion 
of Apollo, and Kordénis is an Arcadian damsel. 

Aristidés, the fervent worshipper of Asklépius, adopted the story of Koré- 
nis, and composed hymns on the yauov Kopwvridog καὶ γένεσιν τοῦ ϑεοὺ 
(Orat. 23. p. 463, Dind.). 

* See Pindar, Pyth. iii. The Scholiast puts a construction upon Pindar’s 
words which is at any rate far-fetched, if indeed it be at all admissible: he 
supposes that Apollo knew the fact from his own omniscience, without any in- 
formant, and he praises Pindar for having tk 1s transformed the old fable. But 
the words οὐδ᾽ ἔλαϑε σκόπον seem certainly to imply some informant: te 
suppose that σκόπον means the god’s own mind, is a strained interpretation 

* Iliad, u. 730. The Messénians laid claim to the sons of Asklépius as 
their heroes, and tried to justify the pretension by a forced construction uf 
Homer (Pausun. iii. 4. 5) 


ΨΥ, = ——-—. e- * 


ASKLEPIAD FAMILIES IN GREECE. 181 


eyes and disturbed deportment which preceded the suicide of 
Ajax.' 

Galen appears uncertain whether Asklépius (as well as Dion- 
ysus) was originally a god, or wheth.r he was first a man and 
then became afterwards a god ;? but Apollodérus professed to fix 
the exact date of his apotheosis. Throughout all the historical 
ages the descendants of Asklépius were numerous and widely 
diffused. The many families or gentes called Asklépiads, who 
devoted themselves to the study and practice of medicine, and 
who principally dwelt near the temples of Asklénina whither 
sick and suffering men came to obtain relief — all recognized the 
god not merely as the object of their common worship, but also 
as their actual progenitor. Like Solén, who reckoned Néleus 
and Poseidén as his ancestors, or the Milésian Hekateus, who 
traced his origin through fifteen successive links to a god — like 
the privileged gens at Pélion in Thessaly, who considered the 
wise Centaur Cheirén as their progenitor, and who inherited from 
him their precious secrets respecting the medicinal herbs of which 


' Arktinus, Epice. Gree. Fragm. 2. p. 22, Duntzer. The Ilias Minor men- 
tioned the death of Machaén by Eurypylus, son of Télephus (Fragm. 5. p 
19, Diintzer). 

2 ᾿Ασκληπιός γέ τοι καὶ Διόνυσος, eit’ ἄνϑρωποι πρότερον ἧστην εἴτε καὶ 
ἀρχῆϑεν ϑεοί (Galen, Protreptic. 9. t. 1. p. 22, Kuhn.). Pausanias considers 
him as ϑεὸς ἐξ ἀρχῆς (ii. 26, 7). In the important temple at Smyrna he 
was worsnipped as Ζεὺς ᾿Ασκληπιός ( Aristidés, Or. 6. p. 64; Or. 23. p. 456, 
Dind.). 

’ Apolledte ap. Clem. Alex. Strom. i. p. 381; see Heyne, Fragment. 
Apollodér. p. 410. According to Apollodérus, the apotheosis of Héraklés 
and of /Esculapius took place at the same time, thirty-eight years after Hé- 
raklés began to reign at Argos. 

4 About Hekateus, Herodot. ii. 143; about Solén, Diogen. Laért, Vit. 
Platon. init. 

A curious fragment, preserved from the lost works of Diksearchus, tells us 
of the descendants of the Centaur Cheir6n at the town of Pélion, or perhaps 
at the neighboring town of Démétrias, —it is not quite certain which, per- 
haps at both (see Dikzearch Fragment. ed. Fuhr, p. 408). Ταύτην δὲ τὴν 
δύναμιν ἕν τῶν πολιτῶν oide γένος, ὁ δὴ λέγεται Χείρωνος ἀπόγονον εἶναι" 
παραδίδωσι δὲ καὶ δείκνυσι πατὴρ υἱῷ, καὶ οὕτως ἡ δύναμις φυλάσσεται, ὡς 
οὐδεὶς ἄλλος οἷδε τῶν πολιτῶν " οὐχ ὅσιον δὲ τοὺς ἐπισταμένους τὰ φάρμακα 
μεσϑοῦ τοῖς καμνοῦσι βοηϑεῖν, ἀλλὰ προῖκα. : 

Plato, de Republ iii. 4 (p 391) ᾿Αχελλεὺς ὑπ) τῷ σοφωτάτῳ Χείρων 
τεϑράμμενος. Compare Xenophon, De Venat. c. 1 


182 MISTORY OF GREECE. 


their neighborhood was full,— Asklépiads, even of the later 
times, numbered and specified all the intermediate links whica 
separated them from their primitive divine parent. One of these 
genealogies has been preserved to us, and we may be sure that 
there were many such, as the Asklépiads were found in many 
different places... Among them were enrolled highly instructed 
and accomplished men, such as the great Hippocratés and the 
historian Ktésias, who prided themselves on the divine origin of 
themselves and their gens? — so much did the legendary element 
pervade even the most philosophical and positive minds of his- 
torical Greece. Nor can there be any doubt that their means of 
medical observation must have been largely extended by their 
vicinity to a temple so much frequented by the sick, who came in 
confident hopes of divine relief, and who, whilst they offered up 
sacrifice and prayer to /¢sculapius, and slept in his temple in 
order to be favored with healing suggestions in their dreams, 
might, in case the god withheld his supernatural aid, consult his 


' See the genealogy at length in Le Clerc, Historie de la Medecine, lib. ii. 
6. 2. p. 78, also p. 287; also Littré, Introduction aux QCuvres Completes 
d@’Hippocrate, t. i. p. 35. Hippocratés was the seventeenth from Atscula 


pius. 

Theopompus the historian went at considerable length into the pedigree 
of the Asklépiads of Kos and Knidus, tracing them up to Podaleirius and 
his first settlement at Syrnus in Karia (see Theopomp. Fragm. 111, Didot) : 
Polyanthus of Kyréné composed a special treatise περὶ τῆς τῶν ᾿Ασκληπίια- 
δῶν γενέσεως (Sextus Empiric. adv. Grammat. i. 12. p. 271); see Stephan, 
Byz. v. Koc, and especially Aristidés, Orat. vii. Asclémade. The Asklépiads 
were even reckoned among the ᾿Αρχηγέται of Rhodes, jointly with the Hé- 
rakleids (Aristidés, Or. 44, ad Rhod. p. 839, Dind.). 

In the extensive sacred enclosure at Epidaurus stood the statues of Asklé- 
pius and his wife Epioné | Pausan. ii. 29, 1): two daughters are coupled with 
him by Aristophanés, and he was considered especially εὔπαις (Plutus, 654) 
Jaso, Panakeia and Hygieia are named by Aristidés. 

* Plato, Protagor. c. 6 (p, 311). Ἱπποκράτῃ τὸν Kooy, τὸν τῶν ᾿Ασκλη- 
πιαδῶν ; also Phedr. c, 121. (p. 270). About Ktésias, Galen, Opp. t. v. p. 
652, Basil.; and Bahrt, Fragm. Ktésiw, p. 20. Aristotle (see Stahr. Aristo- 
telia, i. p. 32) and Xenoph6n, the physician of the emperor Claudius. were 
both Asklépiads (Tacit. Annal. xii. 61). Plato, de Republ. iii. 405, calls 
them τοὺς κομψοὺς ᾿Ασκληπιάδας. 

Pausanias, a distinguished physician at Geja in Sicily, and contemporary 
of the philosopher Empedoklés, was also an Asklépiad: see the verses of 
Empedoklés upon him, Diogen. Laért. viii. 61. 


ASKLEPIADS AT KOS, ΓΕΙΚΚΑ, ETC. 183 


ving lescendants.1 The sick visitors at Kés, or Trikka, or 
Epidaurus, were numerous and constant, and the tablets usually 
hung up to record the particulars of their maladies, the remedies 
resorted to, and the cures operated by the god, formed both an 
interesting decoration of the sacred ground and an instructive 
memorial to the Asklépiads.? 

The genealogical descent of Hippocratés and the other Asklé- 
piads from the god Asklépius is not only analogcus to that of 
Hekatzus and Solén from their respective ancestoral gods, but 
also to that of the Lacedzemoénian kings from Hérzklés, upon the 
basis of which the whole supposed chronology of the ante-histo- 
rical times has been built, from Eratosthenés and Apollodérus 
down to the chronologers of the present century. I shall revert 


to this hereafter. 


1 Strabo, viii. p. 374; Aristophan. Vesp. 122; Plutus, 635-750; where the 
visit to the temple of AEsculapius is described in great detail, though with 
a broad farcical coloring. 

During the last illness of Alexander the Great, several of his principal 
officers slept in the temple of Serapis. in the hope that remedies would be 
suggested to them in their dreams (Arrian, vii. 26). 

Pausanias, in describing the various temples of Asklépius which he saw, 
announces as a fact quite notorious and well-understood, “ Here cures are 
wrought by the god” (ii. 36, 1; iii. 26, 7; vii. 27,4): see Suidas, v. ’Apio- 
rapyoc. The Orations of Aristidés, especially the 6th and 7th, Asklépius 
and the Asklépiade, are the most striking manifestations of faith and thanks 
giving towards AXsculapius, as well as attestations of his extensive working 
throughout the Grecian world; also Orat. 23 and 25, Ἱερῶν Λόγος, 1 and 3; 
and Or. 45 (De RhetoricA, p. 22. Dind.), af τ᾽ ἐν ᾿Ασκληπιοῦ τῶν ἀεὶ διατρι 
βόντων ἀγελαὶ, ete. 

3 Pausan. ii. 27, 3; 36,1. Ταύταις ἐγγεγράμμενά bore καὶ ἀνδρῶν καὶ 
γυναικῶν ὀνόματα ἀκεσϑέντων ὑπὸ τοῦ ᾿Ασκληπιοῦ, πρόσετι δὲ καὶ νόσημα͵ 
ὅ. τι ἕκαστος ἐνόσησε, καὶ ὅπως la0yn,—-the cures are wrought by the goc 


himself. 
3 Apollodérus sztatem Η sculis pro cardine chronologiz habuit ” (Heyne 


ad Apollodir. Fragm. p 410). 


— eet ee . μευ. “ΦΠὐθεν a 


ree A eee PSE MH “-- “ὁ. 1. 


HISTORY OF GREECE 


CHAPTER X. 


EAKUS AND HIS DESCENDANTS. — ZGINA, SALAMIS, ANI) PHTHIA 


Tue memorable heroic genealogy of the Aakids establishes a 
fabulous connection between AXgina, Salamis, and Phthia, which 
we can only recognize as a fact, without being able to trace its 


origin. 

ZEakus was the son of Zeus, born of Aégina, daughter of Asd- 
pus, whom the god had carried off and brought into the island to 
which he gave her name: she was afterwards married to Aktor, 
and had by him Menostius, father of Patroclus. As there were 
two rivers named Asépus, one between Phlius and Sikyén, and 
another between Thébes and Plataza—so the A%ginétan heroic 
genealogy was connected both with that of Thébes and with that 
of Phlius: and this belief led to practical consequences in the 
minds of those who accepted the legends as genuine history. For 
when the Thébans, in the 68th Olympiad, were hard-pressed in 
war by Athens, they were directed by the Delphian oracle to 
ask assistance of their next of kin: recollecting that Thébé and 
ZEzina had been sisters, common daughters of Asdpus, they were 
induced to apply to the A2ginétans as their next of kin, and the 
ZEginétans gave them aid, first by sending to them their common 
heroes, the ASakids, next by actual armed force.' Pindar dwells 
emphaiically on the heroic brotherhood between Thébes, his native 
city, and A¢gina.” 

ZEakus was alone in A®gina: to relieve him from this solitude, 
Zeus changed all the ants in the island into men, and thus pro 
vided him with a numerous population, who, from their origin, 
were called Myrmidons.* By his wife Endéis, daughter of Chei- 


' Herodot. v. 81. 2 Nem. iv. 22. Isthm. vii. 16. 

3 This tale, respecting the transformation of the ants into men, is as old 
as the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. See Diintzer, Fragm. Epice. 21. p. 
34; evidently an etymological tale from the name Myrmidones. Pausanias 
throws aside both the etymology and the details of the miracle: Le says 


κ᾿’... Se oo Oe te ee OO 4... we Ow ὁ eles 


ZAKUS AND HIS DESCENDANTS 188 


von, AZakus had for his sons Péleus and Telamén: by the Nereid 
Psamathé, he had Phékus. A monstrous crime had then recently 
been committed by Pelops, in killing the Arcadian prince, Stym- 
phalus, under a simulation of friendship and hospitality: for this 
the gods had smitten all Greece with famine and barrenness. 
The oracles affirmed that nothing could relieve Greece from this 
intolerable misery except the prayers of A®akus, the most pious 
of mankind. Accordingly envoys from all quarters flocked to 
Egina, to prevail upon Kakus to put up prayers for them: on his 
supplications the gods relented, and the suffering immediately 
ceased. The grateful Greeks established in A2gina the temple 
and worship of Zeus Panhellénius, one of the lasting monuments 
and institutions of the island, on the spot where A®akus had 
offered up his prayer. The statues of the envoys who had come 
to solicit him were yet to be seen in the Aakeium, or sacred 
edifice of A®akus, in the time of Pausanias: and the Athenian 
Isokratés, in his eulogy of Evagoras, the despot of Salamis in 
Cyprus (who traced his descent through Teukrus to A®akus), 
enlarges upon this signal miracle, recounted and believed by 
other Greeks as well as by the Avginétans, as 2 proof both of 
the great qualities and of the divine favor and patronage dis- 
played in the career of the akids.! A¢akus was also employed 
to aid Poseidon and Apollo in building the walls of Troy.? 
Péleus and Telamdén, the sons of A®akus, contracting a jeal- 


that Zeus raised men from the earth, at the prayer of AZakus (ii. 29, 2): 
other authors retained the etymology of Myrmidons from μύρμηκες, but cave 
a different explanation (Kallimachus, Fragm. 114, Dintzer). Μυρμιδόνων 
ἐσσῆνα (Strabo, viii. p. 375). ᾿Εσσὴν, ὁ οἰκιστής (Hygin. fab. 52). 

According to the Thessalian legend, Myrmidén was the son of Zeus by 
Eurymedusa, daughter of Kletor; Zeus having assumed the disguise of az 
ant (Clemens Alex. Admon. ad Gent. p. 25. Sylb.). 

' Apollod. iii. 12, 6. Isokrat. Evagor. Encom. vol. ii. p. 278, Auger. Pau 
san. i. 45, 13; ii. 29,6. Schol. Aristoph. Equit. 1253. 

So in the 106th Psalm, respecting the Israelites and Phinees, v. 29, “ They 
provoked the Lord to anger by their inventions, and the plague was great 
among them;” “Then stood up Phinees and prayed, and so the plague 
ceased ;” “And that was counted unto him for righteousness, among all 
posterities for evermore.” 

* Pindar, Olymp. viii. 41, with the Scholia. Didymus did not find this 
story in any other poet older than Pindaz 


186 HISTORY OF GRERCE. 


ousy of their bastard brother, Phékus, in consequence of his 
eminent skill in gymnastic contests, conspired to put him to death. 
T2lamon flung his quoit at him while they were playing together, 
and Péleus despatched him by a blow with his hatchet in the 
back. They then concealed the dead body in a wood, but AXakus, 
having discovered both the act and the agents, banished the 
brothers from the island.!. For both of them eminent destinies 
were in store. 

While we notice the indifference to the moral quality of ac- 
tions implied in the old Hesiodic legend, when it imputes dis- 
tinctly and nakedly this proceeding to two of the most admired 
persons of the heroic world — it is not less instructive to witness 
the change of feeling which had taken place in the age of Pindar. 
That warm eulogist of the great AXakid race hangs down his 
head with shame, and declines to recount, though he is obliged 
darkly to glance at the cause which forced the pious Zakus to 
banish his sons from A®gina. It appears that Kallimachus, if 
we may judge by a short fragment, manifested the same repug- 
nance to mention it.? 

Telamén retired to Salamis, then ruled by Kychreus, the son 
of Poseidén and Salamis, who had recently rescued the island 
from the plague of a terrible serpent. This animal, expelled 
from Salamis, retired to Eleusis in Attica, where it was received 
and harbored by the goddess Démétér in her sacred domicile.3 
Kychreus dying childless left his dominion to Telamon, who, mar- 


' Apollod. iii. 12,6, who relates the tale somewhat differently ; but the old 

epic poem Alkmzonis gave the details (ap. Schol. Eurip. Andromach. 685) — 
Ἔνϑα μὲν ἀντίϑεος Τελαμὼν τροχοειδέϊ δίσκῳ 
Πλῆξε κάρη" Πηλεὺς δὲ ϑοῶς ἀνὰ χεῖρα τανύσσας 
᾿Αξίνην ἐύχαλκον ἐπεπλήγει μετὰ νῶτα. 

? Pindar, Nem. v. 15, with Scholia, and Kallimach. Frag. 136. Apolléni- 
us Rhodius represents the fratricide as inadvertent and unintentional (i. 92); 
one instance amongst many of the tendency to soften down and moralize 
the ancient tales. 

Pindar, however, seems to forget this incident when he speaks in other 
places of the general character of Péleus (Olymp. ii. 75-86. Isthm. vii. 40). 

3. Apollod. iii. 12,7. Euphorién, Fragm. 5, Diintzer, p. 43, Epice. Gree. 
There may have been a tutelary serpent in the temple at Eleusis, as there was 
in that of Athéné Polias at Athens (Herodot. viii. 41. Photius, v. Olaotoes 
ὄφιν = Aristophan. Lysistr. 759, with the Schol.). 


PELEUS AND TELAMON. 187 


rying Periboea, daughter of Alkathoos, and gra:d-daughter of 
Pelops, had for his son the celebrated Ajax. Telamén took 
part both in the chase of the Kalydonian boar and in the Argo- 
nautic expedition: he was also the intimate friend and companion 
of Héraklés, whom he accompanied in his enterprise against the 
Amazons, and in the attack made with only six ships upon Lao- 
medon, king of Troy. This last enterprise having proved com- 
pletely successful, Telam6n was rewarded by Héraklés with the 
possession of the daughter of Laomedon, Hésioné — who bore to 
him Teukros, the most distinguished archer amidst the host of 
Agamennon, and the founder of Salamis in Cyprus. 

Péleus went to Phthia, where he married the daughter of 
Eurytién, son of Akt6r, and received from him the third part of 
his dominions. Taking part in the Kalydénian boar-hunt, he 
unintentionally killed his father-in-law Eurytion, and was obliged 
to flee to Idlkos, where he received purification from Akastus, 
son of Pelias: the danger to which he became exposed by the 
calumnious accusations of the enamoured wife of Akastus has 
already been touched upon in a previous section. Peéleus also 
was among the Argonauts; the most memorable event in his life 
however was his marriage with the sea-goddess Thetis. Zeus 
and Poseidén had both conceived a violent passion for Thetis. 
But the former, having been forewarned by Prométheus that 
Thetis was destined to give birth to a son more powerful than 
his father, compelled her, much against her own will, to marry 
Péleus ; who, instructed by the intimations of the wise Cheirén, 
was enabled to seize her on the coast called Sépias in the south- 
ern region of Thessaly. She changed her form several times, 
but Péleus held her fast until she resumed her original appear- 
ance, and she was then no longer able to resist. All the gods 
were present, and brought splendid gifts to these memorable nup- 
tials: Apollo sang with his harp, Poseidén gave to Péleus the 
immortal horses Xanthus and Balius, and Cheirén presented a 


sethantes — 


--- 


' Appollod. iii. 12, 7. Hesiod. ap. Strab. ix. p. 393. 

The libation and prayer of Héraklés, prior to the birth of Ajax, and his 
fixing the name of the yet unborn child, from an eagle (αἰετὸς) which ap- 
peared in response to his words, was detailed in the Hesiodic Eoia, and is 
celebrated by Pindar (Isthm v. 30-54). See also the Scholia 


“Ὁ + 


~~" 


= 


ST ee 


188 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


formidable spear, cut from an ash-tree on Mount Pélion. We 
shall have reason hereafter to recognize the value of both tnese 
gifts in the exploits of Achilles.! 

The prominent part assigned to Thetis in the Iliad is well 
known, and the post-Homeric poets of the Legend of Troy in- 
troduced her as actively concurring first to promote the glory, 
finally to bewail the death of her distinguished son.2 Péleus, 
having survived both his son Achilles and his grandson Neopto- 
lemus, is ultimately directed to place himself on the very spot 
where he had originally seized Thetis, and thither the goddess 
comes herself to fetch him away, in order that he may exchange 
the desertion and decrepitude of age for a life of immortality 
along with the Néreids.s The spot was indicated to Xerxés when 
he marched into Greece by the Ioénians who accompanied him, 
and his magi offered solemn sacrifices to her as well as to the 
other Néreids, as the presiding goddesses and mistresses of the 


soast.4 

Neoptolemus or Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, too young to 
engage in the coramencement of the siege of Troy, comes on the 
stage after the death of his father as the indispensable and pro- 
minent agent in the final capture of the city. He returns victor 
from Troy, not to Phthia, but to Epirus, bringing with him the 
eaptive Andromaché, widow of Hectér, by whom Molossus is 


' Appollod6r. iii. 13, 5. Homer, Iliad, xviii. 434; xxiv. 62. Pindar, 
Nem. iv. 50-68; Isthm. vii. 27-50. Herodot. vii. 192. Catullus, Carm. 64. 
Epithal. Pel. et Thetidos, with the prefatory remarks of Deering. 

The nuptials of Péleus and Thetis were much celebrated in the Hesiodic 
Catalogue, or perhaps in the Eoiai (Diintzer, Epic. Gree. Frag. 36. p. 39), 
and Egimius—see Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. iv. 869—where there is a 
curious attempt of Staphylus to rationalize the marriage of Péleus and 
Thetis. 

There was a town, seemingly near Pharsalus in Thessaly, called Thetide 
ium. Thetis is said to have been carried by Péleus to both these places: 
probably it grew up round a temple and sanctuary of this goddess ( Pherekyd. 
Frag. 16, Didot; Hellank. ap. Steph. Byz. Θεστιδεῖον). 

* See the arguments of the lost poems, the Cypria and the Athiopis, as 
given by Proclus, in Duntzer, Fragm. Epic. Gr. p. 11-16; also Schol. ad 
Nliad. xvi. 140; and the extract from the lost ¥vyooracia of Zischylus, ap. 
Plato. de Republic. ii. c. 21 (p. 382, St.). 

* Eurip. Androm. 1242-1260; Pindar, Olymp. ii. 86. 

Herodot. vii. 198 


--»-. ee a 9 ee oe Se 


ACHILLES AND AJAX. 189 


born to him. He himself perishes in the full vigor of life at 
Delphi by the machinations of Orestés, son of Agamemnén. But 
his son Molossus — like Fleance, the son of Banquo, in Macbeth 
— becomes the father of the powerful race of Molossian kings, 
who played so conspicuous a part during the declining vigor of 
the Grecian cities, and to whom the title and parentage of Aakids 
was a source of peculiar pride, identifying them by community 
of heroic origin with genuine and undisputed Hellénes.! 

The glories of Ajax, the second grandson of A®akus, before 
Troy, are surpassed only by those of Achilles. He perishes by 
his own hand, the victim of an insupportable feeling of humilia- 
tion, because a less worthy claimant is allowed to carry off from 
him the arms of the departed Achilles. His son Philzeus receives 
the citizenship of Athens, and the gens or déme called Philaidz 
traced up to him its name and its origin: moreover the distin 
guished Athenians, Militiadés and Thucydidés, were regarded as 
members of this heroic progeny.? 

Teukrus escaped from the perils of the siege of Troy as well 
as from those of the voyage homeward, and reached Salamis in 
safety. But his father Telamon, indignant at his having return- 
ed without Ajax, refused to receive him, and compelled him to 
expatriate. He conducted his followers to Cyprus, where he 
founded the city of Salamis: his descendant Evagoras was re- 
cognized as a Teukrid and as an A®akid even in the time of 


Isokratés.3 


? Plutarch, Pyrrh. 1; Justin, xi. 3; Eurip. Androm. 1253; Arrian, Exp. 
Alexand. i. 11. ᾿ 

2 Pherekydés and Hellanikus ap. Marcellin. Vit. Thucydid. init.; Pausan. 
ii. 29,4; Plutarch, Solén, 10. According to Apollodérus, however, Phere 
kydés said that Telam6n was only the friend of Péleus, not his brother,— 
not the son of A®akus (iii. 12,7): this seems an inconsistency. There was 
however a warm dispute between the Athenians and the Megarians respect- 
ing the title to the hero Ajax, who was claimed by both (see Pausan. i. 42, 
4; Plutarch, /. c.): the Megarians accused Peisistratus of having interpolated 
a line into the Catalogue in the Iliad (Strabo, ix. p. 394). 

5 Herodot. vii. 90; Isokrat. Enc. Ewag. ut sup.; Sophokl. Ajax, 984-995; 
Vellei. Patercul. i.1; A®schyl. Pers. 891,and Schol. The return from “roy 
of Teukruas, his banishment by Telamé6n, and his settlement in Cyprus, form 
ed the subject of the Τεῦκρος of Sophoklés, and of a tragedy under a similar 


190 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Such was the splendid heroic genealogy of the akids,—a@ 
family renowned for military excellence. The akcion at Agi- 
na, in which prayer and sacrifice were offered to {akus, remain- 
ed in undiminished dignity down to the time of Pausanias.! This 
genealogy connects together various eminent gentes in Achaia 
Phthidtis, in Aigina, in Salamis, in Cyprus, and amongst the 
Epirotic Molossians. Whether we are entitled to infer from it 
that the island of A&gina was originally peopled by Myrmidones 
from Achaia Phthidtis, as Ὁ. Muller imagines,? I will not pretend 
to aflirm. These mythical pedigrees seem to unite together spe 
cial clans or gentes, rather than the bulk of any community — 
just as we know that the Athenians generally had no part in the 
Kakid genealogy, though certain particular Athenian families laid 
claim to it. The intimate friendship between Achilles and the 
Opuntian hero Patroclus — and the community of name and fre- 
quent conjunction between the Locrian Ajax, son of Oileus, and 
Ajax, son of Telamén — connect the Hakids with Opus and the 
Opuntian Locrians, in a manner which we have no farther means 
of explaining. Pindar too represents Mencetius, father of Patro- 
clus, as son of Akiér and gina, and therefore maternal brother 
of Aakus.3 


title by Pacuvius (Cicero de Orat. i. 58; ii. 46); Sophokl. Ajax, 892; Pacuvii 
Fragm. Teucr. 15.— 
“ Te repudio, nec recipio, natum abdico, 
Facesse.” 
The legend of Teukros was connected in Attic archwology with the peculiar 
functions and formalities of the judicature, ἐν ®pearroi (Pamsan. i. 28, 12; 
ii. 29, 7). 
* Hesiod, Fragm. Diiintz, Eoiai, 55, y. 43.— 
᾿Αλκὴν μὲν γὰρ ἔδωκεν Ὀλύμπιος Alaxidacot, 
Νοῦν δ᾽ ᾿Αμυϑαονίδαις, πλοῦτον & bog? ᾿Ατρείΐδῃσε, 
Polyb. v. ῶ.-- 
Αἰακίδας, πολέμῳ κεχαρηότας ἠῦτέ δαιτί. 
* See his Aiginetica, p. 14, his earliest work. 
* Pindar, Olymp. ix. 74. The hero Ajax, son of Otleus, was 


worshipped at Opus; solemn festivals and games were celebrated in hix 
honor. 


ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOUGIES. 


CHAPTER XI. 
ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES. 


THE most ancient name in Attic archeology, as far as our 
means of information reach, is that of Erechtheus, who is men- 
tioned both in the Catalogue of the Iliad and in a brief allusion 
of the Odyssey. Born of the Earth, he is brought up by the 
goddess Athéné, adopted by her as her ward, and installed in her 
temple at Athens, where the Athenians offer to him annual sac- 
rifices. The Athenians are styled in the Iliad, “the people of 
Erechtheus.”! This is the most ancient testimony concerning 
Erechtheus, exhibiting him as a divine or heroic. certainly a su- 
perhuman person, and identifying him with the primitive ger- 
mination (if I may use a term, the Grecian equivalent of which 
would have pleased an Athenian ear) of Attic man. And he 
was recognized in this same character, even at the close of the 
fourth century before the Christian zra, by the Butadz, one of 
the most ancient and important Gentes at Athens, who boasted 
of him as their original ancestor: the genealogy of the great 
Athenian orator Lykurgus, a member of this family, drawn up 
by his son Abrén, and painted on a public tablet in the Erechthe- 
ion, contained as its first and highest name, Erechtaeus, son of 
Héphestos and the Earth. In the Erechtheion, Erechtheus was 
worshipped conjointly with Athéné: he was identified with the 
god Poseidén, and bore the denomination of Poseidén Erech 


' Tliad, ii. 546. Odyss. vii. 81.— 
Oi δ᾽ ap’ ᾿Αϑῆνας εἶχον 
Δῆμον ᾿Ερεχϑῆος μεγαλήτορος, ὅν ποτ᾽ ᾿Αϑήνῃη 
Opépe, Διὸς ϑυγάτηρ, τέκε δὲ ζείδωρος "Apoups 
Kad δ᾽ ἐν ᾿Αϑήνῃσ᾽ εἶσεν ἑῷ ἐνὶ πίονι νηῷ, 
"Evddde μιν ταύροισι καὶ ἀρνειοῖς ἱλάονται 
Κοῦροι ᾿Αϑηναίων. πεοιτελλομένων ἐνιαυτῶν. 


Vol, 1 10 


i92 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


theus: one of the family of the Butadx, chosen among themselves 
by lot, enjoyed the privilege and performed the functions of his 
hereditary priest.!_ Herodotus also assigns the same earth-born 
origin to Erechtheus :* but Pindar, the old poem called the Da- 
nais, Euripidés and Apollodérus — all name Erichthonius, son of 
Héphestos and the Earth, as the being who was thus adopted 
and made the temple-companion of Athéné, while Apollodérus in 
another place identifies Erichthonius with Poseidén.3 The Ho- 
meric scholiast treated Erechtheus and Erichthonius as the same 
person under two names :* and since, in regard to such mythical 
persons, there exists no other test of identity of the subject ex- 
cept perfect similarity of the attributes, this seems the reasonable 
conclusion. 

We may presume, from the testimony of Homer, that the first 
and oldest conception of Athens and its sacred acropolis places it 
under the special protection, and represents it as the settlement 
and favorite abode of Athéné, jointly with Poseidén ; the latter 
being the inferior, though the chosen companion of the former, 
and therefore exchanging his divine appellation for the cog- 
nomen of Erechtheus. But the country called Attica, which, 
during the historical ages, forms one social and political aggregate 
with Athens, was originally distributed into many independent 


' See the Life of Lykurgus, in Plutarch’s (I call it by that name, as it is 
always printed with his works) Lives of the Ten Orators, tom. iv. p. 382- 
384, Wytt. Κατῆγον δὲ τὸ γένος ἀπὸ τούτων καὶ ᾿Ερεχϑέως τοῦ Τῆς καὶ 
Ἡφαίστου καὶ ἐστιν αὐτὴ ἡ καταγωγὴ τοῦ γένους τῶν ἑερασαμένων 
τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος, etc. Ὃς τὴν ἱερωσύνην Ποσειδῶνος ᾽᾿Ἐρεχϑέως εἶχε (ΡΡ. 
382, 383). Erechtheus Πάρεδρος of Athéné — Aristidés, Panathenaic. Ρ. 
184, with the Scholia οὐ Frommel. 

Butés, the eponymus of the Butade, is the first priest of Poseidén Erich- 
thenius: Apollod. iii. 15,1. So Kallais (Xenoph. Sympos. viii. 40), lepede 
ϑεῶν τῶν an’ ᾽Ερεχϑέως. ᾿ 

* Herodot. viii. 55. 

* Harpokration, v. Αὐτοχϑών. Ὁ δὲ Πίνδαρος καὶ ὁ τὴν Δαναΐδα πεποιηκὼς 
φασιν, ᾿Εριχϑόνιον ἐξ Ἡφαίστου καὶ Γῆς φανῆναι. Euripidés, Ion. 21 
Apollod. iii. 14, 6; 15, 1. Compare Plato, Timzus, c. 6. 

* Schol. ad liad. ii. 546, where he cites also Kallimachus for the story of 
Erichthonius. Etymologicon Magn. Ἑρεχϑεύς. Plato (Kritias, c. 4) em- 
ploys vague and general language to describe the agency of Héphestos and 
Athéné, which the old fable in Apollodérus (iii. 14, 6) details in coarser 
terms. See Ovid, Metam. ii. 757 


LEGENDS OF THE ATTIC DEMES AND GENTES 198 


aémes or cantons, and included, besides, various religious clans 
or hereditary sects (if the expression may be permitted); that 
is, a multitude of persons not necessarily living together in the 
same locality, but bound together by an hereditary communion of 
sacred rites, and claiming privileges, as well as performing obli- 
gations, founded upon the traditional authority of divine persons 
for whom they had a common veneration. Even down to the 
beginning of the Peloponnésian war, the demots of the various 
Attic démes, though long since embodied in the larger political 
union of Attica, and having no wish for separation, still retained 
the recollection of their original political autonomy. They lived 
in their own separate localities, resorted habitually to their own 
temples, and visited Athens only occasionally for private or po- 
litical business, or for the great public festivals. Each of these 
aggregates, political as well as religious, had its own eponymous 
god or hero, with a genealogy more or less extended, and a train 
of mythical incidents more or less copious, attached to his name, 
according to the fancy of the local exegetes and poets. The 
eponymous heroes Marathon, Dekelus, Kolénus, or Phlius, had 
ach their own title to worship, and their own position as themes 
vf legendary narrative, independent of Erechtheus, or Poseidén, 
or Athéné, the patrons of the acropolis common to all of them. 
But neither the archeology of Attica, nor that of its various 
component fractions, was much dwelt upon by the ancient epic 
poets of Greece. Théseus is noticed both in the Iliad and 
Odyssey as having carried off from Kréte Ariadné, the daugh- 
ter of Minos — thus commencing that connection between the 
Krétan and Athenian legends which we afterwards find so large- 
ly amplified — and the sons of Théseus take part in the Trojan 
war.! The chief collectors and narrators of the Attic mythes 
were, the prose logographers, authors of the many compositions 
called Atthides, or works on Attic archwology. These writers — 
Hellanikus, the contemporary of Herodotus, is the earliest com- 
poser of an Atthis expressly named, though Pherekydés also 
touched upon the Attic fables—these writers, I say, interwove 
into one chronological series the legends which either greatly oc- 
2apied their own fancy, or commanded the most general reverence 


' Athra, mother of Théseus, is also mentioned (Homer, Iliad, iii. 144). 
VOL. I. 9 18οο. 


124 HISTORY OF GREECE 


among their countrymen. In this way the religious and politica 
legend; of Eleusis, a town originally indeperdent of Athens, but 
incorporated with it before the historical age, were worked into 
one continuous sequence along with those of the Erechtheids. 
in this way, Kekrops, the eponymous hero of the portion of 
Attica called Kekropia, came to be placed in the mythical chro- 
nology at a higher point even than the primitive god or here 
Erechtheus. 

Ogygés is said to have reigned in Attica! 1020 years before the 
first Olympiad, or 1796 years B. c. In his time happened the 
deluge of Deukalién, which. destroyed most of the inhabitants of 
the country : after along interval, Kekrops, an indigenous person, 
half man and half serpent, is given to us by Apollodérus as the 
first king of the country: he bestowed upon the land, which had 
before been called Acté, the name of Kekropia. In his day there 
ensued a dispute between Athéné and Poseid6n respecting the 
possession of the acropolis at Athens, which each of them cov- 
eted. First, Poseidén struck the rock with his trident, and 
produced the well of salt water which existed in it, called the 
Erechthéis: next came Athéné, who planted the sacred olive-tree 
ever afterwards seen and venerated in the portion of Erech- 
theion called the cell of Pandrosus. The twelve gods decided the 
dispute ; and Kekrops having testified before them that Athéné 
had rendered this inestimable service, they adjudged the spot to 
her in preference to Poseidén. Both the ancient olive-tree and 
the well produced by Poseidén were seen on the acropolis, in the 
temple consecrated jointly to Athéné and Erechtheus, throughout 
the historical ages. Poseidén, as a mark of his wrath for the 


’ Hellanikus, Fragm. 62; Philochor. Fragm. 8, ap. Euseb. Prep. Evang. 
x. 10. p. 489. Larcher (Chronologie d’Hérodote, ch. ix. 8. 1. p. 278) treats 
both the historical personality and the date of Ogygés as perfectly well au- 
thenticated. 

It is not probable that Philochorus should have given any calculation of 
time having reference to Olympiads; and hardly conceivable that Hellani 
kus should have done so. Justin Martyr quotes Hellanikus and Philochorus 
as having mentioned Moses, — ὡς σφόδρα ἀρχαίου καὶ παλαιοῦ τῶν ᾿Ιουδαίων 
ἄρχοντος Μωῦσέως μέμνηνται -τ-- which is still more incredible even than the 
assertion of Eusebius about their having fixed the date of Ogygea ty Olye- 


piads (see Philochor. Fragm. 9). 


ATHENE AND POSEIDON. 198 


preference given to Athéné, inundated the Thriasian plain witk 
water.! 

During the reign of Kekrops, Attica was laid waste by Karian 
pirates on tha coast, and by invasions of the Adénian inhabitants 
from Boeétia. Kekrops distributed the inhabitants of Attica into 
twelve local sections — Kekropia, ‘Tetrapolis, Epakria, Dekeleia, 
Eleusis, Aphidna, Thorikus, Braurén, Kythérus, Sphéttus, Ké- 
phisius, Phalerus. Wishing to ascertain the number of inhabitants, 
he commanded each man to cast a single stone into a general heap: 
the number of stones was counted, and it was found that there 
were twenty thousand.? 

Kekrops married the daughter of Aktzeus, who (according to 
Pausanias’s version) had been king of the country before him, 
and had called it by the name of Aktza.3 By her he had three 
daughters, Aglaurus, Ersé and Pandrosus, and a son, Erysichth6n. 
Kekrops is called by Pausanias contemporary of the Arcadian 
Lykaon, and is tavorably contrasted with that savage prince in re- 
spect of his piety and humanity.4- Though he has been often desig- 
nated in modern histories as an immigrant from Egypt into Attica, 


* Apollod. iii. 14,1; Herodot. viii. 55; Ovid. Metam. vi. 72. The story 
current among the Athenians represented Kekrops as the judge of this con- 
troversy (Xenoph. Memor. iii. 5, 10). 

The impressions of the trident of Poseid6n were still shown upon the rock 
in the time of Pausanias (Pausan. i. 26,4). For the sanctity of the ancien 
olive-tree, see the narrative of Herodotus (/. 6.), relating what happened to i. 
when Xerxés occupied the acropolis. As this tale seems to have attached it- 
self specially to the local peculiarities of the Erechtheium, the part which Po 
seiddn plays in it is somewhat mean: that god appears to greater advantage 
in the neighborhood of the “Ἱπποτὴς Κολωνὸς, as described in the beautiful 
Chorus of Sophoklés (C&dip. Colon. 690-712). 

A curious rationalization of the monstrous form ascribed to Kekrops 
(διφυὴς) in Plutarch (Sera Num. Vindict. p. 551). 

® Philochor. ap. Strabo. ix. p. 397. 

% The Parian chronological marble designates Aktseus as an autochthonous 
person. Marmor Parium, Epoch. 3. Pausan. i. 2,5. Philochorus treated 
Aktzus as a fictitious name (Fragm. 8, ut sup.). 

“ Pausan. viii. 2.2. The three daughters of Kekrops were not unnoticed 
in the mythes (Ovid, Metam. ii. 739): the tale of Kephalus, son of Hersé by 
Herinés, who was stolen away by the goddess Eés or Hémera in consequence 
of his surpassing beauty, was told in more than one of the Hesiodic poems 
Pausan. i. 3, 1; Hesiod. Theog. 986), See also Eurip. Ion. 269 


196 FISTORY OF GREECE. 


yet the far greater number of ancient authorities represent ham 
as indigenous or earth-born.! 

Erysichthén died without issue, and Kranaus succeeded him, — 
another autochthonous person and another eponymus, — for the 
name Kranai was an old denomination of the inhabitants of At- 
tica.2 Kranaus was dethroned by Amphikty6n, by some called 
an autochthonous man; by others, a son of Deukalién: Amphik- 
tyOn in his turn was expelled by Erichthonius, son of Héphzstos 
and the Earth, — the same person apparently as Erechtheus, but 
inserted by Apollodérus at this point of the series. Erichthonius, 
the pupil and favored companion of Athéné, placed in the acropo- 
lis the original Palladium or wooden statue of that goddess, said 
to have dropped from heaven: he was moreover the first to cele- 
brate the festival of the Panathenwa. He married the nymph 
Pasithea, and had for his son and successor Pandi6n.3 Erichtho- 
nius was the first person who taught the art of breaking in horses 
‘o the yoke, and who drove a chariot and four.4 

In the time of Pandién, who succeeded to Erichthonius, Dio- 
nysus and Démétér both came into Attica: the latter was received 
by Keleos at Eleusis.©° Pandién married the nymph Zeuxippé, 
and had twin sons, Erechtheus and Butés, and two daughters, 
Prokné and Philoméla. The two latter are the subjects of a memo- 
rable and well-known legend. Pandidn having received aid in 
repelling the Thébans from Téreus, king of Thrace, gave him his 
daughter Prokné in marriage, by whom he had a son, Itys. The 
beautiful Philoméla, going to visit her sister, inspired the barbarous 
Thracian with an irresistible passion: he violated her person, con- 
fined her in a distant pastoral hut, and pretended that she was dead, 
cutting out her tongue to prevent her from revealing the truth. Af- 
ter a long interval, Philoméla found means to acquaint her sister of 
the cruel deed which had been perpetrated ; she wove into a gar- 
ment words describing her melancholy condition, and despatched it 


' Jul. Africanus also (ap. Euseb. x. 9. p. 486-488) calls Kekrops γηγενὴς 
and αὐτοχϑών. 

3 Herod. viii. 44. Kpavaai ᾿Αϑῆναι, Pindar. 

3. Apollod. iii. 14. Pausan. i. 26, 7. 4 Virgil, Georgic iii. 114. 

5. The mythe of the visit of Démétér to Eleusis, on which occasion she 
vouchsafed to teach her holy rites to the leading Eleusinians, is more fully 
touched upon in a previous chapter (see ante, p. 50). 


PANDION. — PROKNE. — TEREUS. 197 


by a trusty messenger. Prokné, overwhelmed with sorrow and an- 
ger, took advantage of the free egress enjoyed by women during the 
Bacchanalian festival to go and release her sister: the two sis- 
ters then revenged themselves upon Téreus by killing the boy Itys 
and serving him up for his father to eat: after the meal had been 
finished, the horrid truth was revealed to him. Téreus snatched a 
hatchet to put Prokné to death: she fled, along with Philoméla, 
and all the three were changed into birds — Prokné became a swal- 
low, Philoméla a nightingale, and Téreus an hoopoe.! This tale, 
so popular with the poets, and so illustrative of the general char- 
acter of Grecian legend, is not less remarkable in another point of 
view — that the great historian Thucydidés seems to allude to it 
as an historical fact,2? not however directly mentioning the final 
metamorphosis. 

After the death of Pandién, Erechtheus succeeded to the king- 
dom, and his brother, Butés, became priest of Poseid6én Erich- 
thonius, a function which his descendants ever afterwards exer- 
cised, the Butadz or Eteobutade. Erechtheus seems to appear 
in three characters in the fabulous history of Athens —as a god, 


Aves, 212. 

* Thucyd. ii. 29. He makes express menti-m of the nightingale in con- 
nection with the story, though not of the metamorphosis. See below, chap. 
xvi. p.544, note2. So also does Pausanias mention and reason upon it as a 
real incident: he founds upon it several moral reflections (i. 5,4; x. 4, 5): 
the author of the Λόγος ᾿Επιτάφιος, ascribed to Demosthenés, treats it in the 
same manner, as a fact ennobling the tribe Pandionis, of which Pandién was 
the eponymus. The same author, in touching upon Kekrops, the eponvmus 
of the Kekropis tribe, cannot believe literally the story of his being half man 
and half serpent: he rationalizes it by saying that Kekrops was so called be- 
cause in wisdom he was like a man, in strength like a serpent (Demasth. 
p. 1307, 1398, Reiske). Hesiod glances at the fable ( Opp. Di. 566), ὀρϑρογόη 
Πανδιονὶς ὦρτο χελιδών ; sce also Alian, V. H. xii. 20. The subject was 
handled by Sophoklés in his lost Téreus. 


198 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Poseidén Erechtheus! — as a hero, Erechtheus, son of the Karth 
—and now, as a king, son of Pandion: so much did the ideas of 
divine and human rule become contounded and blended together 
in the imagination of the Greeks in reviewing their early times. 

The daughters of Erechtheus were not less celebrated in Athe- 
nian legend than those of Pandion. Prokris, one of them, is 
among the heroines seen by Odysseus in Hadés: she became the 
wife of Kephalus, son of Deionés, and lived in the Attic déme of 
Thorikus. Kephalus tried her fidelity by pretending that he 
was going away for a long period; but shortly returned, disguis- 
ing his person and bringing with him a splendid necklace. He 
presented himself to Prokris without being recognized, and suc- 
ceeded in triumphing over her chastity. Having accomplished 
this object, he revealed to her his true character: she earnestly 
besought his forgiveness, and prevailed upon him to grant it. 
Nevertheless he became shortly afterwards the unintentional au- 
thor of her death: for he was fond of hunting, and staid out a 
long time on his excursions, so that Prokris suspected him of 
visiting some rival. She determined to watch him by concealing 
herself in a thicket near the place of his midday repose; and 
when Kephalus implored the presence of Nephelé (a cloud) to 
protect him from the sun’s rays, she suddenly started from her 
hiding-place: Kephalus, thus disturbed, cast his hunting-spear 
unknowingly into the thicket and slew his wife. Erechtheus in- 
terred her with great magnificence, and Kephalus was tried for 
the act before the court of Areopagus, which condemned him to 
exile. 

Kreiisa, another daughter of Erechtheus, seduced by Apollo, 
becomes the mother of I6n, whom she exposes immediately after 
his birth in the cave north of the acropolis, concealing the fact 
from every one. Avpoilo prevails upon Hermés to convey the 
new-born child to Delphi, where he is brought 1p as a servant of 
the temple, without knowing his parents. Kreusa marries Xuthus, 
son of ‘Kolus, but continuing childless, she goes with Xuthus to 


᾿α Paseidén is sometimes spoken of under the name of Erechtheus simply 
(Lycophrén, 158). See Hesychius, v. "Epey deve. 

3 Pherekydés, Fragm. 77, Didot; ap. Schol. ad Odyss. xi. 320; Hellanikus 
Fr. 82; ap. Schol. Euriv. Orest. 1648. Apollodérus (iii 15,1) gives “he 
story differently. 


ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES 19$ 


the Delphian oracle to inquire for a remedy. The god presents 
to them I6n, and desires them to adopt him as their son: their 
son Achzus is afterwards born to them, and Ién and Achzus 
become the eponyms of the Jénians and Acheans.! 

Oreithyia, the third daughter of Erechtheus, was stolen away 
by the god Boreas while amusing herself on the banks of the 
Ilissus, and carried to his residence in Thrace. The two sons of 
this marriage, Zétés and Kalais, were born with wings: they 
took part in the Argonautic expedition, and engaged in the pur. 
suit of the Harpies: they were slain at Ténos by Héraklés, 
Kleopatra, the daughter of Boreas and Oreithyia, was married te 
Phineus, and had two sons, Plexippus and Pandién ; but Phineus 
afterwards espoused a second wife, Idea, the daughter of Darda- 
nus, who, detesting the two sons of the former bed, accused them 
falsely of attempting her chastity, and persuaded Phineus in his 
wrath to put out the eyes of both. For this cruel proceeding he 
was punished by the Argonauts in the course of their voyage.” 

On more than one occasion the Athenians derived, or at least 
believed themselves to have derived, important benefits from this 
marriage of Boreas with the daughter of their primeval hero: 
one inestimable service, rendered at a juncture highly critical for 


? Upon this story of I6n is founded the tragedy of Euripidés which bears 
that name. I conceive many of the points of that tragedy to be of the in- 
vention of Euripidés himself: but to represent Ién as sen of Apollo, not of 
Xuthus, seems a genuine Attic legend. Respecting this drama, see Ὁ. Miil- 
ler, Hist. of Dorians, ii. 2. 13-15. I doubt however the distinction which he 
draws between the Jonians and the other population of Attica. 

* Apollod6r. iii. 15,2; Plato, Pheedr. c. 3; Sophok. Antig. 984; also the 
copious Scholion on Apollén. Rhod. i. 212. 

The tale of Phineus is told very differently in the Argonautic expedition 
as given by Apollénius Rhodius, ii. 180. From Sophoklés we learn that 
this was the Attic version. 

The two winged sons of Boreas and their chase of the Harpies were no- 
ticed in the Hesiodic Catalogue (see Schol. Apollén. Bhod. ii. 296). But 
whether the Attic legend of Oreithyia was recognized in the Hesiodic poems 
seems not certain. 

Both Aschylus and Sophoklés composed dramas on the subject of Orei- 
thyia (Longin. de Sublimit. ¢. 3), “ Orithyia Atheniensis, filia Terrigene 
et a Borea in Thraciam rapta” (Servius ad Virg. Atneid. xii. 83). Ter- 
rigens is the γηγενὴς ᾿Ερεχϑεύς. Philochorus (Fragm. 30) rationalized the 
story, and said that it alluded to the effects of a violent wind. 


200 bis ORY OF GREECE. 


Grecian independence, deserves to be specified.! At the tix ¢ of 
the invasion of Greece by Xerxés, the Grecian fleet was assem- 
bled at Chalcis and Artemision in Eubeea, awaiting the approach 
of the Persian force, so overwhelming in its numbers as well by 
sea as on land. ‘The Persian fleet had reached the coast of Mag- 
nésia and the south-eastern corner of Thessaly without any ma- 
terial damage, when the Athenians were instructed by an oracle 
“to invoke the aid of their son-in-law.” Understanding the ad- 
vice \o point to Boreas, they supplicated his aid and that of Orei- 
thyia, most earnestly, as well by prayer as by sacrifice,? and the 
event corresponded to their wishes. A furious north-easterly wind 
immediately arose, and continued for three days to afflict the Per- 
sian fleet as it lay on an unprotected coast: the number of ships 
driven ashore, both vessels of war and of provision, was immense, 
and the injury done to the armament was never thoroughly re- 
paired. Such was the powertul succor which the Athenians de- 
rived, at a time of their utmost need, from their son-in-law Boreas ; 
and their gratitude was shown by consecrating to him a new tem- 
ple on the banks of the Llissus. 

The three remaining daughters of Erechtheus — he had six in 
all’ — were in Athenian legend yet more venerated than their 
sisters, on account of having voluntarily devoted themselves to 
death for the safety of their country. Eumolpus of Eleusis was 
the son of Poseiddn and the eponymous hero of the sacred gens 
called the Eumolpids, in whom the principal functions, appertain- 
ing to the mysterious rites of Démétér at Eleusis, were vested 
by hereditary privilege: he made war upon Erechtheus and the 


' Herodot. vii. 189. Οἱ ὁ᾽ ὧν ᾿Αϑηναῖοί σφι λέγουσι βοηϑήσαντα τὸν Boppy 
πρότερον, καὶ τότε ἐκεῖνα κατεργάσασϑαι" καὶ ἱρὸν ἀπελϑόντες Βορέω ἱδρύ. 
σαντο παρὰ ποταμὸν Ἴλισσον 

3 Herodot. lc. ᾿Αϑηναῖοι τὸν Βορὴν ἐκ ϑεοπροπίου ἐπεκαλέσαντο, ἐλϑόν- 
Tog σφι ἄλλου χρηστηρίου, τὸν γαμβρὸν ἐπίκουρον καλέσασϑαι. Βορῆς δὲ, 
κατὰ τὸν Ἑλλήνων λόγον ἔχει γυναῖκα ᾿Αττικὴν, ᾿Ωρειϑυίην τὴν ᾿Ἐρεχϑῆος. 
Κατὰ δὴ τὸ κῆδος τοῦτο, οἱ ᾿Αϑηναῖοι, συμβαλλεόμενοί σφι τὸν Βορὴῆν γαμβρὸν 
είναι, etc. 

3 Suidas and Photius, v. Πάρϑενοι : Protogeneia and Pandéra are given 
as the names of two of them. The sacrifice of Pandéra, in the Iambi of 
Hippénax (Hippdonact. Fragm. xxi. Welck. ap. Athen. ix. p. 370), seems to 
allude to this daughter of Erechtheus. 


LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES OF ELEUSIS. 201 


Athenians, with the aid of a body of Thracian allies; indeed it 
appears that the legends of Athens, originally foreign and un- 
friendly to those of Eleusis, represented him as hay ing been him- 
self a Thracian born and an immigrant into Attica.! Respecting 
Eumolpus however and his parentage, the discrepancies much 
exceed even the measure of license usual in the legendary ge 
sealogies, and some critics, both ancient and modern, have sought 
to reconcile these contradictions by the usual stratagem of sup- 
posing two or three different persons of the same name. Even 
Pausanias, so familiar with this class of unsworn witnesses, com- 
plains of the want of native Eleusinian genealogists,? and of the 
extreme license of fiction in which other authors had indulged. 
In the Homeric Hymn to Démétér, the most ancient testimony 
before us, — composed, to all appearance, earlier than the com- 
plete incorporation of Eleusis with Athens, — Eumolpus appears 
(to repeat briefly what has been stated in a previous chapter) as 
one of the native chiefs or princes of Eleusis, along with Tripto- 


" Apollodor. iii. 15,3; Thucyd. ii. 15; Iskoratés (Panegyr, t. i. p. 206; 
Panathenaic. t. ii. p. 560, Auger), Lykurgus, cont. Leocrat. p. 201, Reiske , 
Pausan. i. 38, 3; Euripid. Erechth. Fragm. The Schol. ad. Soph. CEd. Col, 
1048 gives valuable citations from Ister, Akestodorus and Androtién: we 
see that the inquirers of antiquity found it difficult to explain how the Eumol- 
pids could have acquired their ascendant privileges in the management of 
the Eleusinia, seeing that Eumolpus himself was a foreigner. — Ζητεῖται, ri 
δήποτε of Εὐμολπίδαι τῶν τελετῶν ἐξάρχουσι, ξένοι ὄντες. Thucydidés does 
not call Eumolpus a Thracian: Strabo’s language is very large and vague 
(vii. p. 321): Iskoratés says that he assailed Athens in order to vindicate 
the rights of his father Poseid6n to the sovereign patronage of the city. Hy- 
ginus copies this (fab. 46). 

* Pausan. i. 38.3. ᾿Ελευσίνιοί re ἀρχαῖοι, ἅτε οὐ προσόντων σφισι yeveae 
λόγων, ἄλλα τε πλάσασϑαι δεδώκασι καὶ μάλιστα ἐς τὰ γένη τῶν ἡρώων. See 
Heyne ad Apollodér. iii. 15, 4. “ Eumolpi nomen modo communicatum 
pluribus, modo plurium hominum res et facta cumulata in unum. Is ad 
quem Hercules venisse dicitur, serior state fuit: antiquior est is de quo hoc 
loco agitur antecessisse tamen hunc debet alius, qui cum Triptolemo 
vixit,” etc. See the learned and valuable comments of Lobeck in his Aglao- 
phamus, tom. i. p. 206-213: in regard to the discrepancies of this narrative 
he observes, I think, with great justice (p. 211), “ quo uno exemplo ex innu- 
merabilibus delecto, arguitur eorum temeritas, qui ex variis discordibusque 
poetarum et mythographorum narratiunculis, antique fame formam et quasi 
lineamenta recognosci posse sperant.” 

9. 


202 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


lemus, Dioklés, Polyxeinus and Dolichus: Keleos is the king, 
or principal among these chiefs, the son or lineal descendant of 
the eponymous Eleusis himself. To these chiefs, and to the three 
daughters of Keleos, the goddess Démétér comes in her sorrow 
for the loss of her daughter Persephoné: being hospitably enter- 
tained by Keleos she reveals her true character, commands that 
a temple shall be built to her at Eleusis, and prescribes to them 
the rites according to which they are to worship her.! Such 
seems to have been the ancient story of the Eleusinians respect- 
ing their own religious antiquities: Keleos, with Metaneira his 
wife, and the other chiefs here mentioned, were worshipped at 
Eleusis, and from thence transferred to Athens as local gods or 
heroes.? Kleusis became incorporated with Athens, apparently 
not very long before the time of Solén; and the Eleusinian wor- 
ship of Démétér was then received into the great religious 
solemnities of the Athenian state, to which it owes its remarkable 
subsequent extension and commanding influence. In the Atti- 
cized worship of the Eleusinian Démétér, the Eumolpids and the 
Kérykes were the principal hereditary functionaries: Eumolpus, 
the eponym of this great family, came thus to play the principal 


part in the Athenian legendary version of the war between 
Athens and Eleusis. An oracle had pronounced that Athens 
could only be rescued from his attack by the death of the three 
daughters of Erechtheus ; their generous patriotism consented to 
the sacrifice, and their father put them to death. He then went 
forth confidently to the battle, totally vanquished the enemy, and 


» Homer, Hymn. ad Cerer. 153-475. — 
‘H dé xiovoa ϑεμιστοπόλοις βασιλεῦσι 

Δεῖξεν Τριπτολέμῳ τε, Διόκλεϊ re πληξίππῳ, 

Εὐμόλπου τε βίῃ, Κελέῳ ϑ᾽ ἡγήτορι λαὼν, 

Δρησμοσύνην ἱερῶν. 
Also ν. 105. 

Τὴν δὲ ἴδον Κελέοιο ’ Ελευσινέδαο ϑύγατρες. 
The hero Eleusis is mentioned in Pausanias, i. 38, 7: some said that he was 
the son of Hermés, others that he was the son of Ogygus. Compare Hygin. 
f 147. 

* Keleos and Metaneira were worshipped by the Athenians with divine 
honors (Athenagoras, Legat. p. 53, ed. Oxon.): perhaps he confounds divine 
and heroic honors, as the Christian controversialists against Paganism were 
disposed todo. Triptolemus had a temple at E!eacw (Pausan i. 38, 6) 


DAUGHTERS OF ERECHTHEUS. 208 


ailled Eumolpus with his own hand.' Erechtheus was wore 
shipped as a god, and his daughters as goddesses, at Athens.2 
Their names and their exalted devotion were cited along with 
those of the warriors of Marathén, in the public assembly of 
Athens, by orators who sought to arouse the languid patriot, or 
to denounce the cowardly deserter; and the people listened both 
to one and the other with analogous feelings of grateful veneration, 
as well as with equally unsuspecting faith in the matter of fact.3 


* Apollodor. iii. 15,4. Some said that Immaradus, son of Eumolpus, had 
been killed by Erechtheus (Pausan. i. 5, 2); others, that both Eumolpus and 
his son had experienced this fate (Schol. ad Eurip. Pheeniss. 854). But we 
learn from Pausanias himself what the story in the interior of the Erechtheion 
was, — that Erechtheus killed Eumolpus (i. 27, 3). 

* Cicero, Nat. Deor. iii. 19; Philochor. ap. Schol. CEdip. Col. 100. Three 
daughters of Erechtheus perished, and three daughters were worshipped 
(Apollodor. iii. 15,4; Hesychius, Ζεῦγος τριπάρϑενον ; Eurip. Erechtheus, 
Fragm. 3, Dindorf); but both Euripidés and Apollodérus said that Erech- 
theus was only required to sacrifice, and only did sacrifice, one,— the other 
two slew themselves voluntarily, from affection for their sister. I cannot but 
think (in spite of the opinion of Welcker to the contrary, Griechisch. Tragéd. 
ii. p. 722) that the genuine legend represented Erechtheus as having sacrificed 
all three, as appears in the I6n of Euripidés (276): — 

I6n. Πατὴρ᾽ Ἐρεχϑεὺς σὰς ἔϑυσε συγγόνους ; 
REUSA. "Ετλη πρὸ yaiat σφάγια παρϑένους κτανεῖν. 
lon. Σὺ δ᾽ ἐξεσώϑης πῶς κασιγνήτων μόνη ; 
Οκεῦβα. Βρέφος νέογνον μητρὸς ἣν ἐν ἀγκάλαις. 
Compare with this passage, Demosthen. Δόγος ᾿Επιταφ. Ρ. 1397, Reisk 
Just before, the death of the three daughters of Kekrops, for infringing the 
commands of Athéné, had been mentioned. Euripidés modified this in his 
Erechtheus, for he there introduced the mother Praxithea consenting to the 
immolation of one daughter, for the rescue of the country from a foreign ine 
vader: to propose to a mother the immolation of three daughters at once, 
would have been too revolting. In most instances we find the strongly 
marked features, the distinct and glaring incidents as well as the dark con- 
trasts, belong to the Hesiodic or old Post-Homeric legend; the changes made 
afterwards go to soften, dilute, and to complicate, in proportion as the feel- 
ings of the public become milder and more humane; sometimes however the 
later poets add new horrors. 

* See the striking evidence contained in the oration of Lykurgus against 
aeocratés (p. 201-204. Reiske ; Demosthen. Ady. ᾿Επιταφ. l.c.; and Xeno- 
phon, Memor. iii. 5,9): from the two latter passages we see that the Athe- 
aian story represented the invasion under Eumolpus as a combined assault 
from the western continent. 


204 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Though Erechtheus gained the victory over Eumolpus, yet 
the story represents Poseidén as having put an end to the life 
and reign of Erechtheus, who was (it seems) slain in the battle. 
He was succeeded by his son Kekrops II., and the latter again by 
his son Pandidn II.,!-—two names unmarked by any incidents, 
and which appear to be mere duplication of the former Kekrops 
and Pandién, placed there by the genealogizers for the purpose 
of filling up what seemed to them a chronological chasm. The 
Attic legends were associated chiefly with a few names of respect- 
ed eponymous personages ; and if the persons called the children 
of Pandién were too numerous to admit of their being con- 
veniently ascribed to one father, there was no difficulty in sup- 
posing a second prince of the same name. 

Apollodérus passes at once from Erechtheus to his son Kekrops 
II., then to Pandién 11., next to the four sons of the latter, /Egeus, 
Pallas, Nisus and Lykus. But the tragedians here insert the 
story of Xuthus, Kreiisa and I6n; the latter being the sson of 
Kreiisa by Apollo, but given by the god to Xuthus, and adopted 
by the latter as his own. I6n becomes the successor of Erech- 
theus, and his sons Teleon, Hoplés, Argadés and Aigikorés 
become the eponyms of the four ancient tribes of Athens, which 
subsisted until the revolution of Kleisthenés. I6n himself is the 
eponym of the Idnic race both in Asia, in Europe, and in the 
4Egean islands: Dérus and Achzus are the sons of Kreiisa by 
Xuthus, so that I6n is distinguished from both of them by being 
of divine parentage.? According to the story given by Philocho- 
rus, I6n rendered such essential service in rescuing the Athenians 
from the attack of the Thracians under Eumolpus, that he was 
afterwards made king of the country, and distributed all the in- 
habitants into four tribes or castes, corresponding to different 
modes of life,—- soldiers, husbandmen, goatherds, and artisans.? 
And it seems that the legend explanatory of the origin of the 
festival Boédromia, originally important enough to furnish a name 


— 


* Apollodér. iii. 15,5; Eurip. Ién, 282; Erechth. Fragm. 20, Dindorf. 

* Eurip. In. 1570-1595 The Kreiisa of Sophoklés, a lost tragedy, seems 
to have related to the same subject. 

Pausanias (vii. 1, 2) tells us that Xuthus was chosen to arbitrate betweer 
the contending claims of the sons of Erechtheus. 


* Philochor. ap. Harpecrat. v. Bondpéua ; Strabo, viii. p. 383 


PANDION AND AGEUS. 208 


so one of the Athenian months, was attached to the aid thus rem 
dered by I6n.! 

We pass from I6n to persons of far greater mythicai dignity 
and interest, — Aigeus and his son Théseus. 

Pandién had four sons, A¢geus, Nisus, Lykus, and Pallas, 
between whom he divided his dominions. Nisus received the 
territory of Megaris, which had been under the sway of Pandién, 
and there founded the seaport of Nisa. Lykus was made king 
of the eastern coast, but a dispute afterwards ensued, and he quit- 
ted the country altogether, to establish himself on the southern 
coast of Asia Minor among the Termilz, to whom he gave the 
name of Lykians.2 Adgeus, as the eldest of the four, became 
king of Athens; but Pallas received a portion both of the south- 
western coast and the interior, and he as well as his children 
appear as frequent enemies both to Aigeus and to Théseus. 
Pallas is the eponym of the déme Palléné, and the stories 
respecting him and his sons seem to be connected with old and 
standing feuds among the different démes of Attica, originally 
independent communities. These feuds penetrated into the 
legend, and explain the story which we find that AXgeus and 
Théseus were not genuine Erechtheids, the former being denomi- 
nated a supposititious child to Pandién.3 

J¥geus! has little importance in the mythical history except as 
the father of Théseus: it may even be doubted whether his name 
is anything more than a mere cognomen of the god Poseidén, who 
was (as we are told) the real father of this great Attic Héraklés. 
As I pretend only to give a very brief outline of the general 
territory of Grecian legend, I cannot permit myself to recount in 


1 Philochor. ap. Harpocrat. v. Βοηδρόμια. 

2 Sophokl. ap. Strab. ix. p. 392; Herodot. i. 173; Strabo, xii. p. 573. 

3 Plutarch, Théseus, c. 13. Αἰγεὺς ϑετὸς γενόμενος Πανδίονι, καὶ μηδὲν 
τοῖς ᾽ Ἐρεχϑείδαις προσήκων. ΑΡοϊ]]οάόνγ. iii. 15, 6. 

4 AEgeus had by Médea (who took refuge at Athens after her flight from 
Corinth) a son named Médus, who passed into Asia, and was considered as 
the eponymus and progenitor of the Median people. Datis, the general who 
commanded the invading Persian army at the battle of Marathén, sent a 
formal communication to the Athenians announcing himself as the descend- 
ent of Médus, and reqniring to be admitted as king of Attica: such is the 
statement of Diodorus (Exc. Vatic. vii.- x. 48: see also Schol. Aristophan 


Pac. 289). 


206 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


detail the chivalrous career of Théseus, who is found both in the 
Kalydénian boar-hunt and in the Argonautic expedition — his 
personal and victorious encounters with the robbers Sinnis, Pro- 
crustés, Periphétés, Scirén and others — his valuable service in 
ridding his country of the Krommyonian sow and the Marathé 
nian bull — his conquest of the Minotaur in Kréte, and his escape 
from the dangers of the labyrinth by the aid of Ariadné, whom 
he subsequently carries off and abandons— his many amorous 
adventures, and his expeditions both against the Amazons and 
into the under-world along with Peirithous.! 

Thucydidés delineates the character of Théseus as a man who 
combined sagacity with political power, and who conferred upon 
his country the inestimable benefit of uniting all the separate and 
self-governing démes of Attica into one common political society.? 
From the well-earned reverence attached to the assertion of 
‘Shucydidés, it has been customary to reason upon this assertion 
as if it were historically authentic, and to treat the romantic 
attributes which we find in Plutarch and Diod6rus as if they were 
fiction superinduced upon this basis of fact. Such a view of the 
case is in my judgment erroneous. ‘The athletic and amorous 


knight-errant is the old version of the character —the profound 


1 Ovid, Metamorph. vii. 433. — 
“Te, maxime Theseu, 

Mirata est Marathon Cretsi sanguine Tauri: 
Quodque Suis securus arat Cromyona colonus, 
Munus opusque tuum est. Tellus Epidauria per te 
Clavigeram vidit Vulcani occumbere prolem : 
Vidit et immanem Cephisias ora Procrustem. 
Cercyonis letum vidit Cerealis Eleusin. 
Occidit ille Sinis,” etc. 

Respecting the amours of Théseus, Ister especially seems to have enterea 
into great details; but some of them were noticed both in the Hesiodic 
poems and by Kekrops, not to mention Pherekydés (Athen. xiii. p. 557). 
Peirithous, the intimate friend and companion of Théseus, is the eponymous 
hero of the Attic déme or gens Perithoidz (Ephorus ap. Photium, v. [eps 
Svida: ). 

* Thue. ii. 15. ’ Ἐπειδὴ δὲ Θησεὺς ἐβασίλευσε, γενόμενος μετὰ τοῦ ξυνετοῦ 
καὶ δυνατὸς, τά τε ἄλλα διεκόσμησε τὴν χώραν, καὶ κατάλυσας τῶν ἄλλων 
πόλεων τά τε βουλευτήρια καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς, ἐς τὴν viv πόλεν.......... ξυνῷκισε 
werTac. 


THESEUS AND HIS ADVENTURES. 207 


and long-sighted politician is a subsequent correction, introduced 
indeed by men of superior mind, but destitute of historical war- 
ranty, and arising out of their desire to find reasons of their own 
for concurring in the veneration which the general public paid 
more easily and heartily to their national hero. Théseus, in the 
Iliad and Odyssey, fights with the Lapithz against the Centaurs : 
Théseus, in the Hesiodic poems, is misguided by his passion for 
the beautiful /Eglé, daughter of Panopeus:' and the Théseus 
described in Plutarch’s biography is in great part a continuation 
and expansion of these same or similar attributes, mingled with 
many local legends, explaining, like the Fasti of Ovid, or the 
lost Aitia of Kallimachus, the original genesis of prevalent reli- 
gious and secial customs.2 Plutarch has doubtless greatly soften- 
ed down and modified the adventures which he found in the Attic 
logographers as well as in the poetical epics called Théséis 
For in his preface to the lite of Théseus, after having emphati- 
cally declared that he is about to transcend the boundary both of 
the known and the knowable, but that the temptation of comparing 
the founder of Athens with the founder of Rome is irresistible, 
he concludes with the following remarkable words: “I pray that 
this fabulous matter may be so far obedient to my endeavors as 
to receive, when purified by reason, the aspect of history: im 
those cases where it haughtily scorns plausibility and will admit 
no alliance with what is probable, I shall beg for indulgent hear- 
ers, willing to receive antique narrative in a mild spirit.”3. We 
see here that Plutarch sat down, not to recount the old fables as 
he found them, but to purify them by reason and to impart to 
them the aspect of history. We have to thank him for having 
retained, after this purification, so much of what is romantic and 
marvellous ; but we may be sure that the sources from which he 
borrowed were more romantic and marvellous still. It was the 


1 liad, i. 265; Odyss. xi. 321. I do not notice the suspected line, Odyss. 
xi. 630. 

3 Dioddrus also, from his disposition to assimilate Théseus to Héraklés, 
has given us his chivalrous as well as his political attributes(iv. 61). 

3 Plutarch, Théseus, i. Ein μὲν οὖν ἡμῖν, ἐκκαϑαιρόμενον λόγῳ τὸ μυϑῶδες 
ὑπακοῦσαι καὶ λαβεῖν ἱστορίας ὄψιν" ὅπου δ᾽ ἂν αὐϑαδῶς τοῦ πιϑανοῦ περι- 
φρονῇ, καὶ μὴ δέχηται τὴν πρὸς τὸ εἰκὸς μέξεν, εὐγνωμόνων ἀκροατῶν 
ϑεησόμεϑα͵ καὶ πράως τὴν ἀρχαιολργίαν προσδεχομένων. 


208 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


tendency of the enlightened men of Athens, from the days of 
Solén downwards, to refine and politicize the character of Thé- 
seus:! even Peisistratus expunge] from one of the Hesiodiec 
poems the line which described the violent passion of the hero 
for the fair diglé:2 and the tragic poets found it more congenial 
to the feelings of their audience to exhibit him as a dignified 
and liberal sovereign, rather than as an adventurous single-handed 
fighter. But the logographers and the Alexandrine poets re- 
mained more faithful to the old fables. The story of Hekale, the 
hospitable old woman who received and blessed Théseus when 
he went against the Marathdénian bull, and whom he found dead 
when he came back to recount the news of his success, was 
treated by Kallimachus:* and Virgil must have had his mind 
full of the unrefined legends when he numbered this Attic Héra- 
klés among the unhappy sufferers condemned to endless penance 
in the under-world.4 

Two however among the Théseian fables cannot be dismissed 
without some special notice, — the war against the Amazons, and 
the expedition against Kréte. The former strikingly illustrates 
the facility as well as the tenacity of Grecian legendary faith; 
the latter embraces the story of Dedalus and Minos, two of the 
most eminent among Grecian ante-historical personages. 

The Amazons, daughters of Arés and Harmonia, are both 


! See Isokratés, Panathenaic. (t. ii. p. 510-512, Auger); Xenoph. Memor. 
iii. 5.10. In the Helenez Encomium, Isokratés enlarges more upon the per 
sonal exploits of Théseus in conjunction with his great political merits (t. ii 
p. 342-350, Auger). 

3 Plutarch, Théseus, 20. 

3 See the epigram of Krinagoras, Antholog. Pal. vol. ii. p. 144; ep. xv. 
ed. Brunck. and Kallimach. Frag. 40. 

*Acidee δ᾽ (Kallirnachus) ‘ExaAne te dtAogetvoco καλιὴν, 
Kai Θησεῖ Μαραϑὼν οὖς ἐπέϑηκε πόνους. 

Some beautiful lines are preserved by Suidas, v. ᾿Επαύλια, περὶ "Εκώλης 
ϑανούσης (probably spoken by Théseus himself, see Plutarch, Theseus, ἃ 
14). 

Ἴ1ϑι, πρηεῖα γυναικῶν, 
Τὴν ὁδὸν, ἣν ἀνίαι ϑυμαλγέες οὐ περόωσιν 
Πόλλακε cei’, ὦ μαῖα, φιλοξείνοιο καλιῆς 
Μνησόμεϑα ξυνὸν γὰρ ἐπαύλιον ὁ -“εν ἅπασι. 

¢ Virgil, Aineid, vi. 611. “ Sedet seternumque sedebit Infelix Théeeus ἡ 

® Pherekyd. Fragm. 25, Didot. 


THE AMAZONS 203 


sarly creations and frequent reproductions of the ancient epic — 
which was indeed, we may generally remark, largely occupied 
both with the exploits and sufferings of women, or heroines, the 
wives and daughters of the Grecian heroes — and which recog- 
nized in Pallas Athéné the finished type of an irresistible female 
warrior. A nation of courageous, hardy and indefatigable women, 
dwelling apart from men, permitting only a short temporary in- 
tercourse for the purpose of renovating their numbers, and burn- 
ing out their right breast with a view of enabling themselves to 
draw the bow freely, — this was at once a general type stimu- 
lating to the fancy of the poet and a theme eminently popular 
with his hearers. Nor was it at all repugnant to the faith of the 
latter — who had no recorded facts to guide them, and no other 
standard of credibility as to the past except such poetical nar- 
ratives themselves —to conceive communities of Amazons as 
having actually existed in anterior time. Accordingly we find 
these warlike females constantly reappearing in the ancient poems, 
and universally accepted as past realities. In the Iliad, when 
Priam wishes to illustrate emphatically the most numerous host 
in which he ever found himself included, he tells us that it was 
assembled in Phyrgia, on the banks of the Sangarius, for the 
purpose of resisting the formidable Amazons. When Bellero- 
phon is to be employed on a deadly and perilous undertaking,! 
by those who indirectly wish to procure his death, he is despatch- 
ed against the Amazons. In the Zthiopis of Arktinus, describing 
the post-Homeric war of Troy, Penthesileia, queen of the Ama-’ 
zons, appears as the most effective ally of the besieged city, and 
as the most formidable enemy of the Greeks, succumbing only 
to the invincible might of Achilles.2 The Argonautic heroes find 
the Amazons on the river Thermddon, in their expedition along 


Iliad, iii. 186 ; vi. 152. 

* See Proclus’s Argument of the lost Athiopis (Fragm. Epicor. Grecor. 
ed. Diintzer, p. 16). We are reduced to the first book of Quintus Smyrnzeus 
for some idea of the valor of Penthesileia; it is supposed to be copied more 
or less closely from the Aithiopis. See Tychsen’s Dissertation prefixed to 
his edition of Quintus, sections 5 and 12. Compare Dio. Chrysostom. Or. 
xi. p. 350, Reiske. Philostratus (Heroica,c. 19. p. 751) gives a strange 
transformation of this old epical narrative into a Cescent of Amazons upon 
the island sacred to Achilles. 


VOL I. l4oc. 


210 HISTORY OF GREECF. 


the southern coast of the Euxine. To the same spot Heéraclés 
goes to attack them, in the performance of the ninth labor im- 
posed upon him by Eurystheus, for the purpose of procuring the 
girdle of the Amazonian queen, Hippolyté;' and we are told 
that they had not yet recovered from the losses sustained in this 
severe aggression when Théseus also assaulted and defeated them, 
carrying off their queen, Antiopé.? This injury they avenged 
by invading Attica, —an undertaking as Plutarch justly observ4s) 
“neither trifling nor feminine,” especially if according to the 
statement of Hellanikus, they crossed the Cimmerian Bosporus 
on the winter ice, beginning their march from the Asiatic side of 
the Paulus Mieotis.? They overcame all the resistances and dif 
ficulties of this prodigious march, and penetrated even into Athens 
itself, where the final battle, hard-fought and at one time doubt- 
ful, by which Théseus crushed them, was fought—in the very 


' Apollon. Rhod. ii. 966, 1004; Apollod. ii. 5-9; Diodor ii. 46; iv. 16. 
The Amazons were supposed to speak the Thracian lang 2age (Schol. Apoll 
Rkod. ii. 953), though some authors asserted them to be natives of Libyia, 
others of Aithiopia (ὦ. 965). 

Hellanikus (Frag. 33, ap. Schol. Pindar. Nem. iii. 65) said that all the 
Argonauts had assisted Héraklés in this expedition: the fragment of the old 
epic poem (perhaps the ᾿Αμοζόνεα) there quoted mentions ‘TelamOn specially. 

3 The many diversities in the story respecting Théseus and the Amazon 
Antiopé are well set forth in Bachet de Meziriac (Commentaires sur Ovide, 
t. i. p. 317). 

Welcker (Der Epische Cyclus, p. 313) supposes that the ancient epic poem 
called by Suidas ᾿Αμαζόνεα, related to the invasion of Attica by the Ama- 
zons, and that this poem is the same, under another title, as the "Aric of 
Hegesinous cited by Pausanias: I cannot say that he establishes this con- 
jecture satisfactorily, but the chapter is well worth consulting. The epic 
Théséis seems to have given a version of the Amazonian contest in many 
respects different from that which Plutarch has put together out of the logo- 
graphers (see Plat. Thés. 28): it contained a narrative of many unconnect- 
ed exploits belonging to Théseus, and Aristotle censures it on that account 
as ill-constructed (Poetic. c. 17). 

The ᾿Αμαζονὶς or ᾿Αμαζονικὰ of Onasus can hardly have been (as Heyne 
supposes, ad Apollod. ii. 5, 9) an epic poem: we may infer from the ration- 
alizing tendency of the citation from it (Schol. ad Theocrit. xiii. 46, and 
&chol. Apollén. Rhod. i. 1207) that it was a work in prose. There was am 

Apatovic by Possis of Magnésia ( Athenzeus, vii. p. 296). 

3 Plutarch, Théseus, 27. Pindar (Olymp. xiii. 84) represents the Amazons 

as having come from the extreme north, when Bellerophon conquers them 


INVASION OF ATTICA BY THE AMAZONS. 211 


heart of the city. Attic antiquaries confidently pointed out the 
exact position of the two contending armies: the left wing of the 
Amazons rested upon the spot occupied by the commemorative 
monument called the Amazoneion; the right wing touched the 
Pnyx, the place in which the public assemblies of the Athenian 
democracy were afterwards held. The details and fluctuations 
of the combat, as well as the final triumph and consequent truce, 
were recounted by these authors with as complete faith and as 
much circumstantiality as those of the battle of Platza by Herod- 
otus. The sepulchral edifice called the Amazoneion, the tomb 
cr pillar of Antiopé near the western gate of the city —the spot 
called the Horkomosion near the temple of Théseus — even the 
hill of Areiopagus itself, and the sacrifices which it was custom- 
ary to offer to the Amazons at the periodical festival of the Thé- 
seia — were all so many religious mementos of this victory ;! 
which was moreover a favorite subject of art both with the 
sculptor and the painter, at Athens as well as in other parts of 
Greece. 

No portion of the ante-historical epic appears to have been more 
deeply worked into the national mind of Greece than this inva- 
sion and defeat of the Amazons. It was not only a constant theme 
of the logographers, but was also familiarly appealed to by the 
popular orators along with Marathén and Salamis, among those 
antique exploits of which their fellow-citizens might justly be proud. 
It formed a part of the retrospective faith of Herodotus, Lysias, 
Plato and Isokratés,2 and the exact date of the event was settled 


' Plutarch, Théseus, 27-28; Pausan. i. 2,4; Plato, Axiochus, c. 2; Har. 
pocration, v. Auacoveiov ; Aristophan. Lysistrat. 678, with the Scholia. Ats- 
chy]. (Eumenid. 685) says that the Amazons assaulted the citadel from the 
Areiopagus : — 

Πάγον τ᾽ “Apetov τόνδ᾽, ᾿Αμαζόνων ἕδραν 
Σκηνάς τ᾽, ὅτ᾽ HAGov Θησέως κατὰ φϑόνον 
Στρατηλατοῦσαι, καὶ πόλιν νεόπτολιν 
Τηνδ᾽ ὑψίπυργον ἀντεπύργωσάν ποτε. 

* Herodot. ix. 27, Lysias (Epitaph, c. 3) represents the Amazons as ἄρ 
χουσαι πολλῶν ἔϑνων: the whole race, according to him, was nearly extin- 
guished in their unsuccessful and calamitous invasion of Attica. Isokratés 
(Panegyric. t. i. p. 206. Auger) says the same; also Panathénaic, t. iii. p. 560, 
Auger; Demosth. Epitaph. p. 1391. Reisk. Pausanias quotes Pindar’s no- 
tice of the invasion, and with the fullest belief of its historical reality (vii. 2, 4} 


212 HISTURY OF GREECE. 


by the chronologists.!_ Nor did the Athenians stand alone in such 
a belief. Throughout many other regions of Greece, both Kuro- 
pean ari Asiatic, traditions and memorials of the Amazons were 
found. At Megara, at Troezen, in Laconia near Cape Tenarus, 
at Cheroneia in Bcedtia, and in more than one part of Thessaly, 
sepulchres or monuments of the Amazons were preserved. The 
warlike women (it was said), on their way to Attica, had not 
traversed those countries, without leaving some evidences of their 
passage.* 

Amongst the Asiatic Greeks the supposed traces of the Amazons 
were yet more numerous. Their proper territory was asserted to 
be the town and plain of Themiskyra, near the Grecian colony of 
Amisus, on the river Therméd6n, a region called after their name 
by Roman historians and geographers. But they were believed 
to have conquered and occupied in early times a much wider range 
of territory, extending even to the coast of lénia and olis. 
Ephesus, Smyrna, Kymé, Myrina, Paphos and Sinopé were af- 
firmed to have been founded and denominated by them.4 Some 


Plato mentions the invasion of Attica by the Amazons in the Menexenus 
(c. 9), but the passage in the treatise De Legg. ὁ. ii. p. 804, — ἀκούων γὰρ δὴ 
μύϑους παλαιοὺς πέπεισμαι, etc. — is even a stronger evidence of his own be- 
lief. And Xenophén in the Anabasis, when he compares the quiver and the 
hatchet of his barbarous enemies to “ those which the Amazons carry,” evi- 
dently believed himself to be speaking of real persons, though he could have 
seen only the costumes and armature of those painted by Mik6n and others 
(Anabas. iv. 4, 10; compare Aéschl. Supplic. 293, and Aristophan. Lysistr. 


678: Lucian. Anachars, c. 34. v. iii. p. 318). 
How copiously the tale was enlarged upon by the authors of the Atthides, 


we see in Platarch, Théseus, 27-28. 

Hekateeus (ap. Steph. Byz. ᾿Αμαζονεῖον ; also Fragm. 350, 351, 352, Di- 
dot) and Xanthus (ap. Hesychium, v. BovAewin) both treated of the Ama 
zons: the latter passage ought to be added to the collection of the Fragments 
of Xanthus by Didc?. 

1 Clemens Alexandr. Stromat, i. p. 336; Marmor Pariam, Epoch. 21. 

4 Plutarch, Thés. 27-28. Steph. Byz v. ῷ᾿Αμαζονεῖον. Pausan. ii. 32, 8 
iii. 25, 2. 

3 Pherekydés ap. Schol. Apollon. Rh. ii. 373-992 ; Justin, ii.4; Strabo, 
xii. p. 547, Θεμίσκυραν. τὸ τῶν ᾿Αμαζόνων οἰκητήριον ; Diodor. ii. 45-46; 
Sallust ap. Serv. ad Virgil. Mneid. xi. 659; Pompon. Mela, i.19; Plin. ΒΗ, 
N. νἱ 4 The geography of Quintus Cartius (vi. 4) and of Philostratus (He 
roic. c. 19) is on this point indefinite, and even inconsistent. 

Ephor. Fragm. 87, Didot. Strabo, xi. p. 505; xiii p- 573; xiii. p. 622 


AMAZONS IN ASIA. 213 


auinors placed them in Libya or Ethiopia; and when the Pontie 
Greeks on the north-western shore of the Euxine had become 
acquainted with the hardy and dating character of the Sarmatian 
maidens, — who were obliged to have slain each an enemy in 
battle as the condition of obtaining a husband, and who artificially 
prevented the growth of the right breast during childhood, — they 
could imagine no more satisfactory mode of accounting for such 
attributes than by deducing the Sarmatians from a colony of va- 
grant Amazons, expelled by the Grecian heroes from their terri- 
tory on the Thermédoén.' Pindar ascribed the first establishment 
of the memorable temple of Artemis at Ephesus to the Amazons. 
And Pausanias explains in part the preéminence which this tem- 
ple enjoyed over every other in Greece by the widely diffused 
renown of its female founders,? respecting whom he observes 
with perfect truth, if we admit the historical character of the old 
epic), that women possess an unparalleled force of resolution in 
resisting adverse events, since the Amazons, after having been 
first roughly handled by Héraklés and then completely defeated 


Pausan. iv. 31,6; vii.2.4. Tacit. Ann. iii. 61. Schol. Apollon. Rhod. ii. 
965. 

The derivation of the name Sinopé from an Amazon was given by Heka 
teus (Fragm. 352). Themiskyra also had one of the Amazons for its epony- . 
mus (Appian, Bell. Mithridat. 78). 

Some of the most venerated religious legends at Sinopé were attached to 
the expedition of Héraklés against the Amazons: Autolykus, the oracle- 
giving hero, worshipped with great solemnity even at the time when the town 
was besieged by Lucullus, was the companion of Héraclés (Appian, ib. c.83). 
Even a small mountain village in the territory of Ephesus, called Latoreia, 
derived its name from one of the Amazons (Athenw. i. p. 31). 

1 Herodot. iv. 108-117, where he gives the long tale, imagined by the Pon- 
tic Greeks, of the origin of t2e Sarmatian nation. Compare Hippokratés, De 
Aére, Locis et Aquis, 6.17; Ephorus, Fragm.103 ; Skymn. Chius, v. 192; 
Plato, Legg. vii. p. 804; Diod6r. ii. 34. 

The testimony of Hippokratés certifies the practice of the Sarmatian wo 
men to check the growth of the right breast : Tov δέξιον dé μαζὸν οὐκ ἔχουσιν. 
Παιόίοισι yap ἐοῦσιν ἔτι νηπίοισιν αἱ μητέρες χαλκεῖον τετεχνήμενον ἐπ᾽ αὐτέῳ 
τούτῳ διάπυρον ποιέουσαι, πρὸς τὸν μαζὸν τιϑέασι τὸν δέξιον " καὶ ἐπικαίεται, 
ὥστε τὴν αὔξησιν φϑείρεσϑαι, ἐς δὲ τὸν δέξιον ὦμον καὶ βραχίονα πᾶσαν τὴν 
foxvy καὶ τὸ πλῆϑος ἐκδιδόναι. 

Ktésias also compares a warlike Sakian woman to the Amazons (Fragm 
Persic. ii. pp. 221,449, Bahr). 

3 Pausan. iv.31,6; vii. 2,4. Dionys. Periégét. 828 


214 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


by Théseus, could yet find courage to play so conspicuous a part 
in the defence of Troy against the Grecian besiegers.! 

It is thus that in what is called early Grecian history, as the 
Greeks themselves looked back upon it, the Amazons were among 
the most prominent and undisputed personages. Nor will the cir- 
cumstance appear wonderful if we reflect, that the belief in them 
was first established at a time when the Grecian mind was ted 
with nothing else but religious legend and epic poetry, and that 
the incidents of the supposed past, as received from these sources, 
were addressed to their faith and feelings, without being required 
to adapt themselves to any canons of credibility drawn from 
present experience. But the time came when the historians of 
Alexander the Great audaciously abused this ancient credence. 
Amongst other tales calculated to exalt the dignity of that monarch, 
they affirmed that after his conquest and subjugation of the Per- 
sian empire, he had been visited in Hyrcania by Thalestris, queen 
of the Amazons, who admiring his warlike prowess, was anxious to 
be enabled to return into her own country in a condition to produce 
offspring of a breed so invincible.” But the Greeks had now been 
accustomed for a century and a half to historical and philosophical 
criticism — and that uninquiring faith, which was readily accorded 
to the wonders of the past, could no longer be invoked for them 
when tendered as present reality. For the fable of the Amazons 
was here reproduced in its naked simplicity, without being ration- 
alized or painted over with historical colors. 

Some literary men indeed, among whom were Démétrius ot 
Skepsis, and the Mitylenean Theophanés, the companion of Pom- 
pey in his expeditions, still continued their belief both in Ama- 
zons present and Amazons past ; and when it becomes notorious 
that at least there were none such on the banks of the Thermédon, 
these authors supposed them to have migrated from their original 
locality, and to have settled in the unvisited regions north of 
Mount Caucasus.3 Strabo, on the contrary, feeling that the grounds 


, Pausan. i. 15, 2. 

3. Arrian, Exped. Alex. vii. 13; compare iv. 15; Quint. Curt. vi. 4; Jus- 
tin, xlii. 4. The note of Freinshemius on the above passage of Quintus Cur 
tins is full of valuable references on the subject of the Amazons. 

3. Strabo, xi. p. 503-504; Appian, Bell. Mithridat. c. 103; Plutarch, Pom 


STRABO AND ARRIAN. 215 


of disbelief applied with equal force to the ancient stories and to 
the modern, rejected both the one and the other. But he remarks 
at the same time, not without some surprise, that it was usual 
with most persons to adopt a middle course, — to retain the Ama 
zons as historical phenomena of the remote past, but to disallow 
them as realities of the present, and to maintain that the breed 
had died out.! The accomplished intellect of Julius Cesar did not 
scruple to acknowledge them as having once conquered and held 
in dominion a large portion of Asia;? and the compromise be- 
tween early, traditional, and religious faith on the one hand, and 


peius, c. 35. Plin. N. H.vi.7. Plutarch still retains the old description of 
Amazons from the mountains near the Therméd6n. Appian keeps clear of 
this geographical error, probably copying more exactly the language of The- 
ophanés, who must have been well aware that when Lucullus besieged The- 
miskyra, he did not find it defended by the Amazons (see Appian, Bell. Mith- 
ridat.c. 78). Ptolemy (v. 9) places the Amazons in the imperfectly known 
regions of Asiatic Sarmatia, north of the Caspian and near the river Rha 
(Volga). “This fabulous community of women (observes Forbiger) Hand 
yuch der alten Geographie, ii. 77, p.457) was a phenomenon much too inter 
esting for the geographers easily to relinquish.” 

1 Strabo, xi. p. 505. Ἴδιον dé τι συμβέβηκε τῷ λόγῳ περὶ τῶν ᾿Αμαζόνων 
Οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἄλλοι τὸ μυϑῶδες καὶ τὸ ἱστορικὸν διωρίσμενον ἔχουσι " τὰ γὰρ πα- 
λαιὰ καὶ ψευδῆ καὶ τερατώδη, μῦϑοι καλοῦνται" | Note. Strabo does not always 
speak of the μῦϑοι in this disrespectful tone ; he is sometimes much displeased 
with those who dispute the existence of an historical kernel in the inside, 
especially with regard to Homer.] ἡ δ᾽ ἱστορία βούλεται τἀληϑὲς, ἄντε παλα- 
Lov, ἄντε νέον " καὶ τὸ τερατῶδες ἢ οὐκ ἔχει, ἢ σπάνιον. Περὶ δὲ τῶν ᾿Αμαζόνων 
τὰ αὐτὰ λέγεται καὶ νῦν καὶ παλαὶ, τερατώδη τ’ ὄντα, καὶ πίστεως πόῤῥω. 
Τίς γὰρ ἂν πιστύσειεν, ὡς γυναικῶν στράτος, ἢ πόλις, ἢ ἔϑνος, συσταίη ἂν πότε 
χωρὶς ἀνδρῶν ; καὶ οὗ μόνον συσταίη, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐφόδους ποιήσαιτο ἐπὶ τὴν aA- 
λοτρίαν, καὶ κρατήσειεν ob τῶν ἐγγὺς μόνον, ὥστε καὶ μέχρι τῆς νῦν ᾿Ιωνίας 
προελϑεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ διαπόντιον στείλαιτο στρατίαν μέχρι th, ᾿Αττικῆς; ᾿Αλλὰ 
μὴν ταῦτά γε αὐτὰ καὶ νῦν λέγεται περὶ αὐτῶν " ἐπιτείνει δὲ τὴν 
ἰδιότητα καὶ τὸ πιστεύεσϑαι τὰ παλαιὰ μᾶλλον ἢ τὰ 
νῦν. There are however, other passages in which he speaks of the Ama- 
ons as realities. 

Justin (ii. 4) recognizes the great power and extensive conquests of the 
Amazons in very early times, but says that they gradually declined down te 
the reign of Alexander, in whose time there were just a few remaining ; the 
queen with these few visited Alexander, but shortly afterwards the whole 
breed became extinct. This hypothesis has the merit of convenience, per 
haps of ingenuity. 

δ Suetonius, Jul. Cxsar,c 22. “In SyriA quoque regrasss Semiramin 


Vol, 1 11 


216 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


established habits of critical research on the other, adopted by 
the historian Arrian, deserves to be transcribed in his own words, 
as illustrating strikingly the powerful sway of the old legends 
even over the most positive-minded Greeks: —“ Neither Aris- 
tobulus nor Ptolemy (he observes), nor any other competent wit- 
ness, has recounted this (visit of the Amazons and their queen 
to Alexander): nor does it seem to me that the race of the 
Amazons was preserved down to that time, nor have they been 
noticed either by any one before Alexander, or by Xenophon, 
though he mentions both the Phasians and the Kolchians, and 
the other barbarous nations which the Greeks saw both before 
and after their arrival at Trapezus, in which marches they must 
have met with the Amazons, if the latter had been still in exist- 
ence. Yet ἐΐ is incredible to me that this race of women, celebra- 
ted as they have been »y authors so many and so commanding, 
should never have existed at all. The story tells of Heraklés, 
that he set out from Greece and brought back with him the 
girdle of their queen Hippolyté; also of Theseus and the Athe- 
nians, that they were the first who defeated in battle and repel. 
led these women in their invasion of Europe; and the combat 
of the Athenians with the Amazons has been painted by Mikon, 
not less than that between the Athenians and the Persians. More- 
over Herodotus has spoken in many places of these women, and 
those Athenian orators who have pronounced panegyrics on the 
citizens slain in battle, have dwelt upon the victory over the 
Amazons as among the most memorable of Athenian exploits. 
If the satrap of Media sent any equestrian women at all to Alex- 
ander, I think that they must have come from some of the neigh- 
boring tribes, practised in riding and equipped in the costume 
generally called Amazonian.”! 

There cannot be a more striking evidence of the indelible force 


(Julius Caesar said this), magnamque Asiz partem Amazonas tenuisse quon- 


dam.” 
In the splendid triumph of the emperor Aurelian at Rome after the defeat 


of Zenobia, a few Gothic women who had been taker in arms were exhibited 
among the prisoners; the official placard carried along with them annoan- 
ced them as Amuzons (Vopiscus Aurel. in Histor. August. Scrip. p. 260, ed 
Paris). 

3 Arrian, Expedit. Alexand. vii. 13. 


NOILLVUOLSAY 


HO 


HHL 


LV STIOdOUOV 


SNHHLV 


\ iz - ( 


i we 


my, 


LEGEND AS CONCEIVED BY ARRIAN. 917 


with which these ancient legends were worked into the national 
faith and feelings of the Greeks, than these remarks of a judi- 
cious historian upon the fable of the Amazons. Probably if any 
plausible mode of rationalizing it, and of transforming it into a 
quasi-political event, had been offered to Arrian, he would have 
been better pleased to adopt such a middle term, and would have 
rested comfortably in the supposition that he believed the legend 
in its true meaning, while his less inquiring countrymen were 


imposed upon by the exaggerations of poets. But as the story 
was presented to him plain and unvarnished, either for accept- 
ance or rejection, his feelings as a patriot and a religious man 


prevented him from applying to the past such tests of credibility 
as his untrammelled reason acknowledged to be paramount in 
regard to the present. When we see moreover how much his 
belief was strengthened, and all tendency to scepticism shut out by 
the familiarity of his eye and memory with sculptured or painted 
Amazons!—we may calculate the irresistible force of this sensi- 
ble demonstration on the convictions of the unlettered public, at 
once more deeply retentive of passive impressions, and unaccus- 
tomed to the countervailing habit of rational investigation into 
evidence. Had the march of an army of warlike women, from 
the Thermédo6n or the Tanais into the heart of Attica, been re- 
counted to Arrian as an incident belonging to the time of Alexan- 
der the Great, he would have rejected it no less emphatically than 
Strab6; but cast back as it was into an undefined past, it took 
rank among the hallowed traditions of divine or heroic antiquity, 
— gratifying to extol by rhetoric, but repulsive to scrutinize in 


argument.” 


1 Ktésias described as real animals, existing in wild and distant regions, 
the heterogeneous and fantastic combinations which he saw sculptured in 
the East (see this stated and illustrated in Bahr, Preface to the Fragm. of 
Ktésias, pp. 58, 59). 

2 Heyne observes (Apollodér. ii. 5,9) with respect to the fable of the Ama- 
zons. “In his historiarum fidem aut vestigia nemo quesiverit.”. Admitting 
the wisdom of this counsel (and I think it indisputable), why are we required 
to presume. in the absence of all proof, an historical basis for each of those 
other narratives, such as the Kalydénian boar-hunt, the Argonautic expé di- 
tion, or the siege of Troy, which go to make up, along with the story of the 
Amazons, the aggregate matter of Grecian legendary faith? If the tule of 


VOL. 1. 10 


~ s  P eee om. 


HISTORY OF GREEOE. 


CHAPTER XII. 


KRETAN LEGENDS.--MINOS AND HIS FAMILY 


40 understand the adventures of Théseus in Kréte, it will be 
necessary to touch briefly upon Minés and the Krétan heroic 


genealogy. 
Minds and Rhadamanthus, according to Homer, are sons of 
Zeus, by Europé,! daughter of the wi 


dely-celebrated Phcenix, 


the Amazons could gain currency without any such support. why not other 
portions of the ancient epic ἢ A Ne 
An author of easy belief, Dr. F. Nagel, vindicates the historical reality 
of the Amazons (Geschichte der Amazonen, Stutgart, 1838). I subjoin 
here a different explanation of the Amazonian tale, proceeding from another 
author who rejects the historical basis, and contained in a work of learning 
and value (GuAl, Ephesiaca, Berlin, 1843, p. 132) :— i 
“ Jd tantam monendum videtur, Amazonas nequaquam historice accipien 
das esse, sed e contrario totas ad mythologiam pertinere. Earum enim 
fabulas quum ex frequentium hierodularum gregibus in cultibus et sacris 
Asiaticis ortas esse ingeniose ostenderit Tolken, jam inter omnes mythologuae 
peritos ον. αἰ, Amazonibus nihil fere nisi peregrini cujusdam cultis notio- 
nem expressum esse, ejusque cum Graecorum religione certamen frequent- 
ibus istis pugnis designatum esse, quas cum Amazonibus tot Greecorum 
heroes habuisse credebantar, Hercules, Bellerophon, Theseus, Achilles, et 
vel ipse, quem Ephesi cultum fuisse supra ostendimus, Dionysus. Que 
Amazonum notio primaria, quum paulatim Euemeristicd (ut ita dicam) 
ratione ita transformaretur, ut Amazones pro vero feminarum populo habe- 
rentur, necesse quoque erat, ut omnibus fere locis, ubi ejusmodi religionum 
certamina locum habuerunt, Amazones habitasse, vel eo usque processisse, 
erederentur. Quod cum nusquam manifestius fuerit, quam in Asia minore, 
et potissimum in δὰ parte que Greciam versus vergit, haud mirandum est 
omnes fere ejus ors urbes ab Amazonibus conditas putari.” 
I do not know the evidence upon which this conjectural interpretation 
sts, but the statement of it, though it boasts so many supporters among 
aythological critics, carries no appearance of probability tomy mind. Priam 
fights against the Amazons as well as the Grecian heroes. ᾿ 
1 Earopé was worshipped with very peculiar solemnity in the island of 
Kréte (see Dictys Cretensis, De Bello Trojano, i. c. 2). 
The venerable plane-tree, under which Zeus and Europé had reposed, was 


KRETAN LEGENDS.— MINOS AND HIS FAMILY. 219 


born in Kréte. Minds is the father of Deukalién, whose son 
Idomeneus, in conjunction with Mérionés, conducts the Krétan 
troops to the host of Agamemnon betore Troy. Minds is ruler 
of Knossus, and familiar companion of the great Zeus. He is 
spoken of as holding guardianship in Kréte — not necessarily 
meaning the whole of the island: he is farther decorated with a 
golden sceptre, and constituted judge over the dead in the under- 
world to settle their disputes, in which function Odysseus finds 
him —this however by a passage of comparatively late interpola- 
tion into the Odyssey. He also had a daughter named Ariadné, 
for whom the artist Dedalus fabricated in the town of Knossus 
the representation of a complicated dance, and who was ultimate- 
ly carried off by Théseus: she died in the island of Dia, de- 
serted by Theseus and betrayed by Dionysos to the fatal wrath 
of Artemis. Khadamanthus seems to approach to Minds both 
in judicial functions and posthumous dignity. He is conveyed 
expressly to Eubee, by the semi-divine sea-carriers the Phaa- 
cians, to inspect the gigantic corpse of the earth-born Tityus — 
the longest voyage they ever undertook. He is moreover after 
death promoted to an abode of undisturbed bliss in the Elysiar 
plain at the extremity of the earth.! 

According to poets later than Homer, Europé is brought over 
by Zeus from Phoenicia to Kréte, where she bears co him three 
sons, Minos, Rhadamanthus and Sarpédén. The latter leaves 
Krete and settles in Lykia, the population of which, as well as 
that of many other portions of Asia Minor, is connected by va- 


still shown, hard by a fountain at Goetyn in Kréte, in the time of Theophras- 
tus: it was said to be the only plane-tree in the neighborhood which never 
cast its leaves (Theophrast. Hist. Plant. i. 9). 

* Homer, Iliad, xiii. 249, 450; xiv. 321. Odyss. xi. 322-568; xix. 179; 
lv. 564—vii. 321. 

The Homeric Minés in the under-world is not a judge of the previous 
lives of the dead, so as to determine whether they deserve reward or pun- 
ishment for their conduct on earth: such functions are not assigned to him 
earlier than the time of Plato. He administers justice among the dead, who 
are conceived as a sort of society, requiring some presiding judge: ϑεμισ- 
τεύοντα νεκύεσσι, with regard to Minds, is said very much like (Odyss. xi. 
484) νῦν δ᾽ aire μέγα κρατέεις νεκύεσσι with regard to Achilles. See this 


matter partially illustrated in Heyne’s Excursus xi. to the sixth book of the 
neid of Virgil. 


220 HISTORY OF GREECE 


rious mythical genealogies with Kréte, though the Sarpédon οἱ 
the Iliad has no connection with Kréte, and is not the son of 
Europé. Sarpédon having become king of Lykia, was favored 
by his father, Zeus, with permission to live for three generations.! 
At the same time the youthful Milétus, a favorite of Sarpédén, 
quitted Kréte, and established the city which bore his name on 
the coast of Asia Minor. Rhadamanthus became sovereign of 
and lawgiver among the islands in the AXgean: ue subsequently 
went to Beotia, where he married the widowed Alkménd, 
mother of Hérakleés. 

Europé finds in Kréte a king Asterius, who marries her and 
adopts her children by Zeus: this Astérius is the son of Krés, 
the eponym of the island, or (according to another genealogy by 
which it was attempted to be made out that Minds was of Dorian 
race) he was a son of the daughter of Krés by Tektamus, the 
son of Dorus, who had migrated into the island from Greece. 

Minos married Pasiphaé, daughter of the god Hélios and Per- 
seis, by whom he had Katreus, Deukalién, Glaukus, Androgeos, 
names marked in the legendary narrative, — together with seve- 
ral daughters, among whom were Ariadné and Phedra. He 
offended Poseidén by neglecting to fulfil a solemnly-made vow, 
and the displeased god afflicted his wife Pasiphaé with a mon- 
strous passion for a bull. The great artist Daedalus, son of Eu- 
palamus, a fugitive from Athens, became the confidant of this 
amour, from which sprang the Minotaur, a creature half man and 
half bull.2 This Minotaur was imprisoned by Minds in the laby- 
rinth, an inextricable inclosure constructed by Dedalus for that 
express purpose, by order of Minos. 

Minés acquired great nautical power, and expelled the Karian 
wwhabitants from many of the islands of the Agean, which he 
placed under the government of his sons on the footing of tribu. 


' Apollod6r. iii. 1,2. Καὶ αὐτῷ didwot “Ζεὺς ἐπὶ τρεῖς yevriic Civ. This 
tircumstance is evidently imagined by the logographers to account for the 
appearance of Sarpédon in the ‘Trojan war, fighting against Idomeneus, the 
grandson of Minés. Nisus is the eponymus of Nisza, the port of the town 
of Megara: his tomb was shown at Athens (Pausan. i. 19,5). Minds is the 
eponym of the island of Minoa (opposite the port of Niszea), where it was 
affirmed that the fleet of Minds was stationed (Pausan. i. 44, δ). 

* Avollod6r iii. 1. 2. 


KRETAN LEGENDS.— MINOS AND HIS FAMILY. 221 


taries. He undertook several expeditions against various places 
on the coast—one against Nisos, the son of Pandion, king of Me- 
gara, who had amongst the hair of his head one peculiar lock of 
a purple color: an oracle had pronounced that his life and reign 
would never be in danger so long as he preserved thiy precious 
lock. The city would have remained inexpugnable, if Scylla, 
the daughter of Nisus, had not conceived a violent passion for 
Minés. While her father was asleep, she cut off the lock on 
which his safety hung, so that the Krétan king soon became vic- 
torious. Instead of pérforming his promise to carry Scylla away 
with him to Kréte, he cast her from the stern of his vessel into 
the sea:! both Scylla and Nisus were changed into birds. 

Androgeos, son of Minds having displayed such rare qualities 
as to vanquish all his competitors at the Panathenaic festival in 
Athens, was sent by AZgeus the Athenian king to contend against 
the bull of Marathén,—an enterprise in which he perished, and 
Minés made war upon Athens to avenge his death. He was for 
a long time unable to take the city: at length he prayed to his 
father Zeus to aid him in obtaining redress from the Athenians, 
and Zeus sent upon them pestilence and famine. In vain did 
they endeavor to avert these calamities by offering up as pro- 
pitiatory sacrifices the four daughters of Hyacinthus. Their 
sufferings still continued, and the oracle directed them to submit 
to any terms which Minds might exact. He required that they 
should send to Kréte a tribute of seven youths and seven mai- 
dens, periodically, to be devoured by the Mindtaur,? — offered to 
him in a labyrinth constructed by Dedalus, including countless 
different passages, out of which no person could escape. 

Every ninth year this offering was to be despatched. The 
more common story was, that the youths and maidens thus des- 
tined to destruction were selected by lot— but the logographer 
Hellanikus said that Minés came to Athens and chose them him- 
self.3 The third period for despatching the victims had arrived, 


* Apollodor. iii. 15,8. See the Ciris of Virgil, a juvenile poem on the 
subject of this fable; also Hyginus, f. 198; Schol. Eurip. Hippol. 1200 
Propertius (iii. 19, 21) gives the features of the story with tolerable fidel 
ity ; Ovid takes considerable liberties with it (Metam. viii. 5-150). 


® Apollodér. iii. 15, 8. 
3 See, on the subject of Théscus and the Minotaur, Eckermann, Lehrbuc} 


299 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


and Athens was plunged in thz deepest affliction, when Theseus 
determined to devote himself as one of them, and either to ter- 
minate the sanguinary tribute or to perish. He prayed to Posei- 
d6n for help, and the Delphian god assured him that Aphrodité 
would sustain and extricate him. On arriving at Knossus he 
was fortunate enough to captivate the affections of Ariadné, the 
daughter of Minés, who supplied him with a sword and a clue of 
thread. With the former he contrived to kill the Minotaur, the 
latter served to guide his footsteps in escaping from the labyrinth 

Having accomplished this triumph, he left Kréte with his ship 
and companions unhu:t, carrying off Ariandé, whom however he 
soon abandoned on the island of Naxos. On his way home to 
Athens, he stopped at Délos, where he offered a grateful sacrifice 
to Apollo for his escape, and danced along with the young men 
and maidens whom he had rescued from the Minotaur, a dance 
called the Geranus, imitated from the twists and convolutions of 
the Krétan labyrinth. It had been concerted with his father 
σου, that if he succeeded in his enterprise against the Mino 

taur, he should on his return hoist white sails in his ship in place 
of the black canvas which she habitually carried when employed 
on this mournful embassy. But Théseus forgot to make the 
change of sails; so that A®geus, seeing the ship return with her 
equipment of mourning unaltered, was impressed with the sorrow- 
ful conviction that his son had perished, and cast himself into the 
sea. The ship which made this voyage was preserved by the 
Athenians with careful solicitude, being constantly repaired with 
new timbers, down to the time of the Phalerian Démétrius: every 
year she was sent from Athens to Délos with a solemn sacrifice 
and specially-nominated envoys. The priest of Apollo decked 
her stern with garlands before she quitted the port, and during 
the time which elapsed until her return, the city was understood 
to abstain from all acts carrying with them public impurity, so 
that it was unlawful to put to death any person even under for- 
mal sentence by the dikastery. This accidental circumstance 


de: Religions Geschichte und Mytholdgie, vol. ii. ch. xiii. p. 133. He main- 
tains that the tribute of these human victims paid by Athens to Minds is 88 
historical fact. Upon what this belief is grounded, I confesg I do nat 


THESEUS AND THE MINOTAUR. 228 


pecomes especially memorable, from its having postponed for 
thirty days the death of the lamented Socratés. 

The legend respecting Théseus, and his heroic rescue of the 
seven noble youths and maidens from the jaws of the Minotaur, 
was thus both commemorated and certified to the Athenian public, 
by the annual holy ceremony and by the unquestioned identity 
of the vessel employed in it. There were indeed many varieties 
in the mode of narrating the incident; and some of the Attic 
logographers tried to rationalize the fable by transforming the 
Minotaur into a general or a powerful athlete, named Taurus, 
whom Théseus vanquished in Kréte.2. But this altered version 
never overbore the old fanciful character of the tale as maintain- 
ed by the poets. A great number of other religious ceremonies 
and customs, as well as several chapels or sacred enclosures in 
honor of different heroes, were connected with different acts and 
special ordinances of Théseus. To every Athénian who took 


’ Plato, Phaedon, ec. 2,3; Xenoph. Memor. iv. 8. 2. Plato especially notic- 
ed τοὺς δὶς ἕπτα éxeivouc, the seven youths and the seven maidens whom 
Théseus conveyed to Kréte and brought back safely : this number seems an 
old and constant feature in the legend, maintained by Sappho and Bacchy- 
lidés as well as by Euripidés (Herc. Fur. 1318). See Servius ad Virgil 
/Eneid. vi. 21. 

* For the general narrative and its discrepancies, see Plutarch, Thés 
ce. 15-19; Diodor. iv. 60-62; Pausan. i. 17,3; Ovid, Epist. Ariadn. Thés 
104. In that other portion of the work of Diodérus which relates more 68. 
pecially to Kréte, and is borrowed from Kretan logographers and historians 
(v. 64-80), he mentions nothing at all respecting the war of Minds with 
Athens. 

In the drama of Euripidés called Théseus, the genuine story of the youths 
and maidens about to be offered as food to the Minétaur was introduced 
(Schol. ad Aristoph. Vesp. 312). 

Ariadné figures in the Odyssey along with Théseus: she is the daughter of 
Minds, carried off by Théseus from Kréte, and killed by Artemis in the way 
home: there is no allusion to Minotaur, or tribute, or self-devotion of Thé- 
seus (Odyss. xi. 324). This is probably the oldest and simplest form of the 
legend —one of the many amorous (compare Theognis, 1232) adventures 
of ‘Théseus : the rest is added by post-Homeric poets. 

The respect of Aristotle for Minds induces him to adopt the hypothesis 
that the Athenian youths and maidens were not put to death in Kréte, but 
grew old in servitude (Aristot. Fragm. Borriaiwy Πολιτεία, p. 106. ed 
Neumann. of the Fragments of the treatise Περὶ HoAcrecév, Plutarch, Quast 
Greec. p. 298). : 


ee ee - 


224 HISTORY CF GREECE. 


part in the festivals of the Oschophoria, the Pyanepsia, or tne 
Kybernésia, the name of this great hero was familiar, and the 
motives for offering to him solemn worship at his own special 
festival of the Théseia, became evident and impressive. 

The same Athenian legends which ennobled and decorated the 
character of Théseus, painted in repulsive colors the uttributes 
of Minds; and the traits of the old Homeric comrade of Zeus 
were buzied under those of the conqueror and oppressor of 
Athens. His history like that of the other legendary personages 
of Greece, consists almost entirely of a string of family romances 
and tragedies. Hisson Katreus, father of Aeropé, wife of Atreus, 
was apprized by an oracle that he would perish by the hand of 
one of his own children: he accordingly sent them out of the 
island, and Althemenés, his son, established himself in Rhodes. 
Katreus having become old, and fancying that he had outlived 
the warning of the oracle, went over to Rhodes to see Althx- 
menés. In an accidental dispute which arose between his atten- 
dants and the islanders, Althemenés inadvertently took part and 
slew his father without knowing him. Glaukus, the youngest 
son of Minds, pursuing ἃ mouse, fell into a reservoir of honey and 
was drowned. No one knew what had become of him,and bis 
father was inconsolable; at length the Argeian Polyeidus, a 
prophet wonderfully endowed by the gods, both discovered the 
boy and restored him to life, to the exceeding joy of Minds.! 

The latter at last found his death in an eager attempt to over- 
take and punish Daedalus. This great artist, the eponymous 
hero of the Attic gens or déme called the Dedalide, and the 
descendant of Erechtheus through Métion, had been tried at the 
tribunal of Areiopagus and banished for killing his nephew 
Talos, whose rapidly improving skill excited his envy.2_ He took 
refuge in Kréte, where he acquired the confidence of Minds, and 
was employed (as has been already mentioned) in constructing 
the labyrinth; subsequently however he fell under the displeasure 
of Minds, and was confined as a close prisoner in the inextricable 
windings of his own edifice. His unrivalled skill and rescuree 
however did not forsake him. He manufactured wings both for 


ΒΟΡΟΙΜΙΝΝΝΗΝΗΝΕΙΝΝΙΠΗΝΒΗΙΝ ΠΉΜΝΝΝΙΒΕΊΝΕΊΡΩΝ 8 --.-ῦὌ.. 


‘i Apollodér. i. cap. 2-3. 
3 Pherekyd. Fragm. 105; Hellanik. Fragm. 82 (Didot); Pausan. vii. 4,8 


fm 95 ~ Pg OO ere 


DEATH OF MINOS IN SICILY. 225 


himself and for his son Ikarus, with which they flew over the 
sea: the father arrived safely in Sicily at Kamikus, the residence 
of the Sikanian king Kokalus, but the son, disdaining paternal 
example and admonition, flew so high that his wings were melted 
by the sun and he fell into the sea, which from him was called 
the Ikarian sea.! 

Dedalus remained for some time in Sicily, leaving in various 
parts of the island many prodigious evidences of mechanical and 
architectural skill.2 At length Minds bent upon regaining posses- 
sion of his person, undertook an expedition against Kokalus with 
a numerous fleet and army. Kokalus affecting readiness to de- 
liver up the fugitive, and receiving Minés with apparent friend- 
ship, ordered a bath to be prepared for him by his three daugh 
ters, who, eager to protect Dedalus at any price, drowned the 
Krétan king in the bath with hot water.3. Many of the Krétans 
who had accompanied him remained in Sicily and founded the 
town of Minoa, which they denominated after him. But not long 
afterwards Zeus roused all the inhabitants of Kréte (except the 
towns of Polichna and Presus) to undertake with one accord an 
expedition against Kamikus for the purpose of avenging the 
death of Minds. They besieged Kamikus in vain for five years, 
until at last famine compelled them to return. On their way 
along the coast of Italy, in the Gulf of Tarentum, a terrible 
storm destroyed their fleet and obliged them to settle perma- 
nently in the country: they founded Hyria with other cities, and 
became Messapian Iapygians. Other settlers, for the most part 
Greeks, immigrated into Kréte to the spots which this movement 


! Diodor. iv. 79; Ovid, Metamorph. viii. 181. Both Ephorus and Philis- 
tus mentioned the coming of Dedalus to Kokalus in Sicily (Ephor. Fr. 99; 
Philist. Fragm. 1, Didot): probably Antiochus noticed it also (Diodd6r. xii. 
71). Kokalus was the point of commencement for the Sicilian historians. 

3 Diod6r. iv. 80. 

3 Pausan. vii. 4,5; Schol. Pindar. Nem. iv. 95; Hygin. fab. 44; Conon 
Narr. 25; Ovid. Ibis, 291. — 


“ Vel tua maturet, sicut Minoia fata, 
Per caput infuse fervidus humor aquz.” 


This stoty formed the subject of a lost drama of Sophoklés, Καμέκιοι ‘os 
Μίνως; it was also told by Kallimachus, ἐν Alriocg, as well as by Philnase 
vkanus (Schol. Iliad, ii. 145). 

TOL. 1 10* 150° 


996 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


had left vacant, and in the second generation after Minés occur 
red the Trojan war. The departed Minds was exceedingly of: 
fended with the Krétans for cooperating in avenging the injury 
to Menelaus, since the Greeks generally had lent no aid to the 
Krétans in their expedition against the town of Kamikus. He 
sent upon Kréte, after the return of Idomeneus from Troy, such 
terrible visitations of famine and pestilence, that the population 
again died out or expatriated, and was again renovated by fresh 
immigrations. The intolerable suffering! thus brought upon the 
Krétans by the anger of Minds, for having cooperated in the 
general Grecian aid to Menelaus, was urged by them to the 
Greeks as the reason why they could take no part in resisting 
the invasion of Xerxés; and it is even pretended that they were 
advised and encouraged to adopt this ground of excuse by the 
Delphian oracle.” 

Such is the Minds of the poets and legographers, with his 
legendary and romantic attributes: the familiar comrade of the 
great Zeus, — the judge among the dead in Hadés,— the husband 
of Pasiphaé, daughter of the god Hélios,— the father of the god- 
dess Ariadné, as well as of Androgeos, who perishes and is wor- 
shipped at Athens,? and of the boy Glaukus, who is miraculously 
restored to life by a prophet, —the person beloved by Scylla, and 
the amorous pursuer of the nymph or goddess Britomartis,4— 


' This curious and very characteristic narrative is given by Herodot. vii 
169-171. 

3 Heredot. vii. 169. The answer ascribed to the Delphian oracle, on the 
question being put by the Krétan envoys whether it would be better for thena 
to aid the Greeks against Xerxés or not, is higaly emphatic and poetical: 
ΤΩ νῆπιοι, ἐπιμέμφεσϑε dou ὑμῖν ἐκ τῶν Mevedéw τιμωρημώτων Μίνως ἔπεμψε 
μηνίων δακρύματα, ὅτι οἱ μὲν οὐ ξυνεξεπρήξαντο αὐτῷ τὸν ἐν Καμέκῳ ϑάνατον 
γενόμενον, ὑμεῖς δὲ κείνοισι τὴν ἐκ Σπάρτης ἁρπαχϑεῖσαν ὑπ᾽ ἀνδρὸς βαρίβα- 
ρου γυναῖκα. 

If such an answer was ever returned at cil, 1 cannot but think that it 
must have been from some oracle in Kréte :tself, not from Delphi. The 
Delphian oracle could never have so far fcrgotten its obligations to the 
general cause of Greece, at that critical moment, which involved moreovet 
the safety of all its own treasures, as to deter the Krétans from giving assist- 
ance. 

3 Hesiod, Theogon. 949; Pausan. i. 1, 4. 

4 Kallimach. Hvmn. ad Dian. 189. Strabo (x. p. 476) dwells also upon 


CHARACTER OF MINOS IN LEGEND. 997 


the proprietor of the Labyrinth and of the Mindétaur, and the 
exacter of a periodical tribute of youths and maidens from Athens 
as food for this monster, — lastly, the follower of the fugitive 
artist Dedalus to Kamikus, and the victim of the three ill-dis 
posed daughters of Kokalus in a bath. With this strongly- 
marked portrait, the Minds of Thucydidés and Aristotle has 
searcely anything in common except the name. He is the first 
to acquire 7halassokraty, or command of the A°gean sea: he ex- 
pels the Karian inhabitants from the Cyclades islands, and sends 
thither fresh colonists under his own sons ; he puts down piracy, 
in order that he may receive his tribute regularly ; lastly, he at- 
tempts to conquer Sicily, but fails in the enterprise and perishes.! 
Here we have conjectures, derived from the analogy of the 
Athenian maritime empire in the historical times, substituted in 
place of the fabulous incidents, and attached to the name of 
Minos. 

In the fable, a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens is 
paid to him periodically by the Athenians; in the historicized 
narrative this character of a tribute-collector is preserved, but 
the tribute is money collected from dependent islands ;2 and Aris- 


sei 


the strange contradiction of the legends concerning Minds: I agree with 
Hoeckh ( Kreta, ii. p. 93) that δασμόλογος in this passage refers to the tribute 
exacted from Athens for the Minotaur. 

' Thuyed. i. 4. Μίνως γὰρ, παλαίτατος ὦν ἀκοῇ iouev, ναυτικὸν ἐκτήσατο, 
καὶ τῆς viv Ἑλληνικῆς ϑαλώσσης ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἐκράτησε, καὶ τῶν Κυκλάδων 
νήσων npsé τε καὶ οἰκιστὴς αὐτὸς τῶν πλείστων ἐγένετο, Κᾶρας ἐξελάσας καὶ 
τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ παῖδας ἡγεμόνας ἐγκαταστήσας" τό τε λῃστικὸν, ὡς εἰκὸς, Kadg- 
ρει ἐκ τῆς ϑαλάσσης, ἐφ᾽ dcov ἠδύνατο, τοῦ τὰς προσόδυς μᾶλλον ἰέναι αὐτῷ. 
See also c. 8. 

Aristot. Polit. ii. 7,2, Δοκεῖ & ἡ νῆσος καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἀρχὴν τὴν Ἑλληνικὴν 
πεφυκέναι καὶ κεῖσϑαι καλῶς διὸ καὶ τὴν τῆς ϑαλάσσης ἀρχὴν κατε- 
σχεν ὁ Μίνως, καὶ τὰς νήσους τὰς μὲν ἐχειρώσατο, τὰς δὲ ᾧκισε" τέλος δ᾽ ἐπι. 
ϑέμενος τῇ Σικελίᾳ τὸν βίον ἐτελεύτησεν ἐκεῖ περὶ Κάμικον. 

Ephorus (ap. Skymn. Chi. 542) repeated the same statement: he men 
tioned also the autochthonous king Krés. 

ἢ It is curious that Herodotus expressly denies this, and in language which 
shows that he had made special inquiries about it: he says that the Karians 
or Leleges in the islands (who were, according to Thucydidés, expelled by 
Minds) paid no tribute to Minds, but manned his navy, i. 6. they stood to 
Min6és much in the same relation as Chios and Lesbos stood to Athens 
'Herodot. i. 171). Om may trace here the influence of those discussions 


- τ τιν." 


--- σφε ee ΞΘΕΩΣ. ...Ἅὅ 


<= 


223 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


totle points out to us how conveniently Kréte is situated to ex- 
ercise empire over the Augean. The expedition against Kami 

kus, instead of being directed to the recovery of the fugitive 
Deedalus, is an attempt on the part of the great thalassokrat to 
conquer Sicily. Herodotus gives us generally the same view of 
the character of Minds as a great maritime king, but his notice 
of the expedition against Kamicus includes the mention of De- 
dalus as the intended object of 1.} Ephorus, while he described 
Minds as a commanding and comprehensive lawgiver imposing 
his commands under the sanction of Zeus, represented him as 
the imitator of an earlier lawgiver named Rhadamanthus, and 
also as an immigrant into Kréte from the Holic Mount Ida, along 
with the priests or sacred companions of Zeus called the Idai 
Dactyli. Aristotle too points him out as the author of the Sys- 
sitia, or public meals common in Kréte as well as at Sparta,— 
other divergences in a new direction from the spirit of the old 
fables.” 

The contradictory attributes ascribed to Minos, together with 
the perplexities experienced by those who wished to introduce a 
regular chronological arrangement into these legendary events, 
has led both in ancient and in modern times to the supposition of 
two kings named Minds, one the grandson of the other, — Minés 
L, the son of Zeus, lawgiver and judge, — Minds II., the thalas- 
sokrat, — a gratuitous conjecture, which, without solving the prob- 
lem required, only adds one to the numerous artifices employed 
for imparting the semblance of history to the disparate matter of 
legend. The Krétans were at all times, from Homer downward, 
expert and practised seamen. But that they were ever united 


which must have been prevalent at that time respecting the maritime empire 
of Athens. 

' Herodot. vii. 170. Λέγεται γὰρ Μίνω κατὰ ζήτησιν Δαιδάλου ἀπικόμενον 
ἐς Σικανίην, τὴν νῦν Σικαλίην καλουμένην, ἀποϑανεῖν βιαίῳ ϑανάτῶ. ‘Ard 
δὲ χρόνον Κρῆτας, ϑεοῦ ogi ἐποτρύνοντος, etc. 

3 Aristot. Polit. ii. 7,1; vii. 9,2. phorus, Fragm. 63, 64, 65. He set 
aside altogether the Homeric genealogy of Minés, which makes him brother 
of Rhadamanthus and born in Kréte. 

Strabo, in pointing out the many contradictions respecting Minds, re 
marks, Ἔστι δὲ καὶ ἄλλος λόγος οὐχ ὁμολογούμενος, τῶν μὲν ξένον τῆς νῆσον 
τὸν Μίνω λεγόντων, τῶν δὲ ἐπιχώριτν. By the former he doubtless means 
Ephorus though he has not here specified him (x. p. 477). 


CHARACTER OF MINOS IN LEGEND. 239 


under one governinent, or ever exerzised maritime dominion in 
the Avgzean is a fact which we are neither able to affirm nor to 
deny. The Odyssey, in so far as it justifies any inference at all, 
points against such a supposition, since it recognizes a great di- 
versity both of inhabitants and of languages in the island, and 
designates Minds as king specially of Knéssus: it refutes still 
more positively the idea that Minés put down piracy, which the 
Homeric Krétans as well as others continue to practise without 
scruple. 

Herodotus, though he in some places speaks of Minds as a per- 
son historically cognizable, yet in one passage severs him point- 
edly from the generation of man. The Samian despot “ Poly- 
kratés (he tells us) was the first person who aspired to nautical 
dominion, excepting Minds of Knéssus, and others before him 
(if any such there ever were) who may have ruled the sea; but 
Polykratés is the first of that which is called the generation of 
man who aspired with much chance of success to govern Jdénia 
and the islands of the Aigwan.”! Here we find it manifestly in- 
timated that Minds did not belong to the generation of man, and 
the tale given by the historian respecting the tremendous calam- 
ities which the wrath of the departed Minds inflicted on Kréte 
confirms the impression. The king ‘of Kndssus is a god ora 
hero, but not a man; he belongs to legend, not to history. He 
is the son as well as the familiar companion of Zeus ; he mar- 
ries the daughter of Hélios, and Ariadné is numbered among his 
offspring. ‘To this superhuman person are ascribed the oldest 
and most revered institutions of the island, religious and politi- 
cal, together with a period of supposed ante-historical dominion. 
That there is much of Krétan religious ideas and practice em- 
bodied in the fables concerning Mindés can hardly be doubted: 
nor is it improbable that the tale of the youths and maidens sent 


a ΠΡ’ 


' Herodot. iii. 122. Πολυκράτης yap ἐστὶ πρῶτος τῶν ἡμεῖς iduev EAA 
νων, ὃς ϑαλασσοκρατέειν ἐπενοήϑη, παρὲξ Μίνωός τε τοῦ Κνωσσίου, καὶ ε. δή 
τις ἄλλος πρότερος τούτου pte τῆς ϑαλάττης" τῆς δὲ av} ρωπηΐης 
λεγομένης γενέης Πολυκράτης ἐστὶ πρῶτος ἔλπιδας πολλὰς ἔχων Ἰωνέης 
τε καὶ νήσων ἄρξειν. 

The expression exactly corresponds to that of Pausan‘as, ix. 5, 1, ἐπὶ τῶν 
καλουμένων Ἡρώων, for the age preceding the ἀνϑρωπηΐγ γενέη ; also viii. 8, 
1, ἐς τὰ ἀνωτέρω τοῦ ἀνϑρώπων γένους. 


230 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


from Athens may be based in some expiatory offerings rer 
dered to a Krétan divinity. The orgiastic worship of Zeus, sol 
emnized by the armed priests with impassioned motions and vio- 
lent excitement, was of ancient date in that island, as well as the 
connection with the worship of Apollo both at Delphi and at 
Délos. ‘To analyze the fables and to elicit from them any trust- 
worthy particular facts, appears to me a fruitless attempt. The 
religious recollections, the romantic invention, and the items of 
matter of fact, if any such there be, must forever remain indis- 
solubly amalgamated as the poet originally blended them, for the 
amusement or edification of his auditors. | Hoeckh, in his in- 
structive and learned collection of facts respecting ancient Kréte, 
construes the mythical genealogy of Minds to denote a combina- 
tion of the orgiastic worship of Zeus, indigenous among the 
Eteokrétes, with the worship of the moon imported from Phe- 
nicia, and signified by the names Europé, Pasiphaé, and Ariad- 
né.! This is specious as a conjecture, but I do not venture to 
speak of it in terms of greater confidence. 

From the connection of religious worship and legendary tales 
between Kréte and various parts of Asia Minor, — the Troad, 
the coast of Milétus and Lykia, especially between Mount Ida 
in Kréte and Mount Ida in A®6lis, — it seems reasonable to infer 
an ethnographical kindred or relationship between the inhabitants 
anterior to the period of Hellenic occupation. The tales of Kré- 
tan settlement at Minoa and Engyi6on on the south-western coast 
of Sicily, and in Iapygia on the Gulf of Tarentum, conduct us 
to asimilar presumption, though the want of evidence forbids our 
tracing it farther. In the time of Herodotus, the Eteokrétes, or 
aboriginal inhabitants of the island, were confined to Polichna 
and Presus; but in earlier times, prior to the encroachments of 
the Hellénes, they had occupied the larger portion, if not the 
whole of the island. Minds was originally their hero, subse- 
quently adopted by the immigrant Hellénes, — at least Herodotus 
considers him as barbarian, not Hellenic.? 


1 Hoeckh, Kreta, vol. ii. pp. 56-67. K.O. Miiller also (Dorier. ii. 2, 14) 
outs a religious interpretation upon these Kreto-Attic legends, brt he ex- 
plains them in a manner totally different from Hoeckh. 

* Herodct. i, 173 


ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION 


CHAPTER XITT. 


ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION. 


Tue ship Argé was the theme of many songs during the old- 
est periods of the Grecian epic, even earlier than the Odyssey. 
The king A‘étés, from whom she is departing, the hero Jasén, 
who commands her, and the goddess Héré, who watches over 
him, enabling the Argé to traverse distances and to escape dan- 
gers which no ship had ever before encountered, are all circum- 
stances briefly glanced at by Odysseus in his narrative to Alki- 
nous. Moreover, Eunéus, the son of Jasén and Hypsipylé, 
governs Lemnos during the siege of Troy by Agamemnon, and 
carries on a friendly traffic with the Grecian camp, purchasing 
from them their Trojan prisoners.! 

The legend of Halus in Achaia Phthidtis, respecting the re- 
ligious solemnities connected with the family of Athamas and 
Phryxus (related in a previous chapter), is also interwoven with 
the voyage of the Argonauts ; and both the legend and the solemni- 
ties seem evidently of great antiquity. We know further, that the 
adventures of the Argé were narrated not only by Hesiod and in 
the Hesiodie poems, but also by Eumélus and the author of the 
Naupactian verses—by the latter seemingly at considerable 
length.2 But these poems are unfortunately lost, nor have we 


? Odyss. xii. 69.— 


Oin δὴ κείνη ye παρέπλει ποντόπορος νῆυς, 

᾿Αργὼ πασιμέλουσα, παρ᾽ Αἰήταο πλέουσα 

Kai vi κε τὴν bb’ ὦκα βάλεν μεγάλας ποτὶ πέτρας, 
᾽Αλλ᾽ Ἥρη παρέπεμψεν, ἐπεὶ φίλος ev ᾿Ιήσων. 


See also Iliad, vii. 470. 
See Hesiod, Fragm. Cataloy. Fr. 6. p. 33, Diintz., Kota, Frag. 36. p 
89: Frag. 72. p. 47. Compare Schol. ad Apollén. Rhod.i. 45; ii. 178-297 
1125; iv. 254-284. Other poetical sources — 
The old epic poem -Zgimius, Frag. 5. p. 57, Diintz. 


232 HISTORY OF GREECE 


any means of deter ining what the original story was; for the 
narrative, as we have it, borrowed from later sources, is enlarged 
by local tales from the subsequent Greek colonies — Ky zikus, 
Herakléia, Sinopé, and others. 

Jasén, commanded by Pelias to depart in quest of the golden 
fleece belonging to the speaking ram which had carried away 
Phryxus and Hellé, was encouraged by the oracle to invite the 
noblest youth of Greece to his aid, and fifty of the most distin 
guished amongst them obeyed the call. Héraklés, Théseus, 
Telamén and Péleus, Kast6ér and Pollux, Idas and Lynkeus — 
Zétés and Kalais, the winged sons of Boreas — Meleager, Am- 
phiaraus, Képheus, Laertés, Autolykus, Meneetius, Aktor, Ergi- 
nus, Euphémus, Ankzus, Poeas, Periklymenus, Augeas, Eurytus, 
Admétus, Akastus, Kzneus, Euryalus, Péneleéds and Leéitus, 
Askalaphus and Ialmenus, were among them. Argus the son 
of Phryxus, directed by the promptings of Athéné, built the ship, 
inserting in the prow a piece of timber from the celebrated oak 
of Dodona, which was endued with the faculty of speech :! Ti- 
phys was the steersman, Idmén the son of Apollo and Mopsus 


Kinethén in the Herakléia touched upon the death of Hylas near Kius in 
Mysia (Schol. Apollon. Rhod. i. 1357). 

The epic poem Naupactia, Frag. 1 to 6, Diintz. p. 61. 

Eumélus, Frag. 2, 3, 5, p. 65, Diintz. 

Epimenidés, the Krétan prophet and poet, composed a poem in 6500 lines, 
᾿Αργοῦς ναυπηγίαν τε, καὶ ᾿Ιάσονος εἰς Κόλχους ἀποπλοῦν (Diogen. Laér. i. 
10, 5), which is noticed more than once in the Scholia on Apollonius, on 
subjects connected with the poem (ii. 1125; iii. 42). See Mimnerm. Frag. 
10, Schneidewin, p. 15. 

Antimachus, in his poem [ydé, touched upon the Argonautic expedition, 
and has been partially copied by Apollénius Rhod. (Schol. Ap. Rh. i. 1290 - 
ii. 296: iii. 410; iv. 1153) 

The logographers Pherekydés and Hekatseus seem to have related the ex- 
pedition at considerable length. 

The Bibliothek der alten Literatur und Kunst (Gottingen, 1786, 2119 
Stiick, p. 61) contains an instructive Dissertation by Groddeck, Ueber die 
Argonautika, a sammary of the various authorities respecting this expedi- 
tion. 

* Apollon. Rhod. i. 525; iv. 580. Apollodér. i. 9,16. Valerius Flaccus 
(i. 300) softens down the speech of the ship Argo into a dream of Jasén 
Alexander Polyhistor explained what wood was used (Plin. H. N. xii 


32) 


ARGONAUTS AT LEMNOS. 283 


accompanied them as prophets, while Orpheus came to amuse 
their weariness and reconcile their quarrels with his harp.! 
First they touched at the island of Lémnos, in which at that 
time there were no men; for the women, infuriated by jealousy 
and ill-treatment, had put to death their fathers, husbands and 
brothers. The Argonauts, after some difficulty, were received with 
friendship, and even admitted into the greatest intimacy. They 
staid some months, and the subsequent population of the island was 


' Apollonius Rhodius, Apollodérus, Valerius Flaccus, the Orphic Argonau- 
tica, and Hyginus, have all given Catalogues of the Argonautic heroes (there 
was one also in the lost tragedy called Λήμνιαι of Sophoklés, see Welcker 
Gr. Trag. 327): thedic- . -..cies among them are numerous and _ irreconcil 
able. Burmann, in the Catalogus Argonautarum, prefixed to his edition of 
Valerius Flaccus, has discussed - em copiously. I transcribe one or two of 
the remarks of this conscientious and laborious critic, out of many of a simi- 
lar tenor, on the impracticability of a fabulous chronology. Immediately 
before the first article, Acastus —“ Neque enim in statibus Argonautarum 
ullam rationem temporum constare, neque in stirpe et stemmate deducenda 
ordinem ipsum nature congruere videbam. Nam et huic militie adscribi 
videbam Heroas, qui per naturz leges et ordinem fati eo usque vitam ex- 
trahere non potuére, ut aliis ab hac expeditione remotis Heroum militiis no- 
mina dedisse narrari deberent a Poetis et Mythologis. In idem etiam tempus 
avos et Nepotes conjici, consanguineos state longe inferiores prioribus ut 
gequales adiungi, concoquere vix posse videtur.” — Art. Anceus : “ Scio objici 
posse, si seriem illam majorem respiciamus, hunc Anceeum simul cum proa 
vo suo Talao in eandem profectum fuisse expeditionem. Sed similia exem- 
pla in aliis occurrent, et in fabulis rationem temporum non semper accura- 
tam licet deducere.”— Art. Jasén: “ Herculi enim jam provecta state ad 
hsesit Theseus juvenis, et in Amazonia expeditione socius fuit, interfuit huic 
expeditioni, venatui apri Calydonii, et rapuit Helenam, que circa Trojanum 
bellum maxime floruit: qua omnia si Theseus tot temporum intervallis 
distincta egit, secula duo vel tria vixisse debuit. Certe Jason Hypsipylem 
neptem Ariadnes, nec videre, nec Lemni cognoscere potuit.” — Art. Melea- 
ger: “Unum est quod alicui longum ordinem majorum recensenti scrupu- 
lum movere possit: nimis longum intervallum inter Holum et Meleagrum 
intercedere, ut potuerit interfuisse huic expeditioni: cum nonus fere numer- 
etur ab Zolo, et plurimi ut Jason, Argus, et alii tertid tantum ab Kolo 
g2neratione distent. Sed seepe jam notavimus, frustra temporum concor 
fam in fabulis queeri.” 

Read also the articles Castér and Pollux, Nestér Péleus, Staphylus, ete. 

We may stand excused for keeping clear of a chronology which is fertile 
enly in difficulties, and ends in nothing but il}sions. 


284 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the fruit of their visit. Hypsipylé, the queen of the island, core 
to Jas6én two sons.! 

They then proceeded onward along the coast of Thrace, up the 
Hellespont, to the southern coast of the Propontis, inhabited by 
the Doliones and their king Kyzikus. Here they were kindly 
entertained, but after their departure were driven back to the 
same spot by a storm; and as they landed in the dark, the inhabi- 
tants did not know them. A battle took place, in which the 
chief, Kyzikus, was killed by Jasén; whereby much grief was 
occasioned as soon as the real facts became known. After Kyzi- 
kus had been interred with every demonstration of mourning and 
solemnity, the Argonauts proceeded along the coast of Mysia.? 
In this part of the voyage they left Héraklés behind. For Hylas, 
his favorite youthful companion, had been stolen away by the 
nymphs of a fountain, and Héraklés, wandering about in search 
of him, neglected to return. At last he sorrowfully retired, ex- 
acting hostages from the inhabitants of the neighboring town of 
Kius that they would persist in the search.* 


1 Apollodér. i. 9, 17 ; Apollén. Rhod. i. 609-915 ; Herodot. iv. 145. Theocri- 

tus (Idyll. xiii. 29) omits all mention of Lémnos, and represents the Argd 
as arriving on the third day from Idlkos at the Hellespont. Diodérus (iv 
41) also leaves out Lémnos. 

2 Apollon. Rhod. 940-1020; Apollodor. i. 9, 18 

3 Apollodér. i. 9,19. This was the religious legend, explanatory of a cere 
mony performed for many centuries by the people of Prusa: they ran round 
che lake Askanias shouting and clamoring for Hylas —“ ut littus Hyla, Hyla 
<mne sonaret.” (Virgil, Eclog.).... “jin cujus memoriam adhue 
solemni cursatione lacum populus circuit et Hylam voce clamat.” Solinus, 
ς. 42. 

There is endless discrepancy as to the concern of Héraklés with the 
Argonautic expedition. A story is alluded to in Aristotle (Politic. iii. 9) 
that the ship Arg6é herself refused to take him on board, because he was 80 
mach superior in stature and power to all the other heroes — οὐ γὰρ ἐϑέλειν 
αὐτὸν ἄγειν τὴν ᾿Αργὼ μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων, ὡς ὑπερβάλλοντα πολὺ τῶν πλωτήρων. 
This was the story of Pherekydés (Fr. 67, Didot) as well as εὖ Antimachus 
(Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 1990) : itis probably a very ancient portion of the 
legend, inasmuch as it ascribes to the ship sentient powers, in consonance 
with her other miraculous properties. The etymology of Aphete in Thes 
saly was connected with the tale of Héraklés having there been put on shore 
from the Argé (Herodot. vii. 193): Ephorus said that he staid away volun- 
tarily from fondness for Omphalé (Frag. 9, Didot). The old epic poet 


PHINEUS AND THE HARPIES. 935 


They next stopped in the country of the Bebrykians, where 
the boxing contest took place between the king Amykus and the 
Argonaut Pollux:! they then proceeded onward to Bithynia, 
the residence of the blind prophet Phineus. His blindness had 
been inflicted by Poseidén as a punishment for having communi- 
cated to Phryxus the way to Kolchis. The choice had been al- 
lowed to him between death and blindness, and he had preferred 
the latter.2 He was also tormented by the harpies, winged mon- 
sters who came down from the clouds whenever his table was 
set, snatched the food from his lips and imparted to it a foul 
and unapproachable odor. In the midst of this misery, he hail- 
ed the Argonauts as his deliverers—his prophetic powers having 
enabled him to foresee their coming. The meal being prepared 
for him, the harpies approached as usual, but Zétés and Kalais, 
the winged sons of Boreas, drove them away and pursued them. 
They put forth all their speed, and prayed to Zeus to be enabled 
to overtake the monsters; when Hermés appeared and directed 
them to desist, the harpies being forbidden further to molest 
Phineus,? and retiring again to their native cavern in Kréte.4 

Phineus, grateful for the relief afforded to him by the Argo- 
nauts, forewarned them of the dangers of their voyage and of the 
precautions necessary for their safety ; and through his suggestions 
they were enabled to pass through the terrific rocks called Sym- 
plégades. These were two rocks which alternately opened and 


Kineeth6n said that Héraklés had placed the Kian hostages at Trachin, and 
that the Kians ever afterwards maintained a respectful correspondence with 
that place (Schol. Ap. Rh.i. 1357). This is the explanatory legend con- 
nected with some existing custom, which we are unable further to unravel 

1 See above, chap. viii. p. 169. 

? Such was the old narrative of the Hesiodic Catalogue and Eolai. See 
Schol. Apollon. Rhod. ii. 181-296. 

* This again was the old Hesiodic story (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 296), — 

"Ev? oiy’ εὔχεσϑον Αἰνηΐῳ ὑψιμέδοντι. 

Apollodérus (i. 9, 21), Apollénius (178-300), and Valerius Flacc. ,iv. 428- 
530) agree in most of the circumstances. 

4 Such was the fate of the harpies as given in the old Naupaktian Verses 
(See Fragm. Ep. Gree. Diintzer, Naupakt. Fr. 2. p. 61). 

The adventure of the Argonauts with Phineus is given by Diodérus in 8 
manner totally different (Diod6r. iv. 44): he seems to follow Dionysius of 
Mityléné (see Schol. Apolién. Rhod. ii. 207). 


233 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


shut, with a swift and violent collision, so that it was difficult even 
for a bird to fly through during the short interval. When the 
Argo arrived at the dangerous spot, Euphémus let loose a dove, 
which flew through and just escaped with the loss of a few feath- 
ers of her tail. This was a signal to the Argonauts, according 
to the prediction of Phineus, that they might attempt the pas 
sage with confidence. Accordingly they rowed with all thei 
might, and passed safely through: the closing rocks, held for 
a moment asunder by the powerful arms of Athéné, just crushed 
the ornament. at the stern of their vessel. It had been decreed 
by the gods, that so soon as any ship once got through, the pas- 
sage should forever afterwards be safe and easy to all. The rocks 
became fixed in their separate places, and never again closed.! 

After again halting on the coast of the Maryandinians, where 
their steersman Tiphys died, as well as in the country of the 
Amazons, and after picking up the sons of Phryxus, who had 
been cast away by Poseidon in their attempt to return from Kol- 
chis to Greece, they arrived in safety at the river Phasis and the 
residence of Aiétes. In passing by Mount Caucasus, they saw 
the eagle which gnawed the liver of Prométheus nailed to the 
rock, and heard the groans of the sufferer himself. The sons of 
Phryxus were cordially welcomed by their mother Chalciopé.* 
Application was made to A®étés, that he would grant to the Ar- 
gonauts, heroes of divine parentage and sent forth by the man- 
date of the gods, possession of the golden fleece: their aid in 
return was proffered to him against any or all of his enemies, 
But the king was wroth, and peremptorily refused, except upon 
conditions which seemed impracticable.3 Héphzstos had given 
him two ferocious and untamable bulls, with brazen feet, which 
breathed fire from their nostrils: Jasén was invited, as a proof 
both of his illustrious descent and of the sanction of the gods te 
his voyage, to harness these animals to the yoke, so as to plough 
a large field and sow it with dragon’s teeth.4 Perilous as the 
condition was, each one of the heroes volunteered to make the 


.-...».».------..ὄ΄..-ὦΞὸὃὸὃὸἢ.... . .....ὄ.ὄ-...- . . .ὄ LTS GN —  “« 


' Apolloddér. i. 9,22. Apollén. Rhod. ii. 310-615. 
* Apollodér. i. 9, 23. Apollén. Rhod. ii. 850-1257. 
? Apollén. Rhod. iii. 320-385. 

* Apollén. Rhod. iii. 410 Apollodér. i. 9. 97 


RETURN OF THE ARGONAUTS. 937 


attempt. Idmén especially encouraged Jasin to undertake it.) 
and the goddesses Héré and Aphrodité made straight the way 
for him.2. Médea, the daughter of A®étés and Eidyia, having 
seen the youthful hero in his interview with her father, had con- 
ceived towards him a passion which disposed her to employ every 
means for his salvation and success. She had received from 
Hekaté preéminent magical powers, and she prepared for JasOn 
the powerful Prometheian unguent, extracted froman herb which 
had grown where the blood of Prométheus dropped. The body 
of Jasén having been thus pre-medicated, became invulnerable? 
either by fire or by warlike weapons. He undertook the enter- 
prise, yoked the bulls without suffering injury, and ploughed the 
field: when he had sown the dragon’s teeth, armed men sprung 
out of the furrows. But he had been forewarned by Médea to 
cast a vast rock into the midst of them, upon which they began 
to fight with each other, so that he was easily enabled to subdue 
them all.4 

The task prescribed had thus been triumphantly performed. 
Yet Aétés not only refused to hand over the golden fleece, but 
even took measures for secretly destroying the Argonauts and 
burning their vessel. He designed to murder them during the 
night after a festal banquet; but Aphrodité, watchful for the 
safety of Jason,5 inspired the Kolchian king at the critical mo- 
ment with an irresistible inclination for his nuptial bed. While 
he slept, the wise Idmén counselled the Argonauts to make their 
escape, and Médea agreed to accompany them. She lulled to 
sleep by a magic potion the dragon who guarded the golden fleece, 

! This was the story of the Naupaktian Verses (Schol. Apollén. Rhod. 
iii. 515-525): Apollonius and others altered it. Idmé6n, according to them, 
died in the voyage before the arrival at Kolchis. 

? Apollén. Rhod. iii. 50-200. Valer. Flacc. vi. 440-480. Hyzgin. fab. 22. 

3 Apollén. Rhod. iii. 835. Apollodér. i. 9, 23. Valer. Flacc. vii. 356 
Ovid, Epist. xii. 15. 

“ Isset anhelatos non premedicatus in ignes 
Immemor sonides, oraque adunca boum.” 


 Apollén. Rhod. iii. 1230-1400. 

* The Naupaktian Verses stated this (see the Fragm. 6, ed. Dantser, p 
61), ap. Schol. Apollén. Rhod. iv. 59-86). 

* Such was the story of the Naupaktian Verses (See Fragm. 6. p. 6] 
Dontrer ap. Schol. Apollén. Rhod. iv. 59, 86, 87). 


988 WISTORY OF GREECE. 


placed that mach-desired prize on board the vessel, and accom 
panied Jas6n with his companions in their flight, carrying along 
with her the young Apsyrtus, her brother.! 

Fétés, profoundly exasperated at the flight of the Argonauts 
with his daughter, assembled his forces forthwith, and put to sea 
in pursuit of them. So energetic were his efforts that he shortly 
overtook the retreating vessel,when the Argonauts again owed 
their safety to the stratagem of Médea. She killed her brother 
Apsyrtus, cut his body in pieces and strewed the limbs round 
about in the sea. -Ajétés on reaching the spot found these sorrow- 
fal traces of his murdered son; but while he tarried to collect the 
scattered fragments, and bestow upon the body an honorable in- 
terment, the Argonauts escaped.2 The spot on which the unfor- 
tunate Apsyrtus was cut up received the name of Tomi.3 This 
fratricide of Médea, however, so deeply provoked the indignation 


of Zeus, that he condemned the Argé and her crew to a trying” 


1 Apollodér. i. 9,23. Apollén. Rhod. iv. 220. 

Pherekydés said that Jas6n killed the dragon ( Fr. 74, Did.). 

2 This is the story of Apollodérus (i. 9, 24), who seems to follow Phere 
kydés (Fr. 73, Didot). Apollonius (iv. 225-480) and Valerius Flaccus ( viii 
262 seq.’ give totally different circumstances respecting the death of Apsyr 
tus ; but the narrative of Pherekydés seems the oldest: so revolting a story 
as that of the cutting up of the little boy cannot have been imagined in later 
times. 

Sophoklés composed two tragedies on the adventures of Jasén and Médea, 
both lost — the KoAyidec and the Σκύϑαι. In the former he represented the 
murder of the child Apsyrtus as having taken place in the house of Métés: 
in the latter he introduced the mitigating circumstance, that Apsyrtus was 
the son of Auétés by a different mother from Médea (Schol. Apollon Rhod. 
iv. 223). 

3 Apollodér. i. 9, 24, τὸν τόπον προσηγόοευσε Touove. Ovid. Trist. iii. 9. 
The story that Apsyrtus was cut in pieces, is the etymological legend expla- 


natory of the name Tomi. 
There wes however a place called Apsarus, on the southern coast of the 


Enuxine, west of Trapezus, where the tomb of Apsyrtus was shown, and 
where it was affirmed that he had been put to death. He was the eponymas 
of the town, which was said to have been once called Apsyrtus, and only 
corrupted by a barbarian pronunciation (Arrian. Periplas, Euxin. p. 6; 
Geogr. Min. v. 1}. Compare Procop. Bell. Goth. iv. 2. 

Strabo connects the death of Apsyrtus with the Apsyrtides, islands off the 
coast of Illyria, in the Adriatic (vii τ. 315). 


ARGONAUTS IN LIBYA. 939 


voyage, full of hardship and privation, before she was permitted 
to reach home. The returning heroes traversed an immeasurable 


length both of sea and of river : first up the river Phasis into the 
ocean which flows round the earth — then following the course of 
that circumfluous stream until its junction with the Nile,! they 
came down the Nile into Egypt, from whence they carried the 
Argé on their shoulders by a fatiguing land-journey to the lake 
Triténis in Libya. Here they were rescued from the extremity 
of want and exhaustion by the kindness of the local god ‘Tritén, 
who treated them hospitably, and even presented to Euphémus 8 
clod of earth. as a symbolical promise that his descendants should 
one day found a city on the Libyan shore. The promise was 
amply redeemed by the flourishing and powerful city of Kyréné,? 
whose princes the Battiads boasted themselves as lineal descend- 
ants of Kuphémus. 

Refreshed by the hospitality of Tritén, the Argonauts found 
themselves again on the waters of the Mediterranean in their way 
homeward. But before they arrived at Iélkos they visited Circe, 
at the island of Aisa, where Médea was purified for the murder 
of Apsyrtus: they also stopped at Korkyra, then called Drepané, 
where Alkinous received and protected them. The cave in that 
island where the marriage of Médea with Jasén was consum 
mated, was still shown in the time of the historian Timeus, as 
well as the altars to Apollo which she had erected, and the rites 


? The original narrative was, that the Argé returned by navigating the 
circumfluous ocean. This would be almost certain, even without positive 
testimony, from the early ideas entertained by the Greeks respecting geog- 
raphy ; but we know further that it was the representation of the Hesiodie 
poems, as well as of Mimnermus, Hekateeus and Pindar, and even of Anti- 
machus. Schol. Parisina Ap. Rhod. iv. 254. ‘Exaraiog δὲ ὁ Μιλήσιος διὰ 
τοῦ Φάσιδος ἀνελϑεῖν φησὶν αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸν ᾽Ὠκεανόν" διὰ δὲ τοῦ ᾿Ωκεανοξ 
κατελϑεῖν εἰς τὸν Νεῖλον" ἐκ δὲ τοῦ Νείλου εἰς τὴν καϑ'᾽ ἥμως ϑάλασσαν 
Ἡσίοδος δὲ καὶ Πίνδαρος ἐν Πυϑιονίκαις καὶ ᾿Αντίμαχος ἐν Λυδὴ διὰ τοϑ 
Ὠκεανοῦ φασὶν ἐλϑεῖν αὐτοὺς εἰς τὴν Λιβύην" εἶτα βαστάσαντας τὴν ᾿Αργὼ 
εἰς τὸ ἡμέτερον ἀφικέσϑαι πέλαγος. Compare the Schol. Edit. ad iv. 259. 

5 See the fourth Pythian Ode of Pindar, and Apollén. Rhod. iv. 1551-1756 

The tripod of Jasén was preserved by the Euesperite in Libya, Diod. iv. 
86: but the legend, connecting the Argonauts with the lake Tritonis in Libya, 
& given with some considerable differences in Herodotus, iv. 179. 


Vol. 1 12 


240 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


and sacrifices which she had first instituted.! After leaving 
Korkyra, the Argé was overtaken by a perilous storm near the 
island of Théra. The heroes were saved from imminent peril by 
the supernatural aid of Apollo, who, shooting from his golden bow 
an arrow which pierced the waves like a track of light, caused a 
new island suddenly to spring up in their track and present to 
them a port of refuge. The island was called Anaphé ; and the 
grateful Argonauts established upon it an altar and sacrifices in 
honor of Apollo Aglétés, which were ever afterwards continued, 
and traced back by the inhabitants tothis originating adventure.? 

On approaching the coast of Kréte, the Argonauts were pre- 
vented from landing by Talés, a man of brass, fabricated by 
Hépheestos, and presented by him to Minds for the protection of 
the island. This vigilant sentinel hurled against the approach- 
ing vessel fragments of rock, and menaced the heroes with de- 
struction. But Médea deceived him by a stratagem and killed 
him ; detecting and assailing the one vulnerable point in his body. 
The Argonauts were thus enabled to land and refresh themselves. 
‘hey next proceeded onward to Aigina, where however they 
again experienced resistance before they could obtain water — 
then along the coast of Eubcea and Locris back to Idlkas in the 
gulf of Pagasz, the place from whence they had started. The 
proceedings of Pelias during their absence, and the signal revenge 
taken upon him by Médea after their return, have already been 
sarrated in a preceding section.4 The ship Argé herself, in 
which the chosen heroes of Greece had performed so long a 
voyage and braved so many dangers, was consecrated by Jas6n to 
PoseidOén at the isthmus of Corinth. According to another 


+ Apollon. Rhod. iv. 1153-1217. Timeus, Fr. 7-8, Didot. Τίμαιος ἐν 
Χερκύρᾳ λέγων γενέοϑαι τοὺς γάμους, καὶ περὶ τῆς ϑυσίας ἱστορεῖ, ἔτι καὶ νῦν 
ἀέγων ἄγεσϑαι αὐτὴν κατ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸν, Μηδείας πρῶτον ϑυσάσης ἐν τῷ τοῦ ATOA- 
havoc ἱερῷ. Καὶ βωμοὺς δέ φησι μνημεῖα τῶν γάμων ἱδρύσασϑαι συνεγγὺς 
μὲν τῆς ϑαλάσσης, οὐ μακρὰν δὲ τὴς πόλεως. ᾿Ονομάζουσι δὲ τὸν μὲν, Νυμῥῶν 
sty δὲ, Νηρηΐδων. 

2 Apollodér. i. 9,25. Apollén. Rhod. iv. 1700-1725. 

9 Some called Talés a remnant of the brazen race of men (Schol. Apoll 


Bhod. iv. 1641). 
4 Apollodér. i. 9,26. Apolléa. Rhod. iv. 1638. 


MEMORIALS LEFT BY THE ARGONAUTS. 24i, 


aecoun:, she was translated to the stars by Athéné, and became 8 
constellation. ! 

Traces of the presence of the Argonauts were found not only 
in the regions which lay between I6lkos and Kolchis, but also in 
the western portion of the Grecian world — distributed more or 
less over all the spots visited by Grecian mariners or settled by 
Grecian colonists, and scarcely less numerous than the wander- 
ings of the dispersed Greeks and Trojans after the capture of 
Troy. The number of Jasonia, or temples for the heroic worship 
of Jasén, was very great, from Abdéra in 'Thrace,? eastward along 
the coast of the Euxine, to Armenia and Medea. The Argonauts 
had left their anchoring-stone on the coast of Bebrykia, near 
Kyzikus, and there it was preserved during the historical ages in 
the temple of the Jasonian Athéné.3 They had founded the great 
temple of the Idan mother on the mountain Dindymon, near 
Kyzikus, and the Hieron of Zeus Urios on the Asiatic point at 
the mouth of the Euxine, near which was also the harbor of 
Phryxus.4 Idmén, the prophet of the expedition, who was 
believed to have died of a wound by a wild boar on the Mary- 
andynian coast, was worshipped by the inhabitants of the Pontie 
Hérakleia with great solemnity, as their Heros Poliuchus, and 
that too by the special direction of the Delphian god. Autolykus, 
another companion of Jas6n, was worshipped as CEkist by the 
inhabitants of Sinopé. Moreover, the historians of Hérakleia 
pointed out a temple of Hekaté in the neighboring country of 


? Diodor. iv. 53. Eratosth. Catasterism. c. 35. 

? Strabo, xi. p. 526-531. 

* Apollon. Rhod. i. 955-960, and the Scholia. 

There was in Kyzikus a temple of Apollo under different ἐπικλήσεις; 
some called it the temple of the Jasonian Apollo. 

Arother anchor however was preserved in the temple of Rhea on the banks 
of the Phasis, which was affirmed to be the anchor of the ship Argé. Arrian 
saw it there, but seems to have doubted its authenticity (Periplus, Euxin. 
Pont. p.9. Geogr. Min. v. 1). 

4 Neanthés ap. strabo. i. p. 45. Apollén. Rhod. i. 1125, and Schol. Steph 
Byz. v. Φρίξος. 

Apollénius mentions the fountain called Jasonex, on the hill of Dindymona 
Apollén. Rhod. ii. 532, and the citations from Timosthenés and Herodorus in 
‘he Scholia. See also Appian. Syriac. c. 63. 


VOL. 1. 11 1600 


--« -““«..»...΄... 


242 HISTORY CF GREECE. 


Paphlagonia, first erected by Médea;' and the important town ai 
Pantikapzon, on the European side of the Cimmerian Bosporus, 
ascribed its first settlement to a son of Atétés.2, When the return- 
ing ten thousand Greeks sailed along the coast, called the Jaso- 
nian shore, from Sinopé to Hérakleia, they were told that ‘he 
grandson of Aétés was reigning king of the territory at the mouth 
of the Phasis, and the anchoring-places where the Argé had 
stopped were specially pointed out to them.3 In the lofty re 
gions of the Moschi, near Kolchis, stood the temple of Leukothea, 
founded by Phryxus, which remained both rich and respected 
down to the times of the kings of Pontus, and where it was an 
inviolable rule not to offer up aram.4 The town of Dioskurias, 
north of the river Phasis, was believed to have been hallowed by 
the presence of Kastor and Pollux in the Argo, and to have re- 
ceived from them its appellation.5 Even the interior of Médea 
and Armenia was full of memorials of Jasén and Médea and 
their son Médus, or of Armenus the son of Jasén, from whom the 
Greeks deduced not only the name and foundation of the Medes 
end Armenians, but also the great operation of cutting a channel 
through the mountains for the efflux of the river Araxes, which 


they compared to that of the Peneius in Thessaly.6 And the 


1 See the historians of Hérakleia, Nymphis and Promathidas, Fragm. Orelli, 
pp. 99, 100-104. Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. iv. 247. Strabo, xii. p. 546. 
Autolykus, whom he calls companion of Jasén, was, according to another 
legend, comrade of Héraklés in his expedition against the Amazons. 

2 Stephan. Byz. v. Παντεκαπαῖον, Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieget. 311. 

3 Xenoph6én, Anabas. vi. 2, 1; v. 7, 37. 4 Strabo, xi. p. 499. 

5. Appian, Mithridatic. c. 101. 

5 Strabo, xi. p. 499, 503, 526, 531; i. p. 45-48. Justin, xlii. 3, whose 
statements illustrate the way in which men found a present home and appli- 
cation for the old fables, —--“ Jason, primus humanorum post Herculem et 
Liberum, qui reges Orientis fuisse traduntur, eam celi plagam domuisse 
dicitur. Cum Albanis foedus percussit, qui Herculem ex Italia ab Albano 
monte, cum, Geryone extincto, armenta ejus per Italiam duceret, secut 
dicuntur; quique, memores Italics originis, exercitam Cn. Pompeii belle 
Mithridatico fratres consalutavére. Itaque Jasoni totus fere Oriens, ut con. 
ditori, divinos honores templaque constituit ; quae Parmenico, dux Alexandr 
Magni, post multos annos dirui jussit, ne cujusquam nomen in Oriente vene 
rabilius quam Alexandri esset.” 

The Thessalian companions of Alexander the Great, placed by his victoriee 
in possession of rich acquisitions in these regions, pleased themselves by 


MEMORIALS LEFT BY THE ARGONAUTS. 243 


Soman general Pompey, after having completed the conquest and 
expulsion of Mithridatés, made long marches through Kolchis 
into the regions of Caucasus, for the express purpose of contem- 
plating the spots which had been ennobled by the exploits of the 
Argonauts, the Dioskuri and Héraklés.! 

In the west, memorials either of the Argonauts or of the pur 
suing Kolchians were pointed out in Korkyra, in Kréte, in Epi- 
rus near the Akrokeraunian mountains, in the islands called Ap- 
syrtides near the Illyrian coast,at the bay of Caieta as well as at 
Poseidénia on the southern coast of Italy, in the island of Atha 
liaor Elba, and in Libya.2 

Such is a brief outline of the Argonautic expedition, one of 
the most celebrated and widely-diffused among the ancient tales 
of Greece. Since so many able men have treated it as an un- 
disputed reality, and even made it the pivot of systematic chro- 
nological calculations, 1 may here repeat the opinion long ago 
expressed by Heyne, and even indicated by Burmann, that the 
process of dissecting the story, in search of a basis of fact, is one 
altogether fruitless. Not only are we unable to assign the date 


vivifving and multiplying all these old fables, proving an ancient kindre@ 
between the Medes and Thessalians. See Strabo, xi. p. 530. The temples 
of Jason were τεμώμενα σφόδρα ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων (ib. p. 526). 

The able and inquisitive geographer Eratosthenés was among those who 
fally believed that Jas6n had left his ships in the Phasis, and had undertakea 
8. land expedition into the interior country, in which he had conquered Media 
and Armenia (Strabo, i. p. 48). 

+ Appian, Mithridatic. 103: τοὺς Κόλχους ἐπήει, xa’ ἱστορίαν τὴς “Apye 
ναυτῶν καὶ Διοσκούρων καὶ Ἡρακλέους ἐπιδημίας, καὶ μάλιστα τὸ πάϑος ἰδεῖν 
ἐθέλων. ὃ Προμηϑεῖ φασὶ γενέσϑαι περὶ τὸ Καύκασον ὅρος. The lofty crag 
of Caucasus called Strobilus, to which Prométhens had been attached, 
was pointed out to Arrian himself in his Periplus (p 12. Geogr. Mimoe 
vol. i.). 

* S:rabo, i. pp. 21, 45,46; v. 224-252. Pompon. Mel. ii 3. Diodér. iw. 
86. Apollén. Rhod. iv. 656. Lycophron, 1273. — 


Τύρσιν μακεδνὰς ἀμφὶ Kipxaiov νάπας 
᾿Αργοῦς Te κλεινὸν ὅρμον Αἰήτην μέγαν. 


* Heyne, Observ. ad Apollodér. i. 9, 16. p. 72. “ Mirum in modam fallitas 
qui in his commentis certum fandum historicum vel geographicum aut es 


444 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


or identify the crew, or decipher the log-book, of the Argo, but 
we have no means of settling even the preliminary question, 
whether the voyage be matter of fact badly reported, or legend 
from the beginning. The widely-distant spots in which the mon- 
uments of the voyage were shown, no less than the incidents of 
the voyage itself, suggests no other parentage than epical fancy. 
The supernatural and the romantic not only constitute an insep- 
arable portion of the narrative, but even embrace all the promi- 
nent and characteristic features; if they do not comprise the 
whole, and if there be intermingled along with them any sprink 
ling of historical or geographical fact, — a question to us indeter- 
minable, — there is at least no solvent by which it can be disen- 
gaged, and no test by which it can be recognized. Wherever 
the Grecian mariner sailed, he carried his religious and patrioti¢ 


mythes along with him. His fancy and his faith were alike full 


of the long wanderings of Jasén, Odysseus, Perseus, Héraklés, 
Dionysus, Triptolemus or 16; it was pleasing to him in success, 
and consoling to him in difficulty, to believe that their journeys 
had brought them over the ground which he was himself travers- 
ing. There was no tale amidst the wide range of the Grecian 


epic more calculated to be popular with the seaman, than the 
history of the primeval ship Argé and her distinguished crew, 
comprising heroes from all parts of Greece, and especially the 


quirere studet, aut se reperisse, atque historicam vel geographicam aliq 
doctrinam, systema nos dicimus, inde procudi posse, putat,” ete. 

See also the observations interspersed in Burmann’s Catalogus Argonauta 
ram, prefixed to his edition of Valerius Flaccus. 

The Persian antiquarians whom Herodotus cites at the beginning of his 
history (i. 2-4 — it is much to be regretted that Herodotus did not inform us 
who they were, and whether they were the same as those who said that Per- 
y birth and had become 8 Greek, vi. 54), joined 
together the abductions of 16 and of Eurépé, of Médea and of Helen, as 

irs of connected proceedings, the second injury being a retaliat‘on for the 
first, — they drew up a debtor and creditor account of abductions between 
Asia and Europe. The Kolchian king (they said) had sent a herald to 
Greece to ask for his satisfaction for the wrong done to him by Jason and to 
te-demand his daughter Médea ; but he was told in reply that the Greeks had 
received no satisfaction for the previous rape of 16. 

There was some ingenuity in thus binding together the old fables, so as & 

sent the invasions of Greece by Darius and Xerxés as retaliations foe 


repre 
the unexpiated destruction wrought by Agamemnén. 


seus was an Assyrian b 


FABULOUS LOCALITIES. 245 


‘Yyndarids Kastér and Pollux, the heavenly protecton invoked 
during storm and peril. He localized the legend anew wherever 
he went, often with some fresh circumstances suggested either by 
his own adventures or by the scene before him. He took a sort 
of religious possession of the spot, connecting it by a bond of 
faith with his native land, and erecting in it a temple or an altar 
with appropriate commemorative solemnities. The Jasonium 
thus established, and indeed every visible object called after the 
name of the hero, not only served to keep alive the legend of 
the Argé in the minds of future comers or inhabitants, but was 
accepted as an obvious and satisfactory proof that this marvellous 
vessel had actually touched there in her voyage. 

The epic poets, building both on the general love of fabulous 
incident and on the easy faith of the people, dealt with distant 
and unknown space in the same manner as with past and unre- 
corded time. They created a mythical geography for the for- 
mer, and a mythical history for the latter. But there was this 
material difference between the two: that while the unrecorded 
time was beyond the reach of verification, the unknown space 
gradually became trodden and examined. In proportion as au- 
thentic local knowledge was enlarged, it became necessary to 
modify the geography, or shift the scene of action, of the old 
mythes ; and this perplexing problem was undertaken by some 
of the ablest historians and geographers of antiquity, — for it was 
painful to them to abandon any portion of the old epic, as if it 
were destitute of an ascertainable basis of truth. 

Many of these fabulous localities are to be found in Homer 
and Hesiod, and the other Greek poets and logographers, — Ery- 
theia, the garden of the Hesperides, the garden of Pheoebus,! to 
which Boreas transported the Attic maiden Orithyia, the deli- 
cous country of the Hyperboreans, the Elysian plain,” the flees. 
ing island of AZolus, Thrinakia, the country of the Athiopians, the 


 — 


* Sophokl. ap. Strabo. vii. p. 295. — 


Ὑπέρ τε πόντον πάντ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἔσχατα χϑονὸς, 
Νυκτός τε πηγὰς obpuvod τ᾽ ἀναπτυχὰς, 
Φοίβου τε παλαιὸν κῆπον. 


8 Odyss. iv. 562. The Islands of the Blessed, in Hesi 
@cean (Opp. Di. 169). 3 oo 


246 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Lestrygones, the Kykidpes. cae Lxtophagi, the Sirens, the Cia 
merians and the Gorgons,' etc. These are plaves which (to use 
the expression of Pindar respecting the Hyperboreais) you can- 
net approach either by sea or by land 2 the wings of the poet 
alone can carry you thither. They were ποῦ introduced into the 
Greek mind by incorrect geographical reperis, but, on the con- 
trary, had their origin in the legend, and passed from thence into 
the realities of geography, which they contributed much to per- 
yert and confuse. For the navigator or emigrant, starting with 
an unsuspicious faith in their real existence, looked out for them 
in his distant voyages, and constantly fancied that he had seen or 
heard of them, so as to be able to identify their exact situation. 
The most contradictory accounts indeed, as might be expected, 
were often given respecting the latitude and longitude of suc 
fanciful spots, but this did not put an end to the general belief 
in their real existence. 

In the present advanced state of geographical knowledge, the 
reading Gulliver's Traveis went to 


story of that man who after 


1 Hesiod, Theogon. 275-290. Homer, Iliad, 1. 423. Odyss. i. 23; iz 
86-206; x 4-83; xii. 135. Mimnerm. Fragm. 13, Schneidewin. 
* Pindar, Pyth. x. 29.— 
Navoi δ᾽ οὗτε πεζὸς ἰὼν ἂν εὕροις 
Ἐς Ὑπερβορέων ἀγῶνα ϑαυματὰν ὑδόν. 
Παρ᾽ οἷς ποτε Περσεὺς ἐδαίσατο λαγετᾶς, ete. 


Hesiod, and the old epic poem called the Epigoni, both mentioned the Hypez 
s (Herod. iv. 32-34). 2 
ae’ oa is well stated and sustained by Véleker (Mythische Geographie 
der Griechen und Romer, cap. i. p. 11), and by Nitzsch in iis Comments 08 
the Odyssey — Introduct. Remarks to Ὁ. ix. p. Xii—xxXXII. 1 be twelith 
and thirteenth chapters of the History of Orchomenos, by 0. Miiller, are 
also full of good remarks on the geography of the Argonautic voyage (pp. 


274-299). ι 
The most striking evidence of this disposition of the Greeks is to be 


found in the legendary discoveries of Alexander and his companions, when 
they marched over the untrodden regions in the east of the Persian empire 
{see Arrian, Hist. Al. ν. 8: compare Lucian. Dialog. Mortuor. xiv. vol. i. p. 
912. Tauch‘. because these ideas were first broached at a time when geo- 
graphical science was sufliciently advanced to canvass and we-aege them. 
The early settlers in Italy, Sicily and the Euxine, indulged their fancifal 
vision without the fear of any sach monitor: there was no such thing as ὃ 
map before the days of Anaximander, the disciple of Thales. 


PERVERSION Or #EOGRAPMY BY LEGEND. 9247 


eok in his map for Lilliput, appears an absurdity. But those 
who fixed the exact locality of tne floating island of AXolus or 
the rocks of the Sirens did much the same;! and, with their ig- 
norance of geography and imperfect appreciation of historical 
evidence, the error was hardly to be avoided. The ancient be- 
liet which fixed the Sirens on the islands of Sirenuse off the 
coast of Naples —the Kyklépes, Erytheia, and the Lestrygones 
in Sicily —the Lotophagi on the island of Méninx? near the 
Lesser Syrtis—the Phwakians at Korkyra—and the goddess 
Circé at the promontory of Circeium— took its rise at a time 
when these regions were first Hellenized and comparatively little 
visited. Once embodied in the local legends, and attested by vis- 
ible monuments and ceremonies, it continued for a long time un- 
assailed ; and Thucydidés seems to adopt it, in reference to Kor- 
Kyra and Sicily before the Hellenic colonization, as matter of 
fact generally unquestionable,’ though little avouched as to de- 
tails. But when geograpical knowledge became extended, and 
the criticism upon the ancient epic was more or less systematized 
by the literary men of Alexandria and Pergamus, it appeared to 
many of them impossible that Odysseus could have seen so 
many wonders, or undergone such monstrous dangers, within 
limits so narrow, and in the familiar track between the Nile and 
the Tiber. The scene of his weather-driven course was then 
ehifted further westward. Many convincing evidences were dis- 
covered, especially by Asklepiadés of Myrlea, of his having vise 
ited various places in Iberia:‘ several critics imagined that he 


See Mr. Payne Knight, Prolegg. ad Homer ¢. 49. Compare Spohn— 
“de extrema Odyssex parte” — p. 97. 

* Strabo, xvii. p. 834. An altar of Odysseus was shown upon this island, 
as well as some other evidences (σύμβολα) of his visit to the place. 

Apoll6nius Rhodius copies the Odyssey in speaking of the island of Thri- 
nakia and the cattle of Helios (iv. 965, with Schol.). He conceives Sicily 
as Thrinakia, a name afterwards exchanged for Trinakria. The Scholiast 
ad Apoll. (1. c.) speaks of Trinax king of Sicily. Compare iv. 291 with the 
Scholia. 

* Thucyd. i. 25-vi. 2. These local legends appear in the eyes of Strabo 
convincing evidence (i. p. 23-26),— the tomb of the siren Parthenopé δὲ 
Naples, the stories at Cume and Diksarchia about the νεκυομαντεῖον of 
Avernus, and the existence of places named after Baius and Misénus, the 
companions of Odysseus, etc. 

4 Strabo, iii. p. 150-157. Οὐ γὰρ μόνον οἱ κατὰ τὴν ᾿Ιταλίαν καὶ Deacdios 


248 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


had wandered about in the Atlantic Ocean outside of the Strait 
of Gibraltar,’ and they recognized a section of Lotophagi on the 


-- - 


“όποι καὶ ἄλλοι τινες τῶν τοιούτων σημεῖα ὑπογράφουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν τῇ 
Ἰβηρίᾳ ᾿Οδύσσεια πόλιες δείκνυται, καὶ ᾿Αϑηνᾶς ἱερὸν, καὶ ἄλλα μύρια ἴχνη 
τῆς ἐκείνου πλάνης, καὶ ἄλλων τῶν ἐκ τοῦ Tpwikod πολέμου περιγενομένων 
(I adopt Grosskurd’s correction of the text from γενομένων to περιγενομένων, 
in the note to his German translation of Strabo). 

Asklepiadés (of Myrlea in Bithynia, about 170 B. c.) resided some time 
in Turditania, the south-western region of Spain along the Guadalquivir 
as a teacher of Greek literature {παιδεύσας τὰ γραμματικὰ), and com 
posed a periegesis of the Iberian tribes, which unfortunately has not been 
preserved. He made various discoveries in archeology, and successfully 
connected his old legends with several portions of the territory before him. 
His discoveries were, — 1. In the temple of Athéné, at this Iberian town of 
Odysseia, there were shields and beaks of ships affixed to the wails, mona 
ments of the visit of Odysseus himself. 2. Among the Kalleki, in the 
northern part of Portugal, several of the companions of Teukros had set- 
tled and left descendants: there were in that region two Grecian cities, one 
called Hellenés, the other called Amphilochi; for Amphilochus also, the sou 
of Amphiaraus, had died in Iberia, and many of his soldiers had taken ἂρ 
their permanent residence in the interior. 3. Many new inhabitants had 
come into Iberia with the expedition of Héraklés ; some also after the con- 
quest of Meséné by the Lacedemonians. 4. In Cantabria, on the norta 
coast of Spain, there was a town and region of Lacedwmonian colonists. 
5. In the same portion of the country there was the town of Opsikella, 
founded by Opsikellas, one of the companions of Antenor in his emigration 
from Troy (Strabo, iii. p. 157). 

This is a specimen of the manner in which the seeds of Grecian mythus 
eame to be distributed over so large a surface. To an ordinary Greek 
reader, these legendary discoveries of Asklepiadés would probably be more 
interesting than the positive facts which he communicated respecting the 
fberian tribes; and his Turditanian auditors would be delighted to hear ~ 
while he was reciting and explaining to them the animated passage of the 
Iliad, in which Agamemnén extols the inestimable value of the bow of 
Teukros (viii. 281) — that the heroic archer and his companions had actually 
set foot in the Iberian peninsula. 

! This was the opinion of Kratés of Mallus, one of the most distinguished 
of the critics on Homer: it was the subject of an animated controversy be- 
tween him and Aristarchus {Aulus Gellius, N. A. xiv. 6; Strabo, iii. p. 157). 
See the instructive treatise of Lehrs, De Aristarchi Studiis, c. v. § 4. p. 251. 
Mauch controversy also took place among the critics respecting the ground 
winch Menelaus went over in his wanderings (Odyss. iv.). Kratés affirmed 
that he had circumnavigated the southern extremity of Africa and gone t 


ERYTHEIA. — GERYON. 245 


coast of Mauritania, over and above those who dwelt on the 
island of Méninx.' On the other hand, Eratosthenés and Apol. 
lod6rus treated the places visited by Odysseus as altogether un 
real, for which scepticism they incurred much reproach.2 

The fabulous island of Erytheia, — the residence of the three 
headed Geryén with his magnificent herd of oxen, under the 
custody of the two-headed dog Crthrus, and described by He- 
sind, like the garden of the Hesperides, as extra-terrestrial, on the 
farther side of the circumfluous ocean ;— this island was sup- 
posed by the interpreters of Stesichorus the poet to be named by 
him off the south-western region of Spain called Tartéssus, and 
in the immediate vicinity of Gadés. But the historian Heka- 
tzeus, in his anxiety to historicize the old fable, took upon him- 
self to remove Erytheia from Spain nearer home to Epirus. He 
thought it incredible that Héraklés should have traversed Europe 
from east to west, for the purpose of bringing the cattle of Ger- 
yon to Eurystheus at Mykéne, and he pronounced Geryén to 
have been a king of Epirus, near the Gulf of Ambrakia. The 
oxen reared in that neighborhood were proverbially magnificent, 
and to get them even from thence and bring them to Mykénz 
(he contended) was no inconsiderable task. Arrian, who cites 
this passage from Hekatzeus, concurs in the same view,— an il- 
lustration of the license with which ancient authors fitted on 
their fabulous geographical names to the real earth, and brought 
down the ethereal matter of legend to the lower atmosphere of 
history. 


India: the critic Aristonikus, Strabo’s contemporary, enumerated all the 
different opinions (Strabo, i. p. 38). 

' Strabo, iii. p. 157. ? Strabo, i. p. 22-44 ; vii. p. 299 

5. Stesichori Fragm. ed. Kleine ; Geryonis, Fr. 5. p. 60; ap. Strabo. iii. p. 
148; Herodot. iv. 8. It seems very doubtful whether Stesichorus meant to 
indicate any neighboring island as Mrytheia, if we compare Fragm. 10. p. 
67 of the Geryonis, and the passages of Athenzeus and Eustathius there 
ctied. He seems to have adhered to the old fable, placing Erytheia on 
the opposite side of the ocean-stream, for Héraklés crosses the ocean to get 
bo it. 

Hekatseus, ap. Arrian. Histor. Alex. ii. 16. Skylax places Erytheia, 
“whither Geryén is said to have come to feed his oxen,” in the Kastid terri- 
tory near the Greek city of Apollénia on the Ionic Gulf, northward of the 
Keraunian mountains. There were splendid cattle consecrated to Hélios 

11* 


eR 


ag et RE eg ee -- 


250 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Both the track and the terminus of the Argonautic voyage ap- 
pear in the most ancient epic as little within the conditions of real- 


ity, as the speaking timbers or the semi-divine crew of the vessel. 
In the Odyssey, Alétés and Circé (Hesiod names Médea also) ars 
brother and sister, offspring of Hélios. ‘TheA‘zan island, adjoining 
the circumfluous ocean, “ where the house and dancing-ground of 
Eés are situated, and where Hélios rises,” is both the residence of 
Circé and of A®étés, inasmuch as Odysseus, in returning from the 
former, follows the same course as the Argé had previously taken 
in returning from the latter.!.| Even in the conception of Mimner- 
mus, about 600 B. c., Aa still retained its fabulous attributes in 
conjunction with the ocean and Hélios, without having been yet 
identified with any known portion of the solid earth :3 and it was 
july remarked by Démétrius of Sképeis in antiquity? (though 


near Apoliénia, wate hed by the citizens of the place with great care ( Hero- 
dot. ix. 98; Skylax, c. 26) 

About Erytheia, Cellerius observes (Geogr. Ant. ii. 1, 227}, “Insula Ery 
theia, quam veteres adjungunt Gadibus, vel demersa est, vel in scopulis que- 
renda, vel pars est ipearem Θεόν, neque hodie ejus forme aliqna, πὸ 
descripta est, fertur superesse.” ‘To make the disjunctive catalogue comolate. 
he ought to have added, “ or it never really existed,” — not the least proba 
ble supposition of all. 

» Hesiod, Theogon. 956-992; Homer, Odyss xii. 3 69. — 

Νῆσον ἐς Aiainyv, ὅϑι τ᾽ ᾿᾽Ηοῦς ἠριγενεεης 

Οἴκεα καὶ χόροι εἰσὶ, καὶ ἀντ λαὶ ἠελίοιο. 

3 Mimnerm. Fragm. 10-11, Schneidewin; Athenz. vii. p. 277. - 

Οὐδέ Kor’ ἂν μέγα κῶας ἀνήγαγεν αὐτὸς ᾿Ιήσων 

"ES Αἴης τελέσας ἀλγινόεσσαν ὁδὸν, 
Ὑβρίστῃ Πελίῃ τελέων χαλεπῆρες ἄεϑλον, 

Οὐδ᾽ ἂν ἐπ᾽ ᾽Ωκεανοῦ καλὸν ἵκοντο ῥόον. 

* . ” » * 

Αἰήταο πόλιν, τόϑι τ᾽ ὠκέος “Hediovo 

᾿Ακτῖνες χρυσέῳ κείαται ἐν ϑαλάμῳ,. 
᾽Ωκεανοῦ παρὰ χείλεσ᾽, iv’ ῴχετο ϑεῖος ᾿Ἰήσων. 

* Strabo, i. p. 45-46. Δεμήτριος ὁ Σκήψιος πρὸς Νεάνϑη τὸν Κυζ'- 
κηνὸν φελοτιμοτέρως ἀντιλέγων, εἰπόντα, ὅτε οἱ ᾿Αργοναῦται πλέοντες 
εἰς Φᾶσιν τὸν ὑφ᾽ ‘Ounpov καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὁμολογούμενον πλοῦν, ἑὀρύσαντϑ 
τὰ τῆς ᾿Ιδαίας μητρὸς ἱερὰ ἐπὶ Κύζικον.......ἀρχήν φησὶ und εἰδέναι 
τὴ. εἰς Φᾶσιν ἀποδημίαν τοῦ Ἰάσονος “Ὅμηρον. Again, p. 
46, παραλαβὼν μάρτυρα Μίμνερμον, ὃς ἐν τῷ ᾿᾽Ωκεανῷ ποιῆσας οἴκησιν Av ov, 
etc. 

The adverb φιλοτιμοτέρως reveals to us the municipal rivalry and@ conten 


#ETES.— CIROE.— EA 951 


Strabo yaiuty tries to refute him), that neither Homer nor Mim- 
nermus designates Kolchis either as the residence of étés, or 
as the terminus of the Argonautic voyage. Hesiod carried the 
returning Argonauts through the river Phasis into the ocean. 
But some of the poems ascribed to Eumélus were the first 
which mentioned A®étés and Kolchis, and interwove both of 
them into the Corinthian mythical genealogy.! These poems seem 
to have been composed subsequent to the foundation of Sinop4, 
and to the commencement of Grecian settlement on the Borys- 
then¢s, between the years 600 and 500 B.c. The Greek mari- 
ners who explored and colonized the southern coast of the Eux- 
ine, found at the extremity of their voyage the river Phasis 
and its barbarous inhabitants: it was the easternmost point 
which Grecian navigation (previous to the time of Alexander the 
Great) ever attained, and it was within sight of the impassable 
barrier of Caucasus.2 They believed, not unnaturally, that they 
bad nere found “the house of Eés (the morning) and the rising 
place of the sun,” and that the river Phasis, if they could follow 
it to its unknown beginning, would conduct them to the circum- 
fluous ocean. They gave to the spot the name οἍ a, and the 
fabulous and real title gradually became associated together inio 
one compound appellation,—the Kolchian A®a, or a of Kol- 
chis. While Kolchis was thus entered on the map as a fit re- 
presentative for the Homeric “house of the morning,” the nar- 
row strait of the Thracian Bosporus attracted to itself the 
postical fancy of the Symplégades, or colliding rocks, through 
which the heaven-protected Argo had been the first to pasa. 
The powerful Greek cities of Kyzikus, Hérakleia and Sinopé, 
each fertile in local legends, still farther contributed to give this 
direction to the voyage ; so that in the time of Hekatzus it had 
become the established belief that the Argé had started from 
Jolkos and gone to Kolchis. 

/Eétés thus received his home from the legendary faith and 


tion between the small town Sképsis and its powerful neighbor Kyzikus, 
respecting points of comparative archeology. 

* Eumélus, Fragm. Evpwria 7, Κορινϑιακὰ 2-5. pp. 63-68, Dantzer. 

* Arrian, Periplus Pont. Euxin. p. 12; ap. Geogr. Minor. vol. i. He eas 
the Caucasus from Dioskurias. 

* Herovot i. 2; vii. 193-197. Eurip. Med. 2 Valer. Flace. v. 34 


952 MISTORY GREECE. 


fancy of the eastern Greek navigators: his sister Circé, origi- 
nally his fellow- resident, was localized by the western. The 
Hesiodic and other poems, giving expression to the imaginative 
impulses of the inhabitants of Cum and other early Grecian 
settlers in Italy and Sicily,! had referred the wanderings of 
Odysseus to the western or Tyrrhenian sea, and had planted the 
Cyclopes, the Lestrygones, the floating island of olus, the 
Lotophagi, the Phzacians, etc., about the coast of Sicily, Italy, 
Libya, and Korkyra. In this way the ASzan island,— the resi 
dence of Circé, and the extreme point of the wanderings | of 
Odysseus, from whence he passes only to the ocean and into 
Hadés — came to be placed in the far west, while the Za of 
ZEétés was in the far east,— not unlike our East and West In- 
dies. The Homeric brother and sister were separated and sent 
to opposite extremities of the Grecian terrestrial horizon. 
The track from Idlkos to Kolchis, however, though plausible 
as far as it went, did not realize all the conditions of the genuine 
fabulous voyage: it did not explain the evidences of the visit of 
these maritime heroes which were to be found in Libya, in Krété 


1 Strabo, i. p. 23. Volcker (Ueber Homerische Geographie, v. 66) is in 
structive upon this point, as upon the geography of the Greek poets gene- 
rally. He recognizes the purely mythical character of fia in Homer and 
Hesiod, but he tries to prove — unsuccessfully, in my judgment — that 
Homer places Aétés in the east, while Circé is in the west, and that Homer 
refers the Argonautic voyage to the Euxine Sea. 

2 Strabo (or Polybius, whom he has just been citing) contends that Homer 
knew the existence of Aétés in Kolchis, and of Circé at Circeium, as histor- 
ical persons, as well as the voyage of Jasén to fa as an historical fact. 
Vpon this he (Homer) built a superstructure of fiction (προσμύϑευμα) : he 
invented the brotherhood between them, and he placed both the one and the 
other in the exterior ocean (@vyyeveiag τε ἔπλασε τῶν οὕτω διῳκισμένων, Kal 
ἐξωκεανισμὸν ἀμφοῖν, i. p. 20); perhaps also Jasén might have wandered as 
far as Italy, as evidences (σημεῖά τινα) are shown that he dic (ib.). 

But the idea that Homer conceived Jétés in the extreme east and Circé 
in the extreme west, is not reconcilable with the Odyssey. The supposition 
of Strabo is alike violent and unsatisfactory. " 

Circé was worshipped as a goddess at Circeii (Cicero, Nat. Deor. iii. 19). 
Hesiod, in the Theogony, represents the two sons of Circt by Odysseus as 
reigning over all the warlike Tyrrhenians (Theog. 1012), an undefined 
western sovereignty. The great Mamilian gens at Tusculum traced their 


dvscems to Odysseus and Circé (Dionys. Hal. iv. 45). 


KETURN O¥ THE ARGUNAUTS. 258 


m Anaphé, in Korkyra, in the Adriati: Gulf, in Italy and ir 
fEthalia. It became necessary to devise another route for them 
in their return, and the Hesiodic narrative was (as I have before 
observed), that they came back by the circumfluous ocean; first 
going up the river Phasis into the circumfluous ocean; follow 
ing that deep and gentle stream until they entered the Nile, 
and came down its course te the coast of Libya. This seems 
iso to have been the belief of Hekatzus.! But presently sey- 
eral Greeks (and Herodotus among them) began to discard the 
idea of a cireumfluous ocean-stream, which had pervaded their 
old geographical and astronomical fables, and which expiainad 
the supposed easy communication between one extremity of the 
earth and another. Another idea was then started for the return- 
ing voyage of the Argonauts. It was supposed that the river 
Ester, or Danube, flowing from the Rhipzan mountains in tis 
north-west of Europe, divided itself into two branches, one of 
which fell into the Euxine Sea, and the other into the Adriatic. 
The Argonauts, fleeing from the pursuit of A®étés, had been 
obliged to abandon their regular course homeward, and had gone 
from the Euxine Sea up the Ister; then passing down the other 
branch of that river, they had entered into the Adriatic, the 
Kolchian pursuers following them. Such is the story given by 
Apollonius Rhodius from ‘Timagétus, and accepted even by 80 
able a geographer as Kratosthenés — who preceded him by ong 
generation, and who, though sceptical in regard to the localities 
visited by Odysseus, seems to have been a firm believer in th2 
reality of the Argonautic voyage.? Other historians again, amoug 


' See above, p. 239. There is an opinion cited from Hekatzus in Schol. 
Apoll. Rhod. iv. 284. contrary to this, which is given by the same scholiast 
on iv. 259. But, in spite of the remarks of Klausen (ad Fragment. Heka- 
tzi, 187. p. 98), I think that the Schol. ad. iv. 284 has made a mistake in 
citing Hekatzeus; the more so as the scholiast, as printed from the Codex 
Parisinus, cites the same opinion without mentioning Hekateus. Accord 
ing to the old Homeric idea, the ocean stream flowed all round the earth, 
and was the source of all the principal rivers which flowed into the great in- 
ternal sea, or Mediterranean (see Hekatzus, Fr. 349; Klausen, ap. Arrian. 
ii. 16, where he speaks of the Mediterranean as the μεγάλη ϑάλασσα). Re 
taining this old idea of the ocean-stream, Hekateus would naturally believe 
that the Phasis joined it: nor can I agree with Klausen (ad Fr. 187) tha 
this implies a degree of ignorance toc gross Ὁ impute to him. 

3 Apolién. Rhod. iv. 287; Schol. ad iv. 284: Pindar, Pyth. iv. 447, wits 


254 HISTORY OF GREECE 


whom was Timzus, though they 2onsidered the ocean as an out 
er sea, and no longer admitted the existence of the old Homeric 
ocean-stream, yet imagined a story for the return-voyage of the 
Argonauts somewhat resembling the old tale of Hesiod and 
Hekatzus. They alleged that the Argo, after entering into thé 
Palus Mzotis, had followed the upward course of the river Ta. 
nais; that she had then been carried overland and launched in a 
river which had its mouth in the ocean or great outer sea. When 
in the ocean, she had coasted along the north and west of Europe 
until she reached Gadés and the Strait of Gibraltar, where she 
entered into the Mediterranean, and there visited the many places 
specified in the fable. Of this long voyage, in the outer sea to 
the north and west of Europe, many traces were affirmed to 
exist along the coast of the ocean.! There was again a third 
version, according to which the Argonauts came back as they 
went, through the Thracian Bosporus and the Hellespont. In 
this way geographical plausibility was indeed maintained, but a 
large portion of the fabulous matter was thrown overboard.? 
Such were the various attempts made to reconcile the Argo- 
nautic legend with enlarged geographical knowledge and improv- 
ed historical criticism. ‘The problem remained unsolved, but the 


Schol.; Strabo, i. p. 46-57; Aristot. Mirabil. Auscult.c. 105. Altars were 
shown in the Adriatic, which had been erected both by Jason and by Médea 
(i). 

Aristotle believed in the forked course of the Ister, with one embochure in 
the Euxine and another in the Adriatic: he notices certain fishes called rpi- 
zat, who entered the river (like the Argonauts) from the Euxine, went up 
it as far as the point of bifurcation and descended into the Adriatic (Histor. 
Animal. viii. 15). Compare Ukert, Geographie der Griech. und Rémer, vol. 
iii. p. 145-147, about the supposed course of the Ister. 

* Diodér. iv. 56; Timezus, Fragm. 53. Goller. Skymnus the geographer 
also adopted this opinion (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. 284-287). The pseudo-Or- 
pheus in the poem called Argonautica seems to give a jumble of all the dif- 
ferent stories. 

® Diodér. iv. 49. This was the tale both of Sophoklés and of Kallimachus 
(Schol. Apoli. Rhod. iv. 394). 

See the Dissertation of Ukert, Beylage iv. vol. i. part 2. p. 320 of his 
Geographie der Griechen und Rémer, which treats of the Argonautic voy- 
age at some length; also J. H. Voss, Alte Weltkunde aber die Gestalt der 
Erce, published in the second volume of the Kritische Blatter, pp. 162, 314- 
826; and Forbiger, Handbuch der Alten Geographie-Einleitung, p. 8. 


ARGONAUTIC LEGEND MODIFIED 256 


faith in the l2gend did not the less continue. It was a faitd 
originally generated at a time when the unassisted narrative of 
the inspired poet sufficed for the conviction of his hearers; it 
consecrated one among the capital exploits of that hervic and 
superhuman race, whom the Greek was accustomed at once to 
look back upon as his ancestors and to worship conjointly with 
his gods: it lay too deep in his mind either to require historical 
evidence for its support, or to be overthrown by geographical 
difficulties as they were then appreciated. Supposed traces of 
the past event, either preserved in the names of places, or embo- 
died in standing religious customs with their explanatory com- 
ments, served as sufficient authentication in the eyes of the curious 
inquirer. And even men trained in a more severe school of 
criticism contented themselves with eliminating the palpable con- 
tradictions and softening down the supernatural and romantic 
events, so as to produce an Argonautic expedition of their own 
invention as the true and accredited history. Strabo, though he 
can neither overlook nor explain the geographical impossibilities 
of the narrative, supposes himself tc have discovered the basis 
of actual fact, which the original poets had embellished or exag- 
gerated. The golden fleece was typical of the great wealth of 
Kolchis, arising from gold-dust washed down by the rivers; and 
the voyage of Jasén was in reality an expedition at the head of 
a considerable army, with which he plundered this wealthy coun- 
try and made extensive conquests in the interior.! Strabo has 
nowhere laid down what he supposes to have been the exact 
measure and direction of Jas6én’s march, but he must have ree 
garded it as very long, since he classes Jasén with Dionysus and 
Héraklés, and emphatically characterizes all the three as having 


Strabo, i. p. 45. He speaks here of the voyage of Phryxus, as well as 
that of Jasén, as having been a military undertaking (στρατεία) : so again, 
iii. p. 149, he speaks of the military expedition of Odysseus —7 τοῦ ’Odve- 
σέως στρατία, and ἡ Ἡρακλέους orparia (ib.). Again xi. p. 298. Οἱ vida, 
αἰνιττόμενοι τὴν ᾿Ιάσονος στρατείαν προελϑόντος μέχρι καὶ Mndiac: ἔτι δὲ 
πρότερον 77 Φρίξου. Compare also Justin, xlii. 2-3; Tacit. Annal. vi. 34, 

Strabo cannot speak of the old fables with literal fidelity : he unconscious- 
ly transforms them into quasi-historical incidents of his own imagination. 
Diodérus gives a narrative of the same kind, with decent substitutes for the 
fabulous elements (iv. 40-47-56). 


256 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


traversed wider spaces of ground than any moderns eould equal.' 
Such was the compromise which a mind like that of Strabo made 
with the ancient legends. He shaped or cut them down to the 
level of his own credence, and in this waste of historical criticism, 
without any positive evidence, he took to himself the credit of 
greater penetration than the literal believers, while he escaped 
the necessity of breaking formally with the bygone heroic world 


CHAPTER XIV. 


LEGENDS OF THEBES. 


Tur Beedtians generally, throughout the historical age, though 
well endowed with bodily strength and courage,” are represented 
as proverbially deficient in intelligence, taste and fancy. But 
the legendary population of Thébes, the Kadmeians, are rich in 


mythical antiquities, divine as well as heroic. Both Dionysus 
and Héraklés recognize Thébes as their natal city. Moreover, 
the two sieges of Thébes by Adrastus, even taken apart from 


' Strabo, i. p. 48. ‘The far-extending expeditions undertaken in the — 
ern regions by Dionysus and Heéraklés were constantly aga to the min 
of Alexander the Great as subjects of comparison with himself : he imposed 
upon his followers perilous and trying marches, from anxiety to equal or 
surpass the alleged exploits of Semiramis, Cyrus, Perseus, and a 
{Arrian, ν- 2, 3; vi. 24, 3; vii. 10, 12. Strabo, iii. p. 171; Xv. p. 686; xvil. 
‘the eponym Beedtus is son of Poseidon and Arné (Euphorion ap. 
Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. 507). It was from Arné in Thessaly that the Beeotians 
were said to have come, when they invaded and occupied Bceodtia. Euri- 
pidés made him son of Poseidén and Melanippé. Another legend recited 
Beestus and Hellén as sons of Poseidén and Antiopé (Hygin. f. 157-1 86). 

The Tanagrzan poetess Korinna (the rival of Pindar, whose compositions 
in the Boedtian dialect are unfortunately lost) appears to have dwelt upoa 
this native Boedtian genealogy: she derived the Ogygian gates of Thébes 
from Ogygus, son of Baedtus (Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iii. 1178), also the Frag 
ments of Korinna in Schneidewin’s edition, fr. 2. p. 433. 


LEGENDS OF THEBES. 253 


Kadmus, Antiopé, Amphién and Zethus, etc., are the most pro- 
minent and most characteristic exploits, next to the siege of Troy, 
of that preéxisting race of heroes who lived in the imagination 
of the historical Hellénes. 

It is not Kadmus, but the brothers Amphion and Zethus, who 
are given to us in the Odyssey as the first founders of Thébes 
and the first builders of its celebrated walls. They are the sons 
of Zeus by Antiopé, daughter of Asépus. The scholiasts who 
desire ὁ) reconcile this tale with the more current account of the 
foundation of Thébes by Kadmus, tell us that after the death of 
Amphion and Zethus, Eurymachus, the warlike king of the 
Phlegyx, invaded and ruined the newly-settled town, so that 
Kadmus on arriving was obliged to re-found 1.1 But Apollo- 
dorus, and seemingly the older logographers before him, placed 
Kadmus at the top, and inserted the two brothers at a lower 
point in the series. According to them, Bélus and Agenor were 
the sons of Epaphus, sop of the Argeian Id, by Libya. Agendr — 
went to Phoenicia and there became king: he had for his off- 
spring Kadmus, Phoenix, Kilix, and a daughter Eurdpa; though 
in the Iliad Eurdépa is called daughter of Phoenix.2 Zeus fell in 
love with Eurépa, and assuming the shape of a bull, carried her 
across the sea upon his back from Egpyt to Kréte, where she 
bore to him Minés, Rhadamanthus and Sarpédén. Two out of 
the three sons sent out by Agendr in search of their lost sister, 


wearied out by a long-protracted as well as fruitless voyage, 
abandoned the idea of returning home: Kilix setiled in Kilikia, 
and Kadmus in Thrace. Thasus, the brother or nephew of 


‘ Homer, Odyss. xi. 262, and Eustath. ad loc. Compare Schol. ad Iliad. 
xiii. 301. 

* liad, xiv. 321. 16 is κερόεσσα προμάτωρ of the Thébans. Eurip. Phe- 
miss. 247-676. 

3 Apollodor. ii. 1,3; iii. 1,8. In the Hesiodic poems (ap. Schol. Apoll. 
Rhod. ii. 178), Phoenix was recognized as son of Agenér. Pherekydés also 
Gescribed both Phoenix and Kadmus as sons of Agenér (Pherekyd. Fragm. 
40, Didot). Compare Servius ad. Virgil. Aneid. 1. 338. Pherekydés ex- 
pressly mentioned Kilix (Apollod. ἐδ.). Besides the Εὐρώπεια of Stesicho- 
fus (see Stesichor. Fragm. xv. p. 73, ed. Kleine), there were several other 
@ncient poems on the adventures of Europa; one in particular by Eumélus 
(Schol. ad Iliad. vi. 138), which however can hardly be the same as the τὰ 

VOL. IL. 1706. 


258 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Kadmus, who had accompanied them in the voyage, settled and 
gave name to the island of Phasus. 

- Both Herodotus and Euripidés represent Kadmus as an emi- 
grant from Phoenicia, conducting a body of followers in quest of 
Europa. The account of Apollodérus describes him as having 
come originally from Libyaor Egypt to Phoenicia: we may 
presume that this was also the statement of the earlier logo- 
graphers Pherekydés and Hellanikus. Condn, who historicizes 
and politicizes the whole legend, seems to have found two differ- 
ent accounts ; one connecting Kadmus with Egypt, another bring- 
ing him from Pheenicia. He tries to melt down the two inte 
one, by representing that the Phoenicians, who sent out Kadmus, 
had acquired great power in Egypt — that the seat of their king- 
dom was the Egyptian Thebes — that Kadmus was despatched, 
under pretence indeed of finding his lost sister, but reaily on 8 
project of conquest — and that the name Thébes, which he gave 
to his new estaklishment in Boeédtia, was borrowed from ‘Thébes 
in Egypt, his ancestorial seat.' 

Kadmus went from Thrace to Delphi to procure information 
respecting his sister EKurépa, but the god directed him to take no 
further trouble about her; he was to follow the guidance of a 
cow, and to found a city on the spot where the animal should lie 
down. ‘The condition was realized on the site of Thébes. The 
neighboring fountain Areia was guarded by a fierce dragon, the 
offspring of Arés, who destroyed all the persons sent to fetch 
water. Kadmus killed the dragon, and at the suggestion of 
Athéné sowed his teeth in the earth 2 there sprang up at once 
the armed men called the Sparti, among whom he flung stones, 


ἔπη τὰ εἰς Eiporny alluded to by Pausanias (ix. 5, 4). See Wallner de 
Cyclo Epico, p. 57 (Manster 1825). 

* Conén, Narrat. 37. Perhaps the most remarkable thing of all is the 
tone of unbounded self-confidence with which Condn winds up this tissue 
of uncertified suppositions — περὶ μὲν Κάδμου καὶ Θηβῶν οἰκίσεως οὗτος ὁ 
ἀληϑὴς λόγος" τὸ δὲ ἄλλο μῦϑος καὶ γοητεία ἀκοῆς. 

3 Stesichor. (Fragm. 16; Kleine) ap. Schol. Eurip. Phoeniss. 680. The 
place where the heifer had lain down was still shown in the time of Pausa- 
mias (ix. 12, 1). 

Lysimachus, a lost author who wrote Thebaica, mentioned Eurépa as 
having come with Kadmus to Thébes, and told the story in many other re 
epects very differently (Schol Apoll. Rhod. iii. 1179). 


KADMUS AND HIS DAUGHTERS. 253 


and they immediately began to assault each other until all were 
slain except five. Arés, indignant at this slaughter, was about 
to kill Kadmus; but Zeus appeased him, condemning Kadmus 
to an expiatory servitude of eight years, after which he married 
Harmonia, the daughter of Arés and Aphrodité— presenting to 
her the splendid necklace fabricated by the hand of Héphae- 
tos, which had been given by Zeus to Eurépa.! All the gods 
came to the Kadmeia, the citadel of Thébes, to present congrat- 
ulations and gifts at these nuptials, which seem to have been 
hardly less celebrated in the mythical world than those of Péleus 
and Thetis. The issue of the marriage was one son, Polydérus, 
and four daughters, Autonoé, Ind, Semelé and Agavé.? 

From the five who alone survived of the warriors sprung from 
the dragon’s teeth, arose five great families or gentes in Thébes ; 
the oldest and noblest of its inhabitants, coeval with the founda- 
tion of the town. They were called Sparti, and their name 
seems to have given rise, not only to the fable of the sowing of 
the teeth, but also to other etymological narratives.% 

All the four daughters of Kadmus are illustrious in fabulous 
history. Ind, wife of Athamas, the son of Aolus, has already 
been included among the legends of the Zolids. Semelé became 
the mistress of Zeus, and inspired Héré with jealousy. Mis- 
guided by the malicious suggestions of that goddess, she solicited 
Zeus to visit her with all the solemnity and terrors which sur- 


 Apollodor. iii. 4,1- Pherekydés gave this account of the necklace, 
which seems to imply that Kadmus must have found his sister Europa. 'The 
narrative here given is from Hellanikus ; that of Pherekydés differed from 
it in some respects: compare Hellanik. Fragm. 8 and 9, and Pherekyd. Frag. 
44. The resemblance of this story with that of Jasén and Métés (see above, 
chap. xiii. p. 237) will strike every one. It is curious to observe how the 
o.d logographer Pherekydés explained this analogy in his narrative ; he said 
that Athéné had given half the dragon’s teeth to Kadmus and half to Aétés 
(see Schol. Pindar. Isthm. vi. 13). 

3 Hesiod, Theogon. 976. Leukothea, the sea-goddess, daughter of Kad 
mus, is mentioned in the Odyssey, v. 334; Dioddr. iv. 2. 

3 Eurip. Pheeniss. 680, with the Scholia; Pherekydés, Fragm. 44; André- 
tion, ap. Schol. Pindar. Isthm. vi. 13. Dionysius (1) called the Sparti an 
ἔϑνος Βοιωτίας (Schol. Pheeniss. 1. c.). 

Even in the days of Plutarch, there were persons living who traced theis 
escent to the Sparti of Thébes (Plutarch, Ser. Num. Vindict. p 563). 


960 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


rounded him when he approached Héré herself. The god um 
willingly consented, and came in his chariot in the midst of 
thunder and lightning, under which awful accompaniments the 
mortal frame of Semelé perished. Zeus, taking from her the 
child of which she was pregnant, sewed it into his own thigh: 
after the proper interval the child was brought out and born, and 
became the great god Dionysus or Bacchus. Hermés took him 
to Ind and Athamas to receive their protection. Afterwards, 
however, Zeus having transformed him into a kid to conceal him 
from the persecution of Héré, the nymphs of the mountain Nysa 
became his nurses.! 

Autonoé, the third daughter of Kadmus, married the pastoral 
hero or god Aristwas, and was mother of Aktwdn, a devoted 
hunter and a favorite companion of the goddess Artemis. She 
however became displeased with him — either because he looked 
into a fountain while she was bathing and saw her naked — οἱ 
according to the legend set forth by the poet Stesichorus, because 
he loved and courted Semelé — or according to Euripidés, be- 
cause he presumptuously vaunted himself as her superior in the 
chase. She transformed him into a stag, so that his own dogs 


set upon and devoured him. The rock upon which Akt#6n used 
two sleep when fatigued with the chase, and the spring whose 
transparent waters had too clearly revealed the form of the god- 
dess, were shown to Pausanias near Platza, on the road to 
Megara.? 


δ Apollod6r. iii. 4, 2-9 ; Diodér. iv. 2. 

2 See Apollodér. iii. 4,3; Stesichor. Fragm. xvii. Kleine; Pausan. ix. 2, 
8; Eurip. Bacch. 337; Diodér. iv. 81. The old logographer Akusilaus 
copied Stesichorus. 

Upon this well-known story it is unnecessary to multiply references. I 
shall however briefly notice the remarks made upon it by Diodorus and by 
Pausanias, as an illustration of the manner in which the literary Greeks of a 
later day dealt with their old national legends. 

Both of them appear implicitly to believe the fact, that Aktw6n was 
devoured by his own dogs, but they differ materially in the explanation 
of it. 

Diodérus accepts and vindicates the miraculous interposition of the dis- 
pleased goddess to punish Aktad6n, who, according to one st ry, had boasted 
of his superiority in the chase to Artemis, — according to another story, had 
presumed to solicit the goddess in marriage, emboldened by the great num- 
bers of the feet of animals slain in the chase which he had hung up as offer 


DIONYSIUS AT THEBES 261 


Agavé, the remaining daughter of Kadmus, married Evhién, 
one of the Sparti. The issue of these nuptials was Pentheus, 
who, when Kadmus became old succeeded him as king of Thébes. 
In his reign Dionysus appeared as a god, the author or discoverer 
of the vine with all its blessings. He had wandered over Asia, 
India and Thrace, at the head of an excited troop of female en- 
thusiasts — communicating and inculcating everywhere the Bac- 
chic ceremonies, and rousing in the minds of women that 
mpassioned religious emotion which led them to ramble in 
solitary mountains at particular seasons, there to give vent to 
violent fanatical excitement, apart from the men, clothed in fawn- 
skins and armed with the thyrsus. The obtrusion of a male spec- 
tator upon these solemnities was esteemed sacrilegious. Though 
the rites had been rapidly disseminated and fervently welcomed 
in many parts of Thrace, yet there were some places in which 
they had been obstinately resisted and their votaries treated with 
rudeness ; especially by Lykurgus, king of the Edonian Thra- 
cians, upon whom a sharp and exemplary punishment was 
inflicted by Dionysus. 

Thébes was the first city of Greece to which Dionysus came, 


ings in her temple. “Itis not improbable (observes Diodérus) that the god 
dess was angry on both these accounts. For whether Akte6én abused these 
hunting presents so far as to make them the means of gratifying his own 
desires towards one unapproachable in wedlock, or whether he presumed to 
eall himself an abler hunter than her with whom the gods themselves will 
aot compete in this department,—in either case the wrath of the goddess 
against him was just and legitimate (ὁμολογουμένην καὶ δικαίαν ὀργὴν ἔσχε 
πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡ ϑεός) With perfect propriety therefore (Καϑόλου δὲ πιϑανῶς; 
was he transformed into an animal such as those he had hunted, and torn to 
pieces by the very dogs who had killed them.” (Didot. iv. 80.) 

Pausanias, a man of exemplary piety, and generally less inclined to 
scepticism than Diod6érus, thinks the occasion unsuitable for a miracle or 
special interference. Having alluded to the two causes assigned for the dis- 
pleasure of Artemis (they are the two first-mentioned in my text, and dis- 
tinct from the two noticed by Diodérus), he proceeds to say, “ But I believe 
that the dogs of Aktzén went mad, without the interference of the goddess : 
in this state of madness they would have torn in pieces without distinction 
any one whom they met (Paus. ix. 2, 3. ἐγὼ dé καὶ ἄνευ ϑεοῦ πείϑομαι νόσον 
λύσσαν ἐπιβαλεῖν τοῦ ᾿Ακταίωνος τοὺς κύνας). He retains the truth of the 
final catastrophe, but rationalizes it, excluding the special intervention of 
Artemis. 


962 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


at the nead of his Asiatic troop of fernales, to obtain divine hor 

ors and to establish his peculiar rites in his native city. The 
venerable Kadmus, together with his daughters and the prophet 
Teiresias, at once acknowledged the divinity of the new god, and 
began to offer their worship and praise to him along with the 
solemnities which he enjoined. But Pentheus vehemently op- 
posed the new ceremonies, reproving and maltreating the god 
who introduced them: nor was his unbelief at all softened by 
the miracles which Dionysus wrought for his own protection and 
for that of his followers. His mother Agavé, with her sisters 
and a large body of other women from Thébes, had gone out 
from Thébes to Mount Kitherén to celebrate their solemnities 
under the influence of the Bacchic frenzy. Thither Pentheus 
followed to watch them, and there the punishment due to his 
impiety overtook him. The avenging touch of the god having 
robbed him of his senses, he climbed a tall pine for the purpose 
of overlooking the feminine multitude, who detected him in this 
position, pulled down the tree, and tore him in pieces. Agavé, 
mad and bereft of consciousness, made herself the foremost in 
this assault, and carried back in triumph to Thébes the head of 
her slaughtered son. The aged Kadmus, with his wife Harmo 
nia, retired among the Illyrians, and at the end of their lives 
were changed into serpents, Zeus permitting them to be trans 


ferred to the Elysian fields.' 


' Apollod. iii. 5, 3-4; Theocrit. Idyll. xxvi. Eurip. Bacch. passim. Such 
is the tragical plot of this memorable drama. It is a striking proof of the 
deep-seated reverence of the people of Athens for the sanctity of the Bacchie 
ceremonies, that they could have borne the spectacle of Agavé on the stage 
with her dead son’s head, and the expressions of triumphant sympathy in 
her action on the part of the Chorus (1168), Muxacp’ ’A;avy! This drama, 
written near the close of the life of Euripidés, and exhibited by his son after 
his death (Schol. Aristoph. Ran. 67), contains passages strongly inculcating 
the necessity of implicit deference to ancestorial authority in matters of re- 
ligion, and favorably contrasting the uninquiring faith of the vulgar with the 
dissenting and inquisitive tendencies of superior minds: see v. 196; com 
ware vv. 389 and 422. — 

Οὐδὲν σοφιζώμεσϑα τοῖσι δαίμοσιν. 
Πατρίους παραδοχὰς. ἃς ϑ᾽ ὑμήλεκας χρόνῳ 
Κεκτήμεϑ᾽, οὐδεὶς αὐτὰ καταβαλεῖ Adyoc, 
Οὐδ᾽ ἣν δι᾿ ἄκρων τὸ σοφὸν εὕρηται φρένων. 
Sach reproofs “ insanientis sapientiw” certainly do not fall in with the plot 


ῬΕΝΊ HEUS. — LABDAKUS. — LATUS. — ANTIOPE. 263 


Polyd6rus and Labdakus successively became kings of Thébes: 
the latter at his death left an infant son, Laius, who was deprived 
of his throne by Lykus. And here we approach the legend of 
Antiopé, Zéthus and Amphidén, whom the fabulists insert at this 
point of the Théban series. Antiopé is here the daughter of Nyk- 
teus, the brother of Lykus. She is deflowered by Zeus, and 
then, while pregnant, flies to Epdpeus king of Sikyén: Nykteus 
dying entreats his brother to avenge the injury, and Lykus 
accordingly invades Sikyén, defeats and kills Epépeus, and brings 
back Antiopé prisoner to Thébes. In her way thither, in a cave 
near Eleutherx, which was shown to Pausanias,! she is delivered 
of the twin sons of Zeus — Amphién and Zéthus — who, exposed 
to perish, are taken up and nourished by a shepherd, and pass 
their youth amidst herdsmen, ignorant of their lofty descent. 

Antiopé is conveyed to Thébes, where, after undergoing a long 
persecution from Lykus and his cruel wife Dirké, she at length 
escapes, and takes refuge in the pastoral dwelling of her sons, 
now grown to manhood. Dirké pursues and requires her to be 
delivered up; but the sons recognize and protect their mother, 
taking an ample revenge upon her persecutors. Lykus is slain, 
and Dirké is dragged to death, tied to the horns of a bull.® 


.---ὁ.-.-. —_ —— 


of the drama itself, in which Pentheus appears as a Conservative, resisting 
the introduction of the new religious rites. Taken in conjunction with the 
emphatic and submissive piety which reigns through the drama, they coun- 
tenance the supposition of Tyrwhitt, that Euripidés was anxious to repel 
the imputations, so often made against him, of commerce with the philoso- 
phers and participation in sundry heretical opinions. 

Pacuvius in his Pentheus seems to have closely copied Euripidés; see 
Servius ad Virg. Aineid. iv. 469. 

The old Thespis had composed a tragedy on the subject of Pentheus: 
Suidas, Θέσπις ; also Aschylus; compare his Eumenidés, 25. 

According to Apollodérus (iii. 5, 5), Labdakus also perished in a similar 
way to Pentheus, and from the like impiety, — ἐκείνῳ φρονῶν παραπλήσια. 

 Pausan. i. 38, 9. 

* For the adventures of Antiopé and her sons, see Apollodér. iii. 5; 
Pausan. ii. 6, 2; ix. 5, 2. 

The narrative given respecting Epépeus in the ancient Cyprian verses 
seems to have been very different from this, as far as we can judge from the 
brief notice in Proclus’s Argument, — ὡς ᾽᾿Επωπεὺς φϑείρας τὴν Λυκούργου 
(Λύκου) γυναῖκα ἐξεπορϑήϑη : it approaches more nearly to the story given 
im the seventh fable of Hyginus, and followed by Propertius (iii. 15); the 


Vol. 1 13 


964 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Amphién and Zéthus, having banished Laius, become kings οἱ 
Tnébes. The former, taught by Hermés, and possessing exyais- 
ite skill on the lyre, employs it in fortifying the city, the stones 
of the walls arranging themselves spontaneously in obedience to 
the rhythm of his song.' 

Zéthus marries Aéd6n, who, in the dark and under a fatal mis- 
take, kills her son Itylus: she is transformed intoa nightingale, 
while Zéthus dies of grief.2 Amphién becomes the husband of 
Niobé, daughter of Tantalus, and the father of a numerous off- 
spring, the complete extinction of which by the hands of Apollo 
and Artemis has already been recounted in these pages. 

Here ends the legend of the beautiful Antiopé and her twin 
sons — the rude and unpolished, but energetic, Zéthus — and the 
refined and amiable, but dreamy, Amphién. For so Euripidés, 
in the drama of Antiopé unfortunately lost, presented the twe 


eighth fable of Hyginus contains the tale of Antiopé as given by Euripidés 
and Ennius. The story of Pausanias differs from both. 

The Scholiast ad Apollén. Rhod. i. 735. says that there were twe persons 
named Antiopé ; one, daughter of Asdépus, the other, daughter of Nykteus. 
Pausanias is content with supposing one only, really the daughter of Nyk- 
teus, but there was a φήμη that she was daughter of Asdpus (ii. 6, 2). Asius 
made Antiopé daughter of Asépus, and mother (both by Zeus and by Epé- 
peus : such a junction of divine and human paternity is of common occur 
rence in the Greek legends) of Zéthus and Amphion (ap. Paus. 1. c.). 

The contradictory versions of the story are brought together, though no? 
very perfectly, in Sterk’s Essay De Labdacidarum Historia, p. 38-43 (Ley- 
den, 1829). 

' This story about the lyre of Amphi6n is not noticed in Homer, but it 
was narrated in the ancient ἔπη ἐς Εὐρώπην which Pausanias had read: the 
wild beasts as well as the stones were obedient to his strains (Paus ix. 5, 4). 
Pherekydés also recounted it (Pherekyd. Fragm. 102, Didot). ‘The tablet 
of inscription (’Avaypa@?) at Sikyén recognized Amphion as the first com 
poser of poetry and harp-music (Plutarch, de Musica, c. 3. p. 1132). 

3 The tale of the wife and son of Zéthus is as old as the Odyssey (xix. 
525). Pausanias adds the statement that Zéthus died of grief (ix. 5, 5; 
Pherekydés, Fragm. 102, Did.). Pausanias, however, as well as Apollodé- 
rus, tells us that Zéthus married Thébé, from whom the name Thébes was 
given to the city. To reconcile the conflicting pretensions of Zéthus and 
Amphidén with those of Kaidmus, as founders of Thébes, Pausanias supposes 
that the latter was the original settler of the hill of the Kadmeia, while dx 
two formes extended the settlement to the lower city (ix 5, 1-3) 


LAIUS AND €DIPUS. 965 


iwothers, in affectionate union as well as in striking contrast.! Is 
is evident that the whole story stood originally quite apart from 
the Kadmeian family, and so the rudiments of it yet stand in 
the Odyssey ; but the logographers, by their ordinary connecting 
artifices, have opened a vacant place for it in the descending se- 
ries of Theban mythes. And they have here proceeded in a 
manner not usual with them. For whereas they are generally 
fond of multiplying entities, and supposing different historical 
personages of the same name, in order to introduce an apparent 
smoothness in the chronology — they have here blended into one 
person Amphion the son of Antiopé and Amphién the father of 
Chloris, who seem clearly distinguished from each other in the 
Odyssey. ‘They have further assigned to the same person all the 
circumstances of the legend of Niobé, which seems to have been 
originally framed quite apart from the sons of Antiopé. 
Amphién and Zéthus being removed, Laius became king of 
Thébes. With him commences the ever-celebrated series of ad- 
ventures of Cidipus and his family. Laius forewarned by the 
oracle that any son whom he might beget would kill him, caused 
Cidipus as soon as he was born to be exposed on Mount Kithe- 
ron. Here the herdsmen of Polybus king of Corinth acciden- 
tally found him and conveyed him to their master, who brought 
him up as his own child. In spite of the kindest treatment, 
however, CEdipus when he grew up found himself exposed to 
taunts on the score of his unknown parentage, and went to Delphi 
to inquire of the god the name of his real father. He received 
for answer an admonition not to go back to his country ; if he did 
80, it was his destiny to kill his father and become the husband of 
his mother. Knowing no other country but Corinth, he accord- 
ingly determined to keep away from that city, and quitted Delphi 
by the road towards Beétia and Phékis. At the exact spot 


ἈΝΌΜΩΝ, ἀσσαξονθανοαι 


: See Valckenaer. Diatribé in Eurip. Reliq. cap. 7, p. 58; Welcker 
Griechis: h. Tragd. ii. p. 811. There is a striking resemblance between the 
Antiopé of Euripidés and the Tyré of Sophoklés in many points. 

Plato in his Gorgias has preserved a few fragments, and a tolerably clear 
general idea of the characters of Zéthus and Amphién (Gorg. 90-92): 
also Horat. Epist. i. 18, 42. ᾿ sie tate 

Both Livius and Pacuvius had tragedies on the scheme of this of Euripi 
iés, the former seemir gly a translation. 


VOL. I. 12 


#68 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


where the roads leading to these two countries ferked, he met 
Laius in a chariot drawn by mules, when the insolence of one of 
the attendants brought on an angry quarrel, in which CEdipus 
killed Laius, not knowing him to be his father. The exact 
place where this event happened, called the Divided Way!, was 
memorable in the eyes of all literary Greeks, and is specially 
adverted to by Pausanias in his periegesis. 

On the death of Laius, Kreén, the brother of Jokasta, suc 
ceeded to the kingdom of Thébes. At this time the country was 
under the displeasure of the gods, and was vexed by a terrible 
monster, with the face of a woman, the wings of a bird, and the 
tail of a lion, called the Sphinx? — sent by the wrath of Héré 
and occupying the neighboring mountain of Phikium. The 
Sphinx had learned from the Muses a riddle, which she proposed 
to the Thébans tc resolve: on every occasion of failure she took 
away one of the citizens and ate him up. Still no person could 
solve the riddle; and so great was the suffering occasioned, that 
Kreoén was obliged to offer both the crown and the nuptials of 
his sister Jokasta to any one who could achieve the salvation of 
the city. At this juncture C£dipus arrived and solved the rid- 
dle: upon which the Sphinx immediately threw herself from the 
acropolis and disappeared. As a recompense for this service, 
(Edipus was made king of Thébes, and married Jokasta, not 
aware that she was his mother. 

These main tragical circumstances — that (Edipus had ig- 
norantly killed his father and married his mother — belong to 
the oldest form of the legend as it stands in the Odyssey. The 
gods (itis added in that poem) quickly made the facts known to 
mankind. Epikasta (so Jokasta is here called) in an agony of 
sorrow hanged herself: CEdipus remained king of the Kad- 
meians, but underwent many and great miseries, such as the 


' See the description of the locality in K. Ὁ. Miiller (Orchomenos, ο. i. Ρ. 
87). 

the tombs of Laius and his attendant were still seen there in the days of 
Pausanias (x. 5, 2). 

* Apollodé6r. iii. 5,8. An author named Lykus, in his work entitled Thé- 
batca, ascribed this visitation to the anger of Dionysus (Schol. Hesiod, 
Theogon. 326). The Sphinx (or Phir, from the Beetian Mount Phikiam) 
is as old as the Hesiodic Theogony, — ®ix’ ὀλόην τέκε, Kadueiowow ὄλεϑρον 
(Theog. 326 ). 


ADVENTURES OF €DIPUS. 267 


Erinnyes, who avenge an injured mother, inflict.) A passage in 
the Iliad implies that he died at Thébes, since it mentions the 
funeral games which were celebrated there in honor of him. 
His misfortunes were recounted by Nestor, in the old Cyprian 
verses, among the stories of aforetime.2 A fatal curse hung both 
upon himself and upon his children, Eteoklés, Polynikés, Anti- 
goné and Isméné. According to that narrative which the Attig¢ 
tragedians have rendered universally current, they were his chil. 
dren by Jokasta, the disclosure of her true relationship to him 
having been very long deferred. But the ancient epic called 
Cidipodia, treading more closely in the footsteps of Homer, rep- 
resented him as having after her death married a second wife, 
Kuryganeia, by whom the four children were born te him: and 
the painter Onatas adopted this story in preference «o that of 
Sophoklés.3 


' Odyss. xi. 270. Odysseus, describing what he saw in the ander-world, 

says, — 
Μητέρα τ᾽ Οἰδιπόδαο ἴδον, καλὴν ᾿Επικάστην, 
Ἢ μέγα ἔργον ἔρεξεν αἰδρεΐῃσι νόοιο, 
Γημαμένη ᾧ υἱεῖ ὁ δ᾽ ὃν πατέρ᾽ ἐξεναρίξας 
Γῆμεν" ἄφαρ δ᾽ ἀνάπυστα ϑεοὶ ϑέσαν ἀνϑρώποισι. 
᾿Αλλ᾽ ὁ μὲν ἐν Θήβῃ πολυηράτῳ ἄλγεα πάσχων, 
Καδμείων ἤνασσε, ϑεῶν ὀλόας διὰ βουλάς - 
Ἡ © ἔβη εἰς Αἰδάο πυλάρταο κρατεροῖο 
᾿Αψαμένη βρόχον αἰπὺν ἀφ᾽ ὑψήλοιο μελάϑρου, 
"2 ἀχεὶ σχομένη - τῷ δ᾽ ἄλγεα κάλλιπ᾽ ὀπίσσω 
Πολλὰ par’, ὅσσα τε μητρὸς "Ἐριννύες ἐκτελέουσιν. 

Iliad, xxiii. 680, with the scholiast who cites Hesiod. Proclus, Argum 
ad Cypria, ap. Dantzer, Fragm. Epic. Gree. p. 10. Νέστωρ δὲ ἐν παρεκϑβάσει 
διηγεῖται καὶ τὰ περὶ Οἰδίπουν, ete. 

* Pausan. ix. 5,5. Compare the narrative from Peisander in Schol. δὰ 
Eurip. Phoeniss. 1773; where, however, the blindness of CEdipus seems to 
be unconsciously interpolated out of the tragedians. In the old narrative 
of the Cyclic Thébais, (dipus does not seem to be represented as blind 
(Leutsch, Thebaidis Cyclici Reliquia, Gotting. 1830, p. 42). 

Pherekydés (ap. Schol. Eurip. Phoeniss. 52) tells us that CEdipus had three 
children by Jokasta, who were all killed by Erginus and the Minye (this 
must refer to incidents in the old poems which we cannot now recover) ; 
then the four celebrated children by Euryganeia; lastly, that he married a 
third wife, Astymedusa. Apollodérus follows the narrative of the trage- 
dians, but alludes to the different version about Euryganeia, — εἰσὶ δ᾽ οἵ φασιν͵ 
etc. (iii. 5, 8). 

Hellanikus (ap. Schol. Eur. Phoeniss. 59) mentioned the self-inflicted blind 


268 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The disputes of Eteoklés and Polynikés for the throne of their 
father gave occasion not only to a series of tragical family inci- 
dents, but also to one of the great quasi-historical events of legen- 
dary Greece — the two sieges of Thébes by Adrastus, king of 
Argos. The two ancient epic poems called the Thébais and the 
Epigoni (if indeed both were not parts of one very comprehen- 
sive poem) detailed these events at great length, and as it appears, 
with distinguished poetical merit; for Pausanias pronounces the 
Cyclic Thébais (so it was called by the subsequent critics to dis- 
tinguish it from the more modern Thébais of Antimachus) infe- 
rior only to the Iliad and Odyssey ; and the ancient elegiac poet 
Kallinus treated it as an Homeric composition.'! Of this once- 
valued poem we unfortunately possess nothing but a few scanty 
fragments. ‘The leading points of the legend are briefly glanced 
at in the Iliad; but our knowledge of the details is chiefly derived 
from the Attic tragedians, who transformed the narratives of their 
predecessors at pleasure, and whose popularity constantly eclips- 
ed and obliterated the ancient version. Antimachus of Kolophon, 
contemporary with Euripidés, in his long epic, probably took no 
less liberties with the old narrative. His Thébaid never became 


generally popular, but it exhibited marks of study and elabora- 
tion which recommended it to the esteem of the Alexandrine 
critics, and probably contributed to discredit in their eyes the old 
eyclic poem. 

The logographers, who gave a continuous history of this siege 
of Thébes, had at least three preéxisting epic poems — the Thé- 
bias, the CEdipodia, and the Alkmzonis,— from which they 


ness of C&dipus ; but it seems doubtful whether this circumstance was inclu: 
ded in the narrative of Pherekydés. 

' Pausan, ix.9.3. ᾿Βποίηϑη δὲ ἐς τὸν πόλεμον τοῦτον Kal ἔπη. OnGaig τὰ 
δὲ ἔπη ταῦτα Καλλῖνος, ἀφικόμενος αὐτῶν ἐς μνήμην, ἔφησεν "Ὅμηρον τὸν 
ποιῆσαντα εἶναι. Καλλίνῳ δὲ πολλοί τε καὶ ἄξιοι λόγου κατὰ ταῦτα ἔγνωσαν " 
ἐγὼ δὲ τὴν ποιήσιν ταύτην μετά γε ᾿Ιλιάδα καὶ τὰ ἔπη τὰ ἐς ᾽Οδυσσέα ἐπαινῶ 
μάλιστα. The name in the text of Pausanias stands Καλαῖνος, an unknown 
person: most of the critics recognize the propriety of substituting Καλλῖνος͵ 
and Leutsch and Welcker have given very sufficient reasons for doing so. 

The ᾿Αμφιάρεω ἐξελασία ἐς Θῆβας, alluded to in the pseudo-Herodotean 
“4 of Homer, seems to be the description of a special passage in this Thé- 

ia 


SIEGES OF THEBES. 269 


could borrow. The subject was also handled in some of the He- 
siodic poems, but we do not know to what extent.! The Thébais 
was composed more in honor of Argos than of Thébes, as the 
first line of it, one of the few fragments still preserved, beto 
kens.? 


SIEGES OF THEBES. 


The legend, about to recount fraternal dissension of the mest 
implacable kind, comprehending in its results not only the imme- 
diate relations of the infuriated brothers, but many chosen com- 
panions of the heroic race along with them, takes its start from 


‘the paternal curse of CEdipus, which overhangs and determines 


all the gloomy sequel. 

CEdipus, though king of Thébes and father of four children 
by Euryganeia (according to the CEdipodia), has become the de- 
voted victim of the Erinnyes, in consequence of the self-inflicted 
death of his mother, which he has unconsciously caused, as well 
as of his unintentional parricide. Though he had long forsworn 
the use of all the ornaments and luxuries which his father had in- 
herited from his kingly progenitors, yet when through age he had 
come to be dependent upon his two sons, Polynikés one day broke 
through this interdict, and set before him the silver table and the 
splendid wine-cup of Kadmus, which Laius had always been ac- 
customed to employ. The old king had no sooner seen these 
precious appendages of the regal life of his father, than his mind 
was overrun by a calamitous phrenzy, and he imprecated terrible 
curses on his sons, predicting that there would be bitter and end- 
less warfare between them. The goddess Erinnys heard and 
heeded him ; and he repeated the curse again on another occasion, 
when his sons, who had always been accustomed to send to him 
the shoulder of the victims sacrificed on the altar, caused the but- 


1 Hesiod, ap. Schol. Iliad. xxiii. 680, which passage does nut seem to me 
80 much at variance with the incidents stated in other poets as Leutsch 
imagines. 

*"Apyoc ἄειδε, Sed, πολυδίψιον, ἔνϑεν ἄνακτες (see Leutsch, ib. c. 4. p 
29). 


470 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


wek to be served to him in place of it.! He resented this αὐ an 
insult, and prayed the gods that they might perish each by the 
hand of the other. Throughout the tragedians as well as in the 
old epic, the paternal curse, springing immediately from the mis- 
guided Cé£dipus himself, but remotely from the parricide and 
incest with which he has tainted his breed, is seen to domineer 
over the course of events — the Erinnys who executes that curse 
being the irresistible, though concealed, agent. Aischylus not 
only preserves the fatal efficiency of the paternal curse, but even 
briefly glances at the causes assigned for it in the Thébais, with- 
out superadding any new motives. In the judgment of Sopho- 
klés, or of his audience, the conception of a father cursing his 
sons upon such apparently trifling grounds was odious ; and that 
great poet introduced many aggravating circumstances, describing 
the old blind father as having been barbarously turned out of 
doors by his sons to wander abroad in exile and poverty. Though 
by this change he rendered his poem more coherent and self- 
justifying, yet he departed, from the spirit of the old legend, 


 Fragm. of the Thébais, ap. Athenz. xii. p. 465, ὅτε οὐτῷ παρέϑηκαν ἐκπώ- 
wara ἃ ἀπηγορεύκει, λέγων οὕτως. 
Αὐτὰρ ὁ διογένης ἤρως ξανϑὸς Πολυνείκης 
Πρῶτα μὲν Οἰδίποδι καλὴν παρέϑηκε τράπεζαν 
᾿Αργυρέην Κάδμοιο ϑεόύόφρονος - αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα 
Χρύσεον ἔμπλησεν καλὸν δέπας ἧδεος οἴνου " 
Αὐτὰρ by’ ὡς ὠράσϑη παρακείμενα πατρὸς ἑοῖο 
Τιμήεντα γέρα, μέγα οἱ κακὸν ἔμπεσε ϑυμῷ. 
Αἶψα δὲ παισὶν ἑοῖσε μετ᾽ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἐπαρὰς 
᾿Αργαλέας ἠρᾶτο" ϑεὸν δ᾽ οὐ λάνϑαν᾽ ἜἘριννύν" 
Ὥς οὐ οἱ πατρῷα γ᾽ ἐνὶ φιλότητι δάσαιντο, 
Elev δ᾽ ἀμφοτέροις αἰεὶ πόλεμοί τε μάχαΐ τε. 
See Leutsch, Thebaid. Cycl. Relig, p. 38. 
The other fragment from the same Thébais is cited by the Schol. ad Soph 
(dip. Colon. 1378.— 
Ἴσχιον ὡς ἐνόησε, χαμαὶ βάλεν, εἶπέ τε μῦϑον" 
Ὦ μοι ἐγὼ, παῖδές μοι ὀνειδείοντες ἔπεμψαν. 
Εὐκτο Διὶ ϑ3ασιλὴϊ καὶ ἄλλοις ἀϑανάτοισι, 
Χερσὶν ὑπ᾽ ἀλλήλων καταβήμεναι "Αἴδος εἴσω. 
Τὰ δὲ παραπλήσια τῷ ἐποποιῷ καὶ Αἴσχυλος ἐν τοῖς Ἕπτα ἐπὶ Θήβας. in 
spite of the protest of Schutz, in his note, I think that the scholiast has un- 
derstood the words ἐπικοτος τροφᾶς (Sept. ad Theb. 787) in their plain and 


just meaning 


ADRASTUS OF ARGOS. 97) 


3οοογάϊηρ to which (Edipus has contracted by his unconscious 
misdeeds an incurable taint destined to pass onward to his progeny. 
His mind is alienated, and he curses them, not because he has 
suffered seriously by their guilt, but because he is made the blind 
instrument of an avenging Erinnys for the ruin of the house of 
Laius.! 

After the death of C&dipus and the celebration of his funeral 
games, at which amongst others, Argeia, daughter of Adrastus 
(afterwards the wife of Polynikés), was present,2 his two sons 
soon quarrelled respecting the succession. The circumstances 
are differently related; but it appears that, according to the orig- 
inal narrative, the wrong and injustice was on the part of Poly- 
nikés, who, however, was obliged to leave Thébes and to seek 
shelter with Adrastus, king of Argos. Here he met Tydeus, a 
fugitive, at the same time, from A®télia: it was dark when they 
arrived, and a broil ensued between the two exiles, but Adrastus 
came out and parted them. He had been enjoined by an oracle 
to give his two daughters in marriage to a lion and a boar, and 
he thought this occasion had now arrived, inasmuch as one of the 
combatants carried on his shield a lion, the other a boar. He 
accordingly gave Deipylé in marriage to Tydeus, and Argeia to 
Polynikés: moreover, he resolved to restore by armed resistance 
both his sons-in-law to their respective countries.3 


' The curses of CEdipus are very frequently and emphatically dwelt upon 
both by Aschylus and Sophoklés (Sept. ad Theb. 70-586, 655-697, etc. ; 


CEdip. Colon. 1293-1378). The former continues the same point of view 
as the Thébats, when he mentions — 


Τὰς περιϑύμους 
Κατάρας βλαψίφρονος Οἰδιπόδα (727) ; 

Or, λόγου τ᾽ ἄνοια καὶ φρενῶν 'Ἐριννύς (Soph. Antig. 584). 

The Scholiast on Sophoklés (Ed. Col. 1378) treats the cause assigned by 
the ancient Thébats for the curse vented by CEdipus as trivial and ludicrous 

The A®geids at Sparta, who traced their descent to Kadmus, suffered from 
terrible maladies which destroyed the lives of their children; an oracle di- 
rected them to appease the Erinnyes of Laius and CEdipus by erecting a 
temple, upon which the maladies speedily ceased (Herodot. iv.). 

* Hesiod. ap. Schol. Iliad. xxiii. 680. 

* Apollodor. iii. 5,9; Hygin. f. 69; ZEschyl. Sept. ad Theb. 573. Hyginus 
says that Polynikés came clothed in the skin of a lion, and Tydeus in that 
fa boar; perhaps after Antimachus, who said that Tydeus had been brought 


vrs HISTORY OF GREECE. 


On proposing the expedition to the Argeian chiefs around hin 
he found most of them willing auxiliaries; but Amphiaraus — 
formerly his bitter opponent, but now reconciled to him, and 
husband of his sister Eriphylé— strongly opposed him.' He 
denounced the enterprise as unjust and contrary to the will of 
the gods. Again, being of a prophetic stock, descended from 
Melampus, he foretold the certain death both of himself and of 
the principal leaders, should they involve themselves as accom- 
plices in the mad violence of Tydeus or the criminal ambition of 
Polynikés. Amphiaraus, already distinguished both in the Kaly- 
donian boar-hunt and in the funeral games of Pelias, was in the 
Théban war the most conspicuous of all the heroes, and absolutely 
indispensable to its success. But his reluctance to engage in it 
was invincible, nor was it possible to prevail upon him except 
through the influence of his wife Eriphylé. Polynikés, having 
brought with him from Thébes the splendid robe and necklace 
given by the gods to Harmonia on her marriage with Kadmus, 
offered it as a bribe to Eriphylé, on condition that she would 
influence the determination of Amphiaraus. ‘The sordid wife, 
seduced by so matchless a present, betrayed the lurking-place of 
her husband, and involved him in the fatal expedition.2, Amphia- 
raus, reluctantly dragged forth, and foreknowing the disastrous 
issue of the expedition both to himself and to his associates, 
addressed his last injunctions, at the moment of mounting his 
chariot, to his sons Alkmzén and Amphilochus, commanding 
Alkmzén to avenge his approaching death by killing the venal 
Eriphylé, and by undertaking a second expedition against Thébes. 

The Attic dramatists describe this expedition as having been 
conducted by seven chiefs, one to each of the seven celebrated 
gates of Thébes. But the Cyclic Thébais gave to it a much 


up by swineherds (Antimach, Fragm. 27, ed. Diintzer; ap. Schol. Iliad. iv. 
400). Very probably, however, the old Thébais compared Tydeus and Poly- 
nikés to a lion and a boar, on account of their courage and fierceness; a 
simile quite in the Homeric character. Mnaseas gave the words of the orscle 
(ap. Schol. Eurip. Pheeniss. 411 ). 

δ See Pindar, Nem. ix. 30, with the instructive Scholium 

* Apollodor. iii. 6,2. The treachery of “the hateful Eriphylé” is noticed 
in the Odyssey, xi. 327: Odysseus sees her in the under-world along with 
the many wives and daughters of the heroes. 


MARCH OF ADRASTUS AGAINST THEBES. 278 


more comprehensive character, mentioning auxiliaries from 
Arcadia, Messéné, and various parts of Peloponnésus;! and the 
application of Tydeus and Polynikés at Mykénz in the course of 
their circuit made to collect allies, is mentioned in the Iliad. 
They were well received at Mykéne; but the warning signals 
given by the gods were so terrible that no Mykenan could 
venture to accompany them.? The seven principal chiefs how- 
ever were Adrastus, Amphiarius, Kapaneus, Hippomedén, Par- 
thenopeus| Tydeus and Polynikés3 When the army had 
advanced as far as the river Asépus, a halt was made for sacrifice 
and banquet; while Tydeus was sent to Thébes as envoy to 
demand the restoration of Polynikés to his rights. His demand 
was refused; but finding the chief Kadmeians assembled at the 
banquet in the house of Eteoklés, he challenged them all to con- 
tend with him in boxing or wrestling. So efficacious was the aid 
of the goddess Athéné that he overcame them all; and the Kad- 
meians were so indignant at their defeat, that they placed an 
ambuscade of fifty men to intercept him in his way back to the 
army. ΑἹ] of them perished by the hand of this warrior, small 
in stature and of few words, but desperate and irresistible in the 
fight. One alone was spared, Mzxon, in consequence of special 
signals from the gods.4 

The Kadmeians, assisted by their allies the Phokians and the 
Phlegyz, marched out to resist the invaders, and fought a battie 


* Pausan. ii. 20,4; ix. 9,1. His testimony to this, as he had read and 
admired the Cyclic Thébais, seems quite sufficient, in spite of the opinion of 
Welcker to the contrary (Aischylische Trilogie. p. 375). 

® Iliad, iv. 376. 

* There are differences in respect to the names of the seven: Atschylus 
(Sept. ad Theb. 461) leaves out Adrastus as one of the seven, and includes 
Rteoklus instead of him ; others left out Tydeus and Polynikés, and inserted 
Eteoklus and Mekisteus (Apollodér. iii. 6,3). Antimachus, in his poetical 
Thébats, called Parthenopeus an Argeian, not an Arcadian (Schol. ad 
ZEschyl. Sept. ad. Theb. 532). 

4 Tliad, iv. 381-400, with the Schol. The first celebration of the Nemean 
games is connected with this march of the army of Adrastus against Thébes: 
they were celebrated in honor of Archemorus, the infant son of Lykurgus, 
who had beea killed by a serpent while his nurse Hypsipylé went to show the 
fountain to the thirsty Argeian chiefs (Apollod. iii. 6,4; Schol. ad Pindar 
Nem. 1) 

VOL. 1. der 180e 


474 HISTORY OF 


near tae Isménian hill, in which they were defeated and forced to 
retire within the walls. The prophet Teiresias acquainted them 
that if Mencekeus, son of Kreén, would offer himself as a victim 
to Arés, victory would be assured to Thébes. The generous 
youth, as soon as he learnt that his life was to be the price of 
safety to his country, went and slew himself before the gates. 
The heroes along with Adrastus now commenced a vigorous 
attack upon the town, each of the seven selecting one of the gates 
to assault. The contest was long and strenuously maintained 

but the devotion of Meneekeus had procured for the Thébans the 
protection of the gods. Parthenopzeus was killed with a stone by 
Periklymenus ; and when the furious Kapaneus, having planted 
a scaling-ladder, had mounted the walls, he was smitten by a 
thunderbolt from Zeus and cast down dead upon the earth. This 
event struck terror into the Argeians, and Adrastus called back 
his troops from the attack. The Thébans now sallied forth to 
pursue them, when Eteoklés, arresting the battle, proposed to 
decide the controversy by single combat with his brother. The 
challenge, eagerly accepted by Polynikés, was agreed to by 
Adrastus: a single combat ensued between the two brothers, in 
which both were exasperated to fury and both ultimately slain by 
each other’s hand. This equal termination left the result of the 
general contest still undetermined, and the bulk of the two armies 
renewed the fight. In the sanguinary struggle which ensued the 
sons of Astakus on the Théban side displayed the most conspicu- 
ous and successful valor. One of them,! Melanippus, mortally 
wounded 'Tydeus — while two others, Leades and Amphidikus, 
killed Eteoklus and Hippomedén. Amphiaraus avenged Tydeus 
by killing Melanippus; but unable to arrest the rout of the army, 


+ The story reeounted that the head of Melanippus was brought to Tydeus 
as he was about to expire of his wound, and that he knawed it with his teeth. 
a story touched upon by Sophoklés (apud Herodian. in Rhetor. Greec. t. viii. 
p. 601, Walz.). 

The lyric poet Bacchylidés (ap. Schol. Aristoph. Aves, 1535) seems to have 
handled the story even earlier than Sophoklés. 

We find the same allegation embodied in charges against real historical 
men: the invective of Montanus against Aquilius Regulus, at the beginning 
of the reign of Vespasian, affirmed, “ datam interfectori Pisonis pecuniam 8 
Kegulo, appetitumque morsu Pisonis cay ¥” (Tacit Hist. iv. 42). 


AMPHIARAUS. 978 


Ge fled with the rest, closely pursued by Periklymenus. ‘The 
latter was about to pierce him with his spear, when the beneficence 
of Zeus rescued him from this disgrace — miraculously opening 
the earth under him, so that Amphiarius with his chariot and 
horses was received unscathed into her bosom.! The exact spot 
where this memorable incident happened was indicated by a se- 
pulchral building, and shown by the Thébans down to the days of 
Pausanias — its sanctity being attested by the fact, that no animal 
would consent to touch the herbage which grew within the sacred 
inclosure. Amphiaraéus, rendered immortal by Zeus, was wor- 
shipped as a god at Argos, at Thébes and at Orépus — and for 
many centuries gave answers at his oracle to the questions of the 


pious applicant.2 

* Apollodor. iii. 6,8. Pindar, Olymp. vi. 11; Nem. ix. 13-27. Pausan. 
1x. 8, 2; 18, 2-4. 

Euripidés, in the Phoenissse (1122 segq.), describes the battle generally ; see 
also Aisch. 5, Th. 392. It appears by Pausanias that the Thébans had 
poems or legends of their own, relative to this war: they dissented in various 
points from the Cyclic Thébais (ix. 18,4). The Thébais said that Perikly- 
menus had killed Parthenopsus; the Thébans assigned this exploit to 
Asphodikus, a warrior not commemorated by any of the poets known to us. 

The village of Harma, between Tanagra and Mykaléssus, was affirmed by 
some to have been the spot where Amphiarius closed his life (Strabo, ix. p 
404): Sophoklés placed the scene at the Amphiarwium near Orépus (ap 
Strabon. ix. p. 399). 

? Pindar, Olymp. vi. 16. Ἕπτα δ᾽ ἔπειτα πυρᾶν νέκρων τελεσϑέντων 
Ταλαϊονίδας Εἶπεν ἐν Θήβαισι τοιοῦτόν τε ἔπος" Ποϑέω στρατιᾶς ὀφϑαλμὸν 
ἐμᾶς ᾿Αμφότερον, μάντιν τ᾽ ἀγαϑὸν καὶ δουρὶ μάχεσϑαι. 

The scholiast affirms that these last expressions are borrowed by Pinda: 
from the Cyclic Thebais. 

The temple of Amphiaréus (Pausan. ii. 23, 2), his oracle, seems to have 
been inferior in estimation only to that of Delphi (Herodot. i. 52; Pausan. i. 
34; Cicero, Divin.i. 40). Croesus sent a rich present to Amphiaraus, πυϑό- 
μενος αὐτοῦ THY Te ἀρετὴν καὶ τὴν πάϑην (Herod. 1. c); a striking proof how 
these interesting legends were recounted and believed as genuine historical 
facts. Other adventures of Amphiariius in the expedition against Thébes 
were commemorated in the carvings on the Thronus at Amyklx (Pausan. 
iii. 18, 4). 

Eschylus (Sept. Theb. 611) seems to enter into the Théban view, doubt 
less highly respectful towards Amphiaraus, when he places ig the mouth of 
the Kadmeian king Eteoklés such high encomiums on Amphiaréus, and es 
marked a eontrast with the other chieis from Argos. 


276 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Adrastus, thus deprived of the prophet and warrior whom he 
regarded as “ the eye of his army,” and having seen the other 
chiefs killed in the disastrous fight, was forced to take flight sin- 
gly, and was preserved by the matchless swiftness of his horse 
Areion, the offspring of Poseidon. He reached Argos on his 
return, bringing with him nothing except “ his garments of woe 
and his black-maned steed.”! 

Kre6n, father of the heroic youth Mencekeus, succeeding to 
the administration of Thébes after the death of the two hostile 
brothers and the repulse of Adrastus, caused Eteoklés to be 
buried with distinguished honor, but cast out ignominiously the 
body of Polynikés as a traitor to his country, forbidding every 
one on pain of death to consign it to the tomb. He likewise 
refused permission to Adrastus to inter the bodies of his fallen 
comrades. This proceeding, so offensive to Grecian feeling, gave 
rise to two further tales; one of them at least of the highest 
pathos and interest. Antigoné, the sister of Polynikés, heard 
with indignation the revolting edict consigning her brother’s body 
to the dogs and vultures, and depriving it of those rites which 
were considered essential to the repose of the dead. Unmoved 
by the dissuading counsel of an affectionate but timid sister, and 
unable to procure assistance, she determined to brave the hazard 
and to bury the body with her own hands. She was detected in 
the act; and Kredén, though forewarned by Teiresias of the con- 
sequences, gave orders that she should be buried alive, as having 
deliberately set at naught the solemn edict of the city. His son 
Hzmon, to whom she was engaged to be married, in vain inter- 
ceded for her life. In an agony of despair he slew himself in 
the sepulchre to which the living Antigoné had been eonsigned ; 


* Pausan. viii 25, 5, from the Cyclic Thébats, Eiuara λυγρὰ φέρων σὺν 
"Apeiovt κυανοχαίτῃ; also Apollodor. iii. 6, 8. 

The celebrity of the horse Areién was extolled in the Iliad (xxiii. 346), 
in the Cyclic Thébats, and also in the Thébais of Antimachus (Pausan. L 
¢.): by the Arcadians of Thelpusia he was said to be the offspring of Démé. 
tér by Poseidén, — he, and a daughter whose name Pausanias will not com 
munieate to the uninitiated (ἧς τὸ ὄνομα ἐς ἀτελέστους λέγειν οὐ νομίζουσι, 
Le.). A different story is in the Schol. Iliad. xxiii. 346; and in Antimach. 
as. who affirme) that “ Gea herself had produced him. as a wonder to mor 
tal men” ‘see Antimach. Frag. 16. p. 109; Epic. Greec. Frag. ed. Diintzer). 


SEPULTURE OF THE CHIEFS 47] 


and his mother Eurydiké, the wife of Kre6n, inconsolable for his 
death, perished by her own hand. And thus the new light which 
seemed to be springing up over the last remaining scion of the 
devoted family of C&dipus, is extinguished amidst gloom and 
horrors — which overshadowed also the house and dynasty of 
Kreén.! 

The other tale stands more apart from the original legend, 
ani scems to have had its origin in the patriotic pride of the 
Athenians. Adrastus, unable to obtain permission from the Thé- 
bans to inter the fallen chieftains, presented himself in suppliant 
guise, accompanied by their disconsolate mothers, to Théseus at 
Eleusis. He implored the Athenian warrior to extort from the 
perverse Thébans that last melancholy privilege which no decent 
or pious Greeks ever thought of withholding, and thus to stand 
forth as the champion of Grecian public morality in one of its 
most essential points, not less than of the rights of the subterra- 
nean gods. The Thébans obstinately persisting in their refusal, 
Théseus undertook an expedition against their city, vanquished 
them in the field, and compelled them by force of arms to permit 
the sepulture of their fallen enemies. This chivalrous interposi- 
tion, celebrated in one of the preserved dramas of Euripidés, 
formed a subject of glorious recollection to the Athenians through 
out the historical age: their orators dwelt upon it in terms of 
animated panegyric; and it seems to have been accepted as a 
real fact of the past time, with not less implicit conviction than 
the Lattle of Marathén.? But the Thébans, though equally per- 
suaded of the truth of the main story, dissented from the Athe- 
nian version of it, maintaining that they had given up the bodies 
for sepulture voluntarily and of their own accord. ‘The tomb of 


 Sophokl. Antigon. 581. Νῦν γὰρ ἐσχάτας ὑπὲρ Ῥίζας éréraro φώος ἐν 
Οἰδίπου δόμοις, ete. 

The pathetic tale here briefly recounted forms the subject of this beautifut 
tragedy of Sophoklés, the argument of which is supposed by Boeckh to have 
been borrowed in its primary rudiments from the Cyclic Thébais or the 
(Edipodia (Boeckh, Dissertation appended to his translation of the Anti- 
goné, c. x. p. 146) ; see Apollodér. iii. 7, 1. 

4ischylus also touches upon the heroism of Antigoné (Sep. Theb. 984). 

* Apollodér. iii. 7,1; Rurip. Supp. passim ; Herodot. ix 27; Plato, Menex 
sn. c. 9; Lysias, Epitaph. c 4; Isokrat. Orat. Panegyr. p 196, Auger 


978 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the chieftains was shown near Eleusis even in the days of Pan- 
sanias.! 

A large proportion both of the interesting persons and of the 
exalted acts of legendary Greece belongs to the female sex. Nor 
can we on this occasion pass over the name of Evadné, the de- 
voted widow of Kapaneus, who cast herself on the funeral pile 
of her husband and perished. 

The defeat of the seven chiefs before Thébes was amply aven- 
ged by their sons, again under the guidance of Adrastus : —Agia- 
leus son of Adrastus, Thersander son of Polynikés, Alkmzén 
and Amphilochus, sons of Amphiaraus, Diomédés son of Tydeus, 
Sthenelus son of Kapaneus, Promachus son of Parthenopzus, and 
Euryalus son of Mekistheus, joined in this expedition. Though 
all these youthful warriors, called the Epigoni, took part in the 
expedition, the grand and prominent place appears to have been 
occupied by Alkmzén, son of Amphiarius. Assistance was 
given to them from Corinth and Megara, as well as from Mes- 
séné and Arcadia; while Zeus manifested his favorable disposi- 
tions by signals not to be mistaken. At the river Glisas the 
Epigoni were met by the Thébans in arms, and a battle took 
place in which the latter were completely defeated. Laodamas, 
son of Eteoklés, killed /Egialeus, son of Adrastus; but he and 
his army were routed and driven within the walls by the valor 
and energy of Alkmzén. The defeated Kadmeians consulted 
the prophet Teiresias, who informed them that the gods had de- 
clared for their enemies, and that there was no longer any hope 
of successful resistance. By his advice they sent a herald to the 
assailants offering to surrender the town, while they themselves 
eonveyed away their wives and children, and fled under the com 


> Pausan. i. 39, 2. 
* Eurip. Supplic. 1004-1110 
? Homer, Iliad, iv. 406. Sthenelus, the companion of Diomédés and one 
" τὸ Epigoni, says to Agamemnon, — 
Ἡμεῖς τοι πατέρων μεγ᾽ ἀμείνονες εὔχοριεϑ᾽ εἰναι 
Ἡμεῖς καὶ Θήβης ἕδος εἵλομεν ἑπταπύλοιο, 
Παυρότερον λαὸν ἀγαγόνϑ᾽ ὑπὸ τεῖχος "Ἄρειον, 
Πειϑόμενοι τεράεσσι ϑεῶν καὶ Ζηνὸς apy 
Αὐτοὶ δὲ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασϑαλίῳσιν ὅλοντο. 


SECOND EXPEDITION.— THE EPIGONI. 279 


mand of Laodamas to the Illyrians,! upon which the Epigoni 
entered Thébes, and established Thersander, son of Polynikés, 
on the throne. 

Adrastus, who in the former expedition had been the single 
survivor amongst so many fallen companions, now found himself 
the only exception to the general triumph and joy of the con- 
querors: he had lost his son Agialeus. and the violent sorrow 
arising from the event prematurely cut short his life. His soft 
voice and persuasive eloquence were proverbial in the ancient 
epic.2, He was worshipped as a hero both at Argos and at Sik- 
yon, but with especial solemnity in the last-mentioned place, 
where his Her6éum stood in the public agora, and where his ex- 
ploits as well as his sufferings were celebrated periodically in ly- 
ric tragedies. Melanippus, son of Astakus, the brave defender 
of Thébes, who had slain both Tydeus and Mekistheus, was wor- 
shipped with no less solemnity by the Thébans. The enmity 
of these two herees rendered it impossible for both of them to be 
worshipped close upon the same spot. Accordingly it came to 
pass during the historical period, about the time of the Solonian 
legislation at Athens, that Kleisthenés, despot of Siky6n, wishing 
to banish the hero Adrastus and abolish the religious solemnities 
celebrated in honor of the latter by the Sikyonians, first applied 
to the Delphian oracle for permission to carry this banishment 
into effect directly and forcibly. That permission being refused, 
he next sent to Thébes an intimation that he was anxious to in- 
troduce their hero Melanippus into Sikyén. The Thébans will- 
ingly consented, and he assigned to the new hero a consecrated 
spot in the strongest and most commanding portion of the Sik- 
yonian prytaneium. He did this (says the historian) “ knowing 
that Adrastus would forthwith go away of his own accord; since 


' Apollod6r. iii. 7,4. Herodot. v. 57-61. Pausan, ix. 5,7; 9,2. Dioddr. 
iv. 65-66. 

Pindar represents Adrastus as concerned in the second expedition against 
Thébes (Pyth. viii. 40-58). 

* Ῥλῶσσαν τ᾽ ᾿Αδρήστου μειλιχόγηρυν ἔχοι (Tyrteus, Eleg. 9, 7, Schneide- 
win); corapare Plato, Phedr. c. 118. “ Adrasti pallentis imago” meets the 
eye of Xneas in the under-world (Eneid, vi. 480). 

* About Melanippus, see Pindar, Nem. x.36. His sepulchre was shown 
near the Preetid zates of ‘Inenes (Pausan. ix. 18, 1). 


930 HISTORY OF GREECE 


Melanippus was of all persons the most odious to him, as having 
slain both his son-in-law and his brother.” Kleisthenes more- 
over diverted the festivals and sacrifices which had been offered 
to Adrastus, to the newly established hero Melanippus ; and the 
lyric tragedies from the worship of Adrastus to that of Diony- 
sus. But his dynasty did not long continue after his decease, 
and the Sikyonians then reéstablished their ancient solemnities.! 
Near the Proetid gate of Thébes were seen the tombs of 
two combatants who had hated each other during life even more 
than Adrastus and Melanippus — the two brothers Eteoklés and 
Polynikés. Even as heroes and objects of worship, they still 
continued to manifest their inextinguishable hostility: those who 
offered sacrifices to them observed that the flame and the smoke 
from the two adjoining altars abhorred all communion, and flew 
off in directions exactly opposite. ‘The Théban exegetes assurec 
Pausanias of this fact. And though he did not himself witness 
it, yet having seen with his own eyes a miracle not very dissimi- 
lar at Pionie in Mysia, he had no difficulty in crediting their 
ion.2 
ΤΣ when forced into the first attack of Thebes — 


against his own foreknowledge and against the warnings of the 


1 This very curious and illustrative story is contained in Herodot. Υ͂. 67. 
Ἐπεὶ δὲ ὁ ϑεὸς τοῦτο οὐ παρεδίδου, ἀπελϑὼν ὀπίσω (Kleisthenés, — 
from Delphi) ἐφρόντιζε μηχανὴν τῇ αὐτὸς ὁ vA dp ded τος ana A aes ε- 
ται. ‘Qe δὲ οἱ ἐξευρῆσϑαι ἐδόκεε, πέμψας ἐς θῆβας τὰς Βοιωτίας, ἔφη é ἊΝ 
ἐπαγαγέσϑαι Μελώνιππον τὸν ᾿Αστακοῦ " οἱ δὲ θήβαῖϊοι ἔδοσαν. ee €TO 
δὲ τὸν Μελάνιππον ὁ Κλεισϑένης, καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο δεῖ ἀπηγήσασϑαι, ὡς ἔχϑισ- 
τον ἐόντα ᾿Αδρήστῳ᾽ ὃς τόν τε ἀδέλφεον Μηκιστέα ἀπεκτόνεε, καὶ τὸν γαμ- 

Τυδέα. 
a Sikyonians (Herodotus says) τά Te δὴ ἄλλα ἐτίμων τὸν “Αδρηστον, καὶ 
πρὸς τὰ πάϑεα αὐτοῦ τραγικοῖσι χόροισι ἐγέραιρον " τὸν μὲν Διόνυσον ov τιμε- 
δὲ "Αδρηστον. ; 
yo was cant as a hero at Megara as well as at Sikyon : the 
Megarians affirmed that he had died there on his way back from a 
(Pausan. i. 43, 1; Dieuchidas, ap. Schol. ad Pindar. Nem. ix. 31). is 
house at Argos was still shown when Pausanias visited the town (ii. om 

? Pausan. ix. 18,3. Τὰ ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῖς δρώμενα οὐ ϑεασάμενος πιστὰ ὅμως 
ὑπείληφα εἶναι. Compare Hygin. f. 68. 

“Et nova fraterno veniet concordia fumo, 
Quem vetus accensa separat ira pyra.” ( Ovid, Ibis, 35.’ 


‘The tale was copied by Ovid from Kallimachus (Trist. v. 5, 32.) 


ERIPHYLE AND ALKMZEON. 981 


gods — had enjoined his sons Alkmzén and Amphilochus not 
only to avenge his death upon the Thébans, but also tu punish 
the treachery of their mother, “ Eriphylé, the destroyer of her 
husband.”! In obedience to this command, and having obtained 
the sanction of the Delphian oracle, Alkmz6n slew his mother ;2 
out the awful Erinnys, the avenger of matricide, inflicted on him 
a long and terrible punishment, depriving him of his reason, and 
chasing him about from place to place without the possibility of 
repose or peace of mind. He craved protection and cure from 
the god at Delphi, who required him to dedicate at the temple, as 
an offering, the precious necklace of Kadmus, that irresistible 
bribe which had originally corrupted Eriphylé.3 He further inti- 
mated to the unhappy sufferer, that though the whole earth was 
tainted with his crime, and had become uninhabitable for him, 
yet there was a spot of ground which was not under the eye of 
the sun at the time when the matricide was committed, and where 


* Ανδροδάμαντ᾽ ᾿Εριφύλην (Pindar, Nem. ix. 16). A poem Eryphilé was 
included among the mythical compositions of Stesichorus: he mentioned in 
it that Asklépius had restored Kapaneus to life, and that he was for that 
reason struck dead by thunder from Zeus (Stesichor. Fragm. Kleine, 18, p. 
74). Two tragedies of Sophoklés once existed, Epigoni and Alkmadn 
(Welcker, Griechisch. Trag6d. i. p. 269): a few fragments also remain of the 
Latin Epigoni and Alphesibea of Attius: Ennius and Attius both composed 
or translated from the Greek a Latin Alkmeén (Poet. Scenic. Latin. ed. Both. 
pp. 33, 164, 198). 

* Hyginus gives the fable briefly (f. 73; see also Asclepiadés, ap. Schol. 
Odyss. xi. 326). In like manner, in the case of the matricide of Orestés, 
Apollo not only sanctions, but enjoins the deed ; but his protection against 
the avenging Erinnyés is very tardy, not taking effect until after Orestés has 
been long persecuted and tormented by them (see Zischyl. Eumen. 76, 197 
462). 

In the Alkme6n of the later tragic writer Thodektés, a distinction was 
drawn the gods had decreed that Eriphylé should die, but not that Alk- 
msn should kill her (Aristot. Rhetoric. ii. 24). Astydamas altered the 
story still more in his tragedy, and introduced Alkmeén as killing his 
mother ignorantly and without being aware who she was (Aristot. Poetic. c. 
27). The murder of Eriphylé by her son was one of the παρειλήμμενοι 
αὖϑο. which could not be departed from; but interpretations and qualifica- 
tions were resorted to, in order to prevent it from shocking the softened 
feelings of the spectators: see the criticism >f Aristotle on the d/emeén of 
Euripidés (Ethic. Nicom. iii. 1, 8). 

3. Ephorus ap. Athens. vi. p. 232. 


Be? MISTURY OF GREECE 


therefore Alkmz6n yet might find a tranquil shelter. The 
promise was realized at the mouth of the river Achelous, whose 
turbid stream was perpetually depositing new earth and forming 
additional islands. Upon one of these, near (Kniade, Alkmzén 
settled, permanently and in peace: he became the primitive 
hero of Akarnania, to which his son Akarnan gave name.! The 
necklace was found among the treasures of Delphi, together with 
that which had been given by Aphrodité to Helen, by the Phé- 
kian plunderers who stripped the temple in the time of Philip 
of Macedén. The Phékian women quarrelled about these valu- 
able ornaments: and we are told that the necklace of Eriphylé 
was allotted to a woman of gloomy and malignant disposition, 
who ended by putting her husband to death; that of Helen to a 
beautiful but volatile wife, who abandoned her husband from a 
‘reference for a young Epirot.? 

There were several other legends respecting the distracted 
Alkmz6n, either appropriated or invented by the Attic trage- 
dians. He went to Phégeus, king of Pséphis in Arcadia, whose 
danghter Arsinoé he married, giving as a nuptial present the 
necklace of Eriphylé. Being however unable to remain there, 


in consequence of the unremitting persecutions of the maternal 
Erinnys, he sought shelter at the residence of king Acheldéus, 
whose daughter Kallirhoé he made his wife, and on whose soil he 
obtained repose.? But Kallirhoé would not be satisfied without 


' Thucyd. ii. 68-102. * Athene. 1. ¢. 

* Apollodér. iii. 7, 5-6; Pausan. viii. 24,4. These two authors have pre- 
served the story of the Akarnanians and the old form of the legend, repre- 
senting Alkmz0n as having found shelter at the abode of the person or king 
Achelous, and married his daughter: Thucydidés omits the personality of 
Achelous, and merely announces the wanderer as having settled on certain 
new islands deposited by the river. 

I may remark that this is a singularly happy adaptation of a legend to an 
existing topographical fact. Generally speaking, before any such adaptation 
can be rendered plausible, the legend is of necessity much transformed ; here 
it is taken exactly as it stands, and still fits on with great precision. 

Ephorus recounted the whole sequence of events as so much politicad his- 
tory, divesting it altogether of the legendary character. Alkmz6n and Dio- 
médés, after having taken Thébes with the other Epigoni, jointly undertook 
an expedition into Aitdlia and Akarnania: they first punished the enemies of 
she old CEneus, grandfather of Diomédés, and established the latter as king 
in Kalyd6on; next they conquered Akernania for Alkmzén. Alkmzén, 


SIEGES OF THEBES 288 


the possession of the necklace of Eriphylé, and Alkmzén went 
back to Pséphis to fetch it, where Phégeus and his sons slew 
him. He had left twin sons, infants, with Kallirhoé, who prayed 
fervently to Zeus that they might be preternaturally invested 
with immediate manhood, in order to revenge the murder of their 
father. Her prayer was granted, and her sons Amphoterus and 
Akarnan, having instantaneously sprung up to manhood, proceed- 
ed into Arcadia, slew the murderers of their father, and brought 
away the necklace of Eriphylé, which they carried to Delphi.' 
Euripidés deviated still more widely from the ancient epic, by 
making Alkmz6n the husband of Manto, daughter of Teiresias, 
and the father of Amphilochus. According to the Cyclic Th3- 
bais, Mant6 was consigned by the victorious Epigoni as a special 
offering to the Delphian god; and Amphilochus was son of Am- 
phiaraus, not son of Alkmzén.2 He was the eponymous hero of 
the town called the Amphilochian Argos, in Akarnania, on the 
shore of the Gulf of Ambrakia. Thucydidés tells us that he 
went thither on his return from the Trojan war, being dissatisfied 
with the state of affairs which he found at the Peloponnésian 
Argos.3 The Akarnanians were remarkable for the numerous 
prophets which they supplied to the rest of Greece: their heroes 


though invited by AgamemnoOn to join in the Trojan war, would not consent 
to do so (Ephor. ap. Strabo. vii. p. 326; x. p. 462). 

' Apollodor. iii. 7, 7; Pausan. viii. 34, 8- 4. His remarks upon the mis- 
chievous longing of Kallirhoé for the necklace are curious: he ushers them 
in by saying, that “many men, and still more women, are given to fall into 
absurd desires,” etc. He recounts it with all the bonne foi which belongs to 
the most assured matter of fact. 

A short allusion is in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (ix. 412) 

5 Thébaid, Cy. Reliqu. p. 70, Leutsch; Schol. Apollon. Rhod. i. 408. The 
following lines cited in Athenzus (vii. p. 317) are supposed by Boeckh, with 
probable reason, to be taken from the Cyclic Thébais; a portion of the 
advice of Amphiarius to his sons at the time of setting out on his last 
expedition, — 

Πουλύποδός μοι, τέκνον, ἔχων νόον, ᾿Αμφίλοχ᾽ ἥρως, 
Τοῖσιν ἐφαρμόζου, τῶν ἂν κατὰ δῆμον ἴκηαι. 


There were two tragedies composed by Euripidés, under the title of ᾿Αλκ- 
μαΐων, ὁ διὰ Ψωφῖδος, and ᾿Αλκμαίων, ὁ διὰ Kopivdov (Dindorf, Fragm 
Eurip. p. 77). 

* Apollodér. iii. 7, 7; Thucyd. ii. 68. 


484 HISTOKY OF GREECE. 


were naturally drawn from the great prophetic race of the Me 
lam podids. 

Thus ends the legend of the two sieges of Thébes; the great- 
est event, except the siege of Troy, in the ancient epic; the great- 
est enterprise of war, between Greeks and Greeks, during the 
time of those who are called the Heroes. 


CHAPTER XV. 
LEGEND OF TROY. 


WE now arrive at the capital and culminating point of the 
Grecian epic,— the two sieges and capture of Troy, with the 
destinies of the dispersed heroes, Trojan as well as Grecian, 
‘after the second and most celebrated capture and destruction of 
the city. 

It would require a large volume to convey any tolerable idea 
of the vast extent and expansion of this interesting fable, first 
handled by so many poets, epic, lyric and tragic, with their end- 
less additions, transformations and contradictions, — then purged 
and recast by historical inquirers, who under color of setting 
aside the exaggerations of the poets, introduced a new vein of 
prosaic invention,-— lastly, moralized and allegorized by philoso- 
phers. In the present brief outline of the general field of Gre- 
cian legend, or of that which the Greeks believed to be their an- 
tiquities, the Trojan war can be regarded as only one among a 
large number of incidents upon which Hekatzus and Herodotus 
looked back as constituting their fore-time. Taken as a special 
legendary event, it is indeed of wider and larger interest than 
any other, but it is a mistake to single it out from the rest as if 
it rested upon a different and more trustworthy basis. I must 
therefore confine myself to an abridged narrative of the current 
and leading facts ; and amidst the numerous contradictory state. 
ments which are to be found respecting every one of them, I 
know no better ground of preference than comparative antiquity, 


LEGEND OF TROY. 285 


though even the oldest tales which we possess — those contained 
in the Iliad — evidently presuppose others of prior date. 

The primitive ancestor of the Trojan [ine of kings is Dardanus, 
son of Zeus, founder and eponymus of Dardania:! in the account 
of later authors, Dardanus was called the son of Zeus by Elektra, 
daughter of Atlas, and was further said to have come from Samo- 
thrace, or from Arcadia, or from Italy ;2 but of this Homer men- 
tions nothing. The first Dardanian town founded by him was in 
a lofty position on the descent of Mount Ida; for he was not yet 
strong enough to establish himself on the plain. But his son 
Erichthonius, by the favor cf Zeus, became the wealthiest of man- 
kind. His flocks and herds having multiplied, he had in his pas- 
tures three thousand mares, the offspring of some of whom, by 
Boreas, produced horses of preternatural swiftness. Trés, the 
son of Erichthonius, and the eponym of the Trojans, had three 
sons — Ilus, Assaracus, and the beautiful Ganymédés, whom Zeus 
stole away to become his cup-bearer in Olympus, giving to his 
father Trés, as the price of the youth, a team of immortal horses. 

From Ilus and Assaracus the Trojan and Dardanian lines di- 
verge; the former passing from [lus to Laomedén, Priam and 
Hector; the latter from Assaracus to Capys, Anchisés and 
7Eneas. TIlus founded in the plain of Troy the holy city of 
Tlium; Assaracus and his descendants remained sovereigns of 
Dardania.4 

It was under the proud Laomedon, son of Ilus, that Poseid6én 
and Apollo underwent, by command of Zeus, a temporary servi- 
tude ; the former building the walls of the town, the latter tending 
the flocks and herds. When their task was completed and the 
penal period had expired, they claimed the stipulated reward ; 
but Laomedon angrily repudiated their demand, and even threat- 
ened to cut off their ears, to tie them hand and foot, and to sell 
them in some distant island as slaves.5 He was punished for this 


' Tliad, xx. 215. 
3 Hellanik. Fragm. 129, Didot; Dionys. Hal. i. 50-61; Apollod6r. iii. 12 


1; Schol. Iliad. xviii. 486; Varro, ap. Servium ad Virgil. Aineid. iii 167 
Kephalon. Gergithius ap. Steph. Byz. v. ᾿Αρίσβη. 
3 Tliad, v. 265; Hellanik. Fr. 146; Apollod. ii. 5, 9. 


4 Tliad, xx. 236. 
® Tliad, vii. 451; xxi. 456. Hesiod. ap. Schol. Lycophr. 393 


488 AISTORY OF GREECH. 


treachery by a sea-monster, whom Poseidén sent to ravage his 
fields and to destroy his subjects. Laomedér publicly offered the 
immortal horses given by Zeus to his father Trés, as a reward to any 
one who would destroy the monster. But an oracle declared that a 
virgin of noble blood must be surrendered to him, and the lot fell 
upon Hesioné, daughter of Laomedon himself. Héraklés arriving 
at this critical moment, killed the monster by the aid of a fort 
built for him by Athéné and the Trojans,' so as to rescue both the 
exposed maiden and the people ; but Laomedon, by a second act 
of perfidy, gave him mortal horses in place of the matchless ani- 
mals which had been promised. Thus defrauded of his due, Héra- 
klés equipped six ships, attacked and captured Troy and killed 
Laomed6n,2 giving Hesioné to his friend and auxiliary Telamén, 
to whom she bore the celebrated archer Teukros.3 A _ painful 
sense of this expedition was preserved among the inhabitants of 
the historical town of [lium, who offered no worship to Héra 
klés.4 

Among all the sons of Laomed6én, Priam® was the only one who 
had remonstrated against the refusal of the well-earned guerdon 
of Héraklés; for which the hero recompensed him by placing 
him on the throne. Many and distinguished were his sons and 
daughters, as well by his wife Hekabé, daughter of Kisseus, as 
by other women. Among the sons were Hectér,’ Paris, Déipho- 


' Iliad, xx. 145; Dionys. Hal. i. 52. 

* Iliad, v. 640. Meneklés (ap. Schol. Venet. ad loc.) affirmed that this 
expedition of Héraklés was a fiction; but Dikssarchus gave, besides, other 
exploits of the hero in the same neighborhood, at Thébé Hypoplakié (Schol. 
Tliad. vi. 396). 

* Diodor. iv. 32-49. Compare Venet. Schol. ad Iliad. viii. 284. 

4 Strabo, xiii. p. 596. 

* As Dardanus, Trés and Ilus are respectively eponyms of Dardama 
Troy and Ilium, so Priam is eponym of the acropolis Pergamum. Πρίαμος ig 
in the Molic dialect Πέῤῥαμος (Hesychius): upon which Ahrens remarks, 
“ Ceeterum ex hac Molic4 nominis formA apparet, Priamum non minus arcis 
Περγάμων eponymum esse, quam Ilum urbis, Troem populi: Πέργαμα enim 
ἃ Ilepiaua natum est, ¢ in y mutato.” (Ahrens, De Dialecto olica, 8, 7. p 
56: compare ibid. 28, 8. p. 150, πεῤῥ᾽ ἀπάλω). 

9 Tliad, vi. 245; xxiv. 495. 

7 Hector was affirmed, both by Steisichorus and Ibykus, to be the son of 
Apollo (Stesichorus, ap. Schol. Ven. ad Iliad. xxiv. 259; Ibyki Fragm. xiv 


PARIS AND HELEN. 451 


bus, Helenus, Tréilus, Polités, Poiydérus; among the daugiiterr 
Laodiké, Kreiisa, Polyxena, and Kassandra. 

The birth of Paris was preceded by formidable presages; toe 
Hekabé dreamt that she was delivered of a firebrand, and Priam, 
on consulting the soothsayers, was informed that the son about 
to be born would prove fatal to him. Accordingly he directed 
the child to be exposed on Mount Ida; but the inauspicious kind- 
ness of the gods preserved him, and he grew up amidst the flocks 
and herds, active and beautiful, fair of hair and symmetrical in 
person, and the special faverite of Aphrodité.! 

It was to this youth, in his solitary shepherd’s walk on Mount 
Ida, that the three goddesses Héré, Athéné, and Aphrodité were 
conducted, in order that he might determine the dispute respect- 
ing their comparative beauty, which had arisen at the nuptials of 
Peleus and Thetis, — a dispute brought about in pursuance of the 
arrangement, and in accomplishment of the deep-laid designs, of 
Zeus. For Zeus, remarking with pain the immoderate numbers of 
the then existing heroic race, pitied the earth for the overwhelming 
burden which she was compelled to bear, and determined to 
lighten it by exciting a destructive and long-continued war.? 


ed. Schneidewin ) : both Euphorién (Fr. 125, Meineke) and Alexander Atélus 
follow the same idea. Stesichorus further stated, that afer the siege Apollo 
had carried Hekabé away into Lykia to rescne her from captivity (Pansa- 
nias, x. 27, 1): according to Euripidés, Apollo had promised that she should 
die in Troy (Troad. 427). 

By Sapph6, Hectér was given as a surname of Zeus, Ζεὺς “Ἕκτωρ (Hesy- 
chius, v. “Exropec) ; ἃ prince belonging to the regal family of Chios, anterior 
to the Ionic settlement, as mentioned by the Chian poet Ién (Pausan. vii. 3, 
8), was so called. 

’ Iliad, iii. 45-55 ; Schol. Iliad. iii. 325 ; Hygin. fab. 91; Apollodér. iii. 12, δ, 

* This was the motive assigned to Zeus by the old epic poem, the Cypriaa 
Verses (Frag. 1. Diintz. p. 12; ap. Schol. ad Iliad. i. 4): — 

Ἡ δὲ ἱστορία παρὰ Στασίνῳ τῷ τὰ Κύπρια πεποιηκότε εἰπόντ οὕτως 

Ἣν ὅτε μύρια φῦλα κατὰ χϑόνα πλαζόμενα 

βαρυστέρνου πλάτος αἴης. 

Ζεὺς δὲ ἰδὼν ἐλέησε, καὶ ἐν πυκιναῖς πραπίδεσσι 
Σύνϑετο κουφίσαι ἀνθρώπων παμβώτορα γαῖαν, 
Ῥιπίσες πολέμου μεγάλην ἔρυν ᾿Ἰλιακοῖο, 

Ὄφρα κενώσειεν ϑάνατῳ βάρος" οἱ δ᾽ ἐνὶ Τροίῃ 
Ἥρωες κτείναντο, Διὸς δ᾽ ἐτελείετο βουλή. 

The same motive is touched upon by Eaurip. Orest, 1635; Hesen. 30; and 


Vol, 1 14 


Pe HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Paris awarded the palm of beauty to Aphrodité, who promised 
him in recompense the possession of Helena, wife of the Spartan 
Menelaus, — the daughter of Zeus and the fairest of living women 
At the instance of Aphrodité, ships were built for him, and he 
embarked on the enterprise so fraught with eventual disaster 
to his native city, in spite of the menacing prophecies of his 
brother Helenus, and the always neglected warnings of Kassan- 
dra.' 

Paris, on arriving at Sparta, was hospitably entertained by 
Menelaus as well as by Kastér and Pollux, and was enabled te 
present the rich gifts which he had brought to Helen.2_ Menelaus 
then departed to Kréte, leaving Helen to entertain his Trojan 
guest —a favorable moment which was employed by Aphrodité 
to bring about the intrigue and the elopement. Paris carried 
away with him both Helen and a large sum of money belonging 
to Menelaus — made a prosperous voyage to Troy — and arrived 
there safely with his prize on the third day.3 

Menelaus, informed by Iris in Kréte of the perfidious return 
made by Paris for his hospitality, hastened home in grief and 


seriously maintained, as it seems, by Chrysippus, ap. Plutarch. Stoic. Rep. p. 
1049: but the poets do not commonly go back farther than the passion of 
Paris for Helen (Theognis, 1232; Simonid. Amorg. Fragm. 6, 118). 

The judgment of Paris was one of the scenes represented on the ancient 
chest of Kypselus at Olympia (Pausan. v. 19, 1). 

' Argument of the "Ex7 Κύπρια (ap. Diintzer, p. 10). These warnings of 
Kassandra form the subject of the obscure and affected poem of Lycophron. 

3 According to the Cyprian Verses, Helena was daughter of Zeus by Ne- 
mesis, who had in vain tried to evade the connection (Athene. viii. 334). 
Hesiod (Schol. Pindar. Nem. x. 150) represented her as daughter of Oceanus 
and Téthys, an oceanic nymph: Sappho (Fragm. 17, Schneidewin), Pausa- 
nias (i. 33, 7), Apollodérus (iii. 10, 7), and Isokratés (Encom. Helen. v. ii. p 
#66, Auger) reconcile the pretensions of Léda and Nemesis to a sort of joint 
maternity (see Heinrichsen, De Carminibus Cypriis, p. 45-46 ). 

3 Herodot. ii. 117. He gives distinctly the assertion of the Cyprian Verses 
which contradicts the argument of the poem as it appears in Proclus (Fragm. 
1. 1.), according to which latter, Paris is driven out of his course by a storm 
and captares the city of Sidén. Homer (Iliad, vi. 293) seems however to 
countenance the statement in the argument. 

That Paris was guilty of robbery, as well as of the abduction of Helen, is 
several times mentioned in the Iliad (iii. 144; vii. 350-363), also in the arge 


ment of the Cyprian Verses (see Aischyl. Agam. 534) 


GRECIAN ARMAMENT AGAINST TROY. 589 


indignation to consult with his brother Agamemnén, as well as 
with the venerable Nestor, on the means of avenging the out- 
rage. They made known the event to the Greek chiefs around 
them. among whom they found universal sympathy: Nestor, Pal- 
amédés and others went round to solicit aid in a contemplated 
attack of Troy, under the command of Agamemnon, to whom 
each chief promised both obedience and unwearied exertion until 
Helen should be recovered.'!' Ten years were spent in equipping 
the expedition. The goddesses Héré and Athéné, incensed at 
the preference given by Paris to Aphrodité, and animated by 
steady attachment to Argos, Sparta and Mykéne, took an active 
part in the cause; and the horses of Héré were fatigued with 
her repeated visits to the different parts of Greece.2 

By such efforts a force was at length assembled at Aulis? in 
Βα θεῖα, consisting of 1186 ships and more than 100,000 men, — 
a force outnumbering by more than ten to one anything that the 
‘Frojans themselves could oppose, and superior to the defenders 


The ancient epic (Schol. ad Il. ii. 286-339) does not recognize the story 
ὙΓ the numerous suitors of Helen, and the oath by which Tyndareus bound 
them all before he made the selection among them, that each should swear 
not only to acquiesce, but even to aid in maintaining undisturbed possession 
to the husband whom she should choose. This story seems to have been 
first told by Stesichorus (see Fragm. 20. ed. Kleine; Apollod. iii. 10,8). Yet 
it was evidently one of the prominent features of the current legend in the 
time of ‘Thucydidés (i. 9; Euripid Iphig. Aul. 51-80; Soph. Ajax, 1100). 

The exact spot in which Tyndareus exacted this oath from the suitors 
near Sparta, was pointed out even in the time of Pausanias (iii. 20, 9). 

? Tliad, iv. 27-55; xxiv. 765. Argument. Carm. Cypri. The point is em- 
phatically touched upon by Dio Chrysostom (Orat. xi. p. 335-336) in his 
assault upon the old legend. Two years’ preparation —in Dictys Cret. 
i. 16. 

* The Spartan king Agesilaus, when about to start from Greece on his 
expedition into Asia Minor (396 B.c.) went to Aulis personally, in order 
that he too might sacrifice on the spot where Agamemnon had sacrificed 
when he sailed for Troy (Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 4, 4). 

Skylax (c. 60) notices the ἱερὸν at Aulis, and nothing else: it seems to 
have been like the adjoining Delium, a temple with a small village grown up 
around it 

Aulis is recognized as the port from which the expedition started, in the 
Hesiodic Works and Days (v. 650° 


VOL. I. 18 190, 


290 HISTORY OF GREECB- 


of Troy even with all her allies included.’ It comprised heroes 
with their followers from the extreme points of Greece — from 
the north-western portions of Thessaly under Mount Olympus, 
as well as the western islands of Dulichium and Ithaca, and the 
eastern islands of Kréte and Rhodes. Agamemndén himself con- 
tributed 100 ships manned with the subjects of his kingdom of 
Mykénz, besides furnishing 60 ships to the Arcadians, who pos- 
sessed none of their own. Menelaus brought with him 60 ships, 
Nestor from Pylus 90, Idomeneus from Kréte and Diomédés 
from Argos 80 each. Forty ships were manned by the Eleians, 
under four different chiefs; the like number under Megés from 
Dulichium and the Echinades, and under Thoas from Kalydén 
and the other ΖΘ] απ towns. Odysseus from Ithaca, and Ajax 
from Salamis, brought 12 ships each. The Abantes from Eu- 
θα, under Elephénér, filled 40 vessels; the Boedtians, under 
Peneleés and Léitus, 50; the inhabitants of Orchomenus and 
Aspled6n, 30; the light-armed Locrians, under Ajax son of Oile- 
us,2 40; the Phékians as many. The Athenians, under Menes- 
theus, a chief distinguished for his skill in marshalling an army, 
mustered 50 ships ; the Myrmidons from Phthia and Hellas, under 
Achilles, assembled in 50 ships; Protesilaus from Phylaké and 
Pyrasus, and Eurypylus from Ormenium, each came with 40 
ships; Macha6én and Podaleirius, from Trikka, with 30 ; Admé- 
tus, from Phere and the lake Beebéis, with 11; and Philoktétés 
from Meliboea with 7: the Lapithz, under Polypeetés, son of 
Peirithous, filled 40 vessels; the A®nianes and Perrhebians, 
under Guneus,? 22; and the Magnétés under Prothous, 40; these 
last two were from the northernmost parts of Thessaly, near the 
mountains Pélion and Olympus. From Rhodes, under Tlépole- 
mus, son of Héraklés, appeared 9 ships; from Symé, under the 
comely but effeminate Nireus, 3; from Kés, Krapathus and the 


’ Tliad, ii. 128. Uschold (Geschichte des Trojanischen Kriegs, p. 9, Statgart 
1836) makes the total 135,000 men. 
* The Hesiodic Catalogue notices Oileus, or Ileus, with a singular etymo 


logy of his name (Fragm. 136, ed. Marktscheffel). 
3 Τουνεὺς is the Heros Eponymus of the town of (fonnus in Thessaly ; the 
duplication of the consonant and shortening of the vowel delong to the 


Holic dialect (Ahrens, De Dialect. Molic. 50, 4. p. 220). 


ACHILLES. — AJAX. — ODYSSEUS. 99; 


neighboring islands, 30, under the orders of Pheidippus and An- 
tiphus, sons of Thessalus and grandsons of Héraklés.! 

Among this band of heroes were included the distinguished 
warriors Ajax and Diomédés, and the sagacious Nestor; while 
Agamemnén himself, scarcely inferior to either of them in prow- 
ess, brought with him a high reputation for prudence in command. 
But the most marked and conspicuous of all were Achilles and 
Odysseus; the former a beautiful youth born of a divii.e mother, 
swift in the race, of fierce temper and irresistible might ; the lat- 
ter not less efficient as an ally from his eloquence, his untiring 
endurance, his inexhaustible resources under difficulty, and the 
mixture of daring courage with deep-laid cunning which never 
deserted him :? the blood of the arch-deceiver Sisyphus, through 
an illicit connection with his mother Antikleia, was said to flow 
in his veins,’ and he was especially patronized and protected by 
the goddess Athéné. Odysseus, unwilling at first to take part in 
the expedition, had even simulated insanity ; but Palamédés, sent 
to Ithaca to invite him, tested the reality of his madness by plac 
ing in the furrow where Odysseus was ploughing, his infant son 
Telemachus. ‘Thus detected, Odysseus could not refuse to join 
the Achzan host, but the prophet Halithersés predicted to him 
that twenty years would elapse before he revisited his native 
land. To Achilles the gods had promised the full effulgence of 


δ See the Catalogue in the second book of the Iliad. There must prea 
ably have been a Catalogue of the Greeks also in the Cyprian Verses ; for 
a Catalogue of the allies of Troy is specially noticed in the Argument ef 
Proclus (p. 12. Diintzer). 

Euripidés (Iphig. Aul. 165-300) devotes one of the songs of the Chorus 
to a partial Catalogue of the chief heroes. 

According to Dictys Cretensis, all the principal heroes engaged in the 
expedition were kinsmen, all Pelopids (i. 14): they take an oath not to lay 
down their arms until Helen shall have been recovered, and they receive 
from Agamemnon a large sum of gold. 

5 For the character of Odysseus, Iliad, iii. 202-220; x. 247. Odyss. xiii. 
295. 

The Philoktétés of Sophoklés carries out very justly the character of the 
Homeric Odysseus (see v. 1035) — more exactly than the Ajax of the same 
poet depicts it. 

+ Sophokl. Philoktét. 417, and Schol.— also Schol. ad Soph. Ajac. 190. 

4 Homer, Odyss. xxiv. 115; Atschyl. Agam. 841 ; Sophokl. Philoktét. 1013 


392 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


heroic glory before the walls of Troy; nor could the place be 
taken without both his cooperation and that of his son after him. 
But they had forewarned him that this brilliant career would be 
rapidly brought to a close; and that if he desired a long life, he 
must remain tranquil and inglorious in his native land. In spite 
of the reluctance of his mother Thetis, he preferred few years 
with bright renown, and joined the Achzan host.! When Nes- 
tor and Odysseus came to Phthia to invite him, both he and his 
intimate friend Patroclus eagerly obeyed the call.2 

Agamemnén and his powerful host set sail from Aulis:; but 
being ignorant of the locality and the direction, they landed by 
mistake in Teuthrania, a part of Mysia near the river Kaikus, 
and began to ravage the country under the persuasion that it 
was the neighborhood of Troy. Telephus, the king of the coun- 
try, opposed and repelled them, but was ultimately defeated and 
severely wounded by Achilles. The Greeks now, discovering 
their mistake, retired; but their fleet was dispersed by a storm 
and driven back to Greece. Achilles attacked and took Skyrus, 
and there married Deidamia, the daughter of Lycomédés.4 Te- 
lephus, suffering from his wounds, was directed by the oracle to 


vome to Greece and present himself to Achilles to be healed, by 
applying the scrapings of the spear with which the wound had 
been given: thus restored, he became the guide of the Greeks 
when they were prepared to renew their expedition.5 


with the Schol. Argument of the Cypria in Heinrichsen, De Carmin. Cypr. 
p. 23 (the sentence is left out in Dantzer, p. 11). 

A lost tragedy of Sophoklés, Odvoced¢ Μαινόμενος, handled this subject. 

Other Greek chiefs were not less reluctant than Odysseus to take part in 
the expedition: see the tale of Poemandrus, forming a part of the temple- 
legend of the Achilleiam at Tanagra in Beotia (Plutarch, Question. Gree 

. 299). 
᾿ ' Tliad, i. 352; ix. 411. * Iliad, xi. 782. 

* Telephus was the son of Augé, daughter of king Aleus of Tegea in 
Arcadia, by Héraklés: respecting her romantic adventures, see the previous 
chapter on Arcadian legends — Strabo’s faith in the story (xii. p. 572). 

The spot called the Harbor cf the Acheans, near Gryneium, was stated 
to be the place where Agamemnén and the chiefs took counsel whether they 
should attack Telephus or not (Skylax, c. 97; compare Strabo, xiv. Ρ. 622). 

* Hliad, xi. 664; Argum. Cypr. p. 11, Dantzer; Diktys Cret. ii. 8. 4. 

* Euripid. Telephus, Frag. 26, Nindorf ; Hygin. f. 101 ; Diktys, ii.10. En- 
tipidés had treated the adventure of Telephus in this lost tragedv: he gave 


AGAMEMNON AND IPHIGENELA. φορὰ 


The armament was again assembled at Aulis, but the 
Artemis, displeased with the boastful language of Agamemnon, 
prolonged the duration of adverse winds, and the offending chief 
was compelled to appease her by the well-known sacrifice of hig 
daughter Iphigeneia.! They then proceeded to Tenedos, from 
whence Odysseus and Menelaus were despatched as envoys to 
Troy, to redemand Helen and the stolen property. In spite of 
the prudent counsels of Antenér, who received the two Grecian 
chiefs with friendly hospitality, the ΤΥ. Jans rejected the demand, 
and the attack was resolved upon. It was foredoomed by the 
gods that the Greek who first landed should perish: Protesi- 
laus was generous enough to put himself upon this forlorn hope, 
and accordingly fell by the hand of Hectér. 

Meanwhile the Trojans had assembled a large body of allies 
from various parts of Asia Minor and Thrace: Dardanians under 
fEneas, Lykians under Sarpedén, Mysians, Karians, Meonians, 
Alizonians,2 Phrygians, Thracians, and Pzonians.2 But vain 


the miraculous cure with the dust of the spear, πριστοῖσε λογχῆς ϑέλγεται 
ῥινήμασι. Diktys softens down the prodigy: “ Achilles cum Machaone et 
Podalirio adhibeutes curam vulneri,” ete. Pliny (xxxiv. 15) gives to the 
rust of brass or iron a place in the list of genuine remedies. 

“ Longe omnino a Tiberi ad Caicum: quo in loco etiam Agamemnén 
Srrasset, nisi ducem Telephum invenisset” (Cicero, Pro L. Flacvo, ¢. 29). 
The portions of the Trojan legend treated in the lost epics and the trage 
<jans, seem to have been just as familiar to Cicero as those noticed in the 
Hliad. 

Strabo pays comparatively little attention to any portion of the Trojan 
war except what appears in Homer. He even goes so far as to give a reason 
why the Amazons did not come to the aid of Priam: they were at enmity 
with him, because Priam had aided the Phrygians agaist them (Iliad, iii 
188: in Strabo, τοῖς ᾿Ιῶσιν must be a mistake for τοῖς Φρυξίν). Strabo can 
hardly have read, and never alludes to, Arktinus; in whose poem the brave 
and beautiful Penthesileia, at the head of her Amazons, forms a marked 
epoch and incident of the war (Strabo, xii. 552). 

' Nothing occurs in Homer respecting the sacrifice of Iphigeneia (see 
Schol. Ven. ad Il. ix. 145). 

* No portion of the Homeric Catalogue gave more trouble to Démétrius 
of Sképsis and the other expositors than these Alizonians ( Strabo, xii. p 
$49; xiii. p. 603): a fictitious place called Alizonium, in the region of Ida, 
was got up to meet the difficulty (εἶτ᾽ ᾿Αλιζώνιον, τοῦτ' ἤδη πεπλασμέ. 
ον πρὸς THY τῶν ᾿Αλιζώνων ὑπόϑεσιν, etc., Strabo, 1. c.). 

° See the Catalogue of the Trojans (Iliad, ii. 815-877). 


994 HISTORY OF GREECE 


was the attempt to oppose the landing of the Greeks the Tro 
jans were routed, and even the invulnerable Cycnus,' son of 
Poseid6n, one of the great bulwarka of the defence, was siain by 
Achilles. Having driven the Trojans within their walls, Achilles 
attacked and stormed Lyrnéssus, Pédasus, Lesbos and other 
places in the neighborhood, twelve towns on the sea-coast and 
eleven in the interior; he drove off the oxen of A‘neas and 
pursued the hero himself, who narrowly escaped with his life: 
he surprised and killed the youthful Troilus, son of Priam, and 
captured several of the other sons, whom he sold as prisoners 
into the islands of the AZgean.2 He acquired as his captive the 
fair Briséis, while Chryséis was awarded to Agamemnon: he 
was moreover eager to see the divine Helen, the prize and sti- 
mulus of this memorable struggle; and Aphrodité and Theis 
contrived to bring about an interview between them.# 

At this period of the war the Grecian army was deprived of 
Palamédés, one of its ablest chiefs. Odysseus had not forgiven 
the artifice by which Palamédés had detected his simulated in- 
sanity, nor was he without jealousy of a rival clever aud cun- 
ning in a degree equal, if not superior, to himself; one who had 
enriched the Greeks with the invention of letters, of dice ior 


1 Cycnus was said by later writers to be king of Kolonw in the Troad 
(Strabe, xiii. p. 589-603; Aristotel. Rhetoric. ii. 23). Auschylus introduced 
up nt ‘itie stage both Cyenus and Memnén in territic equipments (Aris- 
toph u. an. 957. Οὐδ᾽ ἐξέπληττον αὐτοὺς Κύκνους ἄγων Kai Μέμνονας κω: 
δωνοφωλαροπώλους). Compare Welcker, Aschyl. Trilogie, p. 433. 

5 Iliad, xxiv. 752; Argument of the Cypria, pp. 11, 12, Diintzer. These 
desultory exploits of Achilles farnished much interesting romance to the 
later Greek poets (see Parthénius, Narrat. 21). See the neat summary of 
the principal events of the war in Quintus Smyrn. xiv. 125-140; Dio Chry- 
sost. Or. xi. p. 338-342. 

Troilus is only once named in the [liad (xxiv. 253); he was mentioned 
also in the Cypria; but his youth, beauty, and untimely end made him 88 
object of great interest with the subsequent poets. Sophoklés had a tragedy 
called Trétlus (Welcker, Griechisch. Tragéd. i. p. 124); Τὸν ἀνόρόπαεδα dea- 
πότην ἀπώλεσα, one of the Fragm. Even earlier than Sophoklés, his beaa- 
ty was celebrated by the tragedian Phrynichus (Athen. xiii. p. 564; Virgil, 
#neid, i. 474; Lycophrén, 307). 

* Argument. Cypr. p. 11, Diintz. Kai μετὰ ταῦτα ᾿Αχιλλεὺς Ἑλένην ine 
ϑυαεῖ ϑεάσασϑαι, καὶ συνήγαγον αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ ᾿Αφρυδίτη καὶ Θέτες. A 
ecene which would have been highly interesting in the hands of Homer. 


MURDER OF PALAMEDES. 298 


eh.asement, of night-watches, as well as with other useful sug 
gestions. According to the old Cyprian epic, Palamédés was 
drowned while fishing, by the hands of Odysseus and Diomédés.! 
Neither in the Iliad nor the Odyssey does the name of Palamédés 
occur: the lofty position which Odysseus occupies in both those 
poems — noticed with some degree of displeasure even by Pin- 
dar, who described Palamédés as the wiser man of the two— is 
sufficient to explain the omission.2, But in the more advanced 
period of the Greek mind, when intellectual superiority came to 
acquire a higher place in the public esteem as compared with 
military prowess, the character of Palamédés, combined with his 
unhappy fate, rendered him one of the most interesting persona- 
ges in the Trojan legend. Aschylus, Sophoklés and Euripidés 
each consecrated to him a special tragedy ; but the mode of his 
death as described in the old epic was not suitable to Athenian 
ideas, and accordingly he was represented as having been falsely 
accused of treason by Odysseus, who caused gold to be buried in 
his tent, and persuaded Agamemnén and the Grecian chiefs that 
Palamédés had received it from the Trojans. He thus forfeited 
his life, a victim to the calumny of Odysseus and to the delusion 


' Argum. Cypr. 1. 1.; Pausan. x. 31. The concluding portion of the 
Cypria seems to have passed under the title of Παλαμηδεία (see Fragm. 16 
and 18. p. 15, Dantz.; Welcker, Der Episch. Cycl. p.459; Eustath. ad Hom. 
Odyss. i. 107). 

The allusion of Quintus Smyrnzus (v. 197) seems rather to point to the 
story in the Cypria, which Strabo (viii. p. 368) appears not to have read. 

* Pindar, Nem. vii. 21; Aristidés, Orat. 46. p. 260. 

* See the Fragments of the three tragedians, Παλαμήδης --- Aristeidés, Or. - 
xlvi. p. 260; Philostrat. Heroic. x.; Hygin. fab. 95-105. Discourses for and 
against Palamédés, one by Alkidamas, and one under the name of Gorgias 
are printed in Reiske’s Orr Gree. t. viii. pp. 64, 102; Virgil, neid, ii. 82, 
with the ample commentary of Servius — Polyen. Proce. p. 6. 

Welcker (Griechisch. Tragéd. v. i. p. 180, vol. ii. p. 500) has evolved with 
ingenuity the remaining fragments of the lost tragedies. 

According to Diktys, Odysseus and Diomédés prevail upon Palamédés to 
be let down into a deep well, and then cast stones upon him (ii. 15). 

Xenophén (De Venatione, c. 1) evidently recognizes the story in the 
Cypria, that Odysseus and Diomédés caused the death of Palamédés ; but 
he cannot believe that two such exemplary men were really guilty of se 

uiquitous an act — κακοὶ δὲ ἐπραξαν τὸ ἔργον. ἢ 


One of tne emmences near Napoli still bears the name of Palamidhi. 


408 HISTOPY OF GREECR. 


of the leading Greeks. In the last speech made by the philoso. 
pher Socratés to his Athenian judges, he alludes with sclemnity 
and fellow-feeling to the unjust condemnation of Palamédés, ag 
analogous to that which he himself was about to suffer, and his 
companions seem to have dwelt with satisfaction on the compari- 
son. Palamédés passed for an instance of the slanderous enmity 
and misfortune which so often wait upon superior genius.! 

In these expeditions the Grecian army consumed nine years, 
during which the subdued Trojans dared not give battle without 
their walls for fear of Achilles. Ten years was the fixed epical 
duration of the siege of Troy, just as five years was the duration 
of the siege of Kamikus by the Krétan armament which came 
to avenge the death of Minds :3 ten years of preparation, ten 
years of siege, and ten years of wandering for Odysseus, were 
periods suited to the rough chronological dashes of the ancient 
epic, and suggesting no doubts nor difficulties with the original 
hearers. But it was otherwise when the same events came to be 
contemplated by the historicizing Greeks, who could not be satis« 
fied without either finding or inventing Satisfactory bonds of co- 
herence between the separate events. T hucydidés tells us that 
the Greeks were less numerous than the poets have represented, 
and that being moreover very poor, they were unable to procure 
adequate and constant provisions: hence they were compelled to 
disperse their army, and to employ a part of it in cultivating the 
Chersonese, — a part in marauding expeditions over the neigh- 
borhood. Could the whole army have been employed against 
Troy at once (he says), the siege would have been much more 
speedily and easily concluded.s If the great historian could per- 
mit himself thus to amend the legend in so many points, we 
might have imagined that the simpler course would have been to 
include the duration of the siege among the list of poetical exe 
aggerations, and to affirm that the real siege had lasted only one 


' Plato, Apolog. Soer. c. 32; Xenoph. Apol. Soer. 26; Memor. iv. 2, 33; 
Liban. pro Socr. p. 242, ed. Morell. ; Lucian, Dial. Mort. 20. 
2 Herodot. vii. 170. Ten years is a proper mythical period for a grest wag 


«- 


te last: the war between the Olympic gods and the Titan gods lasts teg 
years (Hesiod, Theogon. 636). Compare δεκάτῳ ἐνιαυτῷ (Hom. Ovap 
Evi. 17). 


5 Thucyd. i. 11. 


ANGER OF ACHILLES. 297 


year instead of ten. But it seems that the ten years’ duration 
was so capital a feature in the ancient tale, that no critic ventured 
to meddle with it. 

A period of comparative intermission however was now at 
hand for the Trojans. The gods brought about the memorable 
fit of anger of Achilles, under the influence of which he refused 
to put on his armor, and kept his Myrmidons incamp. Accord- 
ug to the Cypria, this was the behest of Zeus, who had compas- 
sion on the Trojans: according to the Iliad, Apollo was the origi- 
nating cause,' from anxiety to avenge the injury which his priest 
Chrysés had endured from Agamemnén. For a considerable 
time, the combats of the Greeks against Troy were conducted 
without their best warrior, and severe indeed was the humiliation 
which they underwent in consequence. How the remaining Gre- 
cian chiefs vainly strove to make amends for his absence — how 
Hectér and the Trojans defeated and drove them to their ships | 
— how the actual blaze of the destroying flame, applied by Hee- 
tor to the ship of Protesilaus, roused up the anxious and sympa- 
thizing Patroclus, and extorted a reluctant consent from Achil- 
les, to allow his friend and his followers to go forth and avert the 
last extremity of ruin — how Achilles, when Patroclus had been 
killed by Hectér, forgetting his anger in grief for the death of 
his friend, reéntered the fight, drove the Trojans within their 
walls with immense slaughter, and satiated his revenge both 
upon the living and the dead Hectér— all these events have 
been chronicled, together with those divine dispensations on 
which most of them are made to depend, in the immortal verse 
of the Iliad. 

Homer breaks off with the burial of Hectér, whose body has 
just been ransomed by the disconsolate Priam; while the lost 
poem of Arktinus, entitled the A®thiopis, so far as we can judge 
from the argument still remaining of it, handled only the subse- 
quent events of the siege. The poem of Quintus Smyrnzus, com- 
posed about the fourth century of the Christian zra, seems in its 
first books to coincide with the thiopis, in the subsequent 
books partly with the Ilias Minor of Leschés.2 


' Homer, Iliad, i. 21. 
* Tychsen, Commentat. de Quinto Smyrneo, ὁ iii. c. 5-7 The Ἰλίον 
13* 


£98 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The Trojans, dismayed by the death of Hectér, were again an- 
imated with hope by the appearance of the warlike and beautiful 
queen of the Amazons, Penthesileia, daughter of Arés, hitherte 
invincible in the field, who came to their assistance from Thrace 
at the head of a band of her countrywomen. She again led the 
besieged without the walls to encounter the Greeks in the open 
field; and under her auspices the latter were at first driven back, 
until she too was slain by the invincible arm of Achilles. The 
victor, on taking off the helmet of his fait enemy as she lay on 
the ground, was profoundly affected and captivated by her 
charms, for which he was scornfully taunted by Thersités: ex- 
asperated by this rash insult, he killed Thersités on the spot with 
a blow of his fist. A violent dispute among the Grecian chiefs 
was the result, for Diomédés, the kinsman of Thersités, warmly 
resented the proceeding ; and Achilles was obliged to go to Les- 
bus, where he was purified from the act of homicide by Odys 
seus. | 

Next arrived Memnén, son of Tithénus and Eés, the most 
stateiy of living men, with a powerful band of black Ethiopians, 
to the assistance of Troy. Sailying forth against the Greeks, he 
made great havoc among them: the brave and popular Anti- 
lochus perished by his hand, a victim to filial devotion in defence 
of Nestér.? Achilles at length attacked him, and for a long time 
the combat was doubtful between them: the prowess of Achilles 
and the supplication of Thetis with Zeus finally prevailed; 


Πέρσις was treated both by Arktinus and by Leschés: with the latter it 
formed a part of the Ilias Minor. 

' Argument of the /Ethiopis, p. 16, Diintzer; Quint. Smyrn. lib. i.; Dik- 
tys Cret. iv. 2-3. 

In the Philoktétés, of Sophoklés, Thersités survives Achilles (Soph. Phil 
358445). 

* Odyss. xi. 522. Keivov δὴ κάλλιστον ἴδον, μετὰ Μέμνονα δῖον : see alse 
Odyss. iv. 187; Pindar, Pyth. vi. 31. schylus (ap. Strabo. xv. p. 728) 
conceives Memnon as a Persian starting from Susa. 

Ktésias gave in his history full details respecting the expedition of Mem» 
non, sent by the king of Assyria to the relief of his dependent, Priam σὲ 
Troy ; all this was said to be recorded in the royal archives. The Egyp 
tians affirmed that Memnén had come from Egypt (Diodor. ii. 22; compare 
iv. 77): the two stories are blended together in Pausanias, x. 31,2. The 
Phrygians pointed out the road along which he had marched. 


DEATH UF ACHILLES 299 


whilst E6s obtained for her vanquished son the consoling gift of 
gmmortality. His tomb, however,! was shown near the Propontis, 
within a few miles of the mouth of the river A.sépus, and was 
visited annually by the birds called Memnonides, who swept it 
and bedewed it with water from the stream. So the traveller 
Pausanias was told, even in the second century after the Chris 
tian wra, by the Hellespontine Greeks. 

But the fate of Achilles himself was-now at hand. After 
routing the Trojans and chasing them into the town, he was slain 
near the Skwan gate by an arrow from the quiver of Paris, di- 
rected under the unerring auspices of Apollo.2 The greatest 
efforts were made by the Trojans to possess themselves of the 
body, which was however rescued and borne off to the Grecian 
camp by the valor of Ajax and Odysseus. Bitter was the grief of 
Thetis for the loss of her son: she came into the camp with 
the Muses and the Néreids to mourn over him; and when 8 
magnificent funeral-pile had been prepared by the Greeks to burn 
him with every mark of honor, she stole away the body and con- 
veyed it to a renewed and immortal life in the island of Leuké in 
the Euxine Sea. According to some accounts he was there blest 
with the nuptials and company of Helen.3 


? Argum. /Eth. ut sup.; Quint. Smyrn. ii. 396-550; Pausan. x. 31, 1. 
Pindar. in praising Achilles, dwells much on his triumphs over Hectér, Téle 
phus, Memnon, and Cyenus, but never notices Penthesileia (Olymp. ii. 90 
Nem. iii. 60; vi. 52. Isthm. v. 43). 

Zschylus, in the Yvyooracia, introduced Thetis and Eés, each in an atti- 
tude of supplication for her son, and Zeus weighing in his golden scales the 
souls of Achilles and Memnén (Schol. Ven, ad Iliad. viii. 70: Pollux, iv. 
130; Plutarch, De Audiend. Poet. p.17). In the combat between Achilles 
and Memnon, represented on the chest of Kypselus at Olympia, Thetis and 
Eos were given each as aiding her son (Pausan. v. 19, 1). 

2 iad, xxii. 360; Sophokl. Philokt. 334; Virgil, Aineid, vi. 56, 

3 Argum. Xthiop. w sup.; Quint. Smyrn. 151-583 ; Homer, Odyss. v. 310; 
Ovid, Metam. xiii. 284; Eurip. Androm. 1262; Pausan. iii. 19,13. Accord- 
ing to Diktys (iv. 11), Paris and Deiphobus entrap Achilles by the promise 
of ar interview with Polyxena and kill him. 

A minute and curious description of the island Leuké, or ᾿Αχιλλέως νῆσος͵ 
given in Arrian (Periplus, Pont. Euxin. p. 21; ap. Geogr. Min. t. 1). 

The heroic or divine empire of Achilles in Scythia was recognized by 
Alkseus the poet (Alkzi Fragm. Schneidew. Fr. 46), ᾿Αχιλλεῦ, ὃ yag Taw 


C * 
ate ale 
“ον i " ν 


800 M:STORY OF GREECE 


Thetis celebrated spl2ndid funeral games in honor of her son, 
and offered the unrivalled panoply, which Héphwstos had forged 
and wrought for him, as a prize to the most distinguished warrior 
in the Grecian army. Odysseus and Ajax became rivals for the 
distinction, when Athéné, together with some Trojan prisoners, 
who were asked trom which of the two their country had sustained 
greatest injury, decided in favor of the former. The gallant Ajax 
lost his senses with grief and humiliation: in a fit of phrenzy he 
slew some sheep, mistaking them for the men who had wronged 
him, and then fell upon his own sword.! 

Odysseus now learnt from Helenus son of Priam, whom he had 
captured in an ambuscade,? that Troy could not be taken unless 
both Philoktétés,and Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, could be pre- 
vailed upon to join the besiegers. The former, having been stung 
in the foot by a serpent, and becoming insupportable to the 
Greeks from the stench of his wound, had been left at Lemnus in 


——— — .»»...-.-ὄ....----...................΄.... .......... ............... ...... --.ὕ...-.. «-.-  .- 


ϑικὰς μέδεις Eustathius (ad Dionys. Periégét. 307) σίνοα the story of his 
having followed Iphigencia thither: compare Antonin. Liberal. 27. 

Ibykus represented Achilles as having espoused Médea in the Elysian 
Field (Idyk. Fragm. 18, Schneidewin). Simondés followed this story (ap. 
Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 815). 

* Argument of thiopis and Ilias Minor, and Fragm. 2 of the latter, pp. 
37, 18, DAntz.; Quint. Smyrn. v. 120-482; Hom. Odyss. xi. 550; Pindar, 
Nem. vii. 26. The Ajax of Sophoklés, and the contending speeches between 
Ajax and Ulysses in the beginning of the thirteenth book of Ovid’s Meta- 
morphoses, are too well known to need special reference. 

The suicide of Ajax seems to have been described in detail in the Athi 
Opis : compare Pindar. Isthm. iii. 51, and the Scholia ad /oc., which show the 
attention paid by Pindar to the minute circumstances of the old epic. 
See Fragm. 2 of the Ἰλίου Πέρσις of Arktinus, in Dontz. p. 22, which would 
seem more properly to belong to the Ethiopis. Diktys relates the suicide 
of Ajax, as a consequence of his unsuccessful competition with Odysseus, 
not about the arms of Achilles, but about the Palladium, after the taking of 
the city (v. 14). 

There were. however, many different accounts of the manner in which 
Ajax had died, some of which are enumerated in the argument to the drama 
of Sophoklés. Ajax is never wounded in the Iliad: Aeschylus made him 
invulnerable except under th2 armpits (see Schol. ad Sophok. Ajac. 833): 
the Trojans pelted him with mud — ei πως Bapqdeig ὑπὸ τοῦ πήλου (Schob 
Riad. xiv. 404). 

5 Soph. Philokt. 604. 


NEOPTOLEMUS AT TROY 801 


the commencement of the expedition, and had spent ten years! in 
mi-ery on that desolate island; but he still possessed the peerless 
bow and arrows of Héraklés, which were said to be essential to 
the capture of Troy. Diomédés fetched Philoktétés from Lem- 
nus to the Grecian camp, wher2 he was healed by the skill of 
Machadn,? and took an active part against the ‘Trojans — en- 
gaging in single combat with Paris, and killing him with one of 
the H1érakleian arrows. The Trojans were allowed to carry away 
for burial the body of this prince, the fatal cause of all their suf. 
ferings; but not until Ὁ had been mangled by the hand of Mene- 
laus.3 Odysseus went te ‘he island of Skyrus to invite Neoptole- 
mus to the army. The untried but impetuous youth gladly obey. 
ed the call, and received from Odysseus his father’s armor, while 
on the other hand, Eurypylus, son of ‘TSlephus, came from Mysia 
as auxiliary to the Trojans and rendered to them valuable service 
— turning the tide of fortune for a time against the Greeks, and 
killing some of their bravest chiefs, amongst whom was numbered 
Peneleéds, and the unrivalled leech Machaén.4 The exploits of 


' Soph. Philokt. 703. "2 μελέα ψυχὰ, Ὃς und’ οἰνοχύτου πόματος Ἤσϑη 
δεκετῆ χρόνον, ete. 

In the narrative of Diktys (ii. 47), Philoktétés returns from Lemnus to 
Troy much earlier in the war before the death of Achilles, and without any 
assigned cause. 

ἢ According to Sophokl¢s, Héraklés sends Asklépius to Troy to heal Philuk 
tétés (Soph. Philokt. 1415). 

The subject of Philoktétés formed the subject of a tragedy both by Zischy: 
lus and by Euripidés (both lost) as well as by Sophoklés 

? Argument. Iliad. Minor. Diintz. 1. ο. Καὶ τὸν νεκρὸν ὑπὸ Μενελάου κατα,» 
κισϑέντα ἀνελόμενοι Garrovow οἱ Τρῶες. See Quint. Smyrn, x. 240: he 
differs here in many respects from the arguments of the old poems as given 
by Proclus, both as to the incidents and as to their order in time ( Diktys, iv. 
20). The wounded Paris flees to CEnéné, whom he had deserted in order te 
follow Helen, and entreats her to cure him by her skill in simples: she re 
fuses, and permits him to die; she is afterwards stung with remorse, ang 
hangs herself (Quint. Smyrn. x. 285-331; Apollodér. iii. 12, 6; Conéa. 
Narrat. 23; see Bachet de Meziriac, Comment. sur les Epftres d’Ovide, t. L 
p. 456). The story of Cfnéné is as old as Hellanikus and Kephalén of Ges 
gis (see Hellan. Fragm. 126, Didot). 

* To mark the way in which these legendary events pervaded and became 
embodied in the local worship, I may mention the received praetice in the 
great temple of Asklépius (father of Machaén) at Pergamus, even im the 


802 HISTORY OF GREECE 


Neoptolemus were numerous, worthy of the glory of his race and 
the renown of his father. He encountered and slew Eurypylus, 
together with numbers of the Mysian warriors: he routed the 
Trojans and drove them within their walls, from whence they 
never again emerged to give battle: nor was he less distinguished 
for his good sense and persuasive diction, than for forward energy 
in the field. 

Troy however was still impregnable so long as the Palladiam, 
a statue given by Zeus himself to Dardanus, remained in the 
citadel; and great care had been taken by the Trojans not only 
to conceal this valuable present, but to construct other statues so 
like it as to mislead any intruding robber. Nevertheless the 
enterprising Odysseus, having disguised his person with miserable 
clothing and self-inflicted injuries, found means to penetrate into 
the city and to convey the Palladium by stealth away: Helen 
alone recognized him; but she was now anxious to return to 
Greece, and even assisted Odysseus in concerting means for the 
capture of the town.2 

To accomplish this object, one final stratagem was resorted to. 
By the hands of Epeius of Panopeus, and at the suggestion of 
Athéné, a capacious hollow wooden horse was constructed, capable 
of containing one hundred men: the élite of the Grecian heroes, 
Neoptolemus, Odysseus, Menclaus and others, concealed them- 
selves in the inside of it, and the entire Grecian army sailed away 
time of Pausanias. Télephus, father of Eurypylus, was the local hero and 
mythical king of Teuthrania, in which Pergamus was situated. In the 
hymns there sung, the proem and the invocation were addressed to Télephus ; 
but nothing was said in them about Eurypylus, nor was it permitted even to 
mention his name in the temple, — “ they knew him to be the slayer of Ma- 
chan :” ἄρχονται μὲν ἀπὸ Τηλέφου τῶν ὕμνων, προσάδουσι δὲ οὐδὲν ἐς τὸν 
Εὐρύπυλον, οὐδὲ ἀρχὴν ἐν τῷ ναῷ ϑέλουσιν ὀνομάζειν αὐτὸν, οἷα ἐπιστάμενος 
φονέα ὄντα Μαχάονος (Ῥαυβδη. iii. 26, 7). 

The combination of these qualities in other Homeric chiefs is noted in 8 
subs2quent chapter of his work, ch. xx. vol. ii. 

’ Argument. Iliad. Minor. p. 17, Diintzer. Homer, Odyss. xi. 510-520. 
Pausan. iii. 26,7. Quint. Smyrn. vii. 553; viii. 201. 

* Argument. Iliad. Minor. p. 18, Diintz.; Arttinus ap. Dionys. Hal. i. 69; 
Homer, Odyss. iv. 246; Quint. Smyrn. x. 354: Virgil, Aeneid. ii. 164, and 
the 9th Excursus of Heyne on that book. 

Compare with this legend about the Palladium, the Roman legend respeco 
img the Ancylia (Ovid, Fasti, III. 381 ). 


TROJAN HORSE.—LAOCOON 308 


to Tenedos, burning their tents and pretending to have abandoned 
the siege. The Trojans, overjoyed to find themselves free, 
issued from the city and contemplated with astonishment the 
fabric which their enemies had left behind: they long doubted 
what should be done with it; and the anxious heroes from within 
heard the surrounding consultations, as well as the voice of Helen 
when she pronounced their names and counterfeited the accents 
of their wives.! Many of the Trojans were anxious to dedicate 
it to the gods in the city as a token of gratitude for their deliver- 
ance; but the more cautious spirits inculcated distrust of an 
enemy’s legacy; and Laocodn, the priest of Poseidén, manifested 
his aversion by striking the side of the horse with his spear. 
Phe sound revealed that the horse was hollow, but the Trojans 
heeded not this warning of possible fraud; and the unfortunate 
Laocoén, a victim to his own sagacity and patriotism, miserably 
perished before the eyes of his countrymen, together with one of 
his sons, — two serpents being sent expressly by the gods out of 
the sea to destroy him. By this terrific spectacle, together with: 
the perfidious counsels of Sinon, a traitor whom the Greeks had 
left behind for the special purpose of giving false information, 
the Trojans were induced to make a breach in their own walls, 
and to drag the fatal fabric with triumph and exultation into their 
city.2 


' Odyss. iv. 275; Virgil, Aineid, ii. 14; Heyne, Excurs. 3. ad ΖΕ ποία. ἢ. 
Stesichorus, in his ’l/éov Πέρσις, gave the number of heroes in the wooden 
horse as one hundred (Stesichor. Fragm. 26, ed. Kleine; compare Atheng» 
xiii. p. 610). 

* Odyss. viii. 492; xi. 522. Argument of the ’IAéov Πέρσις of Arktinus, 
p. 21. Diintz. Hydin. f. 108-135. Bacchylidés and Euphorion ap. Servium 
ad Virgil. Aeneid. ii. 201. 3 

Both Sinon and Laocoén came originally from the old epic poem of Arkti- 
nus, though Virgil may perhaps have immediately borrowed both them, and 
other matters in his second book, from a poem passing under the name of 
Pisander (see Macrob. Satur. v. 2; Heyne, Excurs. 1. ad En. ii. ; Welcker, 
Der Episch. Kyklus, v. 97). We cannot give credit either to Arktinus or 
Pisander for the masterly specimen of oratory which is put into the mouth of 
Sinon in the Aneid. 

In Quintus Smyrnezus (xii. 366), the Trojans torture and mutilate Sinon 
to extort from him the truth: his endurance, sustained by the inspiration of 
Héré, is proof against the extremity of suffering, and he adheres to his false 
tale. This is probably an incident of the old epic, though the delicate taste 


804 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The destruction of ‘Troy, according to the decree of the gods, 
was now irrevocably sealed. While the Trojans iadulged in 2 
night of riotous festivity, Sinon kindled the fire-signal to the 
Greeks at Tenedos, loosening the bolts of the wooden horse, from 
out of which the enclosed heroes descended. The city, assailed 
both from within and from without, was thoroughly sacked and de- 
stroyed, with the slaughter or captivity of the larger portion of its 
heroes as well as its people. ‘The venerable Priam perished by 
the hand of Neoptolemus, having in vain sought shelter at the 
domestic altar of Zeus Herkeios; but his son Deiphobus, who 
since the death of Paris had become the husband of Helen, de- 
fended his house desperately against Odysseus and Menelaus, and 
sold his life dearly. After he was slain, his body was fearfully 
mutilated by the latter.’ 

Thus was Troy utterly destroyed — the city, the altars and 
temples,? and the population. JEneas and Antenor were permit- 
ted to escape, with their families, having been always more 
favorably regarded by the Greeks than the remaining ‘Trojans. 
According to one version of the story, they had betrayed the 


of Virgil, and his sympathy with the Trojans, has induced him to omit it. 
Euphorion ascribed the proceedings of Sinon co Odysseus: he also gave 8 
different cause for the death of Laocoén (Fr. 33-36. p. 55, ed. Diintz., in tae 
Fragments of Epic Poets after Alexander the Great). Sinon is ¢raipu¢ 
᾽Οδυσσέως in Pausan. x. 27, 1. 

! Odvyss. viii. 515; Argument of Arktinas, ut sup. ; Earipid. Hecub. 9η8 : 
Virg. Rn. vi. 497 ; Quint. Smyrn. xiii. 35-229; Leschés ap. Pausan. x. 27, 
2; Diktys, v.12. Ibykus and mag a Deiphobus as the 
ἀντεράστης ‘ Ἑλένης (Schol. Hom. Iliad. xi. ’ 

The in ἠῆρνντη i the interior of Troy was described with all its fearful 
details both by Leschés and Arktinus: the ᾽Ιλίου Πέρσις of the latter seems ” 
have been a separate poem, that of the former constituted a ypernen of the 
Ilias Minor (see Welcker, Der Epische Kyklus, p. 215): the ᾽Ιλίου Πέρσις 
by the lyric poets Sakadas and Stesichorus probably added many new inci- 
dents. Polygnétus had painted a succession of the various calamitous scenes, 
drawn from the poem of Leschés, on the walls of the lesché at Delphi, with 
the name written over each figure (Pausan. x. 25-26). 

Hellanikus fixed the precise day of the month on which the capture toak 

(Hellan. Fr. 143-144), the twelfth day of Thargelion. 

3 Mschyi. Agamemn. 527.— 

Βωμοὶ δ᾽ ἄϊστοι καὶ ϑεῶν ἱδρύματα, 
Καὶ σπέρμα πάσης ἐξαπόλληται χϑονός. 


CAPTURE OF TROY. 305 


city to the Greeks: a panther’s skin had been hung over the 
door of Antenor’s house as a signal for the victorious besiegers to 
spare it in the general plunder.! In the distribution of the prin- 
cipal captives, Astyanax, the infant son of Hectér, was cast from 
the top of the wall and killed, by Odysseus or Neoptolemus : 
Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, was immolated on the tomb of 
Achilles, in compliance with a requisition made by the shade of 
the deceased hero to his countrymen ;2 while her sister Kassandra 
was presented as a prize to Agamemnén. She had sought 
sanctuary at the altar of Athéné, where Ajax, the son of Oileus, 
making a guilty attempt to seize her, had drawn both upon him- 
self and upon the army the serious wrath of the goddess, insomuch 
that the Greeks could hardly be restrained from stoning him to 
death.’ Andromaché and Helenus were both given to Neopto- 
lemus, who, according to the [lias Minor, carried away also 
fEneas as his captive.4 

Helen gladly resumed her union with Menelaus: she accom- 
panied him back to Sparta, and lived with him there many years 
in comfort and dignity,5 passing afterwards to a happy immortality 


' This symbol of treachery also figured in the picture of Polygnotus. 
A different story appears in Schol. liad. iii. 206. 

* Euripid. Hecub. 38-114, and Troad. 716; Leschés ap. Pausan. x. 25, 9 
Virgil, ΖΕ ποῖά, iii. 322, and Servius ad loc. 

A romantic tale is found in Diktys respecting the passion of Achilles for 
Polyxena (iii. 2). 

* Odyss. xi. 422. Arktinus, Argum. p- 21, Diintz. Theognis, 1232 
Pausan. i. 15, 2; x. 26, 3; 31, 1. As an expiation of this sin of their 
national hero, the Lokrians sent to Ilium periodically some of their maidens, 
to do menial service in the temple of Athéné (Plutarch. Ser. Numin. Vindict. 
Ὁ. 557, with the citation from Euphorion or Kallimachus, Diintzer, Epice. 
Vet. p. 118). 

* Leschés, Fr. 7, Dantz.; ap. Schol. Lycophr. 1263. Compare Schol. ad. 
1232, for the respectful recollection of Andromaché, among the traditions of 
the Molossian kings, as their heroic mother, and Strabo, xiii. p. 594. 

* Such is the story of the old epic (see Odyss. iv. 260, and the fourth book 
generally; Argument of Ilias Minor, p. 20. Dantz.). Polygnotus, in the 
paintings above alluded to, followed the same tale (Pausan. x. 25, 3). 

The anger of the Greeks against Helen, and the statement that Menelaus 
after the capture of Troy approached her with revengeful purposes, but was 
so mollified by her surpassing beauty as to cast away his uplifted sword, 
belongs to the age of the tragedians (Auschyl Agamem. 685-1455: Eurip. 

VOL. I. 2Goc. 


—_— 


4 . _ ———— . = 
+ 
St eee - er Ee ee 


——F 


ee 


Hus HISTORY OF GREECE. 


in the Elysian fields. She was worshipped as a goddess with her 
brothers the Dioskuri and her husband, having her temple, statue 
and altar at Therapne and elsewhere, and various examples of 
her miraculous interventions were cited among the Greeks.! The 
lyric poet Stesichorus had ventured to denounce her, conjointly 
with her sister Klytzmnestra, in a tone of rude and plain-spoken 
severity, resembling that of Kuripidés and Lycophroén afterwards, 
but strikingly opposite to the delicacy and respect with which she 
is always handled by Homer, who never admits reproaches against 
her except from her own lips.2 He was smitten with blindness, 
Androm. 600-629; Helen. 75-120; ‘Troad. 890-1057 ; compare also the fine 
lines in the Mneid, ii. 567-588 ). 

' See the description in Herodot. vi. 61, of the prayers offered to her, und 
of the miracle which she wrought, to remove the repulsive ugliness of a little 
Spartan girl of high family. Compare also Pindar, Olymp. iii. 2, and the 
Scholia at the beginning of che ode; Eurip. Helen. 1662, and Orest. 1652= 
1706; Isokrat. Encom, Helen. ii. p. 368, Auger; Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. p. 
811. Bede ἐνομίσϑη παρὰ τοὶς “Ἕλλησι; Theodectés ap. Aristot. Pol. i. 2, 19 
Θείων ἀπ᾿ ἀμφοῖν ἔκγονον ῥιζωμάώτων. 

3 Euripid. Troad. 982 sey.; Lycophrén ap. Steph. Byz. v. Alyic; Ste 
sichorus ap. Schol. Eurip. Orest. 239; Fragm.9 and 10 of the ’ IAcov Πέρσιᾷ, 
Schneidewin : — 

Oivexa Τυνδάρεως ῥέζων ἁπᾶσι ϑεοῖς μιᾶς Aader’ ἡπιοδώρου 
Κύπριδος - κεῖνα δὲ Τυνδάρεω κούραισι χολωσαμένα 
Διγάμους τριγώμους τίϑησι 
Καὶ λεπευσάνοραε.......... 
Further cecceceses ᾿ Βλένη éxota’ ἄπηρε, etc. 
He had probably contrasted her with other females carried away by force. 

Stesichorus also aflirmed that Iphigeneia was the daughterof Helen, by 
Thésens, born at Argos before her marriage with Menelaus and made over 
to Klytemnéstra: this tale was perpetuated by the temple of Eileithyia at 
Argos, which the Argeians affirmed to have been erected by Helen (Pausan. 
ji. 22.7). The ages ascribed by Hellanikus and other logographers (Hellan 
Fr. 74) to Théseus and Helen — he fifty years of age and she a child of seven 
— when he carried her off to Aphidne, can never have been the original form 
of any poetical legend: these ages were probably imagined in order to make 
the mythical chronology run smoothly, for Théseus belongs to the genera- 
tion before the Trojan war. But we ought always to recollect that Helen 
never grows old (τὴν γὰρ φάτις Euuev’ ἀγήρω ---- Quint. Smyrn. x. 312), and 
that her chronology consists only with an immortal being Servius observes 
(ad Eneid. ii. 691) —“ Helenam immortalem fuisse indicat tempus. Nam 
constat fratres ejus curn Argonantis fuisse. Argonautarum filii cam Theba- 

nis ( Thebano Eteoclis et Polvnicis bello) dimicaverunt. Item illorum filii 


HELEN.—8TESICHORUS B09 


and made sensible of his impiety; but having repented and com 
posed a special poem formally retracting the calumny, was per: 
mitted to recover his sight. In his poem of recantation (the 
famous palinode now unfortunately lost) he pointedly contradicted 
the Homeric narrative, affirming that Helen had never been to 
Troy at all, and that the Trojans had carried thither nothing but 
her image or eidélon.! 11 is, probably, to the excited religious 
feelings of Stesichorus that we owe the first idea of this glaring 
deviation from the old legend, which could never have been 
recommended by any considerations of poetical interest. 

Other versions were afterwards started, forming a sort of com- 
promise between Homer and Stesichorus, admitting that Helen 
had never really been at Troy, without altogether denying her 
elopement. Such is the story of her having been detained in 
Egypt during the whole term of the siege. Paris, on his de- 
parture from Sparta, had been driven thither by storms, and the 
Egyptian king Proteus, hearing of the grievous wrong which he 
contra ‘Trojam bella gesserunt. Ergo, si immortalis Helena non fuisset, tot 
sine dubio seculis durare non posset.” So Xenophon, after enumerating 
many heroes of different ages, all pupils of Cheirén, says that the life of 
Cheirén suffices for all, he being brother of Zeus (De Venatione, c. 1). 

The daughters of Tyndareus are Klytemnéstra, Helen, and Timandra, all 
open to the charge advanced by Stesichorus: see about Timandra, wife of 
the Tegeate Echemus, the new fragment of the Hesiodic Catalogue, recently 
restored by Geel (Gottling, Pref. Hesiod. p. 1xi.). 

It is curious to read, in Bayle’s article Héléne, his critical discussion of the 
adventures ascribed to her — as if they were genuine matter of history, more 
or less correctly reported. 

1 Plato, Republic. ix. p 587. c. 10. ὥσπερ τὸ τῆς 'Ἑλένης εἴδωλον Στη- 
σίχορός φησι περιμάχητον γένεσϑαι ἐν Τροίῃ, ἀγνοίᾳ τοῦ ἀλήϑους. 

Isokrat. Encom. Helen. t. ii. p. 370, Auger; Plato, Pheedr. c. 44. Ρ. 243- 
244; Max. Tyr. Diss. xi. p. 320, Davis; Condn, Narr. 18; Dio Chrysost. 
Or. xi. p. 323. Τὸν μὲν Στησίχορον ἐν τῇ ὕστερον ὠδῇ λέγειν, ὡς τὸ παρά. 
παν οὐδὲ πλεύσειεν ἡ Ἑλένη οὐδάμοσε. Horace, Od. i. 17, 


Epod. xvii. 42. — 


“ Infamis Helenz Castor offensus vice, 
Frateryue magni Castoris, victi prece, 
Adempta vati reddidere lumina.” 
Pausan. iii. 19,5. Virgil, surveying the war from the point of view of the 
Trojans, had no motive to look upon Helen with particular tenderness: 
Deiphobus imputes to her the basest treachery (ined, vi. 511. “ scelus 
exitiale Lacene ;” compare ii. 567). 


308 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


had committed towards Menelaus, had sen; him away from tke 
country with severe menaces, detaining Helen until her lawful 
husband should come to seek her. When the Greeks reciaimed 
Helen from Troy, the Trojans assured them solemnly, that she 
neither was, nor ever had been, in the town; but the Greeks, 
treating this allegation as fraudulent, prosecuted the siege until 
their ultimate success confirmed the correctness of the statement, 
nor did Menelaus recover Helen until, on his return from Troy, 
he visited Egypt.!' Such was the story told by the Egyptian 
priests to Herodotus, and it appeared satisfactory to his his 
toricizing mind. “For if Helen had really been at Troy (he 
argues) she would certainly have been given up, even had she 
been mistress of Priam himself instead of Paris: the Trojan 
king, with all his family and all his subjects, would never know- 
ingly have incurred utter and irretrievable destruction for the 
purpose of retaining her: their misfortune was, that while they 
did not possess, and therefore could not restore her, they yet 
found it impossible to convince the Greeks that such was the 
fact.” Assuming the historical character of the war of Troy, 
the remark of Herodotus admits of no reply; nor can we great- 
ly wonder that he acquiesced in the tale of Helen’s Egyptian 


detention, as a substitute for the “incredible insanity” which the 


1 Herodot. ii. 120. οὐ yap δὴ οὕτω ye φρενοβλαβὴς ἣν ὁ Πρίαμος, οὐδ᾽ οἱ 
ἄλλοι προσήκοντες αὐτῷ, etc. The passage is too long to cite, but is highly 
curious: not the least remarkable part is the religious coloring which he 
gives to the new version of the story which he is adopting, —“ the Trojans, 
though they had not got Helen, yet could not persuade the Greeks that this 
was the fact; for it was the divine will that they should be destroyed root 
and branch, in order to make it plain to mankind that upon great crimes the 
gods inflict great punishments.” 

Dio Chrysostom (Or. xi. p. 333) reasons in the same way as Herodotus 
against the credibility of the received narrative. On the other hand, Iso» 
kratés, in extolling Helen, dwells on the calamities of the Trojan war as a test 
of the peerless value of the prize (Encom. Hel. p. 360, Aug.): in the view 
of Pindar (Olymp. xiii. 56), as well as in that of Hesiod (Opp. Di. 165), 
Helen is the one prize contended for. 

Euripidés, in his tragedy of Helen, recognizes the detention of Helen in 
Egypt and the presence of her εἴδωλον at Troy, but he follows Stesichorus 
in denying her elopement altogether, — Hermés had carried her to Egypt im 
a cloud (Helen. 35-45, 706): compare Von Hoff, De Mytho Helens: Bush 


pide, cap. 2. p. 35 (Leyden, 1843). 


RETURN OF THE GRECIAN HEROES. 809 


genuine legend imputes to Priam and the Trojans. Pausanias, 
upor .he same ground and by the same mode of reasoning, pro 
nounces that the Trojan horse must have been in point of fact a 
battering-engine, because to admit the literal narrative would be 
to impute utter childishness to the defenders of the city. And 
Mr. Payne Knight rejects Helen altogether as the real cause of 
the Trojan war, though she may have been the pretext of it; for 
he thinks that neither the Greeks nor the Trojans could have 
been so mad and silly as to endure calamities of such magni- 
tude “ for one little woman.”! Mr. Knight suggests various po- 
litical causes as substitutes ; these might deserve consideration, 
either if any evidence could be produced to countenance them, 
or if the subject on which they are brought to bear could be 
shown to belong to the domain of history. 

The return of the Grecian chiefs from Troy furnished matter 
to the ancient epic hardly less copious than the siege itself, and ᾿ 
the more susceptible of indefinite diversity, inasmuch as those 
who had before acted in concert were now dispersed and iso- 
lated. Moreover the stormy voyages and compulsory wanderings 
of the heroes exactly fell in with the common aspirations after 
an heroic founder, and enabled even the most remote Hellenic 
settlers to connect the origin of their town with this prominent 
event of their ante-historical and semi-divine world. And an 
absence of ten years afforded room for the supposition of many 
domestic changes in their native abode, and many family misfor- 
tunes and misdeeds during the interval. One of these heroic 
‘ Returns,” that of Odysseus, has been immortalized by the verse 
Homer. The hero, after a series of long-protracted suffering 
and expatriation, inflicted on him by the anger of Poseidon, at 
last reaches his native island, but finds his wife beset, his youth- 
ful son insulted, and his substance plundered, by a troop of inso- 
lent suitors ; he is forced to appear as a wretched beggar, and to 
endure in his own person their scornful treatment; but finally, 
by the interference of Athéné coming in aid of his own courage 


a ..0-- -- 


Pausan. i. 23 8; Payne Knight, Prolegg. ad Homer. c. 53. Euphorion 
eonstrued the wooden horse into a Grecian ship called Ἵππος, “ The Horse 
Euphorion, Fragr.. 34. ap. Diintzer, Fragm Epicc. Greec. p. 55). 
See Thucyd. i. 12; vi. 2. 


310 HISTORY OF GREEC2. 


aid stratagem, he is enabled to overwhelm his enemies, to resume 
his family position, and to recover his property. The return af 
several other Grecian chiefs was the subject of an epic peem by 
Hagias, which is now lost, but of which a brief abstract or argu- 
ment still remains: there were in antiquity various other poems 
of similar title and analogous matter.! 

As usual with the ancient epic, the multiplied sufferings of thie 
back-voyage are traced to divine wrath, justly provoked by the 
sins of the Greeks; who, in the fierce exultation of a victory pur- 
chased by so many hardships, had neither respected nor even? 
spared the altars of the gods in Troy ; and Athéné, who had been 
their most zealous ally during the siege, was so incensed by their 
final recklessness, more especially by the outrage of Ajax, son 
of Oileus, that she actively harassed and embittered their return, 
in spite of every effort to appease her. ‘The chiefs began to 
quarrel among themselves; their formal assembly became 8 
scene of drunkenness; even Agamemnon and Menelaus lost 
their fraternal harmony, and each man acted on his own separate 
resolution.’ Nevertheless, according to the Odyssey, Nestor, 
Diomédés, Neoptolemus, Idomeneus and Philoktétés reached 
home speedily and safely: Agamemnon also arrived in Pelopom 
nésus, to perish by the hand of a treacherous wife; but Mene- 
laus was condemned to long wanderings and to the severest pri- 
vations in Egypt, Cyprus and elsewhere, before he could set foot 
in his native land. The Lokrian Ajax perished on the Gyrzan 
rock. Though exposed to a terrible storm, he had already 
reached this place of safety, when he indulged in the rash boast 
of having escaped in defiance of the gods: no sooner did Po 
seidén hear this language, than he struck with his trident the 


‘ Suidas, v. Νόστος Wiillner, De Cyclo Epico, p. 93. Also a poem 
᾿Ατρειδῶν κάϑοδος (Athenz. vii. p. 281). 

3 Upon this the turn of fortune in Grecian affairs depends (/sachyl. Aga 
memn. 338 ; Odyss. iii. 130; Eurip. Troad. 69-95). 

3 Odyss. iii. 130-161 ; Auschyl. Agamemn. 650-662. 

4 Odyss iii. 188-196; iv. 5-87. The Egyptian cit, cf Kanopus, at the 
mouth of the Nile. was believed to have taken its name from the pilot of 
Menelaus, who had died and was buried there (Strabo, xvii. p. 801; Tacit 
Ann. ii. 60). MeveAaiog νόμος so called after Menelaus (Dio Chryscst. xi 
p- 361). 


UBIQUITY OF THE RETURNING HEROES. $13 


rock which Ajax was grasping and precipitated both into the sea.' 
Kalchas the soothsayer, together with Leonteus and Polypostés, 
proceeded by land from ‘Troy to Kolophon.? 

In respect however to these and other Grecian heroes, tales 
were told different from those in the Odyssey, assigning to them 
a long expatriation and a distant home. Nestor went to Italy, 
where he founded Metapontum, Pisa and Hérakleia:* Philok- 
tétés? also went to Italy, founded Petilia and Krimisa, and sent 
settlers to Egesta in Sicily. Neoptolemus, under the advice of 
Thetis, marched by land across Thrace, met with Odysseus, who 
had come by sea, at Maroneia, and then pursued his journey to 
Epirus, where he became king of the Molossians.6 Idomeneus 
came to Italy, and founded Uria in the Salentine peninsula. Di- 
omédés, after wandering far and wide, went along the Italiana 
coast into the innermost Adriatic gult, and finally settled in Dau- 
nia, founding the cities of Argyrippa, Beneventum, Atria and 
Diomédeia: by the favor of Athéné he became immortal, and 
was worshipped as a god in many different places® The Le 


} Odyss. iv. 500. The epic Νόστοι of Hagias placed this adventure of 
Ajax on the rocks of Kaphareus, a southern promontory of Kubwa (Argum 
Νόστοι, p. 23, Diintzer). Deceptive lights were kindled on the dangerows 
rocks by Nauplius, the father of Palamédés, in revenge for the death of his 
gon (Sophoklés, Ναύπλιος Πυρκαεὺς, a lost tragedy ; Hygin. f. 116; Senec. 
Agamemn. 567). 

3 Argument. Νόστοι, μὲ sup. There were monuments of Kalchas near 
Sipontum in Italy also (Strabo, vi. p. 284), as well as at Selgé in Pisidie 
{Strabo, xii. p. 570). Ἁ 

3 Strabo, v. p. 222; vi. p. 264. Vellei. Paterc. 1.1; Servius ad Ain. x. 1783, 
He had built a temple to Athéné in the island of Keds (Strabo, x. p. 487). 

4 Strabo, vi. pp. 254, 272; Virgil, Ain. iii. 401, and Servius ad loc.; Ly- 
cophron, 912. 

Both the tomb of Philcktétés and the arrows of Héraklés which he had 
ased against Troy, were for a long time shown at Thurium (Justin, xx. 1). 

5. Argumeut. Noorot, p. 25, Diintz.; Pindar, Nem. iv. 51. According %& 
Pindar, however, Neoptolemus comes from Troy by sea, misses the island of 
Skyrus, and sails round to the Epeirotic Ephyra (Nem. vii. 37). 

6 Pindar, Nem. x. 7, with the Scholia. Strabo, iii. p. 150; v. p. 214-213; 
vi, p. 284. Stephan. Byz. ᾿Αργύριππα, Avounésia. Aristotle recognizes [$s 
gs buried in the Diomedean islands in the Adriatic ( Anthol. Gr. Branck. & 


p- 178). Ἀ : 
The identical tripod which had been gained by Diomédés, as victor ἐδ 


Vol, 1 15 


419 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


krian followers of Ajax founded the Epizephyrian Lokri on the 
southernmost corner of Italy,' besides another settlement in Libya 
I have spoken in another place of the compulsory exile of Teu- 
kros, who, besides founding the city of Salamis in Cyprus, is said 
to have established some settlements in the Iberian peninsula.? 
Menestheus the Athenian did the like, and also founded both Elea 
in Mysia and Skylletium in Italy.* The Arcadian chief Aga- 
pendr founded Paphus in Cyprus.4 Epeius, of Panopeus in 
Phokis, the constructor of the Trojan horse with the aid of the 
goddess Athéné, settled at Lagaria near Sybaris on the coast of 
Italy ; and the very tools which he had employed in that remark- 
able fabric were shown down toa late date in the temple of 
Athéné at Metapontum.® ‘Temples, altars and towns were also 
pointed out in Asia Minor, in Samos and in Kréte, the foundation 
of Agamemnon or of his followers.6 The inhabitants of the Gre- 
cian town of Skioné, in the Thracian peninsula called Palléné on 
Pelléné, accounted themselves the offspring of the Pellénians 
from Achza in Peloponnésus, who had served under Agamem- 
non before Troy, and who on their return from the siege had 
been driven on the spot by a storm and there settled? The 
Pamphylians, on the southern coast of Asia Minor, deduced their 


the chariot-race at the funeral games of Patroclus, was shown at Delphi m 
the time of Phanias, attested by an inscription, as well as the dagger which 
bad been worn by Helikadn, son of Anten6r (Athenz. vi. p. 232). 

1 Virgil, Aneid, iii. 399.; xi. 265; and Servius, iid. Ajax, the son of 
Oileus, was worshipped there as a hero (Conén, Narr. 18). 

3 Strabo, iii. p. 257; Isokratés, Evagor. Encom. p. 192; Justin, xliv. 3. 
Ajax, the son of Teukros, established a temple of Zeus, and an hereditary 
priesthood always held by his descendants (who mostly bore the name of 
Ajax or Teukros), at Olbé in Kilikia (Strabo, xiv. p. 672). Teukros carried 
with him his Trojan captives to Cyprus (Athens. vi. p. 256). 

3 Strabo, iii. p. 140-150; vi. p. 261; xiii. p. 622. See the epitaphs on 
Teukros and Agapendér by Aristotle (Antholog. Gr. ed. Brunck. i. p. 179-180). 

* Strabo, xiv. p. 683; Pausan. viii. 5, 2. 

® Strabo, vi. p. 263; Justin, xx. 2; Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. c. 108. Also the 
spigram of the Rhodian Simmias called Πελεκύς (Antholog. Gr. Brunck. 1. 
p. 210). 

5 Vellei. Patercul. i. 1. Stephan. Byz. v. Λάμπη. Strabo, xiii. p. 605; xiv 
p- 639. Theopompus (Fragm. 111, Didot) recounted that Agamemnon and 
nis followers had possessed themselves of the larger portion of Cyprus 


? Thucydid. iv. 190. 


MEMORIALS OF THE DISPERSED HEROES. Sis 


origin from the wanderings of Amphilochus and Kalchas after 
the siege of Troy: the inhabitants of the Amphilochian Argos 
on the Gulf of Ambrakia revered the same Amphilochus as their 
founder.! The Orchomenians under Ialmenus, on quitting the 
conquered city, wandered or were driven to the eastern extremity 
of the Euxine Sea; and the barbarous Achzans under Mount 
Caucasus were supposed to have derived their first establishment 
from this source.2 Merionés with his Krétan followers settled 
at Engyion in Sicily, along with the preceding Krétans who had 
remained there after the invasion of Minds. The Elyminians in 
Sicily also were composed of Trojans and Greeks separately 
driven to the spot, who, forgetting their previous differences, 
united in the joint settlements of Eryx and Egesta3 We hear 
of Podaleirius both in Italy and on the coast of Karia;4 of Aka- 
mas, sou of Théseus, at Amphipolis in Thrace, at Soli in Cyprus, 
and at Synnada in Phrygia;> of Guneus, Prothous and Eurypy- 
lus, in Kréte as well as in Libya® The obscure poem of Ly- 
cophrén enumerates many of these dispersed and expatriated 
herves, whose conquest of Troy was indeed a Kadmeian victory 
(according to the proverbial phrase of the Greeks), wherein the 
sufferings of the victor were little inferior to those of the van- 
quished.? It was particularly among the Italian Greeks, where 
they were worshipped with very special solemnity, that their 
presence as wanderers from Troy was reported and believed.§ 


’ Herodot. vii. 91; Thucyd. ii. 68. According to the old elegiac poet 
Kallinos, Kalchas himself had died at Klarus near Kolophon after his march 
from Troy, but Mopsus, his rival in the prophetic function, had conducted his 
followers into Pamphylia and Kilikia (Strabo, xii. p. 570; xiv. p. 668). The 
oracle of Amphilochus at Mallus in Kilikia bore the highest character for 
exactness and truth-telling in the time of Pausanias, μαντεῖον ἀψευδέστατον 
τῶν ἐπ᾽ ἐμοῦ (Paus, i. 34, 2). Another story recognized Leonteus and Poly. 
peetés as the founders of Aspendus in Kilikia (Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. 138). 

? Strabo, ix. p. 416. 3 Diodér. iv. 79; Thucyd. vi. 2. 

* Stephan, Byz. v. Σύρνα ; Lycophron, 1047. 

® Aschines, De Falsh Legat. c. 14; Strabo, xiv. p. 683; Stephan. ΒΥ. 


ψ. Σύνναδα. 

® Lycophrén, 877-902, with Scholia; Apollodér. Fragm. p. 386, Heyme. 
There is also a long enumeration of these returning wanderers and founderé 
ef new settlements in Solinus (Polyhist. c. 2). 

7 Strabo, iii. p. 150. 

® Aristot. Mirabil. Auscult 79, 106, 107, 109, 11}. 

VOL. L 14 


414 HISTORY OF GREECE 


I pass over the numerous other tales which circulated among _ 


the ancients, illustrating the ubiquity of the Grecian and Trojas 
heroes as well as that of the Argonauts, — one of the most strike 
ing features in the Hellenic legendary world.! Amongst them 
all, the most interesting, individually, is Odysseus, whose romane- 
tic adventures in fabulous places and among fabulous persons 
have been made familiarly known by Homer. The goddesses 
Kalypso and Circé ; the semi-divine mariners of Phzacia, whose 
ships are endowed with consciousness and obey without a steers 
man; the one-eyed Cyclépes, the gigantic Lestrygones, and the 
wind-ruler AZolus; the Sirens who ensnare by their song, as the 
Lotophagi fascinate by their food —all these pictures formed in- 
tegral and interesting portions of the old epic. Homer leaves 
Odysseus reéstablished in his house and family; but so marked 
8 personage could never be permitted to remain in the tameness 
of domestic life: the epic poem called the Telegonia ascribed to 
him a subsequent series of adventures. After the suitors had 
been buried by their relatives, he offered sacrifice to the Nymphs, 
and then went to Elis to inspect his herds of cattle there pasture 
ing: the Eleian Polyxenus welcomed him hospitably, and made 
him a present of a bowl: Odysseus then returned to Ithaka, and 
fulfilled the rites and sacrifices prescribed to him by Teiresias in 
his visit to the under-world. This obligation discharged, he went 
to the country of the Thesprotians, and there married the queen 
Kallidiké: he headed the Thesprotians in a war against the 
Brygians, the latter being conducted by Arés himself, who fierce- 
«ly assailed Odysseus ; but the goddess Athéné stood by him, and 
he was enabled to make head against Arés until Apollo came 


* Strabo, i. p. 48. After dwelling emphatically on the long voyages of 
Dionysus, Héraklés, Jasén, Odysseus, and Menelaus, he says, Αἰνείαν δὲ καὶ 
Avrivopa καὶ ‘Everove, καὶ ἁπλὼς τοὺς ἐκ τοῦ Tpwikod πολέμου πλανηϑέντας 
εἰς πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην, ἄξιον μὴ τῶν παλαιῶν ἀνϑρώπων νομίσαι; 
Συνέβη γὰρ δὴ τοῖς τότε Ἕλλησιν, ὁμοίως καὶ τοῖς βαβάροις, διὰ τὸν τῆς στρα- 
τείας χρόνον, ἀποβαλεῖν τά τε ἐν οἴκῳ καὶ τῇ στρατείᾳ πορισϑέντα' ὥστε μετὰ 
τὴν τοῦ Ἰλίου καταστροφὴν τούς τε νικήσαντας ἐπὶ λήστειαν τραπέσϑαι διὰ 
τὰς ἀπορίας, καὶ πολλῷ μᾶλλον τοὺς ἡττηϑέντας καὶ περιγενομένους ἐκ τοῦ 
πολέμου. Καὶ δὴ καὶ πόλεις ὑπὸ τούτων κτισϑῆναι λέγονται κατὰ 
πᾶσαν τὴν ἔξω τῆς ᾿Ελλάδος παραλέαν, ἔστι δ' ὅπου καὶ τὴν κεσό 


γαιαν. 


ENEAS AND HIS WANDERINGS. $15 


and parted them. Odysseus then returned to Ithaka, leaving 
the Thesprotian kingdom to Polypcetés, his son by Kallidiké. 
Felegonus, his son by Cireé, coming to Ithaka in search of his 
father, ravaged the island and killed Odysseus without knowing 
who he was. Bitter repentance overtook the son for his un- 
desioned parricide: at his prayer and by the intervention of 
his mother Circé, both Penelopé and Télemachus were made im- 
mortal: Telegonus married Penelopé, and Télemachus married 
Circé.! 

We see by this poem that Odysseus was represented as the 
mythical ancestor of the Thesprotian kings, just as Neoptolemus 
was of the Molossian. 

It has already been mentioned that Antenér and AEneas stand 
distinguished from the other Trojans by a dissatisfaction with 
Priam and a sympathy with the Greeks, which is by Sophoklés 
and others construed as treacherous collusion,? — a suspicion in- 
directly glanced, though emphatically repelled, by the A®neas of 
Virgil In the old epic of Arktinus, next in age to the Iliad 
and Odyssey, Aineas abandons Troy and retires to Mount Ida, 
in terror at the miraculous death of Laocodn, before the entry of 
the Greeks into the town and the last night-battle: yet Leschés, 
in another of the ancient epic poems, represented him as having 
been carried away captive by Neoptolemus.4 In a remarkable 

ι The Telegonia, composed by Eugammén of Kyréné, is lost, but the 
Argument of it has been preserved by Proclus (p. 25, Diintzer; Dictys, vi. 
15). 

Sitti quotes a statement from the poem called Thesprétis, respecting 
a son of Odysseus and Penelopé, called Ptoliporthus, born after his return 
from ‘Troy (viii. 12, 3). Nitzsch (Hist. Homer. p. 97) as well as Lobeck 
seem to imagine that this is the same poem as the Telegonia, under another 
title. 

Aristotle notices an oracle of Odysseus among the Eurytanes, a branch 
cf the Etolian nation: there were also places in Epirus which boasted of 
Odysseus as their founder (Schol. ad Lycophrén. 800; Stephan. Byz. v. 
Βούνειμα ; Etymolog. Mag. ᾿Αρκείσιος ; Plutarch, Quest. Gr. c. 14). 

2 Dionys. Hal. i. 46-48; Sophokl. ap. Strab. xiii. p.608; Livy, i.1; Xeno 
pho, Venat. i. 15. 

3 ΖΞ. ii. 433. 

4 Argument of Ἰλέου Πέρσις ; Fragm. 7. of Leschés, in Dantzer’s Collee 


tion, p. 19-21. 
Hellanikus scems to have adopted this retirement of Atneas to the strong 


$16 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


passage of the Tliad, Poseidén describes the family of Priam as 
having incurred the hatred of Zeus, and predicts that Atneas 
and his descendants shall reign over the Trojans: the race of 
Dardanus, beloved by Zeus more than all his other sons, would 
thus be preserved, since Aineas belonged to it. Accordingly, 
when Aéneas is in imminent peril from the hands of Achilles, 
Poseidén specially interferes to rescue him, and ev ἢ the impla- 
cable miso-Trojan goddess Héré assents to the proceeding.' These 
passages have been construed by various able critics to refer to a 
family of philo-Hellenic or semi-Hellenic {neadx, known even 
in the time of the early singers of the Iliad as masters of some 
territory in or near the Troad, and professing to be descended 
from, as well as worshipping, Aineas. In the town of Sképsis, 
situated in the mountainous range of Ida, about thirty miles east- 
ward of Ilium, there existed two noble and priestly families who 
professed to be descended, the one from Hectoér, the other from 
ZEneas. The Sképsian critic Démétrius (in whose time both these 
families were still to be found) informs us that Skamandrius son 
of Hectér, and Ascanius son of A®neas, were the archegets or 
heroic founders of his native city, which had been originally 
situated on one of the highest ranges of Ida, and was subse- 


est parts of Mount Ida, but to have reconciled it with the stories of the 
migration of Aineas, by saying that he only remained in Ida a little time, 
and then quitted the country altogether by virtue of a convention concluded 
with the Greeks (Dionys. Hal. i 47-48). Among the infinite variety of 
stories respecting this hero, one was, that after having effected his settle 
ment in Italy, he had returned to Troy and resumed the sceptre, bequeath- 
ing it at his death to Ascanius (Dionys. Hal. i. 53): this was a comprehea 
sive scheme for apparently reconciling a// the legends. 
' Tliad, xx. 300. Poseidén speaks, respecting A¢neas — 

"AAX dyed’, ἡμεῖς πέρ μιν ὑπ᾽ ἐκ ϑανάτου ἀγάγωμεν, 

Μήπως καὶ Κρονίδης κεχολώσεται, αἴκεν ᾿Αχιλλεὺς 

Τόνδε κατακτείνῃ " μόριμον δέ οἱ ἔστ᾽ ἀλέασϑαι, 

"Odpa μὴ ἄσπερωος γενεὴ καὶ ἄφαντος ὄληται 

Δαρδάνου, ὃν Κρονίδης περὶ πάντων φίλατο παίδων, 

Οἱ ἔϑεν ἐξεγένοντο, γυναικῶν τε ϑνητάων. 

Ἤδη γὰρ Πριάμου γενεὴν ἤχϑῃρε Kpovior 

Νὺν δὲ δὴ Αἰνείαο βίη Τρώεσσιν ἀνάξει, 

Καὶ παίδων παῖδες, toi κεν μετόπισϑε γένωνται. 
Again, v. 339, Poseidén tells Aneas that he has nothing to dread from any 
other Greek than Achilles. 


WORSHIP OF HECTOR AND EZNEAS IN THE TROAD. 819 


guently transferred by them to the less lofty spot on which it 
stood in his time.!' In Arisbé and Gentinus there seem to have 
been families professing the same descent, since the same arche- 
gets were acknowledged.2_ In Ophrynium, Hectér had his con- 
secrated edifice, and in Ilium both he and Aéneas were worshipped 
as gods:3 and it was the remarkable statement of the Lesbian 
Menekratés, that A®neas, “ having been wronged by Paris and 
stripped of the sacred privileges which belonged to him, avenged 
bimself by betraying the city, and then became one of the Greeks.” 

One tale thus among many respecting A¢neas, and that too the 
most ancient of all, preserved among the natives of the ‘Troad, 
who worshipped him as their heroic ancestor, was, that after the 
capture of Troy he continued in the country as king of the re- 
maining Trojans, on friendly terms with the Greeks. But there 
were other tales respecting him, alike numerous and irreconcil- 


' See O. Miiller, on the causes of the mythe of A®neas and his voyage to 
Italy, in Classical Journal, vol. xxvi. p. 308; Klausen, Aineas und die Pen. 
ten, vol. i. p. 43-52. 

Démétrius Sképs. ab. Strab. xiii. p- 607; Nicolaus ap. Steph. Byz. v. 
᾿Ασκανία. Démétrius conjectured that Sképsis had been the regal seat of 
Eneas: there was a village called ποία near to it (Strabo, xiii. p. 603). 

2 Steph. Byz. v. ᾿Αρίσβη, Vevrivoc. Ascanius is king of Ida after the 
departure of the Greeks (Conon, Narr. 41; Mela, i. 18). Ascanius portus 
between Phokx and Kymé. 

3 Strabo, xiii. p. 595; Lycophrén, 1208, and Sch.; Athenagoras, Legat. 
1. Inscription in Clarke’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 86, Οἱ ‘lAceicg τὸν πάτριον ϑεὸν 
Αἰνείαν. Lucian, Deor. Concil. c. 12. i. 111. p. 934, Hemst. 

4 Menekrat. ap. Dionys. Hal. i. 48. ᾿Αχαιοὺς δὲ avin εἶχε (after the burial) 
καὶ ἐδόκεον τῆς στρατιῆς τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀπηράχϑαι. Ὅμως δὲ τάφον αὐτῷ dai- 
σαντες, ἐπολέμεον γῇ πάσῃ, ἄχρις “Asoc ἑάλω, Αἰνείεω ἐνδόντος. Αἰνείης 
γὰρ ἄτιτος ἐὼν ὑπὸ ᾿Αλεξάνδρου, καὶ ἀπὸ γερέων ἱερῶν ἐξειργόμενος, ἀνέτρεψε 
Πρίαμον, ἐργασάμενος δὲ ταῦτα, εἰς ᾿Αχαιῶν ἐγεγύνει. 

Abas, in his Troica, gave a narrative different from any other preserved : 
“Quidam ab Abante, qui 7roica scripsit, relatum ferunt, post discessum ὃ 
Troji Grecorum Astyanacti ibi datam regnum, hunc ab Antenore expul- 
sum sociatis sibi finitimis civitatibus, inter quas et Arisba fuit: Aunean hoe 
gegre tulisse, et pro Astyanacte arma cepisse ac prospere gesta re Astyanact. 
restituisse regnum” (Servius ad Virg. Aineid. ix. 264). According to Dik- 
tys, Antenér remains king and F£neas goes away (Dikt. v. 17): Antenor 
brings the Palladium to the Greeks (Dikt. v. 8). Syncellus, on the con- 
trary, tells us that the sons of Hectér recovered Ilium by the suggestions of 


Helenus, expelling the Atenorids (Syncell. p. 322, ed. Bonn) 


818 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


able: the hand of destiny marked him as a wanderer ( fato pro- 
fugus), and his ubiquity is not exceeded even by that of Ody 
seus. We hear of him at A‘nus in Thrace, in Palléné, at Aneia 
in the Thermaic Gulf, in Delus, at Orchomenus and Mantineig 
in Arcadia, in the islands of Kythéra and Zakynthus, in Leukas 
and Ambrakia, at Buthrotum in Epirus, on the Salentine penin- 
sula and various other places in the southern region of Italy ; at 
Drepana and Segesta in Sicily, at Carthage, at Cape Palinurus, 
Cumz, Misenum, Caieta, and finally in Latium, where he lays 
the first humble foundation of the mighty Rome and her em- 
pire.| And the reason why his wanderings were not continued 
still further was, that the oracles and the pronounced will of the 
gods directed him to settle in Latium.2? In each of these numer- 
ous places his visit was commemorated and certified by local 
monuments or special legends, particularly by temples and per- 
manent ceremonies in honor of his mother Aphrodité, whose 
worship accompanied him everywhere: there were also many 
temples and many different tombs of A®neas himself. The vast 
ascendency acquired by Rome, the ardor with which all the 
literary Romans espoused the idea of a Trojan origin, and tha 
fact that the Julian family recognized A®neas as their gentile 
primary ancestor, — all contributed to give to the Roman version 
of his legend the preponderance over every other. The various 
Other places in which monuments of A‘neas were found came 
thus to be represented as places where he had halted for a time 


soa - — ‘me $$ 


'Dionys. Halic. A. R. i. 48-54; Heyne, Excurs. 1 ad neid. iii.; De 
JEnee Frroribus, and Excurs. 1 ad A®n. v.; Conén. Narr. 46; Livy, xl. 4; 
Stephan. Byz. Aiveca. The inhabitants of “ποῖα in the Thermaic Gulf 
worshipped him with great solemnity as their heroic founder (Pausan. iii 
22,4: viii. 12,4). The tomb of Anchisés was shown on the confines of the 
Arcadian Orchomenus and Mantineia (compare Steph. Byz. v. Kadvac) 
ander the mountain called Anchisia, near a temple of Aphrodité: on the 
discrepancies respecting the death of Anchisés (Heyne Excurs. 17 ad ia 
fii.) : Segesta in Sicily founded by AZneas (Cicero, Verr. iv. 33). 

3 Tod δὲ μηκέτι προσωτέρω τῆς Εὐρώπης πλεῦσαι τὸν Τρωϊκὸν στόλον, ol te 
Ὦ ησμοὶ ἐγένοντο αἴτιοι, etc. (Dionys. Hal. i. 55). 

* Dionys. Hal. i. 54. Among other places, his tomb was shown at Bera 
eynthia, in Phrygia (Festus, v. Romam, p. 224, ed. Miller): a curious article, 
which contains an assemblage of the most contrauictory statements respect: 
meg both A®‘neas and Latings. 


ENEAS FROM TROY TO ROME. 819 


eu his way from Troy to Latium. But though the legendary 
pretensions of these places were thus eclipsed in the eyes of 
those who constituted the literary public, the local belief was not 
extinguished : they claimed the hero as their permanent proper- 
ty, and his tomb was to them a proof that he had lived and died 
among them. 

Antendér, who shares with A®neas the favorable sympathy of 
the Greeks, is said by Pindar to have gone from Troy along with 
Menelaus and Helen into the region of Kyréné in Libya.! But 
according to the more current narrative, he placed himself at 
the head of a body of Eneti or Veneti from Paphlagonia, who 
had come as allies of Troy, and went by sea into the inner part 
of the Adriatic Gulf, where he conquered the neighboring bar- 
barians and founded the town of Patavium (the modern Padua); 
the Veneti in this region were said to owe their origin to his im- 
migration.» We learn further from Strabo, that Opsikellas, one 
of the companions of Antendr, had continued his wanderings 
even into Ibéria, and that he had there established a settlement 
bearing his name. 

Thus endeth the Trojan war; together with its sequel, the dis- 
persion of the heroes, victors as well as vanquished. The ac- 
count here given of it has been unavoidably brief and imperfect ; 
for in a work intended to follow consecutively the real history of 
the Greeks, no greater space can be allotted even to the most 
splendid gem of their legendary period. Indeed, although it would 
be easy to fill a large volume with the separate incidents which 
have been introduced into the “Trojan cycle,” the misfortune -is 
that they are for the most part so contradictory as to exclude all 
possibility of weaving them into one connected narrative. We 
are compelled to select one out of the number, generally without 
any solid ground of preference, and then to note the variations of 
the rest. No one who has not studied the original documents 


' Pindar, Pyth. v., and the citation from the Νόστοι of Lysimachus in the 
Scholia; given still more fully in the Scholia ad Lyccphrén. 875. There 
was a λόφος ᾿Αντηνορίδων at Kyréné. 

* Livy, i. 1. Servius ad Afneid. i. 242. Strabo, i 48; τ 212. Ovid 
Basti, iv. 75. 

8 Serabo, iii. p. 157. 


820 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ean imagine the extent to which this discrepancy proceeds; if 
eovers almost every portion and fragment of the tale. | 

But though much may have been thus omitted of what the 
reader might expect to find in an account of the Trojan war, its 
genuine character has been studiously preserved, without either 
exaggeration or abatement. The real Trojan war is that which 
was recounted by Homer and the old epic poets, and continued 
by all the lyric and tragic composers. For the latter, though 
they took great liberties with the particular incidents, and in- 
troduced to some extent a new moral tone, yet worked mure or 
less faithfully on the Homeric scale: and even Euripides, who 
departed the most widely from the feeling of the old legend, nev 
er lowered down his matter tothe analogy of contemporary life. 
They preserved its well-defined object, at once righteous and ro- 
mantic, the recovery of the daughter of Zeus and sister of the 
Dioskuri — its mixed agencies, divine, heroic and human — the 
colossal force and deeds of its chief actors — its vast magnitude 
and long duration, as well as the toils which the conquerors un- 
derwent, and the Nemesis which followed upon their success. 
And these were the circumstances which, set forth in the full 
blaze of epic and tragic poetry, bestowed upon the legend its 
powerful and imperishable influence over the Hellenic mind. 
The enterprise was one comprehending all the members of the 
Hellenic body, of which each individually might be proud, and 
in which, nevertheless, those feelings of jealous and narrow pa- 
triotism, so lamentably prevalent in many of the towns, were as 
much as possible excluded. It supplied them with a grand and 
inexhaustible object of common sympathy, common faith, and 
common admiration ; and when occasions arose for bringing to- 
gether a Pan-Hellenic force against the barbarians, the prece- 
dent of the Homeric expedition was one upon which the elevated 
minds of Greece could dwell with the certainty of rousing an 
unanimous impulse, if not always of counterworking sinister by- 


‘These diversities are well set forth in the useful Dissertation of Fuchs 

De Varietate Fabularum 'Troicarum (Cologne, 1830). 
Of the number of romantic statements put forth respecting Helen and 
Achilles especially, some idea may be formed from the fourth, filth and sixth 
chapters of Ptolemy Héphestion (apud Westermann. Seriptt. Mythograpt 


p- 188, ete. ). 


SPURIOUS TROJAN WAR OF THE HISTORIANS. $21 


motives, among their audience. And the incidents comprised in 
the Trojan cycle were familiarized, not only to the public mind 
but also to the public eye, by innumerable representations both of 
the sculptor and the painter, — those which were romantic and 
chivalrous being better adapted for this purpose, and therefore 
more constantly employed, than any other. 

Of such events the genuine Trojan war of the old epic was 
for the most part composed. Though literally believed, reveren- 
tially cherished, and numbered among the gigantic phanomene 
of the past, by the Grecian public, it is in the eyes of modern 
inquiry essentially a legend and nothing more. If we are asked 
whether it be not a legend embodying portions of historical mat 
ter, and raised upon a basis of truth, — whether there may not 
really have occurred at the foot of the hill of Ilium a war purely 
human and _ political, without gods, without heroes, without Helen, 
without Amazons, without Ethiopians under the beautiful son of 

6s, without the wooden horse, without the characteristic and ὁχ- 
pressive features of the old epical war, —like the mutilated trunk 
of Deiphobus in the under-world ; if we are asked whether there 
was not really some such historical Trojan war as this, our an- 
Swer must be, that as the possibility of it cannot be denied, so 
neither can the reality of it be affirmed. We possess nothing but 
the ancient epic itself without any independent evidence: had it 
been an age of records indeed, the Homeric epic in its exquisite 
and unsuspecting simplicity would probably never have come 
into existence. Whoever therefore ventures to dissect Homer, 
Arktinus and Leschés, and to pick out certain portions as matters 
of fact, while he sets aside the rest as fiction, must do so in full 
reliance on his own powers of historical divination, without any 
means either of proving or verifying his conclusions. Among 
many attempts, ancient as well as modern, to identify real objects 
in this historical darkness, that of Dio Chrysostom deserves ate 
tention for its extraordinary boldness. In his oration addressed 
to the inhabitants of Ilium, and intended to demonstrate that the 
Trojans were not only blameless as to the origin of the war, but 
Victorious in its issue—he overthrows all the leading points of 
the Homeric narrative, and re-writes nearly the whole from be- 
ginning to end: Paris is the lawful husband of Helen, Achilles ig 
slain by Hectér, and the Greeks retire without taking Troy, dis 

VOL. I. 14* 2Loc 


vie 


ee ce ee ~— ee. -e 


~ 


ΠΤ» eo μῶν" 


822 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


graced as well as baffled. Having shown without difficulty that 
the Iliad, if it be looked at as a history, is full of gaps, incongrui- 
ties and absurdities, he proceeds to compose a more plausible nar- 
rative of his own, which he tenders as so much authentic matter 
of fact. The most important point, however, which his Oration 
brings to view is, the literal and confiding belief with which the 
Homeric narrative was regarded, as if it were actual history, not 
only by the inhabitants of Ilium, but also by the general Grecian 
public. ! 

The small town of Ilium, inhabited by olic Greeks,? and 
raised into importance only by the legendary reverence attached 
to it, stood upon an elevated ridge forming a spur from Mount 
Ida, rather more than three miles from the town and promontory 
of Sigeium, and about twelve stadia, or less than two miles, from 
the sea at its nearest point. From Sigeium and the neighboring 
town of Achilleium (with its monument and temple of Achilles), 
to the town of Rheteium on a hill higher up the Hellespont 
(with its monument and chapel of Ajax called the Aianteium’), 
was a distance of sixty stadia, or seven miles and a half in the 
straight course by sea: in the intermediate space was a bay and 
an adjoining plain, comprehending the embouchure of the Scar 
mander, and extending to the base of the ridge on which Ilium 
stood. ‘This plain was the celebrated plain of Troy, in which 
the great Homeric battles were believed to have taken place: the 
portion of the bay near to Sigeium went by the name of the 
Naustathmon of the Achzans (7. 6. the spot where they dragged 
their ships ashore), and was accounted to have been the camp of 
Agamemnon and his vast army.‘ 


* Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. p. 5310-322. 

* Herodot. v. 122. Pausan. v. 8,3: viii. 12,4. Αἰολεὺς ἐκ πόλεως Tyga 
doc, the title proclaimed at the Olympic games; like Αἰολεὺς ἀπὸ Movpivag, 
from Myrina in the more southerly region of JEolis, as we find in the list 
of visitors at the Charitésia, at Orchomenos in Be6otia (Cory. Inscrip. 
Boeckh. No. 1583). 

* See Pausanias, i. 35, 3, for the legends current at Tlium respecting the 
vast size of the bones of Ajax in his tomb. The inhabitants affirmed that 
after the shipwreck of Odysseus, the arms of Achilles, which he was carry- 
ing away with him, were washed up by the sea against the tomb of Ajax 
Pliny gives the distance at thirty stadia: modern travellers make it some 
thing more than Pliny, but considerably less than Strabo. 

4 Strabo, xiii. p. 596-598 Strabo distinguishes the ᾿Α γαιῶν Ναύσταϑμον, 


HISTORICAL ILIUM. B28 


Historical Tlium was founded, according to the questionable 
statement of Strabo, during the last dynasty of the Lydian 
kings,! that is, at some period later than 720 8. c. Until after 
the days of Alexander the Great — indeed until the period of 
Roman prepanderance — it always remained a place of inconsid- 
erable power and importance, as we learn not only from the as- 
sertion of the geographer, but also from the fact that Achilleium, 
Sigeium and Rho-teium were all independent of it.2 But incon- 
siderable as it might be, it was the only place which ever bore 
the venerable name immortalized by Homer. Like the Homerie 
Hlium, it had its temple of Athéné,3 wherein she was worshipped 
as the presiding goddess of the town: the inhabitants affirmed 
that Agamemnon had not altogether destroyed the town, but that 
it had been reoccupied after his departure, and had never ceased 
to exist.4 Their acropolis was called Pergamum, and in it was 
shown the house of Priam and the altar of Zeus Herkeius where 
that unhappy old man had been slain: moreover there were 
exhibited, in the temples, panoplies which had been worn by the 
Homeric heroes,° and doubtless many other relics appreciated by 
admirers of the Iliad. 


ore akon NE 


which was near to Sizeium, from the ᾿Αχαιῶν λιμῆν, which was more towards 
the middle of the bay between Sigeium and Rheeteium ; but we gather from 
his language that this distinction was not universally recognized. Alexanm 
der landed at the ᾿Αχαιῶν λιμὴν (Arrian, i. 11). 

1 Surabo, xiii. p. 593. 

3 Herodot. v. 95 (his account of the war between the Athenians and Mity- 
lenzans about Sigeium and Achilleium) ; Strabo, xiii. p. 593. Τὴν δὲ τῶν 
Ἰλιέων πόλιν τὴν viv τέως μὲν κωμόπολιν εἶναί φασι, τὸ ἱερὸν ἔχουσαν τῆς 
᾿Αϑηνᾶς μικρὸν καὶ εὐτελές. ᾿Αλεξάνδρον δὲ ἀναβάντα μετὰ τὴν ἐπὶ Τρανίκῳ 
νίκην, ἀναϑήμασι τε κοσμῆσαι τὸ ἱερὸν καὶ προσαγορεῦσαι πόλιν, ete. 

Again, Καὶ τὸ Ἴλιον, 6 νῦν ἐστὶ, κωμόπολίς τις ἣν ὅτε πρῶτον Ῥωμαῖοι rig 
᾿Ασίας ἐπέβησαν. 

3 Besides Athéné. the Inscriptions authenticate Ζεὺς Πολιεὺς at Tlium 
(Corp. Inscrip. Boeckh. No. 3599). 

4 Strabo, xiii. p. 600. Λέγουσι δ᾽ οἱ viv ᾿Ἰλεεὶς καὶ τοῦτο, ὡς οὐδὲ τέλεως 
συνεβαινεν ἠφανίσϑαι τὴν πόλιν κατὰ τὴν ἅλωσιν ὑπὸ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν, οὐδ᾽ ἐξῃ- 
λείφϑη οὐδέποτε. 

The situation of ium (or as it is commonly, but erroneously, termed, 
ivew Ilium) appears to be pretty well ascertained, about two miles from the 
sea (Rennell, On the Topography of Troy, Ε. 41-71; Dr Clarke’s Travels, 
ol. ii. p. 102). 

δ XYerxés passing by Adramyttium, and leaving the range of Mount Ida on 


324 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


These were testimonies which few persons in those ages were 
inclined to question, when combined with the identity of name 
and general locality ; nor does it seem that any one did question 
them until the time of Démétrius of Sképsis. Hellanikus ex- 
pressly described this Ilium as being the Ilium of Homer, for 
which assertion Strabo (or probably Démétrius, from whom the 
narrative seems to be copied) imputes to him very gratuitously 
an undue partiality towards the inhabitants of the town.! Hero- 
dotus relates, that Xerxés in his march into Greece visited the 
place, went up to the Pergamum of Priam, inquired with much 
interest into the details of the Homeric siege, made libations to 
the fallen heroes, and offered to the Athéné of Ilium his mag- 
nificent sacrifice of a thousand oxen: he probably represented 
and believed himself to be attacking Greece as the avenger of 
the Priamid family. The Lacedemonian admiral Mindarus, 
while his fleet lay at Abydus, went personally to Ilium to offer 
sacrifice to Athéné, and saw from that elevated spot the battle 
fought between the squadron of Dorieus and the Athenians, on 
the shore near Rheeteium.2 During the interval between the 


his left hand, jie ἐς τὴν ᾿Ιλεώδα γὴν = ον δὲ 1 
ἐπὶ τὸν Σκάμανδρον... ..... «ἐς τὸ Πριάμου Πέργαμον ἀνέβη, ἵμερον ἔχων 
ϑεήσασϑαι. Θεησάμενος δὲ, καὶ πυϑ όμε gui K é ive ° gE “eo τα, τῷ 
᾿Αϑηναίῃ τῇ ᾿Ιλιάδι ἔϑυσε βοῦς χιλίας - χοὰς δὲ οἱ μάγοι τοῖσιν ἥρωσιν ἐχέ- 
Ἅμα ἡμέρῃ δὲ ἐπορεύετο, ἐν ἀριστέρῃ μὲν ἀπέργων Ῥοιτεῖον 
πόλιν καὶ ᾿Οφρυνεῖον καὶ Δάρδανον, ἧπερ δὴ ᾿Αβύδῳ ὅμουρος ἐστιν " ἐν δεξίῳ 
ργιϑας Τευκρούς (Herod. vii. 43). 
ἜΣ ΡΟΝ (Arrian, i. 11), ᾿Ανελϑόντα δὲ ἐς Ἴλιον, τῇ ᾿Αϑηνᾷ 
ϑῦσαι τῇ ᾿Ιλιάδι, καὶ τὴν τανοπλίαν τὴν αὐτοῦ ἀναθεῖναι εἰς νὸν ναὸν, καὶ 
καϑελεὶν ἀντὶ ταύτης τῶν ἱερῶν τινα ὅπλων ἔτι ἐκ τοῦ Τρωϊκοῦ ἔργον σωζέ- 
μενα καὶ ταῦτα λέγουσιν ὅτι οἱ ὑπασπισταὶ ἔφερον πρὸ αὐτοῦ ἐς τὰς μάχας. 
Θῦσαι δὲ αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τοῦ βωμοῦ τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ — λόγος a μῆνιν 
ἀμου παραιτούμενον τῷ Νεοπτολέμου γένει, ὃ δὴ ἐς αὐτὸν καϑῆκε. 
a ones of "» also showed the lyre which had belonged to 
is (Plutarch, Alexand. c. 15). 
, “““- in his History of Ilium, chap. xxii. Ρ. 89, seems to think that 
the place called by Herodotus the Pergamum of Priam is different from the 
historical lium. But the mention of the Iliean Athéné identifies them as 


᾿Απικομένου δὲ τοὺ στρατοῦ 


the same. . I 
1 Strabo xiii. p. 602. Ἑλλάνικος δὲ χαριζόμενος τοῖς ᾿ἸΙλεεῦσιν, οἷος ὁ 


ἐκείνου μῦϑος, συνηγορεὶ τῷ τὴν αὐτὴν εἶναι πόλιν τὴν νῦν τῇ τότε. Hellan- 


tkus had written a work called Τρωϊκά. 
3 Xenoph. Hellen. i. 1, 10. Skylax places lium twenty-five stadia, οἱ 


RELICS AND MEMORIALS AT ΓΙ. 820 


Peloponnesian war and the Macedonian invasion of Persia. Lium 
was always garrisoned as a strong position; but its domain was 
still narrow, and did not extend even to the sea which was so 
ear to it! Alexander, or crossing the Hellespont, sent his 
army from Sestus to Abydus, under Parmenio, and sailed person- 
ally from Elweus in the Chersonese, after having solemnly 580» 
rificed at the Eleuntian shrine of Prétesilaus, to the harbor of 
the Achzans between Sigeium and Rheeteium. He then ascended 
to Ilium, sacrificed to the Diean Ath2né, and consecrated in her 
temple his own panoply, in exchange for which he took some of 
the sacred arms there suspended, which were said to have been 
preserved from the time of the Trojan war. These arms were 
carried before him when he went to battle by his armor-bearers, 
It is a fact still more curious, and illustrative of the strong work- 
ing of the old legend on an impressible and eminently religious 
mind, that he also sacrificed to Priam himself, on the very altar 
of Zeus Herkeius from which the old king was believed to have 
been torn by Neoptolemus. As that fierce warrior was his heroie 
ancestor by the maternal side, he desired to avert from himself 
the anger of Priam against the Achilleid race.2 


about three miles, from the sea (c. 94). But Ido not understand how he 
ean call Sképsis and Kebrén πόλεις ἐπὶ ϑαλάσσῃ. 

‘See Xenoph. Hellen. iii. i. 16; and the description of the seizure of 
Ilium, along with Sképsis and Kebrén, by the chief of mercenaries, Chart. 
démus, in Demosthen. cont. Aristocrat. c. 38. p. 671: compare Atneas 
Poliorcetic. c. 24, and Polyzn. iii. 14. 

* Arrian, 1. c. Dikgearchus composed a separate work respecting this 
sacrifice of Alexander, περὶ τῆς ἐν Ἰλίῳ ϑυσίας (Athene. xiii. p- 603; 
Dikwarch. Fragm. p. 114, ed. Fuhr). 

Theophrastus, in noticing old and venerable trees, mentions the φηγοὶ 
(Quercus esculus) on the tomb of Ilus at Ilium, without any doubt of the 
authenticity of the place (De Plant. iv. 14); and his contemporary, the 
harper Stratonikos, intimates the same feeling, in his jest on the visit of a 
bad sophist to Ilium during the festival of the Ilieia (Athens. viii. p. 351). 
The same may be said respecting the author of the tenth epistle ascribed to 
the orator Aschinés (p. 737), in which his visit of curiosity to Ilium is 
described —as well as about Apollonius of Tyava, or the writer who 
describes his life and his visit to the Tréad ; it is evident that he did not dis- 
trust the ἀρχαιολογία of the Ilieans, who affirmed their town to be the real 
Troy (Philostrat. Vit. Apollon. Tyan. iv. 11). 

The goddess Athéné of Ilium was reported to have rendered valrnble 


- 


LL a ttt ssi! 
Ἂν “ὡς, i) ϑω 
=" 


326 HISTORY OF GREECE 


Alexander made to the inhabitants of [lium many munificent 
promises, which he probably would have executed, had he not 
been prevented by untimely death: for the Trojan war was 
amongst all the Grecian legends the most thoroughly Pan-Hel- 
lenic, and the young king of Macedon, besides his own sincere 
legendary faith, was anxious to merge the local patriotism of the 
separate Greek towns in one general Hellenic sentiment under 
himself as chief. One of his successors, Antigonus,! founded the 
city of Alexandreia in the Troéad, between Sigeium and the more 
southerly promontory of Lektum ; compressing into it the inhab- 
itants of many of the neighboring olic towns in the region 
of Ida, — Sképsis, Kebrén, Hamaxitus, Koléne, and Neandria, 
though the inhabitants of Sképsis were subsequently permitted 
by Lysimachus to resume their own city and autonomous gov- 
ernment. Ilium however remained without any special mark of 
favor until the arrival of the Romans in Asia and their triumph 
over Antiochus (about 190 B. c.). Though it retained its walls 
and its defensible position, Démétrius of Sképsis, who visited it 
shortly before that event, described it as being then in a state of 
neglect and poverty, many of the houses not even having tiled 
roofs.2 In this dilapidated condition, however, it was still mythi- 
assistance to the inhabitants of Kyzikus, when they were besieged by 
Mithridatés, commemorated by inscriptions set up in Ilium (Plutarch, 
Lucull. 10). 

δ Strabo, xiii. p. 603-607. 

? Livy, xxxv. 43; xxxvii. 9. Polyb. v. 78-111 (passages which prove thas 
Hium was fortified and defensible about B. c. 218). Strabo, xiii. p. 594. Καὶ 
τὸ Ἴλιον δ᾽, ὃ viv ἐστι. κωμόπολίς τις ἣν, ὅτε πρῶτον Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς ᾿Ασίας ἐπέ- 
βησαν καὶ ἐξέβαλον ᾿Αντίοχον τὸν μέγαν ἐκ τῆς ἐντὸς τοῦ ' Ταύρου. Φησὶ γοῦν 
Δημήτριος ὁ Σκήψιος, μειράκιον ἐπιδήμησαν εἰς τὴν πόλιν κατ᾽ ἐκείνους τοὺς 
καιροὺς, οὕτως ὠλιγωρημένην ἰδεῖν τὴν κατοικίαν, ὥστε μηδὲ κεραμωτὰς ἔχειν 
τὰς στέγας. Ἡγησιάναξ δὲ, τοὺς Γαλάτας περαιωϑέντας ἐκ τῆς Εὐρώπης, ἀνα- 
βῆναι μὲν εἰς τὴν πόλιν δεομένους ἐρύματος, παραχρῆμα δ᾽ ἐκλιπεῖν διὰ τὸ 
ἀτείχιστον" ὕστερον δ' ἐπανόρϑωσιν ἔσχε πολλήν. Εἰτ᾽ ἐκώκωσαν αὐτὴν πα- 
λὲν οἱ μετὰ Φιμβρίου, etc. 

This is a very clear and precise statement, attested by an eye-witness. 
But it is thoroughly inconsistent with the statergent made by Strabo in the 
previous chapter, a dozen lines before, as the text now stands; for he there 
mforms us that Lysimachus, after the death of Alexander, paid great atten- 
tion to Ilium, surrounded it with a wall of forty stadia in circumference, 
erected a temple, and aggregated to [lium the ancient cities around, which 


RESPECT SHOWN TC ILIUM. 897 


cally recognized both by Antiochus and by the Roman consul 
Tivius, who went up thither to sacrifice to the Iliean Athéné. 
The Romans, proud of their origin from Troy and Aineas, treat- 
ed Ilium with signal munificence ; not only granting to it immu- 
nity from tribute, but also adding to its domain the neighboring 
territories of Gergis, Rheeteium and Sigeium— and making the 
Tlieans masters of the whole coast! from the Perwa (or conti- 


were in a state of decay. We know from Livy that the aggregation of 
Gergis and Rhceteium to Ilium was effected, not by Lysimachus, but by the 
Romans (Livy, xxxviii. 37); so that the first statement of Strabo is not 
only inconsistent with his second, but is contradicted by an independent au- 
thority. 

I cannot but think that this contradiction arises from a confusion of the 
text in Strabo’s first passage, and that in that passage Strabo really meant to 
speak only of the improvements brought about by Lysimachus in Alevar 
dreia Tréas ; that he never meant to ascribe to Lysimachus any improve- 
ments in J/ium, but, on the contrary, to assign the remarkable attention paid 
by Lysimachus to Alerandreia Téas, as the reason why he had neglected to 
fulfil the promises held out by Alexander to Ilium. The series of facts runs 
thus : — 1. Ilium is nothing better than a κώμη at the landing of Alexander; 
2. Alexander promises great additions, but never returns from Persia to ac- 
complish them ; 3. Lysimachus is absorbed in Alexandreia Tréas, into which 
he aggregates several o* the adjoining old towns, and which flourishes under 
his hands ; 4. Hence Ilium remained a κώμη when the Romans entered Asia, 
as it had been when Alexander entered. 

This alteration in the text of Strabo might be effected by the simple trans- 
position of the words as they now stand, and by omitting ὅτε καὶ, ἤδη ἔπε- 
μελήϑη, without introducing a single new or conjectural word, so that the 
passage would read thus: Μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἐκείνου (Alexander’s) τελευτὴν Λυσέ- 
μαχος μάλιστα τῆς ᾿Αλεξανδρείας ἐπεμελήϑη, συνῳκισμένης μὲν ἤδη ὑπ᾽ ’AvTe 
γόνου ͵ καὶ προσηγορευομένης ᾿Αντιγόνιας, μεταβαλούσης δὲ τοὔνομα" (ἔδοξε γὰρ 
εὐσεβὲς εἷναι τοὺς ᾿Αλεξάνδρον διαδεξαμένους ἐκείνου πρότερον κτίζειν ἐπωνῦ- 
μους πόλεις, εἶϑ᾽ ἑαυτῶν) καὶ νέων κατεσκεύασε καὶ τεῖχος περιεβάλετο ὅσον 
40 σταδίων - συνώκισε δὲ εἰς αὐτὴν τὰς κύκλῳ πόλεις ἀρχαΐας, ἤδη κεκακωμέ- 
νας. Καὶ δὴ καὶ συνέμεινε.... . πόλεων. If this reading be adopted, the 
words beginning that which stands in Tzschucke’s edition as sect. 27, and 
which immediately follow the last word πόλεων, will read quite suitably and 
coherently,— Kai τὸ Ἴλιον δ᾽, ὃ viv ἐστὲ, κωμόπολίς τις ἣν, ὅτε πρῶτον ‘Pa- 
μαῖοι τῆς ᾿Ασίας ἐπέβησαν, etc., whereas with the present reading of the pas- 
sage they show a contradiction, and the whole passage is entirely confused. 

' Livy, xxxviii. 39; Strabo, xiii. p. 600. Κατέσκαπται δὲ καὶ τὸ Σίγειον 
ὑπὸ τῶν ᾿Ιλιέων διά τὴν ἀπείϑειαν" ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνοις γὰρ ἣν ὕστερον  wapahig 
@aca ἡ μέχρι Δαρδάνου, καὶ νῦν ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνοις ὅστε. 


$28 HISTORY OF GREECE 


nental possessions) of Tenedos (southward of Sigeium) to the 
boundaries of Dardanus, which had its own title to legendary 
reverence as the special sovereignty of ‘Eneas. Τ he inhabitants 
of Sigeium could not peaceably acquiesce in this loss of their 
autonomy, and their city was destroyed by the llieans. ! 

The dignity and power of [lium being thus prodigiously en- 
hanced, we cannot doubt that the inhabitants assumed to them- 
selves exaggerated importance as the recognized parents οἵ all- 
conquering Rome. Partly, we may naturally suppose, ang wu 
jealousies thus aroused on the part of their neighbors at Sképsis 
and Alexandreia ‘Tréas — partly from the pronounced tendency 
of the age (in which Kratés at Pergamus and Aristarchus at 
Alexandria divided between them the palm of literary celebrity) 
towards criticism and illustration of the old poets —a blow was 
now aimed at the mythical legitimacy of Llium. Démétrius of 
Skeépsis, one of the most laborious of the Riomnente critics, pe 
composed thirty books of comment upon the Catalogue in the 
Tliad: Hestiza, an authoress of Alexandreia Tréas, had written 
on the same subject: both of them, well-acquainted with the 
locality, remarked that the vast battles described in the Tliad 
could not be packed into the narrow space between Ilium and 
the Naustathmon of the Greeks; the more so, as that space, too 
small even as it then stood, had been considerably enlarged since 
the date of the Iliad by deposits at the mouth of the Skaman- 
der.! They found πὸ difficulty in pointing out topographical in- 
congruities and impossibilities as to the incidents in the Iliad, 
which they professed to remove by the startling theory that the 
Homeric Ilium had not occupied the site of the city so called. 
There was a village, called the village of the Ilieans, situated 


' Strabo, xiii. 599. Παρατίϑη. δὲ ὁ Δημήτριος καὶ τὴν ᾿Αλεξανδρίνην age 
Qiav μάρτυρα, τὴν συγγράψασαν περὲ τῆς "Ομῆρου Ἰλιάδος, sinister ates ε 
περὶ τὴν νῦν πόλιν ὁ πόλεμος συνέστη, καὶ τὸ Τρωϊκὸν πέδιον ποῦ ἔστιν, ὃ μέ- 
ταξυ τῆς πόλεως καὶ τῆς ϑαλάσσης ὁ ποιητὴς φράζει" τὸ μὲν γὰρ πρὸ τῆς νὺν 
πόλεως ὁρώμενον, πρόχωμα εἶναι τῶν ποταμῶν, ὕστερον γεγονός. 

The words ποῦ ἔστιν are introduced conjecturally by Grosskurd, the ex 
cellent German translator of Strabo but they seem to me necessary to make 


the sense complete. 
Hesitza is cited more than once in the Homeric Scholia (Schol. Venet. ad 


Died. iii. 64; Enstath. ad Iliad. ii. 538). 


᾿ HYPOTHESIS OF AN OLD AND NEW ILIUM. 829 


rather less than four miles from the city in the direction of Mount 
Ida, and further removed from the sea; here, they affirmed the 
“holy Troy” had stood. 

No positive proof was produced to sustain the conclusion, for 
Strabo expressly states that not a vestige of the ancient city re- 
mained at the Village of the Ilieans :! but the fundamental] sup- 
position was backed by a second accessory supposition, to explain 
how it happened that all such vestiges had disappeared. Never- 
theless Strabo adopts the unsupported hypothesis of Démétrius as 
if it were an authenticated fact — distinguishing pointedly be- 
tween Old and New Ilium, and even censuring Hellanikus for 
having maintained the received local faith. But I cannot find 
that Démétrius and Hestiwa have been followed in this respect 
by any other writer of ancient times excepting Strabo. Tlium 
still continued to be talked of and treated by every one as the 
genuine Homeric Troy : the cruel Jests of the Roman rebel Fim- 
bria, when he sacked the town and massacred the inhabitants — 
the compensation made by Sylla, and the pronounced favor of 
Julius Cxsar and Augustus, — all prove this continued recogni- 
tion of identity.2 Arrian, though a native of Nicomedia, hold- 
ing a high appointment in Asia Minor, and remarkable for the 
exactness of his topographical notices, describes the visit of 
Alexander to Ilium, without any suspicion that the place with all 
its relics was a mere counterfeit : Aristidés, Dio Chrysostom, Pau- 
sanias, Appian, and Plutarch hold the same language. But 
modern writers seem for the most part to have taken up the 


---....΄΄΄ὋὦὋὃὖὦἝὃὥ,ὋὃὋὃὁἜἝἜἜἜ 


' Strabo, xiii. p. 599. Οὐδὲν δ᾽ ἔχνος σώζεται τῆς ἀρχαίας πόλεως --- εἰκό- 
Two’ ἅτε γὰρ ἐκπεπορϑημένων τῶν κύκλῳ πόλεων, οὐ τελέως δὲ κατεσπασμέ- 
νων, οἱ λίϑοι πάντες εἰς τὴν ἐκείνων ἀνάληψιν μετηνέχϑησαν. 

* Appian, Mithridat. ec. 53; Strabo, xiii. p. 594; Plutarch, Sertorius, c. 1 ; 
Velleius Patere. ii, 23. 

The inscriptions attest Panathenaic games celebrated at Ilium in honor of 
Athéné by the Ilieans conjointly with various other neighboring cities (see 
Corp. Inser. Boeckh. No. 3601-3602, with Boeckh’s observations). The 
valuable inscription No. 3595 attests the liberality of Antiochus Soter to- 
wards the Iliean Athéné as early as 278 B. c. 

? Arrian, i. 11; Appian ut sup.; also Aristidés, Or. 43, Rhodiaca, p, 
820 (Dindorf p 369). The curious Oratio xi. of Dio Chrysostom, in which 
he writes his new version of the Trojan. war, is addressed to the inhabitar te 
wf ium 


tt τΤΠι1}....ὦὦὃᾧὖ0Θρ'ο'.».».- αὕ.... 


“τ τὺ. 


te 


390 HISTORY OF GREECE 


supposition from Strabo as implicitly as he took it from Démé 
trius. ‘They call Ilium by the disrespectful appellation of New 
Ilium — while the traveller in the Tréad looks for Old Ilium as 
if it were the unquestionable spot where Priam had lived and 
moved ; the name is even formally enrolled on the best maps re- 


cently prepared of the ancient 'Tréad.! 


' The controversy, now half a century old, respecting Troy and the 
Trojan war — between Bryant and his various opponents, Morritt, Gilbert 
Wakefield, the British Critic, etc., seems now nearly forgotten, and 1 cannot 
think that the pamphlets on either side would be considered as displaying 
much ability, if published at the present day. The discussion was first 
raised by the publication of Le Chevalier’s account of the plain of ‘Troy, in 
which the author professed to have discovered the true site of Old Llium 
(the supposed Homeric Troy), about twelve miles from the sea near Bounar- 
bashi. Upon this account Bryant published some animadversions, followed 
up by a second treatise, in which he denied the historical reality of the Trojan 
war, and advanced the hypothesis that the tale was of Egyptian origin (Dis- 
sertation on the War of Troy, and the Expedition of the Grecians as de 
scribed by Homer, showing that no such Expedition was ever undertaken, 
and that no such city of Phrygia existed, by Jacob Bryant; seemingly 1797, 
though there is no date in the title-page: Morritt’s reply was published in 
1798). A reply from Mr. Bryant and a rejoinder from Mr. Morritt, as well 
as a pamphlet from G. Wakefield, appeared in 1799 and 1800, besides an 
Expostulation by the former addressed to the British Critic. 

Bryant, having dwelt both on the incredibilities and the inconsistencies of 
the Trojan war, as it is recounted in Grecian legend generally, nevertheless 
admitted that Homer had a groundwork for his story, and maintained that 
that groundwork was Egyptian. Homer (he thinks) was an Ithacan, de- 
scended from a family originally emigrant from Egypt: the war of Troy 
was originally an Egyptian war, which explains how Memnon the Ethiopian 
came to take part in it: “upon this history, which was originally Egyptian, 
Homer founded the scheme of his two principal poems, adapting thinys to 
Greece and Phrygia by an ingenious transposition:” he derived information 
from priests of Memphis or Thébes (Bryant, pp. 102, 108, 126). The Ἥρως 
Αἰγύπτιος, mentioned in the second book of the Odyssey (15), is the Egyp- 
tian hero, who affords, in his view, an evidence that the population of that 
island was in part derived from Egypt. No one since Mr. Bryant, I appre- 
hend, has ever construed the passage in the same sense. 

Bryant's Egyptian hypothesis is of no value; but the negative portion of 
his argument, summing up the particulars of the Trojan legend, and con- 
tending against its historical credibility, is not so easily put aside. Few 
persons will share in the zealous conviction by which Morritt tries to make it 
appear that the 1100 ships, the ten years of war, the large confederacy of 
princes from all parts of Greece, etc., have nothing but what is consonant with 


LEGEND OF TROY. 831 


Strabo has here converted into geographical matter of fact an 
hypothesis purely gratuitous, with a view of saving the accuracy 
of the Homeric topography ; though in all probability the locali- 
ty of the pretended Old lium would have been found open to 
difficulties not less serious than those which it was introduced to 
Obviate.! It may be true that Démétrius and he were justified in 


historical probability ; difficulties being occasionally eliminated by the plea of 
our ignorance of the time and of the subject (Morritt, p. 7-21). Gilbert Wake- 
field, who maintains the historical reality of the siege with the utmost inten- 
sity, and even compares Bryant to Tom Paine (W. p. 17), is still more 
displeased with those who propound doubts, and tells us that “ grave dispu- 
tation in the midst of such darkness and uncertainty is a conflict with chi- 
mezras ” (W. p. 14). 

The most plausible line of argument taken by Morritt and Wakefield is, 
where they enforce the positions taken by Strabo and so many other authors, 
ancient as well as modern, that a superstructure of fiction is to be distin 
guished from a basis of truth, and that the latter is to be amintained 
while the former is rejected (Morritt, p.5; Wake. p. 7-8). To this Bryant 
replies, that “ if we leave out every absurdity, we can make anything plau- 
sible ; that a fable may be made consistent, and we have many romances 
that are very regular in the assortment of characters and circumstances: this 
may be seen in plays, memoirs, and novels. But this regularity and corres 
pondence alone will not ascertain the truth” (Expostulation, pp. 8, 12, 18) 
* That there are a great many other fables besides that of Troy, regular and 
consistent among themselves, believed and chronologized by the Greeks, and 
even looked up to by them in a religious view (p. 13), which yet no one now 
thinks of admitting as history.” 

Morritt, having urged the universal belief of antiquity as evidence that 
the Trojan war was historically real, is met by Bryant, who reminds him 
that the same persons believed in centaurs, satyrs, nymphs, augury, aruspicy ; 
Homer maintaining that horses could speak, ete. To which Morritt replies, 
“What has religious belief to do with historical facts? Is not the evidence 
on which our faith rests in matters of religion totally different in all its 
parts from that on which we ground our belief in history?” (Addit. Re- 
marks, p. 47). 

The separation between the grounds of religious and historical belief is by 
no means so complete as Mr. Morritt supposes, even in regard to modern 
times; and when we apply his position to the ancient Greeks, it will be 
found completely the reverse of the truth. The contemporaries of Herodo- 
tus and Thucydidés conceived their early history in the most intimate con- 
janction with their religion. 

1 For example, adopting his own line of argument (not to mention those 
battles in which the pursuit and the flight reaches from the city to the ships 
and back again), it might have been urged to him, that by supposing the 


———— ~ - -“. -- 


~~ oe ee 


--- ---- 


-ς 


A ES 


Ema 


— 


S52 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


their negative argument, so as to show that the battles described 
in the Iliad could not possibly have taken place if the city of 
Priam had stood on the hill inhabited by the Ilieans. But the 
legendary faith subsisted before, and continued without abate 
ment afterwards, notwithstanding such topographical impossibili- 
ties. Hellanikus, Herodotus, Mindarus, the guides of Xerxés, 
and Alexander, had not been shocked by them: the case of the 
latter is the strongest of all, because he had received the best 
education of his time under Aristotle — he was a passionate ade 
mirer and constant reader of the Iliad — he was moreover per 
sonally familiar with the movements of armies, and lived at @ 
time when maps, which began with Anaximander, the disciple of 
Thalés, were at least known to all who sought instruction. Now 
if, notwithstanding such advantages, Alexander fully believed in 
the identity of Ilium, unconscious of these many and glaring to 
pographical difficulties, much less would Homer himself, or the 
Homeric auditors, be likely to pay attention to them, at a period, 
five centuries earlier, of comparative rudeness and ignorance, 
when prose records as well as geographical maps were totally 
anknown.! The inspired poet might describe, and his hearers 


Homeric Troy to be four miles farther off from the sea, he aggravated the 
difficulty of rolling the Trojan horse into the town: it was already sufficiently 
hard to propel this vast wooden animal full of heroes from the Greek Nan- 
stathmon to the town of Ilium. 

The Trojan horse, with its accompaniments Sinon and Laocoon, is one 
of the capital and indispensable events in the epic: Homer, Arktinus, Les- 
chés, Virgil, and Quintus Smyrnenus, all dwell upon it emphatically as the 
proximate cause of the capture. 

The difficulties and inconsistencies of the movements ascribed to Greeks 
and Trojans in the Iliad, when applied to real topography, are well set forth 
in Spohn, De Agro Trojano, Leipsic, 1814; and Mr. Maclaren has shown 
(Dissertation on the Topography of the Trojan War, Edinburgh, 1822) that 
these difficulties are nowise obviated by removing Ilium a few miles further 
from the sea. 

* Major Rennell argues differently from the visit of Alexander, employ- 
ing it to confute the hypothesis of Chevalier, who had placed the Homeric 
Troy at Bounarbashi, the site supposed to have been indicated by Démé- 
trius and Strabo: — 

“ Alexander is said to have been a passionate admirer of the Mliad, and 
@e had an opportunity of deciding on the spot how far the tepography was 
sensistent with the narrative. Had he been shown the site of Bounarbashi 


CONTINUANCE OF TRE MYTHICAL FAITH IN ILIUM. 8388 


q@ould listen with delight to the tale, how Hectér, pursued by 
Achilles, ran thrice round the city of Troy, while the trembling 
Trojans were all huddled into the city, not one daring to come out 
even at this last extremity of their beloved prince — and while the 
Grecian army looked on, restraining unwillingly their uplifted 
spears at the nod of Achilles, in order that Hector might perish 
by no other hand than his; nor were they, while absorbed by 
this impressive recital, disposed to measure distances or calculate 
topographical possibilities with reference to the site of the real 
Tiium.! The mistake consists in applying to Homer and to the 
Homeric siege of Troy, criticisms which would be perfectly just 
if brought to bear on the Athenian siege of Syracuse, as de- 
scribed by Thucydidés;? in the Peloponnesian war’ — but which 


for that of Troy, he would probably have questioned the fidelity either of 
the historical part of the poem or his guides. It is not within credibility, 
that a person of so correct a judgment as Alexander could have admired a 
poem, which contained a long history of military details, and other transactions 
that could not physically have had an existence. What pleasure could he 
receive, in contemplating as subjects of history, events which could not have 
happened? Yet he did admire the poem, and therefore must have found the 
topography consistent: that is, Bounarbashi, surely, was not shown to him for 
Troy (Reynell, Observations on the Plain of Troy, Ρ. 128). 
Major Rennell here supposes in Alexander a spirit of topographical criti- 
cism quite foreign to his real character. We have no reason to believe that 
the site of Bounarbashi was shown to Alexander as the Homeric Troy, or 
that any site was shown to him except Ilium, or what Strabo calls New lium 
Still less reason have we to believe that any scepticism crossed his mind, 
or that his deep-seated faith required to be confirmed by measurement of 
distances. oy ee 
! Strabo, xiii. p. 599. Οὐδ᾽ ἡ τοῦ Ἕκτορος dé περιδρομὴ ἡ περὶ τὴν πόλιν 
ἔχει τι εὔλογον - ob γάρ ἐστι περίδρομος ἡ νῦν, διὰ τὴν συνεχῆ ῥάχιν" ἡ δὲ 
ὰ ἔχει περιδρομήν. 
gees (Geographie der Griechen und Romer, th. 6. heft 3. b. 8. cap. 
8) is confused in his account of Old and New Hlium : he represents thas 
Alexander raised up a new spot to the dignity of having been the Homerie 
Tlium, which is not the fact: Alexander adhered to the received local belief. 
Indeed, as far as our evidence goes, no one but Démétrius, Hestisa, and 
appears ever to have departed from it. | 
ag se Hage hardly be a sill singular example of this same confusion, 
than to find elaborate military criticisms from the Emperor Napoleon, upon 
the description of the taking of Troy in the second book of the Aineid. 
He shows that gross faults are committed in it, when looked at from the 


834 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


are not more applicable to the epic narrative than they would be 
to the exploits of Amadis or Orlando. 

There is every reason for presuming that the Ilium visited by 
Xerxés and Alexander was really the “ holy Ilium” present te 
the mind of Homer; and if so, it must have been inhabited, either 
by Greeks or by some anterior population, at a period earlier than 
that which Strabo assigns. History recognizes neither Troy the 
city, nor Trojans, as actually existing; but the extensive region 
called Tréas, or the Tréad (more properly ‘Trdéias), is known 
both to Herodotus and to Thucydidés: it seems to include the 
territory westward of an imaginary line drawn from the north- 
east corner of the Adramyttian gulf to the Propontis at Parium, 
since both Antandrus, Kolénz, and the district immediately 
round Ilium, are regarded as belonging to the ‘l'réad.! Herodo- 
tus further notices the Teukrians of Gergis? (a township conter- 
minous with Ilium, and lying to the eastward of the road from 
[lium to Abydus), considering them as the remnant of a larger 
Teukrian population which once resided in the country, and 
which had in very early times undertaken a vast migration from 
Asia into Europe.2 To that Teukrian population he thinks that 
the Homeric Trojans belonged :* and by later writers, especially 


by Virgil and the other Romans, the names Teukrians and ΤΟ» 
jans are employed as equivalents. As the name Trojans is not 
mentioned in any contemporary historical monument, so the 


point of vlew of 2 general (see an interesting article by Mr. G. C. Lewis, in the 
Classical Museum, vol. i. p. 205, “ Napoleon on the Capture of Troy”). 

Having cited this criticism from the highest authority on the art of waz, 
we may find a suitable parallel in the works of distinguished publicists. The 
attack of Odyssens on the Ciconians (described in Homer, Odyss. ix. 39-61} ia 
cited both by Grotius (De Jure Bell. et Pac. iii. 3, 10) and by Vattel (Droit 
des Gens, iii. 202) as a case in point in international law. Odysseus is con 
sidered to have sinned against the rules of international law by attacking 
them as allies of the Trojans, without a formal declaration of war. 

1 Compare Herodot. v. 24-122; Thucyd. i. 131. The lade γῆ is 8 past 
of the Tréad. 

* Herodot. vii. 43. 

* Herodot. v. 122. elAe μὲν Αἰολέας πάντας, ὅσοι τὴν ᾿Ιλεάδα γῆν νέμονται, 
εἷλε δὲ Γέργιϑας. τοὺς ἀπολειφϑέντας τῶν ἀρχαίων Τεύκρων. 

For the migration of the Teukrians and Mysians into Europe see Herodet 
vii. 20; the Preonians, on the Strymén called themselves thei descendant 


Φ Herodot. ii. 118; v. 13. 


THE TEUKRIANS. 388 


mame Zeukrians never once occurs in the old epic. It appears te 
have been first noticed by the elegiac poet Kallinus, about 
660 B. c., who connected it by an alleged immigration of Teu- 
krians from Kréte into the region round about Ida. Others 
again denied this, asserting that the primitive ancestor, Teukrus, 
had come into the country from Attica,' or that he was of indige- 
nous origin, born from Skamander and the nymph Ida — all 
various manifestations of that eager thirst after an eponymous 
hero which never deserted the Greeks. Gergithians occur in 
more than one spot in A®olis, even so far southward as the 
neighborhood of _Kymé:* the name has no place in Homer, but 
he mentions Gorgythion and Kebriones as illegitimate sons of 
Priam, thus giving a sort of epical recognition both to Geigis 
and Kebrén. As Herodotus calls the old sensed Trojans by the 
name Teukrians, so the Attic Tragedians cal] them Phrygians ; 
though the Homeric hymn to Aphrodite represents Phryyians 
and ‘Trojans as completely distinct, specially noting the diversity 
of language ;? and in the Iliad the Phrygians are simply num- 
bered among the allies of Troy from the far Ascania, without in- 
lication of any more intimate relationship. Nor do the tales 
which connect Dardanus with Samothrace and Arcadia find 
countenance in the Homeric poems, wherein Dardanus is the son 
of Zeus, having no root anywhere except in Dardania5 The 
mysterious solemnities of Samothrace, afterwards so highly vene- 
rated throughout the Grecian world, date from a period much 
later than Homer; and the religious affinities of that island as 
well as of Kréte with the territories of Phrygia and olis, were 
certain, according to the established tendency of the Grecian 
mind, to beget stories of a common genealogy. 

To pass from this legendary world, — an aggregate of streams 
distinct and heterogeneous, which do not willingly come into cou 


‘ Strabo, xiii. p. 604 ; Apollodér. iii. 12, 4. 
Kephalon of Gergis called Teukrus a Krétan (Stephan. Byz. v. ᾿Αρίσβη), 


® Clearchus ap. Athene. vi. p. 256; Strabo, xiii. p. 589-616. 


3 Homer, Hymn. in Vener. 116. 
4 Tliad, ii. 863. Asius, the brother of Hecabé, lives in Phrygia on the banks 


of the Sangarius (Iliad, xvi. 717). 
δ See Hellanik. Fragm. 129, 130. ed. Didot: and Kephalén Gergithius ap. 


Steph. Byz. v. ᾿Αρισβή. 
Vol. 1 16 


836 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


fluence, and cannot be forced to intermix,—smto the clearer 
vision afforded by Herodotus, we learn from him that in the year 
500 B. c. the whole coast-region from Dardanus southward to the 
promontory vf Lektum (including the town of Ilium), and from 
Lektum eastward to Adramyttium, had been olized, or was 
occupied by AZolic Greeks — likewise the inland towns of Skép- 
sis! and Krebén. So that it we draw a line northward from Adra- 
myttium to Kyzikus on the Propontis, throughout the whole ter- 
ritory westward from that line, to the Hellespont and the A gean 
Sea, all the considerable towns would be Hellenic, with the excep- 
tion of Gergis and the Teukrian population around it, — all the 
towns worthy of note were either Ionic or Aolic. A century ear- 
lier, the Teukrian population would have embraced a wider range 
— perhaps Sképsis and Krebén, the latter of which places was 
colonized by Greeks from Kyme :* a century afierwards, during 
the satrapy of Pharnabazus, it appears that Gergis had become 
Hellenized as well as the rest. The four towns, Ilium, Gergis, 
Kebrén and Sképsis, all in iofty and strong positions, were distin- 
guished each by a solemn worship and temple of Athéné, and by 
the recognition of that goddess as their special patroness.* 

The author of the Iliad conceived the whole of this region as 
secupied by people not Greek, — Trojans, Dardanians, Lykians, 
Lelegians, Pelasgians, and Kilikians. He recognizes a temple 
and worship of Athéné in Ilium, though the goddess is bitterly 

1 Sképsis received some colonists from the Ionic Miletus (Anaximenés 
apud Strabo, xiv. p. 635); but the coins of the place prove that its dialect 
was Aolic. See Klausen, Aineas und die Penaten, tom. i. note 180. 

Arisbé also, near Abydus, seems to have been settled from Mityléné (Eu 
stath. ad Iliad. xii 97). 

The extraordinary fertility and rich black mould of the plain around Ilium 
1s noticed by modern travellers (see Franklin, Remarks and Observations om 
the Plain of Troy, London, 1800, p.44): it is also easily worked: “a couple 
of buffaloes or oxen were sufficient to draw the plough, whereas near Constan- 
tinople it takes twelve or fourteen. 

? Ephdrus ap. Harpocrat. νυ. Κεβρῆνα. 

3 Xenoph. Hellen. i. 1, 10; iii. 1, 10-15. 

One of the great motives of Dio in setting aside the Homeric narrative of the 


Trojan war, is to vindicate Athéné from the charge of having unjustly de- 
stroyed her own city of Ilium (Orat. xi. p. 310: μάλιστα διὰ τὴν ᾿Αϑηνᾶν ὅπωξ 


ud δοκῇ ἀδίκως διαφϑεῖραι τὴν ἑαυτῆς 'κόλιν). 


HOMERIC AND HISTORICAL TROAD. 887 


hostile to the Trojans: and Arktinus described the Palladium as 
the capital protection ef the city. But perhaps the most remark- 
able teature of identity between the Homeric and the historical 
Eolis, is, the solemn and diffused worship of the Sminthian Apollo. 
Chrysé, Killa and Tenedos, and more than one place called Smin- 
thium, maintain the surname and invoke the protection of that 
god during later times, just as they are emphatically described to 
do by Homer:! 

When it is said that the Post-Homeric Greeks gradually Hel- 
lenized this entire region, we are not to understand that the whole 
previous population either retired or was destroyed. The Greeks 
settled in the leading and considerable towns, which enabled them 
both to protect one another and to gratify their predominant tastes. 
Partly by foree— but greatly also by that superior activity, and 
power of assimilating foreign ways of thought to their own, which 
distinguished them from the beginning — they invested all the 
public features and management of the town with an Hellenic air, 
distributed all about it their gods, their heroes and their legends, 
and rendered their language the medium of public administration, 
religious songs and addresses to the gods, and generally for com- 
munications wherein any number of persons were concerned. But 
two remarks are here to be made: first, in doing this they could 
not avoid taking to themselves more or less of that which belonged 


a ————— 


1 Strabo, x. p. 473; xiii. p. 604-605. Polemon. Fragm. 31. p. 63, ed. 
Preller. 

Polemon was a native of Ilium, and had written a periegesis of the place 
{about 200 B. c., therefore earlier than Démétrius of Sképsis): he may have 
witnessed the improvement in its position effected by the Romans. He 
noticed the identical stone upon which Palamédés had taught the Greeks to 
play at dice. 

The Sminthian Apollo appears inscribed on the coins of Alexandreia Tréas; 
and the temple of the god was memorable even down to the time of the em- 
peror Julian (Ammian. Marcellin. xxii. 8). Compare Menander (the Rhetor) 
wept ᾿Επιδεικτικῶν, iv. 14; apud Walz. Collect. Rhetor. t. ix. p. 304; also 
περὶ Σμινϑιακῶν, iv. 17. 

Xuivdoc, both in the Krétan and the Aolic dialect, meant a jield-mouse: 
the region seems to have been greatly plagued by these little animals. 

Polemo could not have accepted the theory of Démétrius, that lium was 
mot the genuine Troy: his Periegesis, describing the localities and relics of 
lium, implied the legitimacy of the place as a matter of course. 

VOL. I. 15 22 


388 FUSTORY OF GREECx. 


to the parties with whom they fraternized, so that the resuit was 
pet pure Hellenism; next, that even this was done only in the 
towns, without being fully extended to the territorial domain 
around, or to those smaller townships which stood to the town in 
adependent relation. The A‘olic and Ionic Greeks borrowed 
from the Asiatics whom they had Hellenized, musical instruments 
and new laws of rhythm and melody, which they knew how to turn 
to account: they further adopted more or less of those violent 
and maddening religious rites, manifested occasionally in self- 
inflicted suffering and mutilation, which were indigenous in Asia 
Minor in the worship of the Great Mother. The religion of the 
Greeks in the region of Ida as well as at Kyzikus was more 
orgiastic than the native worship of Greece Proper, just as that 
of Lampsacus, Priapus and Parium was more licentious. From 
the Teukrian region of Gergis, and from the Gergithes near 
Kymé, sprang the original Sibylline prophecies, and the legend- 
ary Sibyll who plays so important a part in the tale of A®neas : 
the mythe of the Sibyll, whose prophecies are supposed to be 
heard in the hollow blast bursting out from obscure caverns and 
apertures in the rocks,! was indigenous among the Gergithian 
Teukrians, and passed from the Kymezans in olis, along with 
the other circumstances of the tale of Aéneas, to their brethren 
the inhabitants of Cumz in Italy. The date of the Gergithian 
Sibyll, or rather of the circulation of her supposed prophecies, is 
placed during the reign of Croesus, a period when Gergis was 
thoroughly Teukrian. Her prophecies, though embodied in 
Greek verses, had their root in a Teukrian soil and feelings ; and 
the promises of future empire which they so liberally make to the 
fugitive hero escaping from the flames of Troy into Italy, become 
interesting from the remarkable way in which they were realized 


by Rome.? 


Virgil, Aneid, vi. 42 :—- 
Excisum Eubotce lJatus ingens rupis in antrum, 
Quo lati ducunt aditus centum, ostia centum ; 
Unde raunt totidem voces, responsa Sibylle. 
‘ Pansanias, x. 12, 8; Lactantius, i. 6,12; Steph. Byz. v. Μέρμησσος ; 
Sehol. Plat. Pheedr. p. 315, Bekker. 
The date of this Gergitiian Sibyii, or of the prophecias passing under hes 


LEGEND OF TROY. 839 


At what time Ilium and Dardanus became lized we have 
80 information. We find the Mitylenzans in possession of Si- 
geium in the time of the poet Alkzus, about 600 B. c.; and the 
Athenians during the reign of Peisistratus, having wrested it from 
them and trying to maintain their possession, vindicate the pro 
ceeding by saying that they had as much right to it as the Mity- 
leneans, “for the latter had no more claim to it than any of the 
other Greeks who had aided Menelaus in avenging the abduction 
of Helen.”! This is a very remarkable incident, as attesting the 
celebrity of the legend of Troy, and the value of a mythical title 
in international disputes — yet seemingly implying that the estab- 
lishment of the Mitylenzans on that spot must have been suffi 
ciently recent. ‘The country near the junction of the Hellespont 
and the Propontis is represented as originally held? by Bebrykian 
Thracians, while Abydus was first occupied by Milesian colonists 
in the reign and by the permission of the Lydian king Gygés3 
—to whom the whole Tréad and the neighboring territory be- 
longed, and upon whom therefore the Teukrians of Ida must have 
been dependent. This must have been about 700 Bs. c., a period 


name, is stated by Hérakleidés of Pontus, and there seems no reason for 
calling it in question. ; 

Klausen (Aineas und die Penaten, book ii. p. 205) has worked out cs 
piously the circulation and legendary import of the Sibylline prophecies. 

' Herodot. v. 94. Σίγειον τὸ εἷλε Πεισίστρατος αἰχμῇ παρὰ Μιτυ 
ληναίων ᾿Αϑηναῖοι, ἀποδεικνύντες λόγῳ οὐδὲν UGA? ov Αἰολεῦσι μετεὸν 
τῆς ᾿Ιλιάδος χώρης, ἢ οὐ καί σφι καὶ τοῖσι ἄλλοισι, ὅσοι Ελλήνων συνεξεπρή- 
ξαντο Μενέλεῳ τὰς Ἕ λένης ἁρπαγάς. In AEschylus (Eumenid. 402) the god- 
dess Athéné claims the land about the Skamander, as having been presented 
to the sons of Théseus by the general vote of the Grecian chiefs : ~ 

᾿Απὸ Σκαμάνδρου γῆν καταφϑατουμένῃ, 
Ἣν δὴ τ᾽ ᾿Αχαιῶν ἄκτορες τε καὶ πρόμοι 
Τῶν αἰχμαλώτων χρημάτων λάχος μέγα, 
"Evecuav αὐτόπρεμνον εἰς τὸ πᾶν ἐμοὶ, 
"Ega:perov δώρημα Θησέως τύκοις. 

In the days of Peisistratus, it seems Athens was not bold enough or pow- 
erful enough to advance this vast pretension. 

* Charén of Lampsacus ap. Schol. Apollén. Rhod. ii. 2; Bernhardy ed 
Dionys. Periégét. 805. p. 747. Ὶ 

* Such at least is the statement of Strabo (xii. Ρ. 590); though such 45 
extent of Lydian rule at that time seems not easy to reconcile with the pro 


ceedings of the subsequent Lydian kings. 


840 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


considerably earlier than the Mitylenzan occupation of Sigeium 
Lampsacus and Pesus, on the neighboring shores of the Propon 
tis, were also Milesian colonies, though we do not know their date 
Parium was jointly settled from Miletus, Krythre and Parus. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


RECIAN MYTHES, AS UNDERSTOOD, FELT AND INTERPRETED 
BY THE GREEKS THEMSELVES. 


THe preceding sections have been intended to exhibit a sketch 
of that narrative matter, so abundant, so characteristic and so 
intresting, out of which early Grecian history and chronology 
hae been extracted. Raised originally by hands unseen and 
from data unassignable, it existed first in the shape of floating 
talk among the people, from whence a large portion of it passed 
into the song of the poets, who multiplied, transformed and adorn- 
ed it in a thousand various ways. 

These mythes or current stories, the spontaneous and earliest 
growth of the Grecian mind, constituted at the same time the 
entire intellectual stock of the age to which they belonged. They 
are the common root of all those different ramifications into which 
the mental activity of the Greeks subsequently diverged; con- 
taining, as it were, the preface and germ of the positive history 
and philosophy, the dogmatic theology and the professed romance, 
which we shall hereafter trace each in its separate development. 
They furnished aliment to the curiosity, and solution to the vague 
doubts and aspirations of the age; they explained the origin of 
those customs and standing peculiarities with which men were 
familiar ; they impressed moral lessons, awakened patriotic sym 
pathies, and exhibited in detail the shadowy, but anxious presen 
timents of the vulgar as to the agency of the gods: moreover 
they satisfied that craving for adventure and appetite for the 


GENERAL REMARKS ON MYTHICAL NARRATIVES. 84) 


marvellous, which has in modern times become the province of 
fiction proper. 

It is difficult, we may say impossible, for a man of mature age 
to carry back his mind to his conceptions such as they stood when 
he was a child, growing naturally out of his imagination and feel- 
ings, working upon a scanty stock of materials, and borrowing 
from authorities whom he blindly followed but imperfectly appre- 
hended. A similar difficulty occurs when we attempt to place 
ourselves in the historical and quasi-philosophical point of view 
which the ancient mythes present to us. We can follow perfect- 
ly the imagination and feeling which dictated these tales, and we 
can admire and sympathize with them as animated, sublime, and 
affecting poetry ; but we are too much accustomed to matter of 
fact and philosophy of a positive kind, to be able to conceive a 
time when these beautiful fancies were construed literally and 
accepted as serious reality. 

Nevertheless it is obvious that Grecian mythes cannot be either 
understood or appreciated except with reference to the system of 
conceptions and belief of the ages in which they arose. We 
must suppose a public not reading and writing, but seeing, hear- 
ing and telling — destitute of all records, and careless as well as 
ignorant of positive history with its indispensable tests, yet at the 
same time curious and full of eagerness for new or impressive 
incidents — strangers even to the rudiments of positive philoso- 
phy and to the idea of invariable sequences of nature either in 
the physical or moral world, yet requiring some connecting the- 
ory to interpret and regularize the phenomena before them. Such 
a theory was supplied by the spontaneous inspirations of an early 
fancy, which supposed the habitual agency of beings intelligent 
and voluntary like themselves, but superior in extent of power, 
and different in peculiarity of attributes. In the geographical 
ideas of the Homeric period, the earth was flat and round, with 
the deep and gentle ocean-stream flowing around and returning 
mto itself: chronology, or means of measuring past time, there 
existed none; but both unobserved regions might be described, 
the forgotten past unfolded, and the unknown future predicted — 
through particular men specially inspired by the gods, or endow: 
ed by them with that peculiar vision which detected and inter 


preted passing signs and omens. 


PRP gle = 


a ee ee 


i 
ied 


342 HISTORY OF GREEOS. 


If even the rudiments of scientific geography and physics, now 
80 universally diffused and so invaluable as a security agamst 
error and delusion, were wanting in this early stage of soviety, 
their place was abundantly supplied by vivacity of imaginatica 
and by personifying sympathy. The unbounded tendency of the 
Homeric Greeks to multiply fictitious persons, and to consirue 
the phenomena which interested them into manifestations of de- 
sign, is above all things here to be noticed, because the form of 
personal narrative, universal in their mythes, is one of its many 
manifestations. Their polytheism (comprising some elements of 
an original fetichism, in which particular objects had themselves 
been supposed to be endued with life, volition, and design) recog: 
nized agencies of unseen beings identified and confounded with 
the different localities and departments of the physical world. 
Of such beings there were numerous varieties, and many grada- 
tions both in power and attributes ; there were differences of age, 
sex and local residence, relations both conjugal and filial between 
them, and tendencies sympathetic as well as repugnant. The 
gods formed a sort of political community of their own, which 
had its hierarchy, its distribution of ranks and duties, its conten- 
tions for power and occasional revolutions, its public meetings in 
the agora of Olympus, and its multitudinous banquets or festi- 
vals.!_ The great Olympic gods were in fact only the most exalted 
amongst an aggregate of quasi-human or ultra-human personages, 
— demons, heroes, nymphs, eponymous (or name-giving) genii, 

‘jdentified with each river, mountain,? cape, town, village, or known 


' Homer, Iliad, i. 603; xx. 7. Hesiod. Theogon. 802. 

* We read in the Iliad that Asteropzeus was grandson of the beautiful 
river Axius, and Achilles, after having slain him, admits the dignity of thia 
parentage, but boasts that his own descent from Zeus was much greater, 
since even the great river Acheléus and Oceanus himself is inferior to Zens 
(xxi. 157-191). Skamander fights with Achilles, calling his brother Sunois 
to his aid (213-308). Tyrd, the daughter of Salméneus, falls in love with 
Enipeus, the most beautiful of rivers (Odyss. xi. 237). Acheléus appears 
as a suitor of Deianira (Sophokl. Trach. 9). 

There cannot be a better illustration of this feeling than what is told of 
the New Zealanders at the present time. The chief Heu-Heu appeals to his 
ancestor, the great mountain Tonga Riro: “I am the Hea-Heu, and ruig 
over you all, just as my ancestor Tonga Riro, the mountain of snow, stands 
above all this land.” (E. J. Wakefield, Adventares in New Zealand, vol. ¢. 


PERSONIFYING SYMPATHY AND [ΜΑΘΥΚΑΤΊΟΝ. 848 


@rcumscription of territory, — besides horses, bulls, and dogs, of 
immortal breed and peculiar attributes, and monsters of strange 


ch. 17. p. 465). Heu-Heu refused permission to any one to ascend the moun- 
tain, on the ground that it was his tipuna or ancestor: “ he constantly iden 
tified himself with the mountain and called it his sacred ancestor” (vol. ii. ¢. 
4. p 113). The mountains in New Zealand are accounted by the natives 
masculine and feminine: Tonga Riro, and Taranaki, two male mountains, 
quarrelled about the affections of a small volcanic female mountain in the 
neighborhood (iid. ii. ο. 4. p. 97). 

The religious imagination of the Hindoos also (as described by Colonel 
Sleeman in his excellent work, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian 
Official), affords a remarkable parallel to that of the early Greeks. Colonel 
Sleeman says, — 

“ [ asked some of the Hindoos about us why they called the river Mother 
Nerbudda, if she was really never married. Her Majesty (said they with 
great respect) would really never consent to be married after the indignity 
she suffered from her affianced bridegroom the Sohun: and we call her 
mother because she blesses us all, and we are anxious to <7cost her by the 
name which we consider to be the most respectful and en“ zaring. 

“ Any Englishman can easily conceive a poet in his highest calenture of 
the brain, addressing the Ocean as a steed that knows his rider, and patting 
the crested billow as his flowing mane. But he must come to India to un. 
derstand how every individual of a whole community of many millions can 
address a fine river as a living being —a sovereign princess who hears und un- 
derstands all they say, and exercises a kind of local superintendence over their 
affairs, without a single temple in which her image is worshipped, or a 
single priest to profit by the delusion. As in the case of the Ganges, it is 
the river itself to whom they address themselves, and not to any deity residing in it, 
or presiding over it—the stream itself is the deity which fills their imagina- 
tions, and receives their homage” (Rambles and Recollections of an In- 
dian Official, ch. iii. p. 20). Compare also the remarks in the same work 
on the sanctity of Mother Nerbudda ( chapter xxvii. p. 261); also of the holy 
personality of the earth. “The land is considered as the MOTHER of the 
prince or chief who holds it, the great parent from whom he derives all that 
maintains him, his family, and his establishments. If well-treated, she yields 
this in abundance to her son; but if he presumes to look upon her with the 
eye of desire, she ceases to be fruitful; or the Deity sends down hail or 
blight to destroy all that she yields. The measuring the surface of tho 
fields, and the frequently inspecting the crops by the chief himself or his 
immediate agents, were considered by the people in this light —either it 
should not be done at all, or the duty should be delegated to inferior agents, 
whose close inspection of the great parent could not be so displeasing fo the 
Deity” (Ch. xxvii. p. 248). 

See also about the gods who are believed to reside in trees —the Peepul 


344 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


lineaments and combinations, “ Gorgons and Harpies and Chi- 
mzras dire.” As there were in every gens or family special gen- 
tile deities and foregone ancestors who watched over its members, 
forming in each the characteristic symbol and recognized guar- 
antee of their union, so there seem to have been in each guild 
or trade pecaliar beings whose vocation it was to codperate or 
to impede in various stages of the business.! 

The extensive and multiform personifications, here faintly 
sketched, pervaded in every direction the mental system of the 
Greeks, and were identified intimately both with their conception 
and with their description of phenomena, present as well as past. 
That which to us is interesting as the mere creation of an exube- 
rant fancy, was to the Greck genuine and venerated reality. 
Both the earth and the solid heaven (Gaza and Uranos) were both 
conceived and spoken of by him as endowed with appetite, feel- 
ing, sex, and most of the various attributes of humanity. Instead 
of a sun such as we now see, subject to astronomical laws, and 
forming the centre of a system the changes of which we can 
ascertain and foreknow, he saw the great god Hélios, mounting 
his chariot in the morning in the east, reaching at mid-day the 
height of the solid heaven, and arriving in the evening at tha 


western horizon, with horses fatigued and desirous of repose. 


tree, the cotton-tree, etc. (ch. ix. p. 112), and the description of the annual 
marriage celebrated between the sacred pebble, or pebble-god, Saligram, 
and the sacred shrub Toolsea, celebrated at great expense and with a nume- 
rous procession (chap. xix. p. 158; xxiii. p. 185). 
* See the song to the potters, in the Homeric Epigrams (14) : — 
Ei μὲν δώσετε μίσϑον, ἀείσω, ὦ κεραμῆες" 
Δεῦρ᾽ dy’ ᾿Αϑηναίη, καὶ ὑπείρεχε χεῖρα καμίνου. 
Ed δὲ μελανϑεῖεν κότυλοι, καὶ πάντα κάναστρα 
Φρυχϑῆναί τε.καλῶς, καὶ τιμῆς ὦνον ἀρέσϑαι 
Ἦν δ' ἐπ᾽ ἀναιδείην τρεφϑέντες ψευδὴ ἄρῃσϑε, 
Συγκαλέω δὴ "recta καμίνῳ δηλητῆρας 
Σύντριβ᾽ ὅμως, Σμάραγόν τε, καὶ "Ασβετον, ἠδὲ Σαβάκτην, 
᾿Ωμόδαμόν 9, δὲ τῇδε τέχνῇ κακὰ πολλὰ πορίζει, etc. 

A certain kindred betwe:n men and serpents (ουγγένειάν τινα πρὸς TUB: 
ὄφεις) was recognized in the peculiar gens of the ὀφιογενεῖς near Parioa, 
who possessed the gift of healing by their touches the bite of the serpent 
the original hero of this gens was said to have been transformed from a 80s 
pent into a man (Strabo, xiii. p. 588). 


GEA, URANOS, HELIOS, ETO. 845 


Helios, having favorite spots wherein his beautifu. cattle grazed, 
took pleasure in contemplating them during the course of his 
journey, and was sorely displeased if any man slew or injured 
them: he had moreover sons and daughters on earth, and as his 
all-seeing eye penetrated everywhere, he was sometimes in a 
Situation to reveal secrets even to the gods themselves — while 
on other occasions he was constrained to turn aside in order to 
avoid ¢ontemplating scenes of abomination.!. To us these now 
appear puerile though pleasing fancies, but to an Homeric Greek 


' Odyss. ii. 388; viii. 270; xii. 4, 128, 416; xxiii. 362. Iliad, xiv. 344. 
The Homeric Hymn to Démétér expresses it neatly (63) — 

᾿έλιον & ἵκοντο, ϑεῶν σκύπον ἠδὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν. 
Also the remarkable story of Euénius of Αρο!]οπία, his neglect of the sacred 
cattle of Hélios, and the awful consequences of it (Herodot. ix. 93: compare 
Theocr. Idyll. xxv. 130). 

I know no passage in which this conception of the heavenly bodies as Per 
sons is more strikingly set forth than in the words of the German chief 
Boiocalus, pleading the cause of himself and his tribe the Ansibarii before 
the Roman legate Avitus. This tribe, expelled by other tribes from its native 
possessions, had sat down upon some of that wide extent of lands on the 
Lower Rhine which the Roman government reserved for the use of its sol- 
Giers, but which remained desert, because the soldiers had neither the meane 
nor the inclination to occupy them. The old chief, pleading his cause before 
Avitus, who had issued an order to him to evacuate the lands, first dwelt upon 
his fidelity of fifty years to the Roman cause, and next touched upon the enor- 
mity of retaining so large an area in a state of waste (Tacit. Ann. xiii. 55): 
“ Quotam partem campi jacere, in quam pecora et armenta militum aliquane 
do transmitterentur? Servarent sane receptos gregibus, inter hominum 
famam: modo ne vastitatem et solitudinem mallent, quam amicos populos 
Chamavorum quondam ea arva, mox Tubantum, et post Usipiorum fuisse, 
Sicuti coelum Diis, ita terras generi mortalium datas: queque vacus, eas 
publicas esse. Solem deinde respiciens, et cetera sidera vocans, quasi coram 
interrogabat — vellentne contueri inane solum? potius mare superfunderent adver 
sus terrarum ereptores. Commotus his Avitus,” etc. The legate refused the 
request, but privately offered to Boiocalus lands for himself apart from the 
tribe, which that chief indignantly spurned. He tried to maintain himself ip 
the lands, bt was expelled by the Roman arms, and forced to seek a home 
among the o:her German tribes, all of whom refused it. After much wander- 
ing and privation, the whole tribe of the Ansibarii was annihilated: its war- 
riors were ail slain, its women and children sold as slaves. 

I notice this afflicting sequel, in order to show that the brave old chief was 
pleading before Avitus a matter of life and death both to himself and hie 
@zibe, and that the occasion was one least of all suited for a mere r i 

15* 


346 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


they seemed perfectly natural and plausible. In his view, the 
description of the sun, as given in a modern astronomical treatise, 
would have appeared not merely absurd, but repulsive and im- 
pious. ven in later times, when the positive spirit of inquiry 
had made considerable progress, Anaxagoras and other astrono- 
mers incurred the charge of blasphemy for dispersonifying Hélios, 
and trying to assign invariable laws to the solar phenomena! 
Personifying fiction was in this way blended by the Homeric 
prosopopewia. His appeal is one sincere and heartfelt to the personal feelings 
and symy athies of Helios. 

‘Tacitus, in reporting the speech, accompanies it with the gloss “ quasi 
coram,” to mark that the speaker here passes into a different order of ideas 
from that to which himself or his readers were accustomed. If Boiocalus 
could have heard, and reported to his tribe, an astronomical lecture, he would 
have introduced some explanation, in order to facilitate to his tribe the com- 
prehension of Hélios under a point of view so new to them. While Tacitus 
finds it necessary to illustrate by a comment the personification of the sun, 
Boiocalus would have had some trouble to make his tribe comprehend the 
re-ification of the god Hélios. 

’ Physical astronomy was both new and accounted impious in the time of 
the Peloponnesian war: see Plutarch, in his reference to that eclipse which 
proved so fatal to the Athenian army at Syracuse, in consequence of the 
religious feelings of Nikias; οὐ γὰρ ἠνείχοντο τοὺς φυσικοὺς καὶ μετεωρολέσχας 
τότε καλουμένους ὡς, εἰς αἰτίας ἀλόγους καὶ δυνάμεις ἀπρονοήτους Kal KATH 
ναγκασμένα Tady διατρίβοντας τὸ ϑεῖον (Plutarch, Nikias, c. 23, and Periklés, 
6. 32; Diodor. xii. 39; Démétr. Phaler. ap. Diogen. Laért, ix. 9, 1). 

“You strange man, Melétus,” said Socratés, on his trial, to his accuser, 
“are you seriously affirming that I do not think Hélios and Seléné to be 
gods, as the rest of mankind think?” “Certainly not, gentlemen of the 
Dikastery (this is the reply of Melétus), Socrates says that the sun is a stone, 
and the moon earth.” “Why, my dear Melétus, you think you are preferring 
an accusation against Anaxagoras! You account these Dikasts so con- 
temptibly ignorant, as not to know that the books of Anaxagoras are full of 
such doctrines! Is it from me that the youth acquire such teaching, when 
they may buy the books for a drachma in the theatre,and may thus laugh 
me to scorn if I pretended to announce such views as my own — not to men- 
tion their extreme absurdity?” (ἄλλως te καὶ οὕτως ἄτοπα ὄντα, Plato, Apolog. 
Socrat. c. 14. p. 26). 

The divinity of Hélios and Seléné is emphatically set forth by Plato, Legg. 
x. p. 886-889. He permits physical astronomy only under great restrictions 
and to a limited extent. Compare Xenoph. Memor. iv.7,7; Diogen. Lagrt 
ii. 8; Plutarch, De Stoicor. Repugnant. c. 40. p. 1053; and Schaubach ad 


Anaxagore Fragmenta, p. 6. 


FORM OF PEKSONAL NARRATIVE IN THE MYTHES. 847 


&reeks with their conception of the physical phenomena >efore 
them, not simply in the way of poetical ornament, but as a genu- 
ine pertion of their every-day belief. 

It was in this early state of the Grecian mind, stimulating so 
forcibly the imagination and the feelings, and acting through them 
upon the belief, that the great body of the mythes grew up and 
obtained circulation. They were, from first to last, personal 
narratives and adventures; and the persons who predominated 
as subjects of them were the gods, the heroes, the nymphs, ete., 
whose names were known and reverenced, and in whom every 
one felt interested. To every god and every hero it was consis- 
tent with Grecian ideas to ascribe great diversity of human mo- 
tive and attribute: each indeed has his own peculiar type of 
character, more or less strictly defined; but in all there was a 
wide foundation for animated narrative and for romantic incident. 
The gods and heroes of the land and the tribe belonged, in the 
conception of a Greek, alike to the present and to the past: he 
worshipped in their groves and at their festivals; he invoked their 
protection, and believed in their superintending guardianship, 
even in his own day: but their more special, intimate, and sym- 
pathizing agency was cast back into the unrecorded past.! To 


? Hesiod, Catalog. Fragm. 76. p. 48, ed. Diintzer: — 

Ξυναὶ γὰρ τότε δαῖτες ἔσαν Evvoi te ϑόωκοε, 
᾿Αϑανάτοις τε ϑεοῖσε καταϑνήτοις τ᾽ ἀνθρώποις. 

Both the Theogonia and the Works and Days bear testimony to the same 
general feeling. Even the heroes of Homer suppose a preceding age, the 
inmates of which were in nearer contact with the gods than they themselves 
(Odyss. viii. 228; Iliad, v. 304; xii. 382). Compare Catullus, Carm. 64; 
Epithalam. Peleés et Thetidos, v. 382-408. 

Menander the Rhetor (following gencrally the steps of Dionys. Hal. Art 
Rhetor. cap. 1-8) suggests to his fellow-citizens at Alexandria Tréas, proper 
and complimentary forms to invite a great man to visit their festival of the 
Sminthia: ---ὥσπερ yap ’ Απόλλωνα πολλάκις ἐδέχετο ἡ πόλις τοῖς Σμινϑίοις, 
ἥἤνικα ἐξὴν ϑεοὺς προφανῶς ἐπιδημεῖν τοῖς ἀνϑρώποις, 
οὕτω καὶ σὲ ἡ πόλις νῦν προσδέχεται (περὶ ᾿Ἐπιδεικτικ. 5. iv. c. 14. ap. Wala 
Coll. Rh2tor. t. ix. p. 304). Menander seems to have been a native of Ales 
andria Tréas, though Suidas calls him a Laodicean (see Walz. Preef. ad ¢. 
ix. p. xv.-xx.; and περὶ Σμινϑιακῶν, sect. iv. c. 17). The festival of the 
Sminthia lasted down to his time, embracing the whole duration of paganism 
from Homer downwards. 


848 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


give suitable utterance to this general sentiment, —to furnis 
body and movement and detail to these divine and heroic pre- 
existences, which were conceived only in shadowy outline, — ta 
lighten up the dreams of what the past must have been,! in the 
minds ot those who knew not what it really had been — such waa 
the spontaneous aim and inspiration of productive genius in the 
community, and such were the purposes which the Grecian 
mythes preéminently accomplished. 

The love of antiquities, which Tacitus notices as so prevalent 
among the Greeks of his day,2 was one of the earliest, the most 
durable, and the most widely diffused of the national propensi- 
ties. But the antiquities of every state were divine and heroic, 
reproducing the lineaments, but disregarding the measure and 
limits, of ordinary humanity. The gods formed the starting-point, 
beyond which no man thought of looking, though some gods were 
more ancient than others: their progeny, the heroes, many of 
them sprung from human mothers, constitute an intermediate link 
between god and man. The ancient epic usually recognizes the 
presence of a multitude of nameless men, but they are intro- 
duced chiefly for the purpose of filling the scene, and of executing 
the orders, celebrating the valor, and bringing out the personality, 
of a few divine or heroic characters.3 It was the glory of bards 
and storytellers to be able to satisfy those religious and patriotic 
predispositions of the public, which caused the primary demand 


' P. A. Miiller observes justly, in his Saga- Bibliothek, in reference to the 
Icelandic mythes, “In dem Mythischen wird das Leben der Vorzeit darges- 
tellt, wie es wirklich dem kindlichen Verstande, der jugendlichen Einbildung- 
skraft, und dem vollen Herzen, erscheint.” 

(Lange’s Untersuchungen iiber die Nordische und Deutsche Heldensage, 
translated from P. A. Miiller, Introd. p. 1.) 

* Titus visited the temple of the Paphian Venus in Cyprus, “ spectata 
opulentid donisque regum, queeque alia letum antiquitatibus Grecorum 
genus incerte vetustati adfingit. de navigatione primum consuluit” (Tacit. 
Hist. ii. 4-5). 

* Aristotel. Problem. xix. 48. Οἱ δὲ ἡγεμόνες τῶν ἀρχαίων μόνοι ἧσαν 
ἤρωες᾽ οἱ δὲ λαοὶ ἄνϑρωποι. Istros followed this opinion also: but the 
more common view seems to have considered all who combated at Troy as 
heroes (see Schol. Iliad. ii. 110; xv. 231), and so Hesiod treats them (Opp, 
Di. 158). 

In refer 2nce to the Trojan war, Aristotle says— καϑάπερ ἐν τοῖς ‘Hp ws 
weic περ: Πριάμου uvdeveras (Ethic. Nicom. i. 9; compare vii. 1). 


GOD AND MEN IN COMMUNION. Bah 


for their tales, and which were of a nature eminently inviting and 
expansive. For Grecian religion was many-sided and many 
colored; it comprised a great multiplicity of persons, together 
with much diversity in the types of character; it divinized every 
vein and attribute of humanity, the lofty as well as the mean — 
the tender as well as the warlike — the self-devoting and adven- 
turous as well as the laughter-loving and sensual. We shall here- 
after yeach a time when philosophers protested against such 
identification of the gods with the more vulgar appetites and en- 
joyments, believing that nothing except the spiritual attributes of 
man could properly be transferred to superhuman beings, und 
drawing their predicates respecting the gods exclusively from what 
was awful, majestic and terror-striking in human affairs. Such 
restrictions on the religious fancy were continually on the in- 
crease, and the mystic and didactic stamp which marked the last 
century of paganism in the days cf Julian and Libanius, contrasts 
forcibly with the concrete and vivacious forms, full of vigorous 
impulse and alive to all the capricious gusts of the human temper- 
ament, which people the Homeric Olympus.! At present, how- 


' Generation by a god is treated in the old poems as un act entirely human 
and physical (éuiyn — wapeAéEaro); and this was the common opinion ia 
the days of Plato (Plato, Apolog. Socrat. c. 15. p. 15); the hero Astrabakas 
is father of the Lacedemonian king Demaratus (Herod. vi. 66). {Herodotus 
does not believe the story told him at Babylon respecting Belus (i. 182}] 
Euripidés sometimes expresses disapprobation of the idea (Ion. 350), bas 
Plato passed among a large portion of his admirers for the actual son of 
Apollo, and his reputed father Aristo on marrying was admonished in @ 
dream to respect the person of his wife Pcriktioné, then pregnant by Apoilo, 
until after the birth of the child Plato (Plutarch, Quest. Sympos. p. 717. 
viii. 1; Diogen. Laért. iii. 2; Origen, cont. Cels. i. p. 29). Plutarch (in Life 
of Numa, c. 4; compare Lis: .f Théseus, 2) discusses the subject, and is in- 
clined to disallow everything beyond mental sympathy and tenderness in 8 
god: Pausanias deals timidly with it, and is not always consistent with him- 
self; while the later rhetors spiritualize it altogether. Meander, πεοὶ ’Ems- 
δεικτικῶν, (towards the end of the third century B. c.) prescribes rules for 
praising a king: you are to praise him for the gens to which he belongs : 
perhaps you may be able to make out that he really is the son of some god ; 
for many who seem to be from men, are really sent down by God and are ema- 
nations from the Supreme Ῥοίθπον --- πολλοὶ τὸ μὲν δοκεῖν ἐξ ἀνϑρώπων εἰσὶ, 
τῇ δ' ἀληϑείᾳ παρὰ τοῦ ϑεοῦ καταπέμποντα καί εἶσιν ἀπόῤῥοιαι ὄντως τοῦ 
κρείττονος - καὶ γὰρ Ἡρακλῆς ἐνομίζετο μὲν ᾿Αμφιτρύωνος, τῇ δὲ ἀληδείᾳ ἣν 
Διός. Οὔτω καὶ βασιλεὺς ὁ ἡμέσερος τὸ udv δοκεῖν ἐξ ἀνθρώπων, τῇ dé Gag 


850 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ever, we have only to consider the early, or Homeric and Hest 
odic paganism, and its operation in the genesis of the mythica} 
narratives. We cannot doubt that it supplied the most powerful 
stimulus, and the only one which the times admitted, to the creas 
tive faculty of the people; as well from the sociability, the gra- 
dations, and the mutual action and reaction of its gods and heroes, 
as from the amplitude, the variety, and the purely human cast, 
of its fundamental types. 


ϑείᾳ τὴν καταβολὴν οὐρώνοϑεν ἔχει, etc. (Menander ap. Walz. Collect. Rhe- 
tor. t. ix. c. i. p. 218). Again— περὶ Σμενϑιακὼν Ζεὺς -ττο γένεσιν παιδῶν 
δημιουργεῖν ἐνενόησε --- ᾿Απύόλλων τὴν ᾿Ασκληπιοῦ γένεσιν ἐ δὴ μι ὕ ρ- 
γσε, p 322-327; compare Hermogenés, about the story of Apollo and 
Daphné, Progymnasm. c. 4; and Julian. Orat. vii. p. 220. 

The contrast of the pagan phraseology of this age (Menander had him. 
self composed a hymn of invocation to Apollo — περὶ “Eyxwuiwy, ο. 3. t. ix, 
2. 136, Walz.) with that of Homer is very worthy of notice. In the Hesi- 
odic Catalogue of Women much was said respecting the marriages and 
amours of the gods, so as to furnish many suggestions, like the love-songs 
of Sapphd, to the composers of Epithalamic Odes (Menand. ib. sect. iv. 6. 
&. p. 268). 

Menander gives a specimen of a prose hymn fit to be addressed to the 
Sminthian Apollo (p. 320) ; the spiritual character of which hymn forms the 
most pointed contrast with the Homeric hymn to the same god. 

We may remark an analogous case in which the Homeric hymn to Apollo 
‘8 modified by Plutarch. ΤῸ provide for the establishment of his temple at 
Delphi, Apollo was described as having himself, in the shave of a dolphin, 
swam before a Krétan vessel and guided it to Krissa, where he directed the 
terrified crew to open the Delphian temple. But Plutarch says that this old 
statement was not correct: the god had not himself appeared in the shape 
of a dolphin — he had sent a dolphin expressly to guide the vessel (Plutarch. 
Ge Solertid Animal. p. 983). See also a contrast between the Homerie 
Zeus, and the genuine Zeus, (ἀληϑινὸς) brought out in Plutarch, Defect 
Oracul. c. 30. p. 426. 

Illicit amours seem in these later times to be ascribed to the δαίμονες : see 
the singular controversy started among the fictitious pleadings of the ancient 
rhetors — Νόμου ὄντος, παρϑένους καὶ καϑαρὰς εἶναι τὰς ἱερείας, ἱερεία τις 
εὑρέϑη ἀτόκιον φέρουσα, καὶ κρίνεταε..........᾽Αλλ᾽ ἐρεῖ, φασὶ, διὰ τὰς τῶν 
δαιμόνων ἐπιφοιτήσεις καὶ ἐπι)ουλὰς περιτεϑεῖσϑαι" Καὶ πῶς οὐκ ἀνόητον 
κομιδῆ τὸ τοιοῦτον ; ἔδει γὰρ πρὸς TI μὴ ἀφαιρεϑῆναι τὴν παρϑενίαν φορεῖν 
τε ἀποτρόπαιον, οὐ μὴν πρὸς τὸ τεκεῖν (Anonymi Scholia ad Hermogen. 
Στάσεις, ap. Walz. Coll. Rh. t. vii. p. 162). 

Apainés of Gadara, a sophist of the time of Diocletian, pretended to be 
ason of Pan (see Suidas, v. ’Awivg¢). The anecdote respecting the rivers 
Skamander and Mzander, in the tenth epistle ascribed to the orator Aischi- 
aes (p. 737), is curious, but we do not know the date of that epistle. 


STIMULUS TO MYTHOPGIC FACULTY. 851 


Though we may thus explain the mythopeic fertility of the 
& eeks, I am far from pretending that we can render any suffi- 
sient account of the supreme beauty of their chief epic and ar- 
tistical productions. There is something in the first-rate produc- 
tions of individual genius which lies beyond the compass of philo- 
sophical theory: the special breath of the Muse (to speak the 
language of ancient Greece) must be present in order to give 
them being. Even among her votaries, many are called, but few 
are chosen ; and the peculiarities of those few remain as yet her 
own secret. 

We shall not however forget that Grecian language was also 
an indispensable requisite to the growth and beauty of Grecian 
mythes — its richness, its flexibility and capacity of new com- 
binations, its vocalic abundance and metrical pronunciation: and 
many even among its proper names, by their analogy to words 
really significant, gave direct occasion to explanatory or illustrae 
tive stories. _Etymological mythes are found in sensible pro- 
portion among the whole number. 

To understand properly ihen the Grecian mythes, we must try 
to identify ourselves with the state of mind of the original my- 
thopeeic age; ἃ process not very easy, since it requires us to 
adopt a string of poetical fancies not simply as realities, but as 
the governing realities of the mental system;! yet a process 


' The mental analogy between the early stages of human civilization and 
the childhood of the individual is furcibly and frequently set forth in the 
works of Vico. That eminently original thinker dwells upon the poetical 
and religious susceptibilities as the first to develop themselves in the humaa 
mind, and as furnishing not merely connecting threads for the explanation 
of sensible phenomena, but also aliment for the hopes and fears, and means 
of socializing influence to men of genius, at a time when reason was yet 
asleep. He points out the personifying instinct (‘‘istinto d’ animazione”) as 
the spontaneous philosophy of man, “to make himself the rule of the uni- 
verse,” and to suppose everywhere a quasi-human agency as the determining 
cause. He remarks that in an age of fancy and feeling, the conceptions ang 
ianguage of poetry coincide with those of reality and common life, instead 
of standing apart as a separate vein. These views are repeated frequently 
{and with some variations of opinion as he grew older) in his Latin work 
De Uno Universi Juris Principio, as well as in the two successive redactions 
ef his great Italian work, Scienza Nuova (it must be added that Vico as an 
expositor is prolix, and does not do justice to his own powers of original 
thought) : I select the following from the second edition of the lateer treatise, 


852 HISTORY OF GREECK. 


which would only reproduce something anogous to our own 
childhood. ‘The age was one destitute both of recorded history 
and of positive science, but full of imagination and sentiment and 
religious impressibility: from these sources sprung that multitude 
of supposed persons around whom all combinations of sensible 


published by himself in 1744, Della Metafisica Poetica (see vol. v. p. 189 of 
Ferrari’s edition of his Works, Milan, 1836): “ Adunque la Sapienza poetica, 
che fu la prima sapienza della Gentilita, dovette incominciare da una Meta- 
fisica, non ragionata ed astratia, qual ἃ questa or degli addottrinati, ma sentita 
ed immaginata, quale dovett’ essere di tai primi uomini, siccome quelli ch’ 
erano di niun raziocinio, e tutti robusti sensi e vigorosissime fantasie, come 
ἃ stato nelle degnita (the Axioms) stabilito. Questa fu la loro propria poesia, 
la qual in essi fu una faculta loro connaturale, perche erano di tali sensi e di 
si fatte fantasie naturalmente forniti, nata da tgnoranza di cagioni — la qual fu 
loro madre di maraviglia di tutte le cose, che quelli ignoranti di tutte le cose 
fortemente ammiravano. Tal poesia incomincid in essi divina: perch? nello 
stesso tempo ch’ essi immaginavano le cagioni delle cose, che sentivano ed 
ammiravano, essere Dei, come ora il confermiamo con gli Americani, i quali 
tutte le cose che superano la loro picciol capacit’, dicono esser Dei... ..nello 
stesso tempo, diciamo, alle cose ammirate davano | y essere di sostanze dalla 
propria lor idea: ch’ ὃ appunto la natura dei fanciulli, che osserviamo pren- 
dere tra mani cose inanimate, e transtullarsi e favellarvi, come fussero quelle 
persone vive. In cotal guisa i primi uomini delle nazioni gentili, come fan- 
ciulli del nascente gener umano, dalla lor idea creavan essi le cose...... per 
la loro robusta ignoranza, il facevano in forza d’ una corpolentissima fantasia, 
e perch’ era corpolentissima, il facevano con una maravigliosa sublimita, tal 
e tanta, che perturbava all’ eccesso essi medesimi, che fingendo le si crea. 

Di questa natura di cose umane resto eterna proprieta spiegata 
con nobil espressione da Tacito, che vanamente gli uomini spaventati singunt 
simul creduntque.” 

After describing the condition of rude men, terrified with thunder and 
other vast atmospheric phenomena, Vico proceeds (i). p. 172) — “In tal 
caso la natura della mente urana porta ch’ ella attribuisca all’ effetto la sua 
natura: e la natura loro era in tale stato d’ uomini tutti robuste forze di corpo, 
che urlando, brontolando, spiegavano le loro violentissime passioni, si finsero 
il cielo esser un gran corpo animato, che per tal aspetto chiamavano Giove, 
che col fischio dei fulmini e col fragore die tuoni volesse lor dire qualche 
cosa ...... E si fanno di tatta la natura un vasto corpo animato, che senta 
passioni ed affetti.” 

Now the contrast with modern habits of thought : — i 

“ Ma siccome ora per la natura delle nostre umane menti troppo ritirate 
dai sensi nel medesimo volgo — con le tante astrazioni, di quante sono pa 
le lingue — con tanti voeaboli astratti — e di troppo assottigliata con !’ arti 
dello scrivere, 6 quasi spiritualezzata con la practica dei numeri — εἰ € nate. 


GRECIAN IMAGINATION AND SENTIMENT. 858 


phenomena were grouped, and towards whom curiosity, sympa 
thies, and reverence were earnestly directed. The adventures 
ef such persons were the only aliment suited at once both to the 
appetites and to the comprehension of an early Greek; and the 
mythes which detailed them, while powerfully interesting his 


ra/mente niegato di poter formare la vasta imagine di cotal donna che dicono 
Natura simpatetica, che mentre von la bocca dicono, non hanno nulla in lor 
mente, perocche la lor mente ὁ dentro il falso, che é nulla; né sono soccorsi 
dalla fantasia a poterne formare una falsa vastissima imagine. Cosi ora ci ὁ 
naturalmente niegato di poter entrare nella vasta immaginativa di quei primi “omint, 
le menti dei quali di nulla erano assottigliate, di nulla astratte, di nulla 
spiritualezzate....... Onde dicemmo sopra ch’ ora appena intender si pud, 
afjutto immaginar non st pud, come pensassero i primi uomini che fondarono 
la umanita gentilesca.” 

In this citation (already almost too long for a note) I have omitted several 
sentences not essential to the general meaning. It places these early divine 
fables and theological poets (so Vico calls them) in their true point of view, 
and assigns to them their proper place in the ascending movement of hu 
man society: it refers the mythes to an early religious and poetical age, in 
which feeling and fancy composed the whole fund of the human mind, over 
and above the powers of sense: the great mental change which has since 
taken place has robbed us of the power, not merely of believing them as they 
were originally believed, but even of conceiving completely that which their 
first inventors intended to express. 

The views here given from this distinguished Italian (the precursor of F, 
A. Wolf in regard to the Homeric poems, as well as of Niebuhr in regard to 
the Roman history) appear to me no less correct than profound; and the 
obvious inference from them is, that attempts to explain (as it is commonly 
called) the mythes (7. e. to translate them into some physical, moral or his- 
torical statements, suitable to our order of thought) are, even as guesses, 
essentially unpromising. Nevertheless Vico, inconsistently with his own 
general view, bestows great labor and ingenuity in attempting to discover 
internal meaning symbolized under many of the mythes; and even lays 
down the position, “che i primi uomini della Gentilita essendo stati sempli- 
cissimi, quanto i fanciulli, i quali per natura son veritieri: le prime favole 
non poterono finger nulla di falso: per lo che dovettero necessariamente 68- 
sere vere narrazioni.” (See vol. v. p. 194; compare also p. 99, Axiom Xvi.) 
If this position be meant simply to exclude the idea of designed imposture, 
it may for the most part be admitted ; but Vico evidently intends something 
more. He thinks that there lies hid under the fables a basis of matter of fact 
— not literal but symbolized — which he draws out and exhibits under the 
form of 8 civil history of the divine and heroic times: a confusion of doc- 
trine the more remarkable, since he distinctly tells us (in perfect conformity 
with the long passage above transcribed from him) that the special mutter of 

VOL. 1. 230¢. 


854 HISTORY OF GREECE 


emotions, furnished to him at the same time a quasi-history and 
quasi-philosophy: they filled up the vacuum of the unrecorded 
past, and explained many of the puzzling incognita of the pres- 
ent.! Nor need we wonder that the same plausibility which cap- 


----- 


these early mythes is “ impossibility accredited as truth,”—* che la di lei pro- 
pria materia ἃ ἢ inpossibile credibile” (p. 176, and still more fully in the first 
rédaction of the Scienza Nuova, Ὁ. iii. c. 4; vol. iv. Ρ. 187 of his Works). 

When we read the Canones Mythologici of Vico (De Constantia Philologia, 
Pars Posterior, c. xxx.; vol. iii. p. 363), and his explanation of the legends 
of the Olympic gods, Herculés, Théseas, Kadmus, etc., we see clearly that 
the meaning which he professes to bring out is one previously put in by 
himself. 

There are some just remarks to the same purpose in Karl Ritter’s Vor- 
halle Europiischer Viiker — Geschichten, Abschn. ii. p. 150 seg. (Berlin, 1820) 
He too points out how much the faith of the old world (der Glaube der Vor- 
welt) has become foreign to our minds, since the recent advances of “ Politik 
und Kritik,” and how impossible it is for us to elicit history from their con- 
ceptions by our analysis, in cases where they have not distinctly laid it out 
for us. The great length of this note prevents me from citing the passage: 
and he seems to me also (like Vico) to pursue his own particular investiga- 
tions in forgetfulness of the principle laid down by himself. 

' O. Muller, in his Prolegomena zu einer wissenschafilichen Mythologie ( cap. 
iv. p. 108), has pointed out the mistake of supposing that there existed ori- 
ginally some nucleus of pure reality as the starting-point of the mythes, and 
that upon this nucleus fiction was superinduced afterwards: he maintains 
that the real and the ideal were blended together in the primitive conception 
of the mythes. Respecting the general state of mind out of which the mythes 
grew, see especially pages 78 and 110 of that work, which is everywhere full 
of instruction on the subject of the Grecian mythes, and is eminently sug- 
gestive, even where the positions of the author are not completely made out 

The short Heldensage der Griechen by Nitasch (Kiel, 1842, t. v.) contains more 
of just and original thought on the subject of the Grecian mythes than any 
work with which I am acquainted. I embrace completely the subjective 
point of view in which he regards them; and although I have profited much 
from reading his short tract, I may mention that before I ever saw it, I had 
enforced the same reasonings on the subject in an article in the Westminster 
Review, May 1843, on the Heroen- Geschichten of Niebuhr. 

Jacob Grimm, in the preface to his Deutsche Mythologie p.1, est edit. Gott 
1835), pointedly insists on the distinction between “ Sage” and history, as 
Well as upon the fact that the former has its chief root in religious belief 
“Legend and history (he says) are powers each by itself, adjoining indeed 
on ‘he confines, but having each its own separate and exclusive ground ; * 
als: p. xxvii. of the same introduction. 

A view substantially similar is adopted by William Urimm, the other o¢ 
the two distinguished brothers whose labors have so much elucidated Tea 


KARLY GREEK POETS. 855 


tivated his imagination and his feelings was sufficient to engender 
spontaneous belief; or rather, that no question as to truth or 
falsehood of the narrative suggested itself to his mind. His 
faith is ready, hteral and uninquiring, apart from all thought of 
discriminating fact from fiction, or of ‘detecting hidden and sym- 
botized meaning; it is enough that what he hears be intrinsically 
plausible and seductive, and that there be no special cause to pro- 
voke doubt. And if ‘indeed there were, the poet overrules such 
doubts by the holy and all-sufficient authority of the Muse, whose 
omniscience is the warrant for his recital, as her inspiration is 
the cause of his success. 

The state of mind, and the relation of speaker to hearers, thus 
depicted, stand clearly marked in the terms and tenor of the an- 
cient epic, if we only put a plain meaning upon what we read. 
The poet —like the prophet, whom he so much resembles — 
sings under heavenly guidance, inspired by the goddess to whom 
he has prayed for her assisting impulse : she puts the word into 
his mouth and the incidents into his mind: he isa privileged man, 
chosen as her organ and speaking from her revelations.!| As the 


tonic philology and antiquities. He examines the extent to which either his- 
torical matter of fact or historical names can be traced in the Deutsche FTelden- 
sage ; and he comes to the conclusion that the former is next to nothing, the 
latter not considerable. He draws particular attention to the fact, that the 
audience for whom these poems were intended had not learned to distin- 
guish history from poetry (W. Grimm, Deutsche Heldensage, pp 8, 337, 342 
845, 399, Gott. 1829). 
1 Hesiod, Theogon. 32. — 
ἀνέπνευσαν dé (the Muses) μοι αὐδὴν, 

Θείην, ὡς κλείοιμε τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα, πρό τ᾽ ἐόντα, 

Καί με κέλονϑ᾽ ὑμνεῖν μακάρων γένος αἰὲν ἐόντων, ete. 
Odyss. xxii. 847; viii. 63, 73, 481, 489. Δημόδοκ᾽...... ἢ σέ ye Moda’ ἐδίδαξε, 
Διὸς παῖς, ἢ σέγ᾽ ᾿Απόλλων : that is, Demodocus has either been inspired ag 
& poet by the Muse, or as a prophet by Apollo: for the Homeric Apollo is 
not the god of sonz. Kalchas the prophet receives his inspiration from 
Apollo, who confers upon him the same knowledge both of past and future 
as the Muses give to Hesiod (Iliad, i. 69) --- 

Κάλχας Θεστορίδης, οἰωνοπόλων ὄχ᾽ ἄριστος 

Ὃς ἡδη τά 7’ ἐόντα, τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα, πρό τ᾽ ἐόντα 

Ἣν διὰ μαντοσύνην, τὴν οἱ πόρε Φοῖβος ᾿Απόλλων, 
Also Iliad, ii. 485. 

Both the μάντις and the ἀοιδὸς are standing, recognized professions (Udysa 

vii. 383), like the physician and the carpenter, δημιόεργοι. 


856 HISTORY OF GRIECE. 


Muse grants the gift of song to whem she will, sc she sometimes 
in her anger snatches it away, and the most constmmate human 
genius is then left silent and helpless.! It is true that these ex. 
pressions, of the Muse inspiring and the poet singing a tale of 
past times, have passed from the ancient epic to compositions pro- 
duced under very different circumstances, and have now degen- 
erated into unmeaning forms of speech; but they gained cure 
rency originally in their genuine and literal acceptation. If poets 
had trom the beginning written or recited, the predicate of singe 
ing would never have been ascribed to them: nor would it have 
ever become customary to employ the name of the Muse as a 
die to be stamped on licensed fiction, unless the practice had be- 
gun when her agency was invoked and hailed in pertect good 
faith. Belief, the fruit of deliberate inquiry and a rational scru- 
tiny of evidence, is in such an age unknown: the sim ple faith of 
the time slides in unconsciously, when the imagination and feel- 
ing are exalted ; and inspired authority is at once understood, 
easily admitted, and implicitly confided in. 

The word mythe (μῦϑος, fabula, story), in its original mean- 
ing, signified simply a statement or current narrative, without any 
connotative implication either of truth or falsehood. Subsee 
quently the meaning of the word (in Latin and English as well as 
in Greek) changed, and came to carry with it the idea of an old 
personal narrative, always uncertified, sometimes untrue or avow- 
edly fictitious.2 And this change was the result of a silent alter. 
ation in the mental state of the society, — of a transition on the 

' Hiad, ii. 599. ‘i i 

? In this later sense it stands pointedly opposed to ἱστορία, history, which 
seems originally to have designated matter of fact, present and seen by the 
describer, or the result of his personal inquiries (see Herodot.i.1; Verriug 
Flace. ap. Aul. Gell. v. 18 ; Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. iii. 12; and the observa- 
tions of Dr. Jortin, Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 59). 

The original use of the word λόγος was the same as that of μῦϑος --8 
current tale, true or false, as the case might be; and the term designating a 
person much conversant with the old legends (λόγεος) is derived from it 
(Herod. i. 1; ii. 3). Hekateus and Herodotus both use λόγος in this sense. 
Herodotus calls both Asop and Hekatwus Ao) ὁποιοΐ (ii. 134-143). 

Aristotle (Metaphys. i. p. 8, ed. Brandis) seems to use μῦϑος in this sense, 
where he says — διὸ καὶ φιλόμυϑος ὁ φιλόσοφός πώς ἐστιν" ὁ γὰρ μῦϑος 
συγκεῖται ἐκ ϑαυμασίων, etc. In the same treatise (xi. p. 254), he uses it to 


signify fabulous amplification and transformation of a doctrine tree in the 
cain. 


FAITH IN THE ZARLY MYTHES. 857 


part of the superior minds (and more or less on the part of all) 
to a stricter and more elevated cazon of credibility, in conse 

quence of familiarity with recorded history, and its essential tests 
affirmative as well as negative. Among the original hearers of 
the mythes, all such tests were unknown; they had not yet learn. 
ed the lesson οἵ critical disbelief; the mythe passed unquestioned 
from the mere fact of its currency, and from its harmony with 
existing sentiments and preconceptions. The very circumstances 
which contributed to rob it of literal belief in after-time, strength- 
ened its hold upon the mind of the Homeric man. He looked for 
wonders and unusual combinations in the past; he expected to 
hear of gods, heroes and men, moving and operating together 
upon earth; he pictured to himself the fore-time as a theatre in 
which the gods interfered directly, obviously and frequently, for 
the protection of their favorites and the punishment of their foes. 
The rational conception, then only dawning in his mind, of a sys- 
tematic course of nature was absorbed by this fervent and lively 
faith. And if he could have been supplied with as perfect and 
philosophical a history of his own real past time, as we are now 
enabled to furnish with regard to the last century of England or 
France, faithfully recording all the successive events, and ac- 
counting for them by known positive laws, but introducing no 
special interventions of Zeus and Apollo— such a history would 
have appeared to him not merely unholy and unimpressive, but 
destitute of all plausibility or title to credence. It would have 
provoked in him the same feeling of incredulous aversion as a 
description of the sun (to repeat the previous illustration) in a 
modern book on scientific astronomy. 

To us these mythes are interesting fictions; to the Homeric 
and Hesiodic audience they were “rerum divinarum et huma- 
narum scientia,” —an aggregate of religious, physical and his- 
torical revelations, rendered more captivating, but not less true 
and real, by the bright coloring and fantastic shapes in which they 
were presented. Throughout the whole of “ mythe-bearing Hel- 
las”! they formed the staple of the uninstructed Greek mind, 


*M. Ampére, in his Histoire Littéraire de la France (ch. viii. v. i. p. 310) 
ifistinguishes the Saga (which corresponds as nearly as possible with the 
Greek μῦϑος, λόγος, ἐπιχώριος λόγος), as a special product of the intellect. 


838 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


upon which history and philosophy were by so slow degrees 88» 
perinduced; and they continued to be the aliment of ordinary 
thought and conversation, even after history and philosophy had 
partially supplanted the mythical faith among the leading men, 
and disturbed it more or less in the ideas of all. The men, the 
women, and the children of the remote démes and villages of 
Greece, to whom Thucydidés, Hippocratés, Aristotle, or Hippar- 
chus were unknown, still continued to dwell upon the local fables 
which formed their religious and patriotic antiquity. And Pau- 
sanias, even in his time, heard everywhere divine or heroic ἰθ- 
gends yet alive, precisely of the type of the old epic; he found 
the conceptions of religious and mythical faith, coexistent with 
those of positive science, and contending against them at more 
or less of odds, according to the temper of the individual. Now 
it is the remarkable characteristic of the Homeric age, that no 
such coéxistence or contention had yet begun. ‘The religious 
and mythical point of view covers, for the most part, all the 
phenomena of nature; while the conception of invariable se- 
quence exists only in the background, itself personified under the 
name of the Mceerx, or Fates, and produced generally as an ex- 


as philosophy : — 

* fl est un pays, la Scandinavie, od la tradition racontée s’est développée 
plus complétement qu’ailleurs, of: ses produits ont été plus soigneusement 
recueillis et mieux conservés: dans ce pays, lis ont recu un nom particulier, 
dont l’équivalent exact ne se trouve pas hors des langues Germaniques : c’est 
le mot Saga, Sage, ce qu'on dit, ce qu’on raconte, — \a tradition orale. Si loa 
prend ce mot non dans une acception restreinte, mais dans le sens général 
od le prenait Niebuhr quand il Pappliquoit, par exemple, aux traditions popu- 
laires qui ont pu fournir ἃ Tite Live une portion de son histoire, la Saga 
doit étre comptée parmi les produits spontanés de ‘imagination humaine, 
La Saga ason existence propre comme la poésie, comme Ihistoire, comme 
le roman. Elle n'est pas la poésie, parcequ’elle n’est pas chantée, mais par- 
lée ; elle n’est pas Vhistoire, parcequ’elle est denuée de critique ; elle n’est 
pas le roman, parcequ’elle est sincére, parcequ’elle a foi a ce qu’elle raconte, 
Elle n’invente pas, mais répéte: elle peut se tromper, mais elle ne ment 
jamais. Ce récit souvent merveilleux, que personne ne fabrique sciemment. 
et que tout le monde alttre et falsifie sans le vouloir, qui se perpétue a le 
maniere des chants primitifs et populaires, — ce récit, quand il se rapposte 
Son ἃ un héros, mais ἃ un saint, s’appelle une légende.” 


NO OTHER LEARNING EXCEPT THE MYTHES. 859 


Voluntary agents, visible and invisible, impel and govern every 
thing. Moreover this point of view is universal throughout the 
community, — adopted with equal fervor, and carried out with 
equal consistency, by the loftiest minds and by the lowest. The 
great man of that day is he who, penetrated like others with the 
general faith, and never once imagining any other system of na- 
ture than the agency of these voluntary Beings, can clothe them 
in suitable circumstances and details, and exhibit in living body 
and action those types which his hearers dimly prefigure. Such 
men were the authors of the Iliad and the Odyssey; embodying 
in themselves the whole measure of intellectual excellence which 
their age was capable of feeling: to us, the first of poets — but 
to their own public, religious teachers, historians, and philoso- 
phers besides— inasmuch as all that then represented history 
and philosophy was derived from those epical effusions and from 
others homogeneous with them. Herodotus recognizes Homer 
and Hesiod as the main authors of Grecian belief respecting the 
names and generations, the attributes and agency, the forms and 
the worship of the gods.! 

History, philosophy, ete., properly so called and conforming to 
our ideas (of which the subsequent Greeks were the first crea- 
tors), never belonged to more than a comparatively small num- 
ber of thinking men, though their influence indirectly affected 
more or less the whole national mind. But when positive science 
and criticism, and the idea of an invariable sequence of events, 
came to supplant in the more vigorous intellects the old mythical 
creed of omnipresent personification, an inevitable scission was 
produced between the instructed few and the remaining commu- 
nity. The opposition between the scientific and the religious 
point of view was not slow in manifesting itself: in general lan- 
guage, indeed, both might seem to stand together, but in every 
particular case the admission of one involved the rejection of the 
other. According to the theory which then became predom- 
inant, the course of nature was held to move invariably on, by 
powers and attributes of its own, unless the gods chose to inter- 
fere and reverse it; but they had the power of interfering as 
often and to as great an extent as they thought fit. Here the 


' Herodot. ii. 53. 


860 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


question was at once opened, respecting a great variety of parti¢e 
ular phenomena, whether they were to be regarded as natural 
or miraculous. No constant or discernible test could be suggest- 
ed to discriminate the two: every man was called upon to settle 
the doubt for himself, and each settled it according to the extent 
of his knowledge, the force of his logic, the state of his health, 
his hopes, his fears, and many other considerations affecting his 
separate conclusion. In a question thus perpetually arising, and 
full of practical consequences, instructed minds, like Periklés, 
Thucydidés, and Euripidés, tended more and more to the scien- 
tific point of view,' in cases where the general public were con- 
stantly gravitating towards the religious. 


Maii. 

The phytologist Theophrastus. in his valuable collection of facts respect- 
ing vegetable organization, is often under the necessity of opposing his sci- 
entific interpretation of curious incidents in tne vegetable world to the 
religious interpretation of them which he found current. Anomalous phe- 
nomena in the growth or decay of trees were construed as signs from the 
gods, and submitted to a prophet for explanation (see Histor. Plantar. ii. 3, 
iv. 16; v. 3). 

We may remark, however, that the old faith had still a certain hold over 
bis mind. In commenting on the story of the willow-tree at Philippi, and 
the venerable old plane-tree at Antandros (more than sixty feet high, and 
requiring four men to grasp it round in the girth), having been blown down 
by ἃ high wind, and afterwards spontaneously resuming their erect posture, 
he offers some explanations how such a phenomenon might have happened, 
but he admits, at the end, that there may be something extra-natural in the 
cease, ᾿Αλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν lowe ἔξω φυσικῆς αἰτίας ἔστιν, etc. (De Caus. Plant. v 
4): see a similar miracle in reference to the cedar-tree of Vespasian (Tactt. 
Hist. ii. 78). 

Euripidés, in his lost tragedy called Μελανίππη Σοφὴ, placed in the mouth 
# Melanippé a formal discussion and confutation of the whole doctrine of 
τέρατα, or supernatural indications (Dionys. Halicar. Ars Rhetoric. p. 300- 
$56, Reisk). Compare the Fables of Phedrus, iii. 3; Plutarch, Sept. Sap. 
Conviv. ch. 3. p. 149; and the curious philosophical explanation by which 
the learned men of Alexandria tranquillized the alarms of the vulgar, on 
occasion of the serpent said to have been seen entwined round the head of 
the crucified Kleomenés (Plutarch, Kleomen. c. 39). 

It is one part of the duty of an able physician, according to the Hippo- 
cratic treatise called Prognosticon (c. 1. t. ii. p. 112, ed. Littré), when he 
visits his patient, to examire whether there is anything divine in the malady, 
ἅμα δὲ καὶ εἴ τι ϑεῖον ἔνεστιν ἐν τῇσι νούσοισι this. however, does not agree 


THE OTRI COLI MASK OF JUPITER 


Greece, vol. one, 


MYTHOPE€IC AGE. 86) 


The age immediately prior to this unsettled condition of thought 
is the really mythopeeic age; in which the creative faculties of 
the society know no other employment, and the mass of the se 
ceity no other mental demand. ‘The perfect expression of such a 
period, in its full peculiarity and grandeur, is to be found in the 
Iliad and Odyssey, — poems of which we cannot determine the 
exact date, but which seem both to have existed prior to the first 
Olympiad, 776 B.c., our earliest trustworthy mark of Grecian 
time. lor some time after that event, the mythopeic tendencies 
continued in vigor (Arktinus, Leschés, Eumélus, and seemingly 
most of the Hesiodic poems, fall within or shortly after the first 
century of recorded Olympiads); but from and after this first 
century, we may trace the operation of causes which gradually 
enteebled and narrowed them, altering the point of view from 
which the.mythes were looked at. What these causes were, it 
will be necessary briefly to intimate. 


with the memorable doctrine laid down in the treatise, De Aére, Locis et 
Aquis (c. 22. p. 78, ed. Littré), and cited hereafter, in this chapter. Nor 
does Galen seem to have regarded it as harmonizing with the general views 
of Hippocratés. In the excellent Prolegomena of Mr. Littré to his edition 
of Hippocratés (t. i. p. 76) will be found an inedited scholium, wherein the 
opinion of Baccheius and other physicians is given, that the affections of the 
plugue were to be looked upon as divine, inasmuch as the disease came from 
God ; and also the opinion of Xenophén, the friend of Praxagoras, that the 
“penus of days of crisis” in fever was divine; “ For (said Xenophon) just 
as the Dioskuri, being gods, appear to the mariner in the storm and bring 
him salvation, so also do the days of crisis, when they arrive, in fever.” 
Galen, in commenting upon this doctrine of Xenoph6n, says that the author 
“has expressed his own individual feeling, but has no way set forth the 
opinion of Hippocratés:” Ὃ dz τῶν κρισίμων γένος ἡμερῶν εἰπὼν εἶναι ϑεῖον, 
ἑαυτοῦ τι πάϑος ὡμολόγησεν" οὐ μὴν Ἱπποκράτους γε τὴν γνώμην ἔδειξεν 
(Galen, Opp. t. v. p. 190, ed. Basil ). 

The comparison of the Dioskuri appealed to by Xenophén is a precise 
reproduction of their function as described in the Homeric Hymn (Hymn 
xxxiil. 10): his personification of the “days of crisis” introduces the old 
religious agency to fill up a gap in his medical science. 

I annex an illustration from the Hindoo vein of thought :—“TIt is a rule 
with the Hindoos to bury, and not to burn, tne bodies of those who die of 
the small-pox: for (say they) the small pox is not only caused by the god 
dess Davey, but is, in fact, Davey herself; and to burn the body of a person 
affected with this disease, is, in reality, neither more nor less than to burn the 
goddess.” (Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections, ete vol. i. ch. xxv. p. 9391} 


16 


862 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The foremost and most general of all is, the expansive force 
of Grecian intellect itself, — a quality in which this remarkable 
people stand distinguished from all their neighbors and contempo- 
raries. Most, if not all nations have had mythes, but no nation 
except the Greeks have imparted to them immortal charm and 
universal interest ; and the same mental capacities, which raised 
the great men of the poetic age to this exalted level, also pushed 
forward their successors to outgrow the early faith in which the 
mythes had been generated and accredited. 

One great mark, as well as means, of such intellectual expan- 
sion, was the habit of attending to, recording, and combining, posis 
tive and present facts, both domestic and foreign. In the genu- 
ine Grecian epic, the theme was an unknown and aoristic past; 
but even as early as the Works and Days of Hesiod, the present 
begins to figure: the man who tills the earth appears in his own 
solitary nakedness, apart from gods and heroes — bound indeed 
by serious obligations to the gods, but contending against many 
difficulties which are not to be removed by simple reliance on 
their help. The poet denounces his age in the strongest terms as 
miserable, degraded and profligate, and looks back with reveren. 
tial envy to the extinct heroic races who fought at Troy and 
Thébes. Yet bad as the present time is, the Muse condescends 
to look at it along with him, and to prescribe rules for human life— 
with the assurance that if a man be industrious, frugal, provi- 
dent, just and friendly in his dealings, the gods will recompense him 
with affluence and security. Nor does the Muse disdain, while 
holding out such promise, to cast herself into the most homely de- 
tails of present existence and to give advice thoroughly practical 
and calculating. Men whose minds were full of the heroes of 
Homer, called Hesiod in contempt the poet of the Helots; and 
the contrast between the two is certainly a remarkable proof of 
the tendency of Greek poetry towards the present and the 
positive. 

Other manifestations of the same tendency become visible in 
the age of Archilochus (8B. c. 680-660). In an age when metri- 
cal composition and the living voice are the only means whereby 
the productive minds of a community make themselves felt, the 
imvention of a new metre, new forms of song and recitaticn, or 


INCREASED ATTENTION TO PRESENT FACTS. 868 


diversified accompanimeats, constitute an epoch. The iainbic, 
elegiac, choric, and lyric poetry, from Archilochus downwards, all 
indicate purposes in the poet, and impressibilities of the hearers, 
very different from those of the ancient epic. In all of themthe 
personal feeling of the poet and the specialties of present 
time and place, are brought prominently forward, while in the 
Homeric hexameter the poet is a mere nameless organ of the 
historical Muse —the hearers are content to learn, believe, and 
feel, the incidents of a foregone world, and the tale is hardly less 
suitable to one time and place than to another. ‘The iambic me- 
tre (we are told) was first suggested to Archilochus by the bitter. 
ness of his own private antipathies; and the mortal wounds in- 
flicted by his lampoons, upon the individuals against whom they 
were directed, still remain attested, though the verses themselves 
have perished. It was the metre (according to the well-known 
judgment of Aristotle) most nearly approaching to common 
speech, and well suited both to the coarse vein of sentiment, and 
to the smart and emphatic diction of its inventor. Simonidés of 
Amorgus, the younger contemporary of Archilochus, employed 
the same metre, with less bitterness, but with an anti-heroie ten- 
dency not less decided. His remaining fragments present a mix- 
ture of teaching and sarcasm, having a distinct bearing upon 
actual life, and carrying out the spirit which partially appears 
in the Hesiodie Works and Days. Of Alkeus and Sapphd, 
though unfortunately we are compelled to speak of them upon 
hearsay only, we know enough to satisfy us that their own pet- 
sonal sentiments and sufferings, their relations private or publie 


ΡΝΒΕΝΜΜΝΝΕΝΝΝΝΟΝΝΒΒΕΝΗΝΝΟΝΝΣ —_ “ — 


' Horat. de Art. Poet. 79: — 
“ Archilochum proprio rabies armavit Tambo,” ete. 
Compare Epist. i. 19, 23, and Epod. vi. 12; Aristot. Rhetor. iii. 8, 7, and 
Poetic. c. 4— also Synesius de Somniis—Gorep ᾿Αλκαῖος καὶ ᾿Αρχίλοχος, 
οἱ δεδαπανήκασι τὴν εὐστομίαν εἰς τὸν οἰκεῖον βίον ἑκάτερος (Alexi Frag- 
ment. Halle, 1810, p. 305). Quintilian speaks in striking language of the 
power of expression manifested by Archilochus (x. 1, 60). 

" Simonidés of Amorgus touches briefly, but in a tone of contempt upon 
the Trojan νὰν --- γυναικὸς οὖν εκ' ἀμφιδηριωμένους (Simonid. Fragm. 
8. p. 36. v. 118); he seems to think it absurd that so destructive a struggle 
shonid have taken place “ pro μπᾶ mulierculé,” to use the phrase of Mu. Payne 


Knight. 


864 HISTOkY OF GREECE, 


with tne contemporary world, constituted the soul of those short 
effusions which gave them so much celebrity :! and in the few re 
mains of the elegiac poets preserved to us — Kallinus, Mimner 
mus, ‘'yrtaus—the impulse of some present motive or circum 
stance is no less conspicuous. The same may also be said of So 
lon, Theognis and Phokylidés, who preach, encourage, censure, Οἱ 
complain, but do not recount — and in whom a profound ethical 
sensibility, unknown to the Homeric poems, manifests itself: the 
form of poetry (to use the words of Solén himself) is made the 
substitute for the public speaking of the agora.2 

Doubtless all these poets made abundant use of the ancient 
mythes, but it was by turning them to present account, in the 
way of illustration, or flattery, or contrast, —a tendency which 
we may usually detect even in the compositions of Pindar, in 
spite of the lofty and heroic strain which they breathe through- 
out. That narrative or legendary poetry still continued to be 
composed during the seventh and sixth centuries before the Chris- 
tian ra is not to be questioned; but it exhibited the old epical 


' See Quintilian, x. 1, 63. Horat. Od. i. 32; li. 13. Aristot. Polit. iii. 10, 
4. Dionys. Halic. observes (Vett. Scriptt. Censur. v. p- 421) respecting 
Alkseus — πολλαχοῦ γοῦν τὸ μέτρον εἴ τις περιέλοι, ῥητορικὴν ἂν εὕροι 
πολιτείαν ; and Strabo (xiii. p. 617), τὰ στασιωτικὰ καλούμενα τοῦ ᾿Αλκαίου 
ποιήματα. 

There was a large dash of sarcasm and homely banter aimed at neighbors 
and contemporaries in the poetry of Sapphé, apart from her impassioned 
love-songs — ἄλλως σκώπτει τὸν ἄγροικον νύμφιον καὶ τὸν ϑυρωρὸν τὸν ἐν 
τοῖς γάμοις, εὐτελέστατα καὶ ἐν πέζοις ὀνόμασι μᾶλλον ἢ ἐν ποιητικοῖς. “Ὥστε 
αὐτῆς μᾶλλόν ἐστι τὰ ποιήματα ταῦτα διαλέγσϑαι ἣ ἄδειν - οὐδ᾽ ἂν ἅρμοσαι 
πρὸς τὸν χόρον ἢ πρὸς τὴν λύραν, εἰ μῆ τις εἴη χόρος διαλεκτικός (Démétr 
Phaler. De Interpret. c. 167). 

Compare aiso Herodot. ii 135, who mentions the satirical talent of Sap- 
pho, employed against her brother for an extravagance about the courtezan 
Rhodopis. 

* Solon, Fragm. iv. 1, ed. Schneidewin : — 

Αὐτὸς κήρυξ ἤλϑον ad’ ἱμερτῆς Σαλαμῖνος 
Κόσμον ἐπέων ὡδὴν ἀντ᾽ ἀγορῆς ϑέμενος, ete. 
See Brandis, Handbuch der Griechischen Philosophie, sect. xxiv.-xxv 
Plato states that Soldn, in his old age, engaged in the composition of an 
epic poem, which he left unfinished, on the subject of the supposed island 
of Atlantis and Attica (Plato, Timaus, p. 21, and Kritias, Ρ. 113). Plu 
tarch, Soldn, c. 31. 


FORMATION OF AN HISTORICAL SENSE. 865 


vharacter without the old epical genius; both the inspiration of 
the composer and the sympathies of the audience had become 
more deeply enlisted in the world before them, and disposed to. 
fasten on incidents of their own actual experience. From Solén 
and Theognis we pass to the abandonment of all metrical restric 
tions and to the introduction of prose writing, —a fact, the im- 
portance of which it is needless to dwell upon, — marking as well 
the increased familiarity with written records, as the commence- 
ment of a separate branch of literature for the intellect, apart 
from the imagination and emotions wherein the old legends had 
their exclusive root. 

Egypt was first unreservedly opened to the Greeks during 
the reign of Psammetichus, about B. c. 660; gradually it became 
much frequented by them for military or commercial purposes, 
or for simple curiosity, and enlarged the range of their thoughts 
and observations, while it also imparted to them that vein of 
mysticism, which overgrew the primitive simplicity of the Ho- 
meric religion, and of which I have spoken in a former chapter 
They found in it a long-established civilization, colossal wonders 
of architecture, and a certain knowledge of astronomy and geo- 
metry, elementary indeed, but in advance of their own. Moreover 
it was a portion of their present world, and it contributed to form 
in them an interest for noting and describing the actual realities 
before them. A sensible progress is made in the Greek mind 
during the two centuries from B. c. 700 to B. c. 500, in the re- 
ecrd and arrangement of historical facts: an historical sense avises 
in the superior intellects, and some idea of evidence as a discrim- 
inating test between fact and fiction. And this progressive ten- 
dency was further stimulated by increased communication and 
by more settled and peaceful social relations between the various 
members of the Hellenic world, to which may be added material 
improvements, purchased at the expense of a period of turbu- 
ence and revolution, in the internal administration of each sepa- 
rate state. The Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian games 
became frequented by visitors from the most distant parts of 
Greece : the great periodical festival in the island of Délos brought 
together the citizens of every Ionic community, with their wives 
and children, and an ample display of wealth and ornameata.’ 


' Homer, Hymn. ad Apollin. 155 ; Thucydid. ii. 104. 


866 *ISTORY OF GREECE. 


Numerous and flourishing colonies were founded in Sicily, the 
sovth of Italy, the coasts of Epirus and of the Euxine Sea: the 
Phokzans explored the whole of the Adriatic, established Mas 
salia, and penetrated even as far as the south of Ibéria, with 
which they carried on a lucrative commerce.!_ The geographical 
ideas of the Greeks were thus both expanded and rectified: the 
first preparation of a map, by Anaximander the disciple of Thalés, 
is an epoch in the history of science. We may note the ridicule 
bestowed by Herodotus both upon the supposed people called 
Hyperboreans and upon the idea of a circumfluous ocean-stream, 
as demonstrating the progress of the age in this department of 
inguiry.2, And even earlier than Herodotus, Xanthus had no- 
ticed the occurrence of fossil marine productions in the interior 
of Asia Minor, which led him to reflections on the changes of ths 
earth’s surtace with respect to land and water.’ 

If then we look down the three centuries and a half which 
elapsed between the commencement of the Olympic wra and the 
age of Herodotus and ‘l’hucydidés, we shall discern a striking 
advance in the Greeks, —— ethical, social and intellectual. Posi- 
tive history and chronology has not only been created, but in the 
case of Thucydidés, the qualities necessary to the historiographer, 
in their application to recent events, have been developed with 
a degree of perfection never since surpassed. Men’s minds have 
assumed a gentler as well as a juster cast; and acts come to be 
criticized with reference to their bearing on the internal happi- 
ness of a well-regulated community, as well as upon the stand- 


* Herodot. i. 163. 

* Herodot. iv. 36. γελῶ δὲ ὁρέων Τῆς περιόδους γράψαντας πολλοὺς ἤδη, 
sai οὐδένα νόον ἔχοντας ἐξηγησώμενον " οἱ ᾽Ωκέανόν τε ῥέοντα γράφουσι πέριξ 
γὴν γῆν. ἐοῦσαν κυκλοτερέα ὡς ἀπὸ τόρνου. ete., a remark probably directed 
wainst Hekatzeus. 

Respecting the map of Anaximander, Strabo, i. p. 7; Diogen. Laért. i 
t; Agathemer ap. Geograph. Minor. i. 1. πρῶτος ἐτόλμησε τὴν οἱεςουμένην 
ἣν πίνακι γράψαι. 

Aristagoras of Milétus, who visited Sparta to solicit aid for the revolted 
senians against Darius, brought with him a brazen tablet or map, by means 
x which he exhibited the relative position of places in the Persian empire 
“Herodot. v. 49). 

* Xanthus ap. Strabo. i. p. 40; xii. p. 579. Compare Creuzer, Fragments 
aamhi, p. 162. 


COMMENCEMENT OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 367 


ing harmony of fraternal states. While Thucydidés treats the 
habitual and licensed piracy, so coolly alluded to in the Homeric 
poems, as an obsolete enormity, many of the acts described in - 
the old heroic and Theogonic legends were found not less repug- 
nant to this improved tone of feeling. The battles of the gods 
with the Giants and Titans,—the castration of Uranus by his 
son Kronus,— the cruelty, deceit and licentiousness, often sup- 
posed both in the gods and heroes, provoked strong disapproba- 
tion. And the language of the philosopher Xenophanés, who 
composed both elegiac and iambic poems for the express purpose 
of denouncing such tales, is as vehement and unsparing as that 
of the Christian writers, who, eight centuries afterwards, attack- 
ed the whole scheme of paganism.! 

Nor was it alone as an ethical and social critic that Xeno- 
phanés stood distinguished. He was one of a great and eminent 
triad — Thalés and Pythagoras being the others — who, in the 
sixth century before the Christian era, first opened up those 
veins of speculative philosophy which occupied afterwards so 
large a portion of Grecian intellectual energy. Of the material 
differences between the three I do not here speak ; I regard them 
only in reference to the Homeric and Hesiodic philosophy which 
preceded them, and from which all three deviated by a step, 
perhaps the most remarkable in all the history of philosophy. 
In the scheme of ideas common to Homer and to the Hesiodice 
Theogony (as has been already stated), we find nature distribut- 
ed into a variety of personal agencies, administered according to 
the free-will of different Beings more or less analogous to man 
—each of these Beings having his own character, attributes and 
powers, his own sources of pain and pleasure, and his own espe- 
cial sympathies or antipathies with human individuals ; each being 
determined to act or forbear, to grant favor or inflict injury in 
his own department of phenomena, according as men, or perhaps 
other Beings analogous to himself, might conciliate or offend him. 
The Gods, properly so called, (those who bore a proper name 
and received some public or family worship,) were the most com- 
manding and capital members amidst this vast network of agents 


* Xenophan. ap. Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathemat. ix. 193 Fragm. 1. Poet 
Greec. ed. Schneidewin. Diogen. Laért. ix. 18. 


888 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


visil,le and invisible, spread over the universe.! The whole vies 
of nature was purely religious and subjective, the spontaneous 
suggestion of the early mind. It proceeded from the instinctive 
tendencies of the feelings and imagination to transport, to the 
world without, the familiar type of free-will and conscious per- 
sonal action: above all, it took deep hold of the emotions, from 
the widely extended sympathy which it so perpetually called 
forth between man and nature.2 

The first attempt to disenthral the philosophic intellect from 
this all-personifying religious faith, and to constitute a method of 
interpreting nature distinct from the spontaneous inspirations of 
untaught minds, is to be found in Thalés, Xenophanés and Pytha- 
goras, in the sixth century before the Christian wra. It is ia 
them that we first find the idea of Person tacitly set aside or 
limited, and an impersonal Nature conceived as the object of 
study. The divine husband and wife, Oceanus and Tethys, 
parents of many gods and of the Oceanic nymphs, together with 
the avenging goddess Styx, are translated into the material sub- 
Stance waler, or, as we ought rather to say, the Fluid: and 
Thalés set himself to prove that water was the primitive element, 
out of which all the different natural substances had been formed. 
He, as well as Xenophanés and Pythagoras, started the problem 
of physical philosophy, with its objective character and invariable 
laws, to be discoverable by a proper and methodical application 
of the human intellect. The Greek word Pvots, denoting nature, 
and its derivatives physics and physiology, unknown in that large 
sense to Homer or Hesiod, as well as the word Aosmos, to denote 
the mundane system, first appears with these philosophers.4 The 


' Hesiod Opp. Di. 122; Homer, Ilymn. ad Vener 260. 

* A defence of the primitive faith, on this ground, is found in Plutarch, 
Question Sympos. vii. 4, 4, p. 703. 

* Aristotel. Metaphys. i. 3. 

* Plutarch, Placit. Philos. ji. 1; also Stobseus, Eclog. Physic. i. 22, where 
the difference between the Homeric expressions and those of the snbsequent 
philosophers is seen. Damm, Lexic. Homeric. vy. Φύσις: Alexander von 
Humboldt, Kosmos, p. 76, the note 9 on page 62 of that admirable work. 

The title of the treatises of the early philosophers (Melissus, Déwokritua 
Parmenidés, Empedoclés, Al}.mz6n, ete.) was frequently Περὶ Φύσεως {Galen 
Opp. tom. i. p. 56, ed. Basil ). 


STUDY OF IMPERSONAL NATURE. 369 


elemental analysis of Thalés — the one unchangeable cosmic sub- 
stance, varying only in appearance, but not in reality, as suggest- 
ed by Xenophanés,—and the geometrical and arithmetical 
combinations of Pythagoras, — all these were different ways of 
approaching the explanation of physical phenomena, and each 
gave rise to a distinct school or succession of philosophers. But 
they all agreed in departing from the primitive method, and in 
recognizing determinate properties, invariable sequences, and 
objective truth, in nature —either independent of willing or 
designing agents, or serving to these latter at once as an indispen- 
sable subject-matter and as a limiting condition. Xenophanés 
disclaimed openly all knowledge respecting the gods, and pro- 
nounced that no man could have any means of ascertaining when 
he was right and when he was wrong, in affirmations respecting 
them :' while Pythagoras represents in part the scientific tenden- 
cies of his age, in part also the spirit of mysticism and of special 
fraternities for religious and ascetic observance, which became 
diffused throughout Greece in the sixth century before the Chris- 
tian era. This was another point which placed him in antipathy 
with the simple, unconscious and demonstrative faith of the old 
poets, as well as with the current legends. 

If these distinguished men, when they ceased to follow the 
primitive instinct of tracing the phenomena of nature to personal 
and designing agents, passed over, not at once to induction and 
observation, but to a misemployment of abstract words, substitut- 
ing metaphysical etdedla in the place of polytheism, and to an 
exaggerated application of certain narrow physical theories — we 
must remember that nothing else could be expected from the 
scanty stock of facts then accessible, and that the most profound 
study of the human mind points out such transition as an inevita- 
ble law of intellectual progress.2 At present, we have to compare 


* Xenophan. ap. Sext. Empiric. vii. 50; viii. 326. — 
Kai τὸ μὲν οὖν σαφὲς οὔτις ἀνὴρ ἴδεν, οὔτε τίς ἐστιν 
Εἰδὼς ἀμφὶ ϑεῶν τε καὶ ἅσσα λέγω περὶ πάντων" 
Ei γὰρ καὶ τὰ μάλιστα τύχοι τετελεσμένον εἰπὼν, 
Αὐτος ὅμως obk οἷδε, δόκος δ᾽ ἐπὶ πᾶσι τέτυκται. 
Compare Aristotel. De Xenophane, Zenone, et Georgia, capp. 1-2. 
* See the treatise of M. Auguste Comte (Cours de Philosophie Positive), and 


VOL. I. 16* 240c 


870 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


them only with that state of the Greek mind! which they partially 
superseded, and with which they were in decided opposition. ‘The 
rudiments of physical science were conceived and developed 
among superior men; but the religious feeling of the mass was 
averse to them; and the aversion, though gradually mitigated, 
never wholly died away. Some of the philosophers were not 
backward in charging others with irreligion, while the multitude 
seems to have felt the same sentiment more or less towards all — 
or towards that postulate of constant sequences, with determinate 
conditions of occurrence, which scientific study implies, and which 
they could not reconcile with their belief in the agency of the 
gods, to whom they were constantly praying for special succor 
and blessings. 

The discrepancy between the scientific and the religious point 
of view was dealt with differently by different philosophers. ‘Thus 
Socratés openly admitted it, and assigned to each a distinct and 
independent province. He distributed phenomena into two class- 
es: one, wherein the connection of antecedent and consequent was 
invariable and ascertainable by human study, and therefore fu- 
ture results accessible to a well-instructed foresight; the other 
and those, too, the most. comprehensive and important, which the 
gods had reserved for themselves and their own unconditional 
agency, wherein there was no invariable or ascertainable se- 
quence, and where the result could only be foreknown by some 
omen, prophecy, or other special inspired communication from 
themselves. Each of these classes was essentially distinct, and 
required to be looked at and dealt with in a manner radically in- 
compatible with the other. Socratés held it wrong to apply the 
scientific interpretation to the latter, or the theological interpre- 
tation to the former. Physics and astronomy, in his opinion, 


his doctrine of the three successive stages of the human mind in reference to 
scientific study —the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive ---- ἃ 
doctrine laid down generally in his first lecture (vol. i. p. 4-12), and largely 
applied and illustrated throughout his instructive work. It is also re-stated 
and elucidated by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his System of Logic, Ratiocinative 
and Inductive, vol. ii. p. 610. 

᾿ “Human wisdom (ἀνϑρωπίνη σοφία), as contrasted with the primitive 
theology (οἱ ἀρχαῖοι καὶ διατρίβοντες rep? τὰς Beodoyiac),” to take the words 
of Aristotle (Meteo~plog. ii. 1. pp. 41-42, ed. Tauchnitz). 


HIPPOCRATES. — ANAXAGORAS. 871 


belonged to the divine class of phznomena, in which human re- 
search was insane, fruitless, and impious.! 

On the other hand, Hippocratés, the contemporary of Sovratés, 
denied the discrepancy, and merged into one those two classes of 
phenomena, — the divine and the scientifically determinable, — 
which the latter had put asunder. Hippocratés treated all phe- 
nomena as at once both divine and scientifically determinable. 
In discussing certain peculiar bodily disorders found among the 
Scythians, he observes, “The Scythians themselves ascribe the 
cause of this to God, and reverence and bow down to such suf- 
ferers, each man fearing that he may suffer the like; and I my- 
self think too that these affections, as well as all others, are di- 
vine: no one among them is either more divine or more human 
than another, but all are on the same footing, and all divine; nev- 
ertheless each of them has its own physical conditions, and not 
one occurs without such physical conditions.”? 


' Xenoph. Memor. i. 1, 6-9. Τὰ μὲν ἀναγκαῖα (Σωκράτης) συνεβούλευε καὶ 
πράττειν, ὡς ἐνόμιζεν ἄριστ᾽ ἂν πραχϑῆναι" περὶ δὲ τῶν ἀδήλων ὅπως amo 
βήσοιτο, μαντευσομένους ἔπεμπεν, εἰ ποιητέα. Καὶ τοὺς μέλλοντας οἴκους Te 
καὶ πόλεις καλῶς οἰκήσειν μαντικῆς ἔφη προσδεῖσϑαι " τεκτονικὸν μὲν γὰρ ἢ 
χαλκευτικὸν ἢ γεωργικὸν ἢ ἀνϑρώπων ἀρχικὸν, ἣ τῶν τοιούτων ἔργων ἐξεταῦσ- 
τικὸν, ἢ λογιστικὸν, ἢ οἰκονομικὸν, ἢ στρατηγικὸν γενέσϑαι, πάντα τὰ τοιαῦτα, 
μαϑηματα καὶ ἀνϑρώπου γνώμῃ αἱρετέα, ἐνόμιζεν εἶναι" τὰ δὲ μέγιστα τῶν ἐν 
τούτοις ἔφη τοὺς ϑεοὺς ἑαυτοῖς καταλείπεσϑαι, ὧν οὐδὲν δῆλον 
εἶναι τοῖς ἀνϑρώποις.......«. Τοὺς δὲ μηδὲν τῶν τοιούτων οἰομένους εἶναι 
δαιμόνιον, ἀλλὰ πάντα τῆς ἀνϑρωπίνης γνώμης, δαιμονᾷν ἔφη " δαιμονᾷν δὲ 
καὶ τοὺς μαντευομένους ἃ τοῖς ἀνϑρώποις ἔδωκαν οἱ ϑεοὶ μαϑοῦσι διακρίνειν. 

Ἔφη δὲ δεῖν. ἃ μὲν μαϑόντας ποιεῖν ἔδωκαν οἱ ϑεοὶ, μανϑάνειν " ἃ 
δὲ μὴ δῆλα τοῖς ἀνϑρώποις ἔστι, πειρᾶσϑαι διὰ μαντικῆς παρὰ τῶν ϑεῶν rus 
ϑάνεσϑαι" τοὺς ϑεοὺς γὰρ, οἷς ἂν dow ἰλέω, σημαίνειν. Compare also 
Memorab. iv. 7. 7; and Cyroped. i. 6, 3, 23-46. 

Physical and astronomical phenomena are classified by Socratés among 
the divine class, interdicted to human study (Memor. i. 1, 13): τὰ ϑεῖα or 
δαιμόνια as supposed to τἀνϑρώπεια. Plato (Phileb.c. 16; Legg. x. p. 886 
889 ; xii. p. 967) held the sun and stars to be gods, each animated with its 
special soul: he allowed astronomical investigation to the extent necessary 
for avoiding blasphemy respecting these beings —péypt τοῦ μὴ βλασφημεῖν 
περὶ αὐτά (vii. 821). 

3 Hippocratés, De Aére, Lacis et Aquis, c. 22 (p. 78, ed. Littré, sect. 106 
ed. Petersen): Ἔτι τε πρὸς τουτέοισι εὐνούχιαι γίγνονται of πλεῖστοι ἐδ 
Σκύϑῃσι, καὶ γυνακηΐα ἐργάζονται καὶ ὡς αἱ yuve 'κες διαλέγονταί τε ὁμοίως" 
καλεῦνταὶ τε οἱ τοιοῦτοι ἀνανδοιεῖς. Ol μὲν οὖν ἐπιχώριοι τὴν αἰτίην xpee 


-- - a ees oe a ee ee . 


872 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


A third distinguished philosopher of the same day, Anaxagoras, 
allegorizing Zeus and the other personal gods, proclaimed the 
doctrine of one common pervading Mind, as having first estab- 
lished order and system in the mundane aggregate, which had 
once been in a state of chaos — and as still manifesting its unin- 
terrupted agency for wise and good purposes. This general doc- 
trine obtained much admiration from Plato and Aristotle; but 
they at the same time remarked with surprise, that Anaxagoras 
never made any use at all of his own general doctrine for the ex- 
planation of the phznomena of nature,— that he looked for noth- 
ing but physical causes and connecting laws,! — so that in fact 
the spirit of his particular researches was not materially different 
from those of Demokritus or Leukippus, whatever might be the 
difference in their general theories. His investigations in meteor- 
ology and astronomy, treating the heavenly bodies as subjects for 
calculation, have been already noticed as offensive, not only to 
the general public of Greece, but even to Socratés himself among 
them: he was tried at Athens, and seems to have escaped con 


demnation only by voluntary exile.? 


τιϑέασι ϑεῷ Kai σέβονται τουτέους τοὺς ἀνϑρώπους καὶ προσκυνέουσι, δεδοι 
κότες περὶ ἑωϑτέων ἕκαστοι. μοὶ δὲ καὶ ἀυτέῳ δοκέει ταῦτα τὰ πάϑεα ϑεῖς 
εἶναι, καὶ τἄλλα πάντα, καὶ οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἑτέρου ϑειότερον οὐδὲ ἀνϑρωπινώ 
τερον, ἀλλὰ πάντα ϑεῖα" ἕκαστον δὲ ἔχει φύσιν τῶν τοιουτέων, καὶ οὐδὲν 
ἄνευ φύσιος γίγνεται. Καὶ τοῦτο τὸ πάϑος, ὥς μοὶ δοκέει γίγνεσϑαι, φράσω, 
ete. 
Again, sect. 112. ᾿Αλλὰ γὰρ, ὥσπερ καὶ πρότερον ἔλεξα, ϑεῖα μὲν καὶ 
ταῦτά ἐστι ὁμοίως τοῖσι ἄλλοισι, γίγνεται δὲ κατὰ φύσιν ἕκαστα. 

Compare the remarkable treatise of Hippocratés, De Morbo Sacro, capp 
1 and 18, vol. vi. p. 352-894, ed. Littré. See this opinion of Hippocratés 
illustrated by the doctrines of some physical philosophers stated in Aristotle 
Physic. ii. 8. ὥσπερ ὕει ὁ Ζεὺς, οὐχ ὅπως τὸν σῖτον αὐξήσῃ, ἀλλ᾽ ἐξ ἀνάγκης, 
etc. Some valuable observations on the method of Hippocratés are also 
found in Plato, Phedr. p. 270. 

' See the graphic picture in Plato, Phedon. p. 97-98 (cap. 46-47) : com- 
pare Plato, Legg. xii. p. 967; Aristotel. Metaphysic. i. p. 13-14 (ed. Bran- 
dis) ; Plutarch, Defect. Oracul. p. 435. 

Simplicius, Commentar. in Aristotel. Physic. p. 38. καὶ ὅπερ dé ὁ ἐν Φαί- 
δωνι Σωκράτης éyadei τῷ ᾿Αναξαγόρᾳ, τὸ ἐν ταῖς τῶν κατὰ μέρος αἰτιολογίαις 
μὴ τῷ νῷ κεχρῆσϑαι, ἀλλὰ ταῖς ὑλικαῖς ἀποδόσεσιν, οἰκεῖον ἣν τῇ φυσιολογίᾳ, 
Anaxagoras thought that the superior intelligence of men, as compared with 
other animals, arose from his possession of hands (Aristot. de Part. Animal 
iv. 10. p. 687, ed. Bekk.). 

3 Xenophén, Memorab. iv. 7. Socratés said, καὶ παραφρονῆσαι τὸν ταῦτ: 


GRECIAN RELIGIOUS BELIFF 378 


The three eminent men just named, all essentially different 
from each other, may be taken as illustrations of the philosophicaj 
mind of Greece during the last half of the fifth century B. Ὁ. 
Scientific pursuits had acquired a powerful hold, and adjusted 
themselves in various ways with the prevalent religious feelings 
of the age. Both Hippocratés and Anaxagoras modified their 
ideas of the divine agency so as to suit their thirst for scientific 
sesearch. According to the former, the gods were the really ef- 
fiuent agents in the production of all phenomena, —the mean 
and inditferent not less than the terrific or tutelary. Being thus 
alike connected with all phznomena, they were specially asso- 
ciated with none — and the proper task of the inquirer was, to find 
out those rules and conditions by which (he assumed) their agency 
was always determined, and according to which it might be tore- 
told. And this led naturally to the proceeding which Plato and 
Aristotle remark in Anaxagoras, —that the all-governing and 
Infinite Mind, having been announced in sublime language at 
the beginning of his treatise, was afterward left out of sight, and 
never applied to the explanation of particular phznomena, be- 
ing as much consistent with one modification of nature as with 


μεριωνῶντα οὐδὲν ἧττον ἢ ᾿Αναξαγόρας παρεφρόνησεν, ὁ μέγιστον φρονήσας 
ἐπὶ τῷ τὰς τῶν ϑεὼν μηχανὰς ἐξηγεῖσϑαε, ete. Compare Schaubach, Anax- 
agorz Fragment. p. 50-141; Plutarch, Nikias, 23, and Periklés, 6-32; Dio 
gen. Lacrt. ii. 10-14. 

The lonic philosophy, from which Anaxagoras receded more in language 
than in spirit, seems to have been the least popular of all the schools, though 
some of the commentators treat it as conformable to vulgar opinion, because 
it confined itself for the most part to phenomenal explanations, and did not 
recognize the noumena of Plato, or the τὸ ἐν νοητὸν of Parmenidés, — “ qualis 
fuit lonicorum, que tum dominabatur, ratio, vulgari opinione et communi 
sensu comprobata ” (Karsten, Parmenidis Fragment., De Parmenidis Philo- 
sophia, p. 154). This is a mistake: the Ionic philosophers, who constantly 
searched for and insisted upon physical laws, came more directly into conflict 
with the sentiment of the muititude than the Eleatic school. 

The larger atmospheric phenomena were connected in the most intimate 
manner with Grecian religious feeling and uneasiness (see Demokritus ap, 
Sect. Empiric. ix. sect. 19-24. p. 552-554, Fabric.): the attempts of Anax- 
agoras and Demokritus to explain them were more displeasing to the publie 
than the Platonic speculations (Demokri-us ap. Aristot. Meteorol. ii 7: 
Scob.cus, Eclog. Physic. p. 594: compare Mullach, Democriti Fragmenta, 
lib. iv. ν. 394). 


874 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


another. Now such a view of the divine agency could mever be 
reconciled with the religious feelings of the ordinary Grecian 
believer, even as they stood in the time of Anaxagoras; still 
less could it have been reconciled with those of the Homeric 
man, more than three centuries earlier. By him Zeus and 
Athéné were conceived as definite Persons, objects of special 
reverence, hopes, and fears, and animated with peculiar feelings, 
sometimes of favor, sometimes of wrath, towards himself or his 
family or country. They were propitiated by his prayers, and 
prevailed upon to lend him succor in danger — but offended and 
disposed to bring evil upon him if he omitted to render thanks 
or sacrifice. This sense of individual communion with, and de- 
pendence upon them was the essence of his faith ; and with that 
faith, the all-pervading Mind proclaimed by Anaxagoras — 
which had no more concern with one man or one phenomenon 
than with another, —- could never be brought into harmony. Nor 
could the believer, while he prayed with sincerity for special 
blessings or protection from the gods, acquiesce in the doctrine 
of Hippocratés, that their agency was governed by constant laws 
and physical conditions. 

That radical discord between the mental impulses of science 
and religion, which manifests itself so decisively during the 
most cultivated ages of Greece, and which harassed more or 
less so many of the philosophers, produced its most afflicting re- 
sult in the condemnation of Socratés by the Athenians. Accord- 
ing to the remarkable passage recently cited from Xenophon, it 
will appear that Socratés agreed with his countrymen in denounc- 
ing physical speculations as impious, — that he recognized the re- 
ligious process of discovery as a peculiar branch, coordinate with 
the scientific, — and that he laid down a theory, of which the ba- 
sis was, the confessed divergence of these two processes from the 
beginning — thereby seemingly satisfying the exigencies of re- 
ligious hopes and fears on the one hand, and those of reason, in 
her ardor for ascertaining the invariable laws of phzenomena, on 
the other. We may remark that the theory of this religious and 
extra-scientific process of discovery was at that time sufficiently 
complete ; for Socratés could point out, that those anoraalous pha 
gwomena which the gods had reserved for themsel* is, and into 


SOCKATES AND THE ATHENIANS. 875 


which science was forbidden to pry, were yet accessible to the 
seekings of the pious man, through oracles, omens, and other excep> 
tional means of communication which divine benevolence vouch- 
safed to keep open. Considering thus to how great an extent 
Socratés was identified in feeling with the religious public of 
Athens, and considering moreover that his performance of open 
religious duties was assiduous — we might wonder, as Xenophén 
does wonder,!' how it could have happened that the Athenian di- 
kasts mistook him at the end of his life for an irreligious man 
But we see, by the defence which Xenophén as well asa Plato 
gives for him, that the Athenian public really considered him, in 
spite of his own disclaimer, as homogeneous with Anaxagoras 
and the other physical inquirers, because he had applied similar 
scientific reasonings to moral and social phenomena. They look- 
ed upon him with the same displeasure as he himself felt towards 
the physical philosophers, and we cannot but admit that in this 
respect they were more unfortunately consistent than he was. It 
is true that the mode of defence adopted by Socratés contributed 
much to the verdict found against him, and that he was further 
weizhed down by private offence given to powerful individuals 
and professions ; but all these separate antipathies found theiz best 
account in swelling the cry against him as an over-curious scep- 
tic, and an impious innovator. 

Now the scission thus produced between the superior minds 
and the multitude, in consequence of the development of science 
and the scientific point of view, is a fact of great moment in the 
history of Greek progress, and forms an important contrast be- 
tween the age of Homer and Hesiod and that of Thucydidés; 
though in point of fact even the multitude, during this later age, 
were partially modified by those very scientific views which they 
regarded with disfavor. And we must keep in view the prime 
itive religious faith, once universal and unobstructed, but subse- 
quently disturbed by the intrusions of science; we must follow 
the great change, as well in respect to enlarged intelligence 88 
to refinement of social and ethical feeling, among the Greeks, 
from the Hesiodic times downward, in order to render some ac 
eount of the altered manner in which the ancient mythes came 


ST A io 


! Xenophén, Memorab. i. 1 


76 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


to be dealt with. These mythes, the spontaneous growth of 8 
creative and personifying interpretation of nature, had struck 
root in Grecian associations at a time when the national faith 
required no support from what we call evidence. They were 
now submitted, not simply to a feeling, imagining, and believing 
public, but also to special classes of instructed men, —philoso- 
phers, historians, ethical teachers, and critics,— and to a public 
partially modified by their ideas! as well as improved by a wider 
practical experience. They were not intended for such an au- 
dience ; they had ceased to be in complete harmony even with the 
lower strata of intellect and sentiment, — much more so with the 
higher. But they were the cherished inheritance of a past time; 
they were interwoven in a thousand ways with the religious faith, 
the patriotic retrospect, and the national worship, of every Gre- 
cian community ; the general type of the mythe was the ancient, 
familiar, and universal form of Grecian thought, which even the 
most cultivated men had imbibed in their childhood from the 
poets,? and by which they were to a certain degree unconsciously 


' It is curious to see that some of the most recondite doctrines of the Py 
thagorean philosophy were actually brought before the general Syracusan 
public in the comedies of Epicharmus: “In comeediis suis personas szepe ita 
colloqui fecit, ut sententias Pythagoricas et inuniversum sublimia vite pre- 
cepta immisceret” (Grysar, De Doriensium Comeedi\, p. 111, Col. 1828). 
The fragments preserved in Diogen. Laért. (iii. 9-17) present both criticisms 
upon the Hesiodic doctrine of a primmval chaos, and an exposition of the 
archetypal and immutable ideas (as opposed to the fluctuating phenomena 
of sense) which Plato afterwards adopted and systematized. 

Epicharmus seems to have combined with this abstruse philosophy a 
strong vein of comic shrewdness and some turn to scepticism (Cicero, Epis- 
tol. ad Attic. i.19): “ut crebro mihi vafer ille Siculus Epicharmus insusurret 
cantilenam suam.” (Clemens Alex. Strom. v. p. 258. Νᾶφε καὶ uéuvao’ ἀπι- 
oreiv: ἄρϑρα ταῦτα τῶν φρενῶν. Zauev ἀριϑμῷ καὶ λογισμῷ" ταῦτα γὰρ σώζει 
βροτούς. Also his contemptuous ridicule of the prophetesses of his time 
who cheated foolish women out of their money, pretending to universal 
knowledge, καὶ πάντα γιγνώσκοντι τῷ τηνᾶν λόγῳ (ap Polluc. ix. 81). See, 
about Epicharmus, Ὁ. Miiller, Dorians, iv. 7, 4. 

These dramas seem to have been exhibited at Syracuse between 480-460 
B. C., anterior even to Chionidés and Magnés at Athens (Aristot. Poet. c. 3p: 
he says πολλῷ πρότερος, which can hardly be literally exact. The critics of 
the Horatian age looked upon Epicharmus as the prototype of Plautus (Hor 
Epistol. ii. 1. 58). 

9 The third book of the republic of Plato is particularly striking in vefes 


POETS AND LOGOGRAPHERS. 877 


mslaved. ‘t'aken as a whole the mythes aad acquired prescrip» 
tive and ineffaceable possession: to attack, call in question, or 
repudiate them, was a task painful even to undertake, and far 
beyond the power of any one to accomplish. 

For these reasons the anti-mythic vein of criticism was of 
no effect as a destroying force, but nevertheless its dissolving de- 
composing and transforming influence was very considerable. To 
accommodate the ancient mythes to an improved tone of sentiment 
and a newly created canon of credibility, was a function which 
even the wisest Greeks did not disdain, and which occupied nc 
small proportion of the whole intellectual activity of the nation. 

The mythes were looked at from a point of view completely 
foreign to the reverential curiosity and literal imaginative faith 
of the Homeric man; they were broken up and recast in order 
to force them into new moulds such as their authors had never 
conteived. We may distinguish four distinct classes of minds, 
in the literary age now under examination, as having taken them 
in hand — the poets, the logographers, the philosophers, and the 
historians. 

With the poets and logographers, the mythical persons are real 
predecessors, and the mythical world an antecedent fact; but it 
is divine and heroic reality, not human ; the present is only half- 
brother of the past (to borrow! an illustration from Pindar in his 
allusion to gods and men), remotely and generically, but not 
closely and specifically, analogous to it. As a general habit, the 
old feelings and the old unconscious faith, apart from all proof or 
evidence, still remain in their minds; but recent feelings have 
grown up which compel them to omit, to alter, sometimes even to 
reject and condemn, particular narratives. 

Pindar repudiates some stories and transforms cthers, because 
they are inconsistent with his conceptions of the gods. Thus he 
formally protests against the tale that Pelops had been killed 
and served up at table by his father, for the immortal gods to eat; 
he shrinks from the idea of imputing to them so horrid an appe- 


ehice to the use of the poets in education : see also his treatise De Legg. vii 

p- 810-811. Some teachers made their pupils learn whole poets by heart 

(ὅλους ποιητὰς ἐκιανϑάνων), others preferred extracts and selections. 
Pindar, Nem. vi. 1. Compare Simonidés, Fragm. 1 (Gaisford). 


878 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


tite; he pronountes the tale to have been originally fabricated 
by a slanderous neighbor. Nor can he bring himself to recount 
the quarrels between different gods.!_ The amours of Zeus and 
Apollo are no way displeasing to him; but he occasionally sup 
presses some of the simple details of the old mythe, as deficient 
in dignity: thus, according to the Hesiodic narrative, Apollo was 
informed by a raven of the infidelity of the nymph Koronis: but 
the mention of the raven did not appear to Pindar consistent 
with the majesty of the god, and he therefore wraps up the mode 
of detection in vague and mysterious language.2 He feels con- 
siderable repugnance to the character of Odysseus, and intimates 
more than once that Homer has unduly exalted him, by force of 
poetical artifice. With the character of the A‘akid Ajax, on the 
other hand, he has the deepest sympathy, as well as with his 
untimely and inglorious death, occasioned by the undeserved pre- 
ference of a less worthy rival. He appeals for his authority usu- 
ally to the Muse, but sometimes to “ancient sayings of men,” 
accompanied with a general allusion to story-tellers and bards,— 
admitting, however, that these stories present great discrepancy, 
and sometimes that they are false.t Yet the marvellous and 
the supernatural séford no ground whatever for rejecting a 
story: Pindar makes an express declaration to this efiect in ree 
ference to the romantic adventures of Perseus and the Gorgon’s 
head.® He treats even those mythical characters, which con- 
flict the most palpably with positive experience, as connected 
by a real genealogical thread with the world before him. Not 
merely tue heroes of Troy and Thébes, and the demigod seamen 
of Jasén and the ship Argé, but also the Centaur Cheiron, the 


2 Pyth. iii. 25. See the allusions to Semelé, Alkména, and Danaé, Pyth. 
iii. 98; Nem. x. 10. Compare also supra, chap. ix. p. 245. 

ἃ Pindar. Nem. vii. 20-30; viii. 23-31. Isthm. iii. 50-60 

It seems to be sympathy for Ajax, in odes addressed to nobfe Aiginetan 
victors, which induces him thus to depreciate Odysseus; for he eulogizes Sisy 
phus, specially on account of his cunning and resources (Olymp. xiii. 50) 
im the ode addressed to Xenophén the Curinthian. 

4 Olymp. i. 28; Nem. viii. 20; Pyth. i. 93; Olymp. vii. 55; Nem vi. 42 
φάντι δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων παλαιαὶ ῥήσιες, ete. 

® Pyth. x. 49. Compare Pyth. xii. 11-22 


TRAGIC POETS 879 


phén and Pegasus, the Chimera, the Amazons and the Hyper 
boreans — all appear painted on the same canvas, and touched 


with the same colors, as the men of the recent and recorded past, 
Phalaris and Kreesus; only they are thrown back to a greater 
distance in the perspective.! The heroic ancestors of those great 
#ginetan, Thessalian, Théban, Argean, etc. families, whose pre- 
sent members the poet celebrates for their agonistic victories, 
sympathize with the exploits and second the efforts of their de- 
scendants: the inestimable value of a privileged breed and of 
the stamp of nature is powerfully contrasted with the impotence 
of unassisted teaching and practice.2 The power and skill of 
the Argeian Thezus and his relatives as wrestlers, are ascribed 
partly to the fact that their ancestors Pamphaés in aforetime 
had hospitably entertained the Tyndarids Kastér and Pollux.3 
Perhaps however the strongest proof of the sincerity of Pindar’s 
mythical faith is afforded when he notices a guilty incident with 
shame and repugnance, but with an unwilling confession of its 
truth, as in the case of the fratricide committed on Phokus by 
his brothers Péleus and Telamoén.4 

4Eschylus and Sophoklés exhibit the same spontaneous and 
uninquiring faith as Pindar in the legendary antiquities of Greece, 
taken as a whole; but they allow themselves greater license as 
to the details. It was indispensable to the success of their com- 
positions that they should recast and group anew the legendary 
events, preserving the names and general understood relation of 
those characters whom they introduced. The demand for novelty 
of combination increased with the multiplication of tragic specta- 
cles at Athens: moreover the feelings of the Athenians, ethical 
as well as political, had become too critical to tolerate the literal 
reproduction of many among the ancient stories. 

Both of them exalted rather than lowered the dignity of the 
mythical world, as something divine and heroic rather than human. 


' Pyth. i. 17; iii 4-7; iv. 12; viii. 16. Nem. iv. 27-32; v. 89. Isthm. v. 
31; vi. 44-48. Olymp. iii. 17 ; viii. 63; xiii. 61-87. 

* Nem. iii. 39; v. 40. συγγενὴς εὐδοξία ---- πότμος συγγενῆς ; v. 8. Olymp. 
ix. 103. Pindar seems to introduce φύᾳ in cases where Homer would have 


mentioned the divine assistance. 
3Nem. x. 37-51. Compare the family legend of the Athenian Déme 


crates, in Plato, Lysis, p. 295. 4 Nem. v. !9-{6. 


880 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The Prométheus of A‘schylus is a far more exalted conceptics 
than his keen-witted namesake in Hesiod, and the more homely 
details of the ancient Thébais and Cedipodia were in like manner 
modified by Sophoklés.!. The religious agencies of the cld epic 
are constantly kept prominent, and the paternal curse, -— the 
wrath of deceased persons against those from whom they have 
sustained wrong, —the judgments of the Erinnys against guilty 
or foredoomed persons, sometimes inflicted directly, sometimes 
brought about through dementation of the sufferer himself (like 
the Homeric Até), -— are frequent in their tragedies.? 


1 See above, chap. xiv. p. 368. on the Legend of the Siege of Thébes. 

2 The curse of C2dipus is the determining force in the Sept. ad Théb., 
"Apa τ᾽, "Epivvig πατρὸς ἡ μεγασϑενῆς (v. 70); it reappears several times in 
the course of the drama, with particular solemnity in the mouth of Eteoklas 
(695-709, 725, 785, ete. ); he yields to it as an irresistible force, as carrying 
the family to ruin: — 


Ἐπεὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα κάρτ᾽ ἐπισπέρχει Bede, 
Ἴτω κατ᾽ ovpov, κῦμα Κωκυτοῦ λαχὸν, 
Φοίβῳ στυγηϑὲν πᾶν τὸ Λαΐου γένος 

* * * * * 
Φίλον yap éy Spa pot πατρὸς τέλει᾽ ἄρα 
Enpoi¢g ἀκλαύστοις ὄμμασιν προσιζώνει, etc. 


So again at the opening of the Agamemno6n, the μνώμων μῆνις τεκνόποινος 
(v. 155) and the sacrifice of Iphigeneia are dwelt upon as leaving behind 
them an avenging doom upon Agamemndii, though he took precautions for 
gagging her mouth during the sacrifice and thus preventing her from giving 
utterance to imprecations—?i3oyyov ἀραῖον οἴκοις Bia χαλινῶν τ᾽ ἀναύδῳ 
μένει (κατασχεῖν), ν. 8486. The Erinnys awaits Agamemnon even at the 
moment of his victorious consummation at Troy (467; compare 762-990, 
1336-1433 ): she is most to be dreaded after great good fortune: 5116 enforces 
the curse which ancestral crimes have brought upon the house of Atreus— 
πρώταρχος ἄτη — παλαιαὶ ἁμαρτίαι δόμων (1185-1197, Choéph. 692) —the 
curse imprecated by the outraged Thyestés (1601). In the Choéphora, 
Apollo menaces Orestés with the wrath of his deceased father, and all the 
direful visitations of the Erinnyes, unless he undertakes to revenge the mur- 
der (271-296). Alcoa and 'Epevvi¢ bring on blood for blood (647). But the 
moment that Orestés, placed between these conflicting obligations (925), has 
achieved it, he becomes himself the victim of the Erinnyes, who drive him 
mad even at the end of the Choéphorex (έως δ᾽ ἔτ᾽ ἐμῴρων εἰμὲ, 1026), and 
who make their appearance bodily, and pursue him throughout the third 
drama of this fearful trilogy. The Eiddlon of Klytemnéstra impels them to 
vengeance (Eumenid. 96) and even spurs them on when they appear to relax 


ESCHYI.US. 88) 


ZEschylus in two of his remaining pieces brings forward the 
gods as the chief personages, and far from sharing the objection 
of Pindar to dwell upon dissensions of the gods, he introduces 
Prométheus and Zeus in the one, Apollo and the Eumenidés in 
the other, in marked opposition. The dialogue, first superinduced 
by him upon the primitive Chorus, gradually became the most 
important portion of the drama, and is more elaborated in Sopho- 
klés than in Aéschylus. Even in Sophoklés, however, it still 
generally retains its ideal majesty as contrasted with the rhetori- 
cal and forensic tone which afterwards crept in; it grows out of 
the piece, and addresses itself to the emotions more than to the 
reason of the audience. Nevertheless, the effect of Athenian 
political discussion and democratical feeling is visible in both these 
dramatists. ‘The idea of rights and legitimate privileges as op- 
posed to usurping force, is applied by Aschylus even to the so- 
ciety of the gods: the Eumenidés accuse Apollo of having, with the 
insolence of youthful ambition, “ ridden down ” their old preroga- 


Apollo conveys Orestés to Athens, whither the Erinnyes pursue him, and 
prosecute him before the judgment-seat of the goddess Athéné, to whom 
they submit the award; Apollo appearing as his defender. The debate 
between “the daughters of Night” and the god, accusing and defending, is 
eminently curious (576-730) : the Erinnyes are deeply mortified at the humil- 
iation put upon them when Orestés is acquitted, but Athéné at length recon- 
ciles them, and a covenant is made whereby they become protectresses of 
Attica, accepting of a permanent abode and solemn worship (1006): Orestés 
returns to Argos, and promises that even in his tomb he will watch that none 
of his descendants shall ever injure the land of Attica (770). The solemn trial 
and acquittal of Orestés formed the consecrating legend of the Hill and Judi 
cature of Areiopagus. 

This is the only complete triology of ZZschylus which we possess, and the 
avenging Erinnyes (416) are the movers throughout the whole — unseen in 
the first two dramas, visible and appalling in the third. And the appearance 
of Cassandra under the actual prophetic fever in the first, contributes still 
farther to impart to it a coloring different from common humanity. 

The general view of the movement of the Oresteia given in Welcker 
(Aischyl. Trilogie, p. 445) appears to me more conformable to Hellenie 
ideas than that of Klausen (Theologumena schyli, pp. 157-169), whose 
valuable collection and comparison of passages is too much affected, both 
here and elsewhere, by the desire to bring the agencies of the Greek mythical 
world into harmony with what a religious mind of the present day would 
approve. Moreover, he sinks the personality of Athéné too much in the 
supreme authority of Zeus (p. 58-168). 


882 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


tives! — while the Titan Prométheus, the champion of suffzring 
humanity against the unfriendly dispositions of Zeus, ventures to 
depict the latter as a recent usurper reigning only by his superior 
strength, exalted by one successful revolution, and destined at 
some future time to be overthrown by another, —a fate which 
cannot be averted except through warnings communicable only 
by Prométheus himself.? 

It is commonly understood that Aéschylus disapproved of the 
march of democracy at Athens during his later years, and that 
the Eumenidés is intended as an indirect manifestation in favor 
of the senate of Areiopagus. Without inquiring at present whether 
such a special purpose can be distinctly made out, we may plain- 
ly see that the poet introduces, into the relations of the gods with 
each other, a feeling of political justice, arising out of the times 
in which he lived and the debates of which he was a witness. 
But though A©schylus incurred reproaches of impiety from Plato, 
and seemingly also from the Athenian public, for particular speech- 
es and incidents in his tragedies,* and though he does not adhere 


1 Eumenidés, 150.—- 
Ἰὼ παῖ Διὺς, ἐπίκλοπος πέλει, 
Νὲος δὲ γραίας δαίμονας καϑιππάσω, etc. 
‘The same metaphor again, v. 731. Zschylus seems to delight in contras® 
ng and the old gods: compare 70-162, 882. 

Ὁ seit tt tell Apollo that he assumes functions which do not belong 
to him, and will thus desecrate those which do belong to him (715-754):— 
"AAW αἱματηρὰ πράγματ᾽, οὐ Aax a», σέβεις, 

Μαντεῖα δ᾽ οὐκ ἔϑ᾽ ἁγνὰ μαντεύσει μένων. 

The refusal of the king Pelasgos, in the Supplices, to undertake what he 
‘eels to be the sacred duty of protecting the suppliant Danaides, without first 
sabmitting the matter to his people and obtaining their expressed consent, and 
the fear which he expresses of their blame (κατ᾽ ἀρχὰς γὰρ φιλαίτιος λέως), are 
wore forcibly set forth than an old epic poet would probably have thought ne 
essary (see Supplices, 369, 397, 485, 519). The solemn wish to exclude both 
anarchy and despotism from Athens bears still more the mark of political 
feeling of the time — μήτ᾽ ἄναρχον μῆτε ig (Eumenid. 527-696) 

3 Prométheus, 35, 151, 170, 309, 524, 910, 940, 956. 

3 Plato, Republ. ii. 381-383; compare Aschyl. Fragment. 159, ed. Din 
forf. He was charged also with having divulged in some of his plays secret 
matters of the mysteries of Démétér, but is said to have excused himeelf by 
alleging ignorance: he was not aware that what he had said was comprised 


ESCHYLUS. 888 


to the received vein of religious tradition with the same strictness 
as Sophoklés — yet the ascendency and interference of the gods 
is never out of sight, and the solemnity with which they are 
represented, set off by a bold, figurative, and elliptical style of 


nt enn ἊΝ -- 


in the mysteries (Aristot. Ethic. Nicom. iii. 2; Clemens Alex. Strom. ii. 
p. 387); the story is ditierent again in Aélian, V. H. v. 19. 

How little can be made out distinctly respecting this last accusation may 
be seen in Lobeck, Aglaopham. p. 81. 

Cicero (Tusc. Dis. ii. 10) calls Aischylus “ almost a Pythagorean :” upon 
what the epithet;is founded we do not know. 

There is no evidence to prove to us that the Prométheus Vinctus was 
considered as impious by the public before whom it was represented; but its 
obvious meaning has been so regarded by modern critics, who resort to many 
different explanations of it, in order to prove that when properly construed 
it is not impious But if we wish to ascertain what Aéschylus really meant, 
we ought not to consult the religious ideas of modern times; we have no 
tast except what we know of the poet’s own time and that which had pre- 
ceded him. The explanations given by the ablest critics seem generally to 
exhibit a predetermination to bring out Zeus as a just, wise. merciful, and 
all-powerful Being; and all, in one way or another, distort the figures, alter 
the perspective, and give far-fetched interpretations of the meaning, of this 
striking drama, which conveys an impression directly contrary (see Welck- 
er, Trilogie, Asch. p. 90-117, with the explanation of Dissen there given; 
Klausen, Theologum. Asch. p. 140-154; Schémann, in his recent transla 
tion of the play, and the criticism on that translation in the Wiener Jahr- 
bucher, vol. cix. 1845, p. 245, by F. Ritter). On the other hand, Schuts 
(Excurs. ad Prom. Vinct. p. 149) thinks that Aischylus wished by means of 
this drama to enforce upon his countrymen the hatred of a despot. Though 
I do not agree in this interpretation, it appears to me less wide of the truth 
than the forcible methods employed by others to bring the poet into har- 
mony with their own religious ideas. 

Without presuming to determine whether Eschylus proposed to himself 
any special purpose, if we look at the Aschylean Prométheus in reference 
only to ancient ideas, it will be found to borrow, both its characters and all 
its main circumstances from the legend in the Hesiodic Theogony. Zeus 
acquires his supremacy only by overthrowing Kronos and the Titans the 
Titan god Prométheus is the pronounced champion of helpless man, and 
negotiates with Zeus on their behalf: Zeus wishes to withhold from them 
the most essential blessings, which Prométheus employs deceit and theft to 
procure for them, and ultimately with success; undergoing, however, severe 
punishment for so doing from the superior force of Zeus. These are the 
main features of the A’schylean Prométheus, and they are all derived from 
the legend as it stands in the Theogony. As for the human race, they are 
depicted as abject and helpless in an extreme degree, in Atschylus even 


Vol. 1 18 


884 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


expression (often but imperfectly intelligible to modern readers), 
reaches its maximum in his tragedies. As he throws round the 


more than in Hesiod: they appear as a race of aboriginal savages, having 
the god Prométheus for their protector. 

éschylus has worked up the old legend, homely and unimpressive as we 
gead it in Hesiod, into a sublime ideal. We are not to forget that Promé- 
theus is not a man, but a god, — the equal of Zeus in race, though his infe- 
rior in power, and belonging to a family of gods who were once superior to 
Zeus: he has moreover deserted his own kindred, and lent all his aid and 
superior sagacity to Zeus, whereby chiefly the latter was able to acquire 
supremacy (this /ast circumstance is an addition by AEschylus himself to the 
Hesiodic legend). In spite of such essential service, Zeus had doomed him 
to cruel punishment, for no other reason than because he conferred upon 
helpless man the prime means of continuance and improvement, thus thwart- 
ing the intention of Zeus to extinguish the race. 

Now Zeus, though superior to all the other gods and exercising general 
control, was never considered, either in Grecian legend or in Grecian religious 
belief, to be superior in so immeasurable a degree as to supersede all free 
@ction and sentiment on the part of gods less powerfui. There were many 
old legends of dissension among the gods, and several of disobedience against 
Zeus: when a poet chose to dramatize one of these, he might so turn his 
composition as to sympathize either with Zeus or with the inferior god, with 
out in either case shocking the general religious feeling of the country. And 
f there ever was an instance in which preference of the inferior god would 
be admissible, it is that of Prométheus, whose proceedings are such as to call 
forth the maximum of human sympathy,— superior mtelligence pitted against 
superior force, and resolutely encountering foreknown suffering, for the sole 
parpose of rendering inestimable and gratuitous service to mortals. 

Of the Prométheus Solutus, which formed a sequel to the Prométheus 
Vinctus (the entire trilogy is not certainly known), the fragments preserved 
are very scanty, and the guesses of critics as to its plot have little base to 
proceed upon. They contend that, in one way or other, the apparent objec- 
tions which the Prométh. Vinctus presents against the justice of Zeus were 
m the Prométh. Solutus removed. Hermann, in his Dissertatio de ME schyli 
Prometheo Soluto (Opuscula, vol. iv. p. 256), calls this position in question : 
I transcribe from his Dissertation one passage, because it contains an im- 
portant remark in reference to the manner in which the Greek poets handled 
their religious legends: “ while they recounted and believed many enormé 
ties respecting individual gods, they always described the Godhead in the 
abstract as holy and faultless.”......... 

“Immo illud admirari oportet, quod quam de singulis Diis indignissima 
queeque crederent, tamen ubi sine certo nomine Deum dicebant, immunem 
@> omni vitio, summaque sanctitate preditum intelligebant. Ilam igitua 
Sovis sevitiam ut excusent defensores Trilogia, et jure punitum volunt Pro 


SOF HOKuBS. 886 


gods a kind of airy grandeur, so neither do his men or neroes 
appear like tenants of the common eartk* the mythical world 
from which he borrows his characters is peopled only with “ the 
immediate seed of the gods, in close contact with Zeus, in whom 
the divine blood has not yet had time to degenerate :”! his indi- 
viduals are taken, not from the iron race whom Hesiod acknow- 
ledges with shame as his contemporaries, but from the extinct 
heroic race which had fought at Troy and Thébes. It is to them 
that his conceptions aspire, and he is even chargeable with fre- 
quent straining, beyond the limits of poetical taste, to realize his 
picture. If he does not consistently succeed in it, the reason is 
because consistency in such a matter is unattainable, since, after 
all, the analogies of common humanity, the only materials which 
the most creative imagination has to work upon, obtrude them- 
selves involuntarily, and the lineaments of the man are thus seen 
even under a dress which promises superhuman proportions. 
Sophoklés, the most illustrious ornament of Grecian tragedy, 
dwells upon the same heroic characters, and maintains their 
grandeur, on the whole, with little abatement, combining with it a 
far better dramatic structure, and a wider appeal to human sym- 
pathies. Even in Sophoklés, however, we find indications that 
an altered ethical feeling and a more predominant sense of artisti¢ 
perfection are allowed to modify the harsher religious agencies of 
the old epic; occasional misplaced effusions? of rhetoric, as well 


metheum — et in sequente fabula reconciliato Jove, restitatam arbitrantur 
divinam justitiam. Quo invento, vereor ne non optime dignitati consulue- 
rint supremi Deorum, quem decuerat potius non sevire omnino, quam pla 
cari ea lege, ut alius Promethei vice lueret.” 

' Aischyl. Fragment. 146, Dindorf; ap. Plato. Repub. iii. p. 391 : compare 
Strabo. xii. p. 580.— : 
οἱ ϑεῶν ἀγχίσποροι 

Οἱ Ζηνὸς ἐγγὺς, ol¢ ἐν ᾿Ιδαίῳ πάγῳ 
Διὸς πατρῴου βωμός ἐστ᾽ ἐν αἰϑέρι, 
Κοὔπω σφιν ἐξίτηλον αἷμα δαιμόνων. 

There is one real exception to this statement—the Perse — which 1 
founded upon an event of recent occurrence; and one apparent exception << 
the Prométheus Vinctus. But in that drama no individual mortal is made 
δῸ appear; we can hardly consider [ὃ as an ἐφήμερος (258). 

* For the characteristics of Aischylus see Aristophan. Ran. 755, ad fi 
passim. The competition between Aschylus and Earipidés turns upon γνῶ. 

VOL. I. 17 2500. 


386 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


as of didactic prolixity, may also be detected. It is Aeschylus, 
not Sophoklés, who forms the marked antithesis to Euripidés ; it 
is Aeschylus, not Sophoklés, to whom Aristophanés awards the 
prize of tragedy, as the poet who assigns most perfectly to the 
heroes of the past those weighty words, imposing equipments, 
simplicity of great deeds with little talk, and masculine energy 
superior to the corruptions of Aphrodité, which beseem the com- 
rades of Agamemnon and Adrastus.' 

How deeply this feeling, of the heroic character of the mythi- 
cal world, possessed the Athenian mind, may be judged by the 
bitter criticisms made on Euripidés, whose compositions were 
pervaded, partly by ideas of physical philosophy learnt under 


Anaxagoras, partly by the altered tone of education and the wide. 


diffusion of practical eloquence, forensic as well as political, at 


μαι ἀγαϑαὶ, 1497 ; the weight and majesty of the words, 1362; πρῶτος τῶν 
“Ελλήνων πυργώσας ῥήματα σεμνά, 1001, 921, 930 (“sublimis et gravis et 
grandiloquus spe usque ad vitium,” Quintil. x. 1) ; the imposing appearance 
of his heroes, such as Memnén and Cycnus, 961; their reserve in speech, 
908; his dramas “full of Arés” and his lion-hearted chiefs, inspiring the 
auditors with fearless spirit in defence of their country, — 1014, 1019, 1040; 
his contempt of feminine tenderness, 1042. — 

Kscu. οὐδ᾽ olf οὐδεὶς ἥντιν᾽ ἐρῶσαν πώποτ᾽ ἐποίησα γυναῖκα. 

Εσκπιρ. Μὰ Ai’, οὐδὲ γὰρ ἣν τῆς ᾿Αφροδίτης οὐδέν σοι. 

Ziscu. μηδέ γ᾽ ἐπείη " 
"AAD? ἐπὶ col τοι καὶ τοῖς σοῖσιν πολλὴ πολλοῦ ᾿πικάϑοιτο. 


To the same general purpose Nubes (1347-1356), composed so many years 
earlier. The weight and majesty of the Aischylean heroes (βάρος, τὸ μεγαλο- 
πρεπὲς) is dwelt upon in the life of Aschylus, and Sophoklés is said to have 
derided it—‘Qorep γὰρ ὁ Σοφοκλῆς ἔλεγε, τὸν Αἰσχύλου διαπεπαιχὼς 
ὄγκον, ete. (Plutarch, De Profect. in Virt. Sent. c. 7), unless we are to un- 
derstand this as a mistake of Plutarch quoting Sophoklés instead of Euri- 
pidés, as he speaks in the Frogs of Aristophanés, which is the opinion both 
of Lessing in his Life of Sophoklés and of Welcker ( Aischyl. Trilogie, p. 
§25). 

1 See above, Chapters xiv. and xv. 

Zischylus seems to have been a greater innovator as to the matter of the 


m7thes than either Sophoklés or Euripidés (Dionys. Halic. Judic. de Vett. 
Seript. p. 422, Reisk.). For the close adherence of Sophoklés to the Homeric 
epic, see Athens. vii. p. 277; Diogen. Laért. iv. 20; Suidas, v. Πολέμων 
Zschylus puts into the mouth of the Eumenidés a serious argument derived 
from the behavior of Zeus in chaining his father Kronos (Eumen. 649 


ALTERED TONE OF EURIPIDES. 88) 


Athens.1 While Aristophanés assails Euripidés as the represen- 
tative of this “young Athens,” with the utmost keenness of 
sarcasm, — other critics also concur in designating him as having 
vulcarized the mythical heroes, and transformed them into mere 
characters of common life, — loquacious, subtle, and savoring at 
the market-place.2. In some of his plays, sceptical expressions 
and sentiments were introduced, derived from his philosophical 
studies, sometimes confounding two or three distinct gods into one, 
sometimes translating the personal Zeus into a substantial Atther 
with determinate attributes. He put into the mouths of some of 
his unprincipled dramatic characters, apologetic speeches which 
were denounced as ostentatious sophistry, and as setting out a 
triumphant case for the criminal.3 His thoughts, his words, and 
the rhythm of his chorie songs, were all accused of being deficient 


The fourth and fifth lectures among the Dramatische Vorlesungen of August 
Wilhelm Schlegel depict both justly and eloquently the difference between 
Zschylus, Sophoklés and Euripidés, especially on this point of the gradual 
sinking of the mythical colossus into an ordinary man; about Euripidés 
especially in lecture 5. vol.i. p. 206, ed. Heidelberg 1809. 

2 Aristot. Poetic, c. 46. Οἷον καὶ Σοφοκλῆς ἔφη, αὐτὸς μὲν οἵους δεῖ ποιεῖν 
Εὐριπίδης δὲ, οἷοί εἰσι. 

The Rangw and Acharneis of Aristophanés exhibit fully the reproaches 
urged against Euripidés: the language put into the mouth of Euripidés 5 
the former play (vv. 935-977) illustrates specially the point here laid down 
Plutarch (De Glorid Atheniens. c. 5) contrasts ἡ Εὐριπίδου σοφία καὶ 9 
Σοφοκλεοῦς λογιότης. Sophoklés either adhered to the old mythes or intro 
duced alterations into them in a spirit comformable to their original charac- 
ter, while Euripidés refined upon them. The comment of Démétrius Phale- 
reus connects τὸ λόγιον expressly with the maintenance of the dignity of the 
tales. ᾿Αρξομαι δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ μεγαλοπρεποῦς, ὅπερ viv λόγιον ὀνομάζουσιν 
(c, 38). 

3 Aristophan. Ran. 770, 887, 1066. 

Euripidés says to Zschylus, in regard to the language employed by both 
of them, — 

Ἣν οὖν od λέγῃς Λυκαβήττους 
Καὶ Παρνάσσων ἡμῖν μεγέϑη, τοῦτ᾽ ἐστὶ τὸ χρηστὰ διδάσκειν, 
Ὃν χρὴ φράζειν ἀνϑρωπείως ; 
Zschylus replies, — 
"AAD’, ὦ κακόδαιμον, ἀνάγκη 
Μεγάλων γνωμῶν καὶ διανοιῶν toa καὶ τὰ ῥήματα τίκτειν. 
Κάλλως εἰκὸς τοὺς ἡ μι ϑέου ς τοῖς ῥήμασι μείζοσι χρῆσϑαν 


eS ee τ᾿ ῸΟ 


88 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


in which he exhibited CEneus, Télephus, Thyestés, Ino, and 
other heroic characters, were unmercifully derided,’ though it 
seems that their position and circumstances had always been 
painfully melancholy ; but the effeminate pathos which Euripidés 
brought so nakedly into the foreground, was accounted unworthy 
of the majesty of a legendary hero. And he incurred still great- 
er obloquy on another point, on which he is allowed even by his 
enemies to have only reproduced in substance the preéxisting 
tales. —the illicit and fatal passion depicted in several of his 
female characters, such as Phedra and Sthenobeea. His oppo- 
nents admitted that these stories were true, but contended that 


they ought to be kept back and not produced upon t* 3 stage, — 
a proof both of the continued mythical faith and o1 the more 
sensitive ethical criticism of his age.2 The marriage of the six 


Kai γὰρ τοῖς ἱματίοις ἡμῶν χρῶνται πολὺ σεμνοτέροισι. 
“A ’μοῦ χρηστῶς καταδείξαντος διελυμήνω ov. 
Evurip. Τί δράσας, 
Escu. Πρῶτον μὲν τοὺς βασιλεύοντας paxe’ ἀμπίσχων, ἵν᾽ ἐλεινοὶ 
Τοῖς ἀνϑρώποις φαίνοιντ᾽ εἶναι. 

For the character of the language and measures of Euripidés, as represent- 
ed by Aischylus, see also v. 1297, and Pace. 527. Philosophical discussion 
was introduced by Euripidés (Dionys. Hal. Ars Rhetor. viii. 10-ix. 11) about 
the Melanippé, where the doctrine of prodigies (τέρας) appears to have been 
argued. Quintilian (x. 1) remarks that to young beginners in judicial plead- 
ing. the study of Euripidés was much more specially profitable than that of 
Sopnoklés : compare Dio Chrysostom, Orat. xviii. vol. i. p. 477, Reisk. 

In Euripidés the heroes themselves sometimes delivered moralizing dis 
courses : — εἰσάγων τὸν Βελλεροφόντην γνωμολογοῦντα (Welcker, Griechisch. 
Tragéd. Eurip. Stheneb. p. 782). Compare the fragments of his Bellero- 
phon (15-25, Matthia), and of his Chrysippus (7, 2-). A striking story is 
found in Seneca, Epistol. 115; and Plutarch, de Audiend. Σ oetis, c. 4. Ὁ. Lp 
70, Wytt. 

' Aristophan. Ran. 840. — 

© στωμυλιοσυλλεκτάδη 
Καὶ πτωχοποιὲ καὶ ῥακιοσυῤῥαπτάδη " 
ee also Aristophan. Acharn. 385-422. For an unfavorable criticism up28 
such proceeding, see Aristotat. Poet. 27. 

* Aristophan. Ran. 1050.— 
Ευκπιν. Πότερον δ᾽ οὐκ ὄντα λόγον τοῦτον περὶ τῆς Φαίδρας ξυνέϑηκα, 
δον. Μὰ Δ,ἀλλ᾽ ὄντ᾽. GAW ἀποκρύπτειν χρὴ τὸ πονηρὸν τὸν ye ποιητὴν 

Καὶ μὴ παράγειν μηδὲ διδάσκειν. 
fm the Hercules Furens, Euripidés outs in relief and even exaggerates the 


CENSURES ON EURIPIDES. 889 


daughters to the six sons of A®olus is of Homeric origin, and 
stands now, though briefly stated, in the Odyssey: but the in- 
cestuous passion of Macareus and Canacé, embodied by Euripidés! 
in the lost tragedy called olus, drew upon him severe censure. 
Moreover, he often disconnected the horrors of the cld legends 
with those religious agencies by which they had been originally 
forced on, prefacing them by motives of a more refined character, 
which carried no sense of awful compulsion: thus the considera- 
tions by which the Euripidean Alkmzén was reduced to the ne- 
cessity of killing his mother appeared to Aristotle ridiculous.2 
After the time of this great poet, his successors seem to have 
followed him in breathing into their characters the spirit of com- 
mon life, but the names and plot were still borrowed from the 
stricken mythical families of Tantalus, Kadmus, ete.: and the 
heroic exaltation of all the individual personages introduced, as 


contrasted with the purely human character of the Chorus, is 


worst elements of the ancient mythes: the implacable hatred of Héré towards 
Héraklés is pushed so far as to deprive him of his reason (by sending dowr 
iris and the unwilling Atooa), and thus intentionally to drive him to slay his 
wife and children with his own hands. 

δ Aristoph. Ran. 849, 1041, 1080; Thesmophor. 547; Nubes, 1354. Grauert, 
De Media Grecorum Comeedia in Rheinisch. Museum, 2nd Jahrs. 1 Heft, p. 
δ᾽. It suited the plan of the drama of olus, as composed by Euripidés, to 
place in the mouth of Macareus a formal recommendation of incestuous 
marriages : probably this contributed much to offend the Athenian public. 
See Dionys. Hal. Rhetor. ix. p. 355. 

About the liberty of intermarriage among relatives, indicated in Homer, 
parents and children being alone excepted, see Terpstra, Antiquitas Homerica 
cap. xiii. p. 104. 

Ovid, whose poetical tendencies led him chiefly to copy Euripidés, observes 
'Trist. ii. 1, 380) — 


“Omne genus scripti gravitate Tragoedia vincit, 
Hee quoque materiam semper amoris habet. 
Nam quid in Hippolvyto nisi cece flamma noverce ? 
Nobilis est Canace fratris amore sui.” 


This is the reverse of the truth in regard to AXschylus and Sophoklés, and 
only very partially true in respect to Euripidés. 

* Aristot. Ethic. Nicom. iii. 1,8. καὶ γὰρ τὸν Εὐριπίδου ᾿Αλκμαίωνα γελοῖᾷ 
φαίνεται τὰ ἀναγκάσαντα μητροκτονῆσαι (In the lost tragedy called ’AAcu™ 
kev ὁ διὰ Yugidoc). . 


890 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


still numbered by Aristotle among the essential points of the 
of tragedy.! 
“mo re δε of Athenian tragedy — powerfully mani- 
fested in A®schylus, and never wholly lost — was to uphold an 
unquestioning faith and a reverential estimate of the general 
mythical world and its personages, but to treat the particular nar 
ratives rather as matter for the emotions than as recitals of actual 
fact. The logographers worked along with them to the first 
of these two ends, but not to the second. Their grand object 
was, to cast the mythes into a continuous readable series, and 
they were in consequence compelled to make selection between 
inconsistent or contradictory narratives; to reject some narra 
tives as false, and to receive others as true. But their prefer- 
ence was determined more by their sentiments as to what was 
appropriate, than by any pretended historical test. Pherekydes, 
Akusilaus and Hellanikus? did not seek to banish miraculous or 
fantastic incidents from the mythical world ; they regarded it 88 
peopled with loftier beings, and expected to find in it phenomena 
not paralleled in their own degenerate days. They reproduced 
the fables as they found them in the poets, rejecting little except 
the discrepancies, and producing ultimately what they believed 
to be not only a continuous but an exact and trustworthy history 
of the past — wherein they carry indeed their precision to such 
a length, that Hellanicus gives the year, and even the day of the 
ture of Troy. 
ν Ὁ οἱ Milétus (500 Β. c.), anterior to Pherekydés and 
Hellanikus, is the earliest writer in whom we can detect any dis- 
position to disallow the prerogative and specialty of the mythes, 
and to soften down their characteristic prodigies, some of which 


’ Aristot. Poetic. 26-27. And in his Problemata also, in giving the reason 
why the Hypo-Dorian and Hypo-Phrygian musical modes were never as- 
signed to the Chorus, he says — : ne 

Ταῦτα δὲ ἄμφω χύρῳ μὲν ἀναρμοστὰ, τοῖς δὲ ἀπὸ σκηνῆς οἰκειότερα. ΤῊΝ 

% e * ΄ ‘es . ΄, nen ᾽ , ΄ ἢ w ες, ο 
μὲν γὰρ ἡρώων μίμηται" οἱ δὲ ἡγεμόνες τῶν ἀρχαίων μόνοι ἧσαν ἥρω Ss 
λαοὶ ἄνϑρωποι, ὧν ἐστὶν ὁ χόρος. Διὸ καὶ ἁρμόζει αὐτῷ τὸ γοερὸν καὶ ἡσύχιον 
426ο; καὶ μέλος " ἀνθρωπικὰ γάρ. : 

* See Miiller, Prolegom zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie, c. ii p 
93. 
3 Hellanic. Fragment. 143, ed. Didot. 


HERODOTUS, THUCYZIDES, ETC. 89] 


however still find favor in his eyes, aa in the case of the speaking 
ram who carried Phryxus over the Hellespont. He pronounced 
the Grecian fables to be “many and ridiculous ;” whether from 
their discrepancies or from their intrinsic improbabilities we do 
not know: and we owe to him the first attempt to force them with- 
in the limits of historical credibility ; as where he transforms the 
three-headed Cerberus, the dog of Hadés, into a serpent inhabit- 
ing a cavern on Cape Tenarus — and Geryén of Erytheia intoa 
king of Epirus rich in herds of oxen.! Hekateus traced the 
genealogy of himself and the gens to which he belonged through 
a line of fifteen progenitors up to an initial god,? — the clearest 
proof both of his profound faith in the reality of the mythical 
world, and of his religious attachment to it as the point of junc- 
tion between the human and the divine personality. 

We have next to consider the historians, especially Herodotus 
and Thucydidés. Like Hekateus, Thucydidés belonged to a 
gens which traced its descent from Ajax, and through Ajax to 
#£akus and Zeus. Herodotus modestly implies that he himself 
had no such privilege to boast of.4 Their curiosity respecting the 


" Hekatxi Fragm. ed. Didot. 332, 346, 349 ; Schol. Apollon. Rhod. 1. 256 ; 
Athene. ii. p. 133; Skylax, c. 26. 

Perhaps Hekatzus was induced to look for Erytheia in Epirus by the 
brick-red color of the earth there in many places, noticed by Pouqueville and 
other travellers (Voyage dans la Gréce, vol. ii. 248: see Klausen, /Eneas 
und die Penaten, vol. i. p. 222). Ἑκαταῖος ὁ Μιλήσιος --- λόγον εὗρεν εἰκότα͵ 
Pausan. iii. 25,4. He seems to have written expressly concerning the fabu- 
lous Hyperboreans, and to have upheld the common faith against doubts 
which had begun to rise in his time: the derisory notice of Hyperboreans in 
Herodotus is probably directed against Hekateus, iv. 36; Schol. Apollén. 
Rhod. ii. 675 ; Diodér. ii. 47. 

It is maintained by Mr. Clinton (Fast. Hell. ii. p. 480) and others (see not 
ad Fragment. Hecatzi, p. 30, ed. Didot), that the work on the Hyperboreans 
was written by Hekatseus of Abdera, a literary Greek of the age of Ptolemy 
Philadelphus — not by Hekateus of Milétus. I do not concur in this opin- 
won. I think it much more probable that the earlier Hekateus was the 
author spoken of. 

The distinguished position held by Hekatezus at Milétus is marked not 
only by the notice which Herodotus takes of his opinions on public matters, 
but also by his negotiation with the Persian satrap Artaphernes on behalf of 
bis countrymen (Diodér. Excerpt. xlvii. p. 41, ed. Dindorf ᾿; 


* Herodot. ii. 143 > Marcellin. Vit. Thucyd. init 
* Herodot. ii. 143. 


989 HISTORY OF GREECE 


past had no other materials to work upon except the mythes 
but these they found already cast by the logographers into a con 
tinuous series, and presented as an aggregate of antecedent his- 
tory, chronologically deduced from the times of the gods. Ip 
common with the body of the Greeks, both Herodotus and Thu- 
cydidés had imbibed that complete and .nsuspecting belief in the 
general reality of mythical antiquity, which was interwoven with 
the religion and the patriotism, and all the public demonstrations 
of the Hellenic world. To acquaint themselves with the genuine 
details of this foretime, was an inquiry highly interesting to them: 
but the increased positive tendencies of their age, as well as their 
own habits of personal investigation, had created in them an /is- 
torical sense in regard to the past as well as to the present. Hav 
ing acquired a habit of appreciating the intrinsic tests of histor- 
ical credibility and probability, they found the particular narra- 
tives of the poets and logographers, inadmissible as a whole even 
in the eyes of Hekatzus, still more at variance with their stricter 
canons of criticism. And we thus observe in them the constant 
struggle, as well as the resulting compromise, between these two 
opposite tendencies ; on one hand a firm belief in the reality of 
the mythical world, on the other hand an inability to accept the 
details which their only witnesses, the poets and logographers, 
told them respecting it. 

Fach of them however performed the process in his own way 
Herodotus is a man of deep and anxious religious feeling; he 
often recognizes the special judgments of the gods as determining 
historical events: his piety is also partly tinged with that mystical 
vein which the last two centuries had gradually infused into the 
religion of the Greeks — for he is apprehensive of giving offence 
to the gods by reciting publicly what he has heard respecting 
them; he frequently stops short in his narrative and intimates 
that there ἐξ a sacred legend, but that he will not tell it: in other 
cases, where he feels compelled to speak out, he entreats forgive- 
ness for doing so from the gods and herves. Sometimes he will 
not even mention the name of a god, though he generally thinks 
himself authorized to do so, the names being matter of publie 
notoriety.! Such pious reserve, which the open-hearted Herodo 


1 Herodot. ii. 3, 51, 61, 65, 170. He alludes briefly (c. 51) to δὴ ἱρὸς λόγος 
which wes communicated in the Samothracian mysteries, but he does nct 


THE MYTHES AS VIEWED BY HERODOTUS. 898 


tus avowedly proclaims as chaining up his ton:ue, affords a strike 
ing contrast with the plain-spoken and unsuspecting tone of the 
ancient epic, as well as of the popular legends, wherein the gods 
and their proceedings were the familiar and interesting subjecta 
of common talk as well as of common sympathy, without ceasing 
to inspire both fear and reverence. 

Herodotus expressly distinguishes, in the comparison of Poly- 
kratés with Minds, the human race to which the former belonged, 
from the divine or heroic race which comprised the latter.! But 
he has a firm belief in the authentic personality and parentage of 


all the names in the mythes, divine, heroic and human, as well 
as in the trustworthiness of their chronology computed by gene- 


rations. He counts back 1600 years from his own day to that of 
Semelé, mother of Dionysus; 900 years to Héraklés, and 800 
years to Penelopé, the Trojan war being a little earlier in date2 
Indeed even the longest of these periods must have seemed to him 
comparatively short, seeing that he apparently accepts the prodi- 
gious series of years which the Egyptians professed to draw frem 
a recorded chronology — 17,000 years from their god Héraklés, 
and 15,000 years from their god Osiris or Dionysus, down te 
their king Amasis? (5508. c.) So much was his imagination 
familiarized with these long chronological coraputations barren of 
events, that he treats Homer and Hesiod as “men of yesterday,” 
though separated from his own age by an interval which he reck- 
ons as four hundred years.‘ 


mention what it was: also about the Thesmophoria, οἱ τελετὴ of Démétég 
(ec. 171). 

Kai περὶ μὲν τούτων τοσαῦτα ἡμῖν εἰποῦσι, καὶ παρὰ tr w ϑεῶν καὶ ἡρώων 
εὐμένεια ele (ς. 45). 

Compare similar scruples on the part of Pausanias (vii 25 and 37). 

The passage of Herodotus (ii. 3) is equivocal, and has b*en understood in 
More ways than one (see Lobeck, Aglaopham. p. 1287). 

The aversion of Dionysius of Halikarnassus to reveal the divine secrets is 
ot less powerful (see A. R. i. 67, 68), and Pausanias passim. 

Herod. iii. 122. ? Herod. ii. 145. 

3 Herodot. ii. 43-145. Kai ταῦτα Αἰγύπτιοι ἀτρεκέως φασὶ ἐπίστασθϑαι, 
Φεί τε λογιζόμενοι καὶ ἀεὶ ἀπογραφόμενοι τὰ ἔτεα. 

* Herodct, ii. 53. μέχρε οὗ πρωῆν τε καὶ χϑὲς, ὡς εἰπεῖν λόγῳ: Ἡσίοδοι 
γὰρ καὶ Ὅμηρον ἡλικίην τετρακοσίοισι ἔτεσι δοκέω μευ πρεσβυτέρους γενό 
wOai, καί οὐ πλέοσι. 

.17. 


394 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Heredotus had been profoundly impressed with what he saw 
and heard in Egypt. The wonderful monuments, the eviden 
antiquity, and the peculiar civilization of that country, acquired 
such preponderance in his mind over his own native legends, that 
he is disposed to trace even the oldest religious names or institu- 
tions of Greece to Egyptian or Phoenician original, setting aside 
in favor of this hypothesis the Grecian legends of Dionysus and 
Pan.' The oldest Grecian mythical genealogies are thus made 
ultimately to lose themselves in Egyptian or Phoenician antiquity, 
and in the full extent of these genealogies Herodotus firmly be- 
lieves. It does not seem that any doubt had ever crossed his 
mind as to the real personality of those who were named or de- 
scribed in the popular mythes: all of them have once had reality, 
either as men, as heroes, or as gods. The eponyms of cities, 
démés and tribes, are all comprehended in this affirmative cate- 
gory ; the supposition of fictitious personages being apparently 
never entertained. Deukali6n, Hellén, Dorus,2— I6n, with his 
four sons, the eponyms of the old Athenian tribes,?—the au- 
tochthonous Titakus and Dekelus,4— Danaus, Lynkeus, Perseus, 
Amphitryén, Alkména, and Héraklés,® — Talthybius, the heroie 
progenitor of the privileged heraldic gens at Sparta, —the Tyn- 
darids and Helena,‘ -— Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Orestes,’ — 
Nestér and his son Peisistratus,— Asépus, Thébé, and gina, 
— Inachus and 10, Atétés and Médea,§ — Melanippus, Adrastus, 
and Amphiarius, as well as Jasén and the Arg6,? — all these are 
occupants of the real past time, and predecessors of himself and 
his contemporaries. In the veins of the Lacedemonian kings 
flowed the blood both of Kadmus and of Danaus, their splendid 
pedigree being traceable to both of these great mythical names: 
Herodotus carries the lineage up through Heraklés first to Per- 
seus and Danaé, then through Danaé to Akrisius and the Egyp- 
tian Danaus; but he drops the paternal lineage when he comes 


' Herodot. ii. 146. 3 Herod. i. 56. 

* Herod. v. 66. 4 Herod. ix. 73. 

* Herod. ii, 43-44, 91 -98, 172-182 (the Egyptians admitted the truth of 
the Greek lezend, that Perseus had come to Libya to fetch the Gorgon’s 
head). . *e ee 

4 Herod. ii. 113-120; iv. 145; vii. 134. 7 Herod. i. 67-68; ii. 113. Vii. 159 

® Herod. i. 1, 2,4; v Si, 65. ® Herod. i. 52; iv. 145; v. 67; vii. 193 


BELIEF Gf HERODOTUS IN MYTHICAL PERSONS. 896 


tc Perseus (inasmuch as Perseus is the son of Zeus by Danaé, 
without any reputed human father, such as Amphitry6n was to 
Héraklés), and then follow the higher members of the series 
through Danaé alone.! He also pursues the same regal geneal- 
ogy, through the mother of Eurysthenés and Proclés, up to Poly- 
nikés, CEdipus, Laius, Labdakus, Polydérus and Kadmus; and 
he assigns various ancient inscriptions which he saw in the temple 
of the Ismenian Apollo at Thébes, to the ages of Laius and 
(Edipus.2 Moreover, the sieges of Thébes and Troy, —the Ar- 
gonautie expedition, —the invasion of Attica by the Amazons, — 
the protection of the Herakleids, and the defeat and death of 
Eurystheus, by the Athenians,3— the death of Mékisteus and 
Tydeus before Thébes by the hands of Melanippus, and the 
touching calamities of Adrastus and Amphiarius connected with 
the same enterprise, —the sailing of Kastér and Pollux in the 
Argé,4— the abductions of I6, Eurépa, Médea and Helena, — 
the emigration of Kadmus in quest of Eurépa, and his coming 
to Boedtia, as well as the attack of the Greeks upon Troy to re- 
cover Helen,5>— all these events seem to him portions of past 
history, not less unquestionably certain, though more clouded over 
by distance and misrepresentation, than the battles of Salamis 
and Mykalé. 

But though Herodotus is thus easy of faith in regard both te 
the persons and to the general facts of Grecian mythes, yet when 
he comes to discuss particular facts taken separately, we find him 
applying to them stricter tests of historical credibility, and often 
disposed to reject as well the miraculous as the extravagant. 
Thus even with respect to Héraklés, he censures the levity of 
the Greeks in ascribing to him absurd and incredible exploits ; 
he tries their assertion by the philosophical standard of nature, 
or of determinate powers and conditions governing the course of 
events. “How is it consonant to nature (he asks), that Héraklés, 
being, as he was, according to the statement of the Greeks, a 
man, should kill many thousand persons? I pray that indulgence 
may be shown to me both by gods and heroes for saying so muck 


’ Herod. vi. 52-53. * Herod. iv. 147; v. 59-61. 
ὃ Herod y. 61; ix. 27-28. * Herod. i. 52; iv. 145; v. 6 
δ Herod. i. 1-4; ii. 49, 113: iv. 147: v. 94. 


; 
΄ 


—~ 
. eee 


τ πεπ.»..ἤπεετε...»"... ὦ 
πο yy? 


το ae ee eee OO ee = 


πος ΟΝ Se “ὦ a ~ — - a 
Ti ae τὸ -- 


298 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


as this.” The religious feelings of Herodotus here told him that 
he was trenching upon the utmost limits of admissible scepti 
cism.! 

Another striking instance of the disposition of Herodotus te 
rationalize the miraculous narratives of the current mythes, is to 
be found in his account of the oracle of Dodona and its alleged 
Egyptian origin. Here, if in any case, a miracle was not only 
in full keeping, but apparently indispensable to satisfy the exi- 
gences of the religious sentiment; anything less than a miracle 
would have appeared tame and unimpressive to the visitors of so 
revered a spot, much more to the residents themselves. Accord- 
ingly, Herodotus heard, both from the three priestesses and from 
the Dodonzans generally, that two black doves had started at 
the same time from Thébes in Egypt: one of them went to Libya, 
where it directed the Libyans to establish the oracle of Zeus 
Ammon; the other came to the grove of Dédona, and perched 
on one of the venerable oaks, proclaiming with a human voice 
that an oracle of Zeus must be founded on that very spot. The 
injunction of the speaking dove was respectfully obeyed.? 

Such was the tale related and believed at Dodéna. But He- 


rodotus had also heard, from the priests at Thébes in Egypt, a 
different tale, ascribing the origin of all the prophetic establish- 
ments, in Greece as well as in Libya, to two sacerdotal women, 
who had been carried away from Thébes by some Phoenician 


? Herod. ii. 45. Λέγουσι δὲ πολλὰ καὶ ἄλλα ἀνεπισκέπτως οἱ "EAAnves: 
ἐνήϑης δὲ αὐτέων καὶ ὃδε ὁ μῦϑός ἐστι, τὸν περὶ τοῦ Ἡρακλέος λέγουσι vase 
wee Ἔτι dé Eva ἐόντα τὸν Ἡρακλέα, καὶ ἔτι ἄνϑρωπον ὡς δή φασι, κῶς φύσιι 
ἔχει πολλὰς μυριάδας φονεῦσαι ; Καὶ περὶ μὲν τούτων τοσαῦτα ἡμῖν εἰποῦσι, 
καὶ παρὰ τῶν ϑεῶν καὶ παρὰ τῶν ἡρώων εὐμένεια εἴη. ie 

We may also notice the manner in which the historfan criticizes the strat 
agem whereby Peisistratus established himself as despot at Athens —by 
dressing up the stately Athenian woman Phyé in the costume of the goddess 
Athéné, and passing off her injunctions as the commands of the goddess ; 
the Athenians accepted her with unsuspecting faith, and received Peisistratus 
at her command. Herodotus treats the whole affair as a piece of extrava 
gant silliness, πρᾶγμα εὐηϑέστατον μακρῷ (i. 60). ‘ : 

? Herod. if. 55. Δωδωναίων dé αἱ ἱρηΐαι ἔλεγον ταῦτα, cvvwpoAdyeos 
$é σφι καὶ of ἄλλοι Δωδωναῖοι οἱ περὶ τὸ ἱρόν. , 

The miracle sometimes takes another form; the oak at Dédéna was itself 


9800 endued with speech (Dionys. Hal. Ars Rhetoric. i. 6; Strabo). 


HERODOTUS AND THE MIRACLE OF DODONA. 897 


merchants and sold, the one in Greece, the other in Libya. The 
Theban priests boldly assured Herodotus that much pains had 
been taken to discover what had become of these women so exe 
ported, and that the fact of their having been taken to Greece 
and Libya had been accordingly verified.! 

The historian of Halicarnassus cannot for a moment think of 
admitting the miracle which harmonized so well with the feelings 
of the priestesses and the Dodonzans.2 “ How (he asks) could 
a dove speak with human voice?” But the narrative of the priests 
at Thébes, though its prodigious improbability hardly requires to 
be stated, yet involved no positive departure from the laws of 
nature and possibility, and therefore Herodotus makes no diffi- 
culty in accepting it. The curious circumstance is, that he turns 
the native Dodonzxan legend into a figurative representation, or 
rather a misrepresentation, of the supposed true story told by the 
Theban priests. According to his interpretation, the woman who 
came from Thébes to Dédéna was called a dove, and affirmed to 
utter sounds like a bird, because she was non-Hellenic and spoke 
a foreign tongue: when she learned to speak the language of the 
country, it was then said that the dove spoke with a human voice. 
And the dove was moreover called black, because of the woman’s 
Egyptian color. 

That Herodotus should thus bluntly reject a miracle, recount. 
ed to him by the prophetic women themselves as the prime cir 
cumstance in the ortgines of this holy place, is a proof of the hold 
which habits of dealing with historical evidence had acquired 
over his mind; and the awkwardness of his explanatory media 
tion between the dove and the woman, marks not less his δηχὶθ» 
ty, while discarding the legend, to let it softly down into. a story 
quasi-historical and not intrinsically incredible. 

We may observe another example of the unconscious tendency 


* Herod. ii.57. ᾿Επεὶ τέῳ τρόπῳ ἂν πελειάς ye ἀνθρωπηΐῃ φωνῇ φϑέγξαιτο; 

According to one statement, the word Πελειὰς in the Thessalian dialect 
meant both a dove and a prophetess (Scriptor. Rer. Mythicarum, ed. Bods, 
1.96). Had there been any truth in this, Herodotus could hardly have 
failed to notice it, inasmuch as it woubi exactly have helped him out of the 
difficulty which he felt 


le 


= 
——— 


-- 


a a ees = eee Sn ee 


698 HISTORY OF G&EECE. 


of Herodotus to eliminate from the mythes the idea of special 
aid from the gods, in his remarks upon Melampus. He desig« 
nates Melampus “ as a clever man, who had acquired for himself 
the art of prophecy ;” and had procured through Kadmus much 
information about the religious rites and customs of Egypt, many 
of which he introduced into Greece! — especially the name, the 
gacrifices, and the phallic processions of Dionysus: he adds, “ that 
Melampus himself did not accurately comprehend or bring out 
the whole doctrine, but wise men who came after him made the 
necessary additions.” Though the name of Melampus is here 
maintained, the character described? is something in the vein of 
Pythagoras — totally different from the great seer and leech of 
the old epic mythes—the founder of the gifted family of the 
Amythaonids, and the grandfather of Amphiaraus.‘ But that 
which is most of all at variance with the genuine legendary spirit, 
is the opinion expressed by Herodotus (and delivered with some 
emphasis as is own), that Melampus “ was a clever man, who 
had acquired for himself prophetic powers.” Such a supposition 
would have appeared inadmissible to Homer or Hesiod, or indeed 
to Solén, in the preceding century, in whose view even inferior 
arts come from the gods, while Zeus or Apollo bestows the power 


1 Herod. ii. 49. Ἐγὼ. μὲν viv φημι Μελάμποδα γενόμενον ἄνδρα σοφὸν, 
ἀαντικήν τε ἑωυτῷ συστῆσαι, καὶ πυϑόμενον an’ Αἰγύπτου, ἄλλα Te πολλὰ 
ἐσηγήσασϑαι "EAAnot, καὶ τὰ περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον, ὀλίγα αὐτῶν παραλλάξαντα.- 

2 Herod. ii. 49. ᾿Ατρεκέως μὲν οὐ πάντα συλλαβὼν τὸν λόνον ἔφῇνε (Me- 
lampus) ἀλλ᾽ οἱ ἐπεγνύμενοι τούτῳ σοφισταὶ μεζόνως ἐξεφῃναν. 

+ Compare Herod. iv. 95; ii. 81. “Ελλήνων οὐ τῷ ἀσϑενεστατῳ σοφιστῇ 
Πυϑαγύρᾳ. 

4 Homer, Odyss. xi. 290; xv. 225. Apollodér. i. 9, 11-12. Hesiod, Eoiai, 
Fragm. 55, ed. Diintzer (p. 43) — 

᾿Αλκὴν μὲν γὰρ ἔδωκεν ᾿Ολύμπιος Αἰακίδησι, 
Νοῦν δ' Αμυϑαονίδαις, πλοῦτον δ᾽ ἔπορ᾽ Arpecdyot. 
also Frag. 34 (p. 38), and Frag. 65 (p. 45); Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 118, 

Herodotus notices the celebrated mythical narrative of Melampus healing 
the deranged Argive women (ix. 34); according to the original legend, the 
daughters of Preetus. In the Hesiodic Eoiai (Fr. 16, Diintz. ; Apcllod. ii. 2) 
the distemper of the Proetid females was ascribed to their having repudiated 
the rites and worship of Dionysus (Akusilaus, indeed, assigned a different 
cause), which shows that the old fable recognized a conuectiou betweer 
Melampus and these rites 


ELIMINATION OF MYTHICAL NARRATIVE. 899 


of prophesying.! The intimation of such an opinion by Herodo- 
tus, himself a thoroughly pious man, marks the sensibly diminish- 
ed omnipresence of the gods, and the increasing tendency to look 
for the explanation of phenomena among more visible and deter- 
minate agencies. 

We may make a similar remark on the dictum of the historian 
respecting the narrow defile of Tempé, forming the emboucl.ure 
of the Péneus and the efflux of all the waters from the Thessa- 
lian basin. The Thessalians alleged that this whole basin of 
Thessaly had once been a lake, but that Poseid6n had split the 
ehain of mountains and opened the efflux ;? upon which primi- 


' Homer, Iliad, i. 72-87; xv. 412. Odyss. xv. 245-252; iv. 233. Some 
times the gods inspired prophecy for the special occasion, without confer 
ting upon the party the permanent gift and status of a prophet (compare 
Odyss. i. 202; xvii. 383). Solén, Fragm. xi. 48-53, Schneidewin : — 
Ἄλλον μάντιν ἔϑηκεν ἄναξ ἑκάεργος ᾿Απολλὼν, 
Ἔγνω 0 ἀνδρὶ κακὸν τήλοϑεν ἐρχόμενον, 
"Qu συνομαρτήσωσι ϑεοί 

Herodotus himself reproduces the old belief in the special gift of prophetac 
power by Zeus and Apollo, in the story of Euenius of Apoll6nia (ix. 94). 

See the fine ode of Pindar, describing the birth and inspiration of Jamas, 
eponymous father of the great prophetic family in Elis called the Jamids 
(Herodot. ix. 33), Pindar, Olymp. vi. 40-75. About Teiresias, Sophoc. Cid. 
Tyr. 283-410. Neither Nestor nor Odysseus possesses the gift of prophecy. 

9 More than one tale is found elsewhere, similar to this, about the defile 
of Tempé : — 

“ A tradition exists that this part of the country was once a lake, and 
that Solomon commanded two deeves, or genii, ramed Ard and Beel, to turn 
off the water into the Caspian, which they effected by cutting a passage through 
the mountains; and a city, erected in the newly-formed plain, was named 
after them Ard-u-beel.” (Sketches on the Shores of the Caspian, by W. R. 
Holmes. ) 

Also about the. plain of Santa Fe di Bogota, in South America, that it 
was once under water, until Bochica cleft the mountains and opened 8 
channel of egress (Humboldt, Vues des Cordilléres, p. 87-88); and about 
the plateau of Kashmir (Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. i. p 102), drained in 
ἃ like miraculous manner by the saint KAsyapa. The manner in which 
conjectures, derived from local configuration or peculiarities, are often made 
to assume the form of traditions, is well remarked by the same illustrious 
traveller: “ Ce qui se présente comme une tradition, n’est souvent que 10 
refiet de impression que laisse l’aspect des lieux. Des bancs de coquilles 
a demi-fossiles, répandues dans les isthmes ou sut des plateaux, font naitre 


400 HISTORY OF GREECT 


tive belief, thoroughly conformable to the genius of Homer and 
Hesiod, Herodotus comments as follows: “The Thessalian states 
ment is reasonable. For whoever thinks that Poseidon shakes 
the earth, and that the rifts of an earthquake are the work of 
that god, will, on seeing the defile in question, say that Poseidon 
has caused it. For the rift of the mountains 1s, “8 appeared to 
me (when I saw it), the work of an earthquake. Herodotus 
admits the reference to Poseidén, when pointed out to him, but 


΄ 4 
τοὺς ποτάμους TOVTOUE ' . ᾿ ΓΙ pe 
Αὐτοὶ μέν νυν Θέσσαλοι λέγουσι Ποσειδέωνα ποιῆσαι τὸν αὐλῶνα, du’ οὐ ῥέει 


ὁ Πηνειὸς, οἰκότα λέγοντες. Ὅστις γὰρ νομίζει Ποσειδέωνα τὴν ἱρὰ — 
καὶ Ta διεστεῶτα ὑπὸ σεισμοῦ Tod ϑεοῦ τούτου ἔργα εἶναι, καὶ ἂν ἐκεῖνο ἰδὼν 
φαίη Ποσειδέωνα ποιῆσαι. Ἔστὶ γὰρ σεισμοῦ ἔργον, ὡς ἐμοὶ ἐφαίνετο εἶναι, 
ἡ διάστασις τῶν οὐρέων. In another case ( viii. 129), Herodotus ἜΝ ᾿κῇ 
Poseid6n produced a preternaturally high tide, in order to — e ae 
sians, who had insulted his temple near Potidza: here was a special mo 


xert his power. 
vm “ν οἵ Herodotus illustrates the hostile ridicule cast by sag 
phanés (in the Nubes) upon Socratés, on the score of alleged mee “a 
cause he belonged to a school of philosophers (though in point of = e 
discountenanced that line of study) who introduced physical laws wei ne 
in place of the personal agency of the gods. The old man Strepsiades in 
ires from Socratés, Who rains? Who thunders? To which Socratés re 
s. “ Not Zeus, but the Nephele, 7. e. the clouds : you never saw rain with- 
out clouds.” Strepsiades then proceeds to inquire —" But who is * _ 
compels the clouds to move onward ? is it not Zeus ? Socratés — “ Not 
at all; it is ethereal rotation.” pos al " oe se ses escaped 
: n no longer exists, and Rotation reigns 8 place. 
Reggae: ais ἐστὶ τίς αὐτὰς (Νεφέλας), οὐχ ὁ Zeve, ὥστε peoew 
ϑαι; 


LEGEND OF TROY IN HERODOTUS. 401 


Herodotus adopts the Egyptian version of the legend of Troy, 
founded on that capital variation which seems to have originated 
with Stesichorus, and according to which Helen never left Sparta 
at all —her eiddlon had been taken to Troy in her place. Upon 
this basis a new story had been framed, midway between Homer 
and Stesichorus, representing Paris to have really carried off 
Helen from Sparta, but to have been driven by storms to Egypt, 


Socrat. ἭΚκιστ᾽, ἀλλ᾽ αἰϑέριος δῖνος. 
STREPS. Δῖνος ; τουτί μ᾽ ἐλελήϑει -το 
Ὁ Ζεὺς οὐκ Ov, ἀλλ᾽ ἀντ᾽ αὑτοῦ Δῖνος νυνὶ βασιλεύων. 
To the same effect ν. 1454, Δῖνος βασιλεύει τὸν Δί᾽ ἐξεληλακώς -το ' Rota 
tion has driven out Zeus, and reigns in his place.” 

If Aristophanés had had as strong a wish to tnrn the public antipathies 
against Herodotus as against Socratés and Euripidés, the explanation here 
given would have afforded him a plausible show of truth for doing so; and 
it is highly probable that the Thessalians would have been sufficiently dis- 
pleased with the view of Herodotus to sympathize in the poet's attack upon 
him. The point would have been made (waiving metrical considerations) —- 


Σεισμὸς βασιλεύει, τὸν Ποσειδῶν᾽ ἐξεληλακώς. 


The comment of Herodotus upon the Thessalian view seems almost as if 12 
were intended to guard against this very inference. 

Other accounts ascribed the cutting of the defile of Tempé to Héraklés 
(Diod6r. iv. 18). 

Respecting the ancient Grecian faith, which recognized the displeasure of 
Poseid6n as the cause of earthquakes, see Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 3, 2; Thucy 
did. i. 127; Strabo, xii. p. 579; Dioddér. xv. 48-49. It ceased to give univer- 
sal satisfaction even so early as the time of Thalés and Anaximenés :-¢e 
Aristot. Meteorolog. ii. 7-8; Plutarch, Placit. Philos. iii. 15; Seneca, Natural. 
Quast. vi. 6-23); and that philosopher, as well as Anaxagoras, Democritus 
and others, suggested different physical explanations of the fact. Notwith- 
standing a dissentient minority, however, the old doctrine still continued to 
be generally received: and Diodorus, in describing the terrible earthquake 
in 373 B. c., by which Heliké and Bura were destroyed, while he notices 
those philosophers (probably Kallisthenés, Senec. Nat. Quest. vi. 23) who 
substituted physical causes and laws in place of the divine agency, rejects 
their views, and ranks himself with the religious public, who traced this for- 
midable phenomenon to the wrath of Poseidéa (xv. 48-49). 

The Romans recognized many different gods as producers of earthquakes ; 
an unfortunate creed, since it exposed them to the danger of addressing 
their prayers to the wrong god: “ Unde in ritualibus et pontificiis obser. 
vatur, obtemperantibus sacerdotiis caute, ne alio Deo pro alio nominata, 
eam quis eorum terram concutiat, piacula committantar.” (Ammian. Mar 
cell. xvii. 7.) 

VOL. 1. 260c. 


409 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


where she remained during the whole siege of Troy, having been 
detained by Priteus, the king of the country, until Menelaus 
came to reciaim her after his triumph. The Egyptian priesta, 
with their usual boldness of assertion, professed to have heard 
the whole story from Menelaus himself—the Greeks had be 
seized Troy, in the full persuasion that Helen and the stolen 
treasures were within the walls, nor would they ever believe the 
repeated denials of the Trojans as to the fact of her presence. In 
mtimating his preference for the Egyptian narrative, Herodotus 
betrays at once his perfect and unsuspecting confidence thet he is 
dealing with genuine matter of history, and his entire distrust of 
the epic poets, even including Homer, upon whose authority that 
supposed history rested. His reason for rejecting the Homeric 
version is that it teems with historical improbabilities. If Helen 
had been really in Troy (he says), Priam and the ‘Trojans would 
never have been so insane as to retain her to their own utter 
ruin: but it was the divine judgment which drove them into the 
miserable alternative of neither being able to surrender Helen, 
nor to satisfy the Greeks of the real fact that they had never 
had possession of her—in order that mankind might plainly 
read, in the utter destruction of Troy, the great punishments with 
which the gods visit great misdeeds. Homer (Herodotus thinks) 
had heard this story, but designedly departed from it, because 
it was not so suitable a subject for epic poetry.! 

Enough has been said to show how wide is the difference be- 
tween Herodotus and the logographers with their literal tran- 
script of the ancient legends. Though he agrees with them in 
admitting the full series of persons and generations, he tries the 
circumstances narrated by a new standard. Scruples have arisen 
in his mind respecting violations of the laws of nature: the poets 


’ Herod. ii. 116. δοκέει δέ μοι καὶ Ὅμηρος τὸν λόγον τοῦτον πυϑέσϑαι" ἀλλ᾽ 
οὐ γὰρ ὁμοίως εὐπρεπὴς hy ἐς τὴν ἐποποιίΐην ἦν τῷ ἑτέρῷ τῷ περ ἐχρήσατο" 
ἐς ὃ μετῆκε αὐτὸν, δηλώσας ὡς καὶ τοῦτον ἐπισταῖτο τὸν λόγον. 

Herodotus then produces a passage from the Iliad, with a view to prove 
that Home knew of the voyage of Paris and Helen to Egypt; but the 
passage pro *2s nothing at all to the point. 

Again (c. 120), his slender confidence in the epic poets breaks out—ei χρῇ 
τι τοῖσι ἐποποιοῖσι χρεώμενον λένειν. 

It is remarkable that Herodotus is disposed to identify Helen with the 
ξείνη ’Adpodirn whose temple he saw at Memphis (c. 112). 


THE MYTHES AS TREATED BY THUCYDIDES. 408 


are unworthy of trust, and their narratives must be brought into 
conformity with historical and ethical conditions, before they can he 
admitted as truth. To accomplish this conformity, Herodotus 1s 
willing to mutilate the old legend in one of its most vital points: 
he sacrifices the personal presence of Helena in Troy, which ran 
through every one of the ancient epic poems belonging to the 
Trojan cycle, and is indeed, under the gods, the great and present 
moving force throughout. 

Thucydidés places himself generally in the same point of view 
as Herodotus with regard to mythical antiquity, yet with some con- 
siderable differences. Though manifesting no belief in present 
miracles or prodigies,! he seems to accept without reserve the pre- 
existent reality of all the persons mentioned in the mythes, and 
of the long series of generations extending back through so many 
supposed centuries: in this category, too, are included the epony- 
mous personages, Hellen, Kekrops, Eumolpus, Pandion, Amphi- 
lochus the son of Amphiardus, and Akarnan. But on the other 
hand, we find no trace of that distinction between a human and 
an heroic ante-human race, which Herodotus still admitted, —nor 
any respect for Egyptian legends. Thucydidés, regarding the 
personages of the mythes as men of the same breed and stature 
with his own contemporaries, not only tests the acts imputed to 
them by the same limits of credibility, but presumes in them the 
same political views and feelings as he was accustomed to trace 
in the proceedings of Peisistratus or Periklés. He treats the 
Trojan war as a great political enterprise, undertaken by all 
Greece ; brought into combination through the imposing power of 


*“ Ut conquirere fabulosa (says Tacitus, Hist. ii. 50, a worthy parallel of 
Thucydidés) et fictis oblectare legentium animos, procu) gravitate ccepti 
operis crediderim, ita vulgatis traditisque demere fidem non ausim. Die, 
quo Bebriaci certabatur, avem inusitata specie, apud Regium Lepidum cele- 
bri vico consedisse, incolw memorant; nec deinde ccetu hominum aut cir- 
cumvolitantium alitum, territam pulsamque, donec Otho se ipse interficeret: 
tum ablatam ex oculis: et tempora reputantibus, initiam finemque miraculi 
cum Othonis exitu competisse.” Suetonius ( Vesp. 5) recounts a different 
miracle, in which three eagles appear. 

This passage of Tacitus occurs immediately after his magnificent descrip- 
tion of the suicide of the emperor Otho, a deed which he contemp!ates with 
the most fervent admiration. His feelings were evidently so wiought up 
that he was content to relax the canons of historical credibility. 


404 HISTORY OF GREECE 


Agamemnén, not (according to the legendary narrative) through 
the influence of the oath exacted by Tyndareus. Then he ex- 
plains how the predecessors of Agamemnon arrived at so vast a 
dominion — beginning with Pelops, who came over (as he says) 
from Asia with great wealth among the poor Peloponnésiana, 
and by means of this wealth so aggrandized himself, though a 
foreigner, as to become the eponym of the peninsula. Next fol- 
lowed his son Atreus, who acquired after the death of Eurystheus 
the dominion of Mykénz, which had before been possessed by 
the descendants of Perseus: here the old legendary tale, which 
described Atreus as having been banished by his father Pelops 
in consequence of the murder of his elder brother Chrysippus, is 
invested with a political bearing, as explaining the reason why 
Atreus retired to Mykéenz. Another legendary tale — the defeat 
and death of Eurystheus by the fugitive Herakleids in Attica, so 
celebrated in Attic tragedy as having given occasion to the gens 
erous protecting intervention of Athens — is also introduced as 
furnishing the cause why Atreus succeeded to the deceased Eurys- 
theus: “for Atreus, the maternal uncle of Eurystheus, had been 
entrusted by the latter with his government during the expedition 
into Attica, and had effectually courted the people, who were 
moreover in great fear of being attacked by the Herakleids.” 
Thus the Pelopids acquired the supremacy in Peloponnésus, and 
Agamemnén was enabled to get together his 1200 ships and 
100,000 men for the expedition against Troy. Considering that 
contingents were furnished from every portion of Greece, Thucy- 
didés regards this as a small number, treating the Homeric catae 
logue as an authentic muster-roll, perhaps rather exaggerated 
than otherwise. He then proceeds to tell us why the armament 
was not larger: many more men could have been furnished, but 
there was not sutlicient money to purchase provisions for their 
subsistence; hence they were compelled, after landing and gaining 
a victory, to fortify their camp, to divide their army, and to send 
away one portion for the purpose of cultivating the Chersonese, 
and another portion to sack the adjacent towns. This was the 
grand reason why the siege lasted so long as ten years. For if 
it had been possible to keep the whole army together, and to ag 


THUCYDIDES ON ΓΞ WAR OF TROY. 405 


with an undivided force, Troy would have been taken both earlier 
and at smaller cost.1 

Such is the general sketch of the war of Troy, as given by 
Thucydidés. So different is it from the genuine epical narrative, 
that we seem hardly to be reading a description of the same 
event ; still less should we imagine that tne event was known, 
to him as well as to us, only through the epic poets themselves, 
The men, the numbers, and the duration of the siege, do indeed 
remain the same; but the cast and juncture of events, the deter- 
mining forces, and the characteristic features, are altogether het- 
erogeneous. But, like Herodotus, and still more than Herodotus, 
Thucydidés was under the pressure of two conflicting impulses 
—he shared the general faith in the mythical antiquity, but at 
the same time he could not believe in any facts which contradict- 
ed the laws of historical credibility or probability. He was thus 
under the necessity of torturing the matter of the old mythes 
into conformity with the subjective exigencies of his own mind: 
he left out, altered, recombined, and supplied new connecting 
principles and supposed purposes, until the story became such as 
no one could have any positive reason for calling in question: 
though it lost the impressive mixture of religion, romance, and 
individual adventure, which constituted its original charm, it ac- 
quired a smoothness and plausibility, and a poetical ensemble, 
which the critics were satisfied te accept as historical truth. And 
historical truth it would doubtless have been, if any independent 
evidence could have been found to sustain it. Had Thucydidés 
been able to produce such new testimony, we should have been 
pleased to satisfy ourselves that the war of Troy, as he recounted 
it, was the real event ; of which the war of Troy, as sung by the 
epic poets, was a misreported, exaggerated, and ornamented re- 
cital. But in this case the poets are the only real witnesses, and 

ae narrative of Thucydidés is a mere extract and distillation 
trom their incredibilities. 

A few other instances may be mentioned to illustrate the views 
of Thucydidés respecting various mythical incidents. 1. He 
treats the residence of the Homeric Pheakians at Corkyra a3 an 
undisputed fact, and employs it partly to explain the efficiency of 


! Thucyd. i. 9-12. 


406 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the Korkyrean navy in times preceding the Peloponnesian war. 
2. He notices, with equal confidence, the story of Téreus and 
Prokné, daughter of Pandion, and the murder of the child Itys 
by Prokné his mother, and Philoméla; and he produces this 
ancient mythe with especial reference to the alliance between the 
Athenians and Térés, king of the Odrysian Thracians, during the 
time of the Peloponnesian war, intimating that the Odrysian 
Térés was neither of the same family nor of the same country as 
Téreus the husband of Prokné.2 The conduct of Pandién, in 
giving his daughter Prokné-in marriage to Téreus, is in his view 
dictated by political motives and interests. 3. He mentions the 
Strait of Messina as the place through which Odysseus is said to 
have sailed.» 4. The Cyclépes and the Leestrygones (he says) 
were the most ancient reported inhabitants of Sicily; but he can- 
not tell to what race they belonged, nor whence they came.A 3. 
Italy derived its name from Italus, king of the Sikels. 6. Eryx 
and Egesto in Sicily were founded by fugitive Trojans after the 
capture of Troy ; also Skioné, in the Thracian peninsula of Pal 
léné, by Greeks from the Achzan town of Pelléné, stopping 
thither in their return from the siege of Troy: the Amphilochian 


Argos in the Gulf of Ambrakia was in like manner founded by 


Ὁ Thucyd. i. 25. 

3 Thucyd. ii. 29. Kai τὸ ἔργον τὸ περὲ τὸν Ἴτυν ai γυναῖκες ἐν τῇ γῇ ταὐτῇ 
ἔπραξαν" πολλοὶς δὲ καὶ τῶν ποιητῶν ἐν ἀηδόνος μνήμῃ Δαυλεὰς ἡ Spry 
ἐπωνόμασται. Εἰκὸς δὲ καὶ τὸ κῆδος Πανδίονα ξυνάψασϑαι τῆς ϑυγατρὸς διὰ 
τοσούτου, ἐπ᾽ ὠφελείᾳ τῇ πρὸς ἀλλήλους, μᾶλλον ἢ διὰ πολλῶν ἡμερῶν ἐς 
᾿Οδρύσας ὁδοῦ. The first of these sentences would lead us to infer, if it came 
from any other pen than that of Thucydidés, that the writcr believed the 
metamorphosis of Philoméla into a nightingale: see above, ch. xi. p. 270. 

The observation respecting the convenience of neighborhood for the mar- 
riage is remarkable, and shows how completely Thucydidés regarded the 
event as historical. What would he have said respecting the marriage of 
Oreithyia, daughter of Erechtheus, with Boreas, and the prodigious distance 
which she is reported to have been carried by her husband? Ὕπέρ Te τοντον 
πάντ᾽, ἐπ᾽ ἔσχατα χϑονὸὺς, etc. (Sophoklés ap. Strabo. vii. p. 295.) 

From the way in which Thucydidés introduces the mention of this event, 
we see that he intended to correct the misapprehension of his czantrymen, 
who having just made an alliance with the Odrysian 7érés, were led by that 
circumstance to think of the old mythical Zéreus, and to regard him as the 


ancestor of Térés. 
3 Thucyd. iv. 24. 4 Thucyd. vi. 2 


MYTHICAL NOTICES IN THUCYDIDES. 401 


Amphilochus son of Amphiaraus, in his return from the same 
enterprise. The remorse and mental derangement of the matri- 
eidal Alkmzén, son of Amphiarius, js also mentioned by Thucy- 
didés,' as well as the settlement of his son Akarnan in the country 
ealled after him Akarnania.? 

Such are the special allusions made by this illustrious author 
in the course of his history to mythical events. From the tenor 
of his language we may see that he accounted all that could be 
known about them tc be uncertain and unsatisfactory; but he has 
it much at heart to show, that even the greatest were inferior in 


1 Thucyd. ii. 68-102; iv. 120; vi.2. Antiochus of Syracuse, the contem 
porary of Thucydidés, also mentioned Italus as the eponymous king of Italy . 
he farther named Sikelus, who came to Morgos, son of Italus, after having 
been banished from Rome. He talks about Italus, just as Thucydidés talke 
about Théseus, as a wise and powerful king, who first acquired a great 
dominion (Dionys. H. A. R. i. 12, 35, 72). Amnstotle also menticned Italus 
in the same general terms (Polit. vii. 9, 2). 

* We may here notice some particulars respecting Isokratés. He mani 
fests entire confidence in the authenticity of the mythical genealogies and 
chronology ; but while he treats the mythical personages as historically real, 
he regards them at the same time not as human, but as half-gods, superior 
to humanity. About Helena, Théseus, Sarpédén, Cycnus, Memnén, Achil- 
les, etc., see Encom. Helen. Or. x. pp. 282, 292, 295. Bek. Helena was wor- 
shipped in his time as a goddess at Therapnew (ἐδ. p. 295). He recites the 
settlements of Danaus, Kadmus, and Pelops in Greece, as undoubted histori- 
eal facts (p. 297). In his discourse called Busiris, he accuses Polykratés, the 
sophist, of a gross anachronism, in having placed Busiris subsequent in poins 
of date to Orpheus and /olus (Or. xi. p. 301, Bek.), and he adds that the 
tale of Busiris having been slain by Héraklés was chronologically impossible 
(p. 309). Of the long Athenian genealogy from Kekrops to Théseus, hb 
speaks with perfect historical confidence (Panathenaic. p. 349, Bek.); not 
less so of the adventures of Héraklés and his mythical contemporaries, which 
he places in the mouth of Archidamus as a justification of the Spartan title 
to Messenia (Or. vi. Archidamus, p. 156, Bek.; compare Or. v. Philippus, pp. 
114, 138), φάσιν, οἷς περὶ τῶν παλαιῶν πιστεύομεν, etc. He condemna th 
poets in strong language for the wicked and dissolute tales which they cir- 
culated respecting the gods: many of them (he says) had been punished fo» 
such blasphemies by blindness, poverty, exile, and other misfortunes (Or. xi 
p- 309, Bek.). 

In general, it may be said that Isokratés applies no principles of historica’ 
triticism to the mythes; he rejects such as appear to him discreditable οἱ 
snworthy, and πρίονος the rest. 


Vol. 1 19 


408 HISTORY OF GREEUCB 


magnituae and importance to the Peloponnesian war.! In this 
respect his opinion seems to have been at variance with that 


which was popular among his contemporaries. 


a Thucyd. i. 21-22. i, 
The fret two volumes of this history have been noticed in an able article 


ly Review, for October, 1846; as well as in the Heidelberger 
thn. ath ct (1846. No. 41. pp. 641-655), by Professor Kortum. 
While expressing, on several points, approbation of my work, by which ; 
feel much flattered — both my English and my German critic take partia 
objection to the views respecting Grecian legend. While the Quarterly Re- 
viewer contends that the mythopeic faculty of the human mind, though 
essentially loose and untrustworthy, is never creative, but requires some basis 
of fact to work upon —- Kortiim thinks that I have not done justice to wines 
didés, as regards his way of dealing with legend ; that I do not allow = 
cient weight to the authority of an historian so circumspect and so - - 
blooded (den kalt-blathigsten und besonnensten Historiker des Altert! gt 
p- 653) as a satisfactory voucher for the early facts of Grecian history in his 
preface (Herr G. Fehlt also, wenn er das anerkannt kritische Pro-cemium als 
Gewahrsmann verschmiaht, p. 654). | ta 
No man feels more powerfully than I do the merits of Thucydidés as an 
historian, or the value of the example which he set in multiplying critical in- 
quiries respecting matters recent and verifiable. But the ablest judge or 
advocate, in investigating specific facts, can proceed ‘no further than he finds 
witnesses having the means of knowledge, and willing ‘more or leas to tell 
truth. In reference to facts prior to 776 B.c., Thucydidés had nothing before 
him except the legendury poets, whose credibility is not at all enhanced by 
the circumstance that he accepted them as witnesses, applying himself only 
to cut down and modify their allegations. His credibility in regard to the 
specific facts of these early times depends altogether upon theirs. Now we 
in our day are in a better position for appreciating their credibility than he 
was in his, since the foundations of historical evidence are so much more fully 
understood, and good or bad materials for history are open to comparison im 
such large extent and variety. Instead of wondering that he shared the 
general faith in such delusive guides — we ought rather to give him credit 
for the reserve with which he qualified that faith, and for the sound idea of 
historical possibility to which he held fast as the limit of his confidence. 
But it is impossible to consider Thucydidés as a satisfactory guarantee 
(Gewithrsmann ) for matters of fact which he derives only from such sources. 
Yrofessor Kortiim considers that I am inconsistent with myself in refusing 
to discriminate particular matters of historical fact among the legends — 
and yet in accepting these legends (in my chap. Xx.) as giving a faithful me 
ror of the general state of early Grecian society (p. 653 ). It ‘Appears to me 
that this is no inconsistency, but a real and important distinction. Whethes 
Héraklés, Agamemnén, Odysseus, etc. were real persons,and performed all, 


FPHORUS, THEUPOMPUS, XENOPHON, ETC. 409 


To touch a little upon the later historians by whom these 
mythes were handled, we find that Anaximenés of Lampsacus 
composed a consecutive history of events, beginning from the 
Theogony down to the battle of Mantineia.! But Ephorus pro- 
fessed to omit all the mythical narratives which are referred to 
times anterior to the return of the Herakleids, (such restriction 
would of course have banished the siege of Troy,) and even re- 
proved those who introduced mythes into historical writing ; 
adding, that everywhere truth was the object to be aimed at.2 
Yet in practice he seems often to have departed from his own 
rules ‘Theopompus, on the other hand, openly proclaimed ‘that 


or a part, of the possible actions ascribed to them — I profess myself unable 
to determine But even assuming both the persons and their exploits to be 
fictions, these very fictions will have been conceived and put together in con- 
formity to the general social phenomena among which the describer and his 
hearers lived — and will thus serve as illustrations of the manners then preva- 
lent. In fact, the real value of the Preface of Thucydidés, upon which Pro- 
fessor Kortm bestows such just. praise, consists, not in the particular facts 
which he brings out by altering the legends, but in the rational general views 
which he sets forth respecting early Grecian society, and respecting the steps 
as well as the causes whereby it attained its actual position as he saw it. 

Professor Kortiim also affirms that the mythes contain “ real matter of 
fact along with mere conceptions :” which affirmation is the same as that of 
the Quarterly Reviewer, when he says that the mythopeic faculty is not 
creative. ‘Taking the mythes in the mass, I doubt not that this is true, nor 
have I anywhere denied it. Taking them one by one, I neither affirm nor 
deny it. My position is, that, whether there be matter of fact or not, we have 
no test whereby it can be singled out, identified, and severed from the accom- 
panying fiction. And it lies upon those, who proclaim the practicability of 
such severance, to exhibit some means of verification better than any which 
has been yet pointed out. If Thucydidés has failed in doing this, it is cer- 
tain that none of the many authors who have made the same attempt after 
him have been more successful. 

It cannot surely be denied that the mythopeeic faculty is creative, when we 
have before us so many divine legends, not merely in Greece, but in other 
countries also. To suppose that these religious legends are mere exaggera- 
tions, etc. of some basis of actual fact —that the gods of polytheism were 
merely divinized men, with qualities distorted or feigned — would be to em- 
brace in substance the theory of Euémerus. 

* Diodor. xv. 89. He was a contemporary of Alexander the Great. 

* Diod6r. iv. 1. Strabo, ix. p. 422, ἐπιτιμῆσας τοὶς φιλομυϑοῦσιν ἐν τῇ τῆς 
ἑστωρίας γραφῇ. 

ἢ Ephorus recounted the principal adventures οἱ Héraklés (Fragm. 8, 8. 

VQL. 1 18 


410 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


he could narrate fables in his history better than Herodotus, ov 
Ktesias, or Hellanicus.. The fragments which remain to us, 
exhibit some proof that this promise was performed as to quan- 
tity ;2 though as to his style of narration, the judgment of Dio- 
nysius is unfavorable. Xenophén ennobled his favorite amuse- 
ment of the chase by numerous examples chosen from the heroic 
world, tracing their portraits with all «he simplicity of an undi- 
minished faith. Kallisthenés, like Ephorus, professed to omit all 
mythes which referred to a time anterior to the return of the Hera 
kleids; yet we know that he devoted a separate book or portion of 
hishistory to the Trojan war.? Philistus introduced some mythes 
in the earlier portions of his Sicilian history ; but Timzeus was dis- 
tinguished above all others for the copious and indiscriminate way 
in which he collected and repeated such legends.4 Some of these 


ed. Marx.), the tales of Kadmus and Harmonia (Fragm. 12), the banish 
ment of tdlus from Elis (Fragm. 15; Strabo, viii. p. 357); he drew in- 
ferences from the chronology of the Trojan and Theban wars (Fragm. 28) ; 
he related the coming of Dedalus to the Sikan king Kokalus, and the expe- 
dition of the Amazons (Fragm. 99-103). 

He was particularly copious in his information about κτίσεις, ἀποικίαι and 
ovyyeveiat (Polyb. ix. 1). 

1 Strabo, i. p. 74. 

* Dionys. Halic. De Vett. Scriptt. Judic. p. 428, Reisk; lian, V. H. iii. 
18, Θεόπομπος... ... δεινὸς μυϑόλογος. 

Theopompus affirmed, that the bodies of those who went into the forbid- 
den precinct (τὸ ἄβατον) of Zeus, in Arcadia, gave no shadow (Polyb. xvi. 
12). He recounted the story of Midas and Silénus (Fragm. 74, 75, 76, ed. 
Wichers) ; he said a good deal about the heroes of Troy; and he seems to 
have assigned the misfortunes of the Νόστοι to an historical cause — the rot- 
tenness of the Grecian ships, from the length of the siege, while the genuine 
epic ascribes it to the anger of Athéné (Fragm. 112, 113, 114; Schol. 
Homer. Iliad. ii. 135) ; he narrated an alleged expulsion of Kinyras from 
Cyprus by Agamemnén (Fragm. 111); he gave the genealogy of the Mace 
donian queen Olympias up to Achilles and AZakus (Fragm. 232). 

5. Cicero, Epist. ad Familiar. v. 12; Xenophén de Venation. c. 1. 

4 Philistas, Fragm. 1 (Géller), Dedalus, and Kokalus; about Liber and 
Juno (Fragm. 57) ; about the migration of the Sikels into Sicily, eighty years 
after the Trojan war (ap. Dionys. Hal. i. 8). 

Timeus Fragm. 50, 51, 52, 53, Géller) related many fables respecting 
dasén, Médea, and the Argonauts generally. The miscarriage of the Athe 
gian armament under Nikias, before Syracuse, is imputed to the anger of 
Méraklés against the Athenians because they came to assist the Egestara 


EUEMERUS. 41) 


writers employed their ingenuity in transforming the mythical 
circumstances into plausible matter of history: Ephorus, in par 
ticular, converted the serpent Pythé, slain by Apollo, into a ty- 
rannical king.! 

But the author who pushed this transmutation of legend into 
history to the greatest length, was the Messenian Euémerus, con- 
temporary of Kassander of Macedén. He melted down in this 
way the divine persons and legends, as well as the heroic — rep- 
resenting both gods and heroes as having been mere earthborn 
men, though superior to the ordinary level in respect of force 
and capacity, and deified or heroified after death as a recompense 
for services or striking exploits. In the course of a voyage into 
the Indian sea, undertaken by command of Kassander, Euémerus 
professed to have discovered a fabulous country cailed Panchaia, 
in which was a temple of the Triphylian Zeus: he there de- 
scribed a golden column, with an inscription purporting to have 
been put up by Zeus himself, and detailing his exploits while on 
earth. Some eminent men, among whom may be numbered 
Polybius, followed the views of Euémerus, and the Roman poet 
Ennius? translated his Historia Sacra; but on the whole he never 
acquired favor, and the unblushing inventions which he put into 
circulation were of themselves sufficient to disgrace both the.au- 
thor and his opinions. The doctrine that all the gods had once 
existed as mere men offended the religious pagans, and drew 
upon Euémerus the imputation of atheism; but, on the other 
hand, it came to be warmly espoused by several of the Christian 
assailants of paganism,— by Minucius Felix, Lactantius, and 
St. Augustin, who found the ground ready prepared for them in 
their efforts to strip Zeus and the other pagan gods of the attri- 
butes of deity. They believed not only in the main theory, but 
also in the -op.ous details of Euémerus ; and the same man whom 
Strabo casts aside as almost a proverb for mendacity, was ex- 


descendants of Troy (Plutarch, Nikias, 1),—a naked reproduction of gen- 
uine epical agencies by an historian; also about Diomédés and the Dauni- 
ans ; Phaéthén and the river Eridanus ; the combats of the Gigantes in the 
Phlegrzan plains (Fragm. 97, 99, 102). 

’ Strabo, ix. p 422. 

* Compare Diodér. v. 44-46; and Lactantius, De Falsi Relig. 1. 11. 

? Cicero, De Natur’ Der. i. 42; Varro, De Re Rust. i. 48. 


412 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


tolled by them as an excellent specimen of careful historical 
inquiry.! 

But though the pagan world repudiated that “lowering tone 
of explanation,” which effaced the superhuman personality of 
Zeus and the great gods of Olympus, the mythical persons and 
narratives generally came to be surveyed more and more from 
the point of view of history, and subjected to such alterations as 
might make them look more like plausible matter of fact. Po 
lybius, Strabo, Diodérus, and Pausanias, cast the mythes into 
historical statements — with more or less of transformation, as 
the case may require, assuming always that there is a basis of 
truth, which may be discovered by removing poetical exaggera- 
tions and allowing for mistakes. Strabo, in particular, lays down 
that principle broadly and unequivocally in his remarks upon 
Homer. To give pure fiction, without any foundation of fact, 
was in his judgment utterly unworthy of so great a genius; and 
he comments with considerable acrimony on the geographer Era- 
tosthenés, wh> maintains the opposite opinion. Again, Polybius 
tells us that the Homeric olus, the dispenser of the winds by 


' Strabo, ii. p. 102. Οὐ πολὺ οὖν λείπεται ταῦτα τὼν Πύϑεω καὶ Einyepor 


καὶ ᾿Αντιφάνους ψευσμάτων ; compare also i. p. 47, and ii. p. 104. 

St. Augustin, on the contrary, tells us (Civitat. Dei, vi. 7), “‘ Quid de ipse 
Jove senserunt, qui nutricem ejus in Capitolio posuerunt? Nonne attestati 
sunt omnes Euemero, qui non fabulosi garrulitate, sed historicd diligentid, 
homines fuisse mortalesque conscripsit?” And Minucius Felix (Octav. 20- 
21), “ Euemerus exequitur Deorum natales: patrias, sepulcra dinumerat, et 
per provincias monstrat, Dictzi Jovis, et Apollinis Delphici, et Phariz Isidis, 
et Cereris Eleusinix.” Compare Augustin, Civit. Dei, xviii. 8-14; and 
Clemens Alexand. Cohort. ad Gent. pp. 15-18, Sylb. 

Lactantius (De Fals4 Relig. c. 13, 14, 16) gives copious citations from 
Enntus’s translation of the Historia Sacra of Euémerus. 

Εὐήμερος, ὁ ἐπικληθεὶς ἄϑεος, Sextus Empiricus, adv. Physicos, ix. ὁ 17 
51. Compare Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 42; Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 
ο. 23. tom. ii. p. 475, ed. Wytt. 

Nitzsch assumes (Helden Sage der Griechen, sect. 7. p. 84) that the voy- 
age of Euémerus to Panchaia was intended only 95 an amusing romance, 
and that Strabo, Polybius, Eratosthenés and Plutarch were mistaken in con- 
struing it as a serious recital. Bottiger, in his Kunst-Mythologie der Grie- 
ehen (Absch. ii. 5. 6. p. 190), takes thesame view. But not the least reason is 
given fcr adopting this opinion, and it seems to me far-fetched and improbable: 
Lobeck (Aglaopham. p. 989), though Nitzsch alludes to him as hciding it 
manifests no such tendency, as far as I can observe. 


POLYBIUS, DIODORUS, ETC. 412 


appointment from Zeus, was in reality a man eminently skilled 
in navigation, and exact in predicting the weather ; that the Cy- 
clépes and Lestrygone: vere wild and savage real men in Sicily ; 
and that Scylla and Chatybdis were a figurative representation 
of dangers arising from pirates in the Strait of Messina. Strabo 
speaks of the amazing expeditions of Dionysus and Héraklés, 
and of the long wanderings of Jasén, Menelaus, and Odysseus, 
in the same category with the extended commercial range of the 
Pheenician merchant-ships: he explains the report of Théseus 
and Peirithous having descended to Hadés, by their dangerous 
earthly pilgrimages, — and the invocation of the Dioskuri as the 
protectors of the imperiled mariner, by the celebrity which they 
had acquired as real men and navigators. 

Diodérus gave at considerable length versions of the current 
fables respecting the most illustrious names in the Grecian myth- 
ical world, compiled confusedly out of distinct and incongruous 
authors. Sometimes the mythe is reproduced in its primitive 
simplicity, but for the most part it is partially, and sometimes 
wholly, historicized. Amidst this jumble of dissentient authori- 
ties we can trace little of a systematic view, except the general 
conviction that there was at the bottom of the mythes a real 
chronological sequence of persons, and real matter of fact, his- 
torical or ultra-historical. Nevertheless, there are some few 
oecasions on which Dioddrus brings us back a step nearer to the 
point of view of the old logographers. For, in reference te 
Heéraklés, he protests against the scheme of cutting down the 
mythes to the level of present reality, and contends that a special 
standard of ultra-historical credibility ought to be constituted, so 
as to include the mythe in its native dimensions, and do fitting 
honor to the grand, beneficent, and superhuman personality of 
Héraklés and other heroes or demi-gods. To apply to such per- 
sons the common measure of humanity (he says), and to cavil at 
the glorious picture which grateful man has drawn of them, is at 
once ungracious and irrational. All nice criticism into the truth 
of the legendary narratives is out of place: we show our reve- 
rence to the god by acquiescing in the incredibilities of his his 
tory, and we must be content with the best guesses which we cay 
make, amidst the inextricable confusion and numberless discrep 


ag «ἢ... 


= - 


-- 


ee ee 


ES ee 


~ , 
ΟῚ 


414 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ancies which they present.! Yet though Diodérus here exhibita 
@ preponderance of the religious sentiment over the purely δι. 
torical point of view, and thus reminds us of a period earlier 
than Thucydidés — he in another place inserts a series of stories 
which seem to be derived from Euémerus, and in which Uranus, 
Kronus, and Zeus appear reduced to the character of human 
kings celebrated for their exploits and benefactions.2 Many of 
the authors, whom Diod6rus copies, have so entangled together 
Grecian, Asiatic, Egyptian, and Libyan fables, that it becomes 
impossible to ascertain how much of this heterogeneous mass can 
be considered as at all connected with the genuine Hellenic 
mind. 

Pausanias is far more strictly Hellenic in his view of the Gre- 
cian mythes than Diodérus: his sincere piety makes him inclined 
to faith generally with regard to the mythical narratives, but 
subject nevertheless to the frequent necessity of historicizing or 
allegorizing them. His belief in the general reality of the myth- 
ical history and chronology is complete, in spite of the many 


' Diodor. iv. 1-8. “Evia: γὰρ τῶν ἀναγινωσκόντων, οὐ δικαίᾳ χρώμενοι κρίσει. 
τἀκριβὲς ἐπιζητοῦσιν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαίαις μυϑολογίαις, ἐπίσης τοῖς πραττομένοις 
ἐν τῷ cad? ἡμᾶς χρόνῳ, καὶ τὰ δισταζόμενα τῶν ἔργων διὰ τὸ μέγεϑος, ἐκ τοῦ 
καϑ' αὑτοὺς βίου τεκμαιρόμενοι, τὴν Ἡρακλέους δύναμιν ἐκ τῆς ἀσϑ'νείας τῶν 
νῦν ἀνϑρώπων ϑεωροῦσιν, ὦστε διὰ τὴν ὑπερβολὴν τοῦ μεγέϑους τῶν ἔργων 
ἀπιστεῖσϑαι τὴν γραφῆν. Καϑόλου γὴρ ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαίαις μυϑολογίαις οὐκ ἐκ 
παντὸς τρόπου πικρῶς τὴν ἀλήϑειαν ἐξεταστέο ve Καὶ yap ἐν 
τοῖς ϑεάτροις πεπεισμένοι μῆτε Κενταύρους διφυεῖς ἐξ ἑτερογε- 
νῶν σωμάτων ὑπάρξαι, μήτε Γηρυόνην τρισώματον, ὅμως π ροσ δεχόμε ϑα 
τὰς τοιαύτας μυϑολογίας, καὶ ταῖς ἐπισημασίαις συναῦ ἔ- 
ομεν τὴν τοῦ ϑεοῦ τιμῆν. Καὶ γὰρ ἄτοπον. Ἡρακλέα μὲν a kar 
ἀνϑρώπους ὄντα τοῖς ἰδίοις πόνοις ἐξημερῶσαι τὴν οἰκουμένην, τοὺς ὃ ἀνθρώ. 
πους, ἐπιλαϑομένους τῆς κοινῆς εὐεργεσίας, συκοφαντεῖν τὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς 
καλλίστοις ἔργοις ἔπαινον, ete. 

This is aremarkable passage : first, inasmuch as it sets forth the total inap- 
plicability of analogies drawn from the historical past as narratives about 
Héraklés ; next, inasmuch as it suspends the employment of critics il and 
scientific tests, and invokes an acquiescence interwoven and identified with 
the feelings, as the proper mode of evincing pious reverence for the god 
Héraklés. It aims at r producing exactly that state of mind to which the 
mythes were addressed, ud with which alone they could ever be in thorough 
harmony. 

* Diodér. iii 45-60 ; v. 44-46. 


PALEZPHATUS. 415 


discrepancies which he finds in it, and which he is unable te 
reconcile. 
Another author who seems to have conceived clearly, and 


applied consistently, the semi-historical theory of the Grecian 
mythes, is Palephatus, of whose work what app®ars to be a short 
abstract has been preserved.! In the short preface of this trea- 
tise “ concerning Incredible Tales,” he remarks, that some men, 
from want of instruction, believe all the current narratives; while 
others, more searching and cautious, disbelieve them altogether. 
Each of these extremes he is anxious to avoid. On the one 
hand, he thinks that no narrative could ever have acquired cre- 
dence unless it had been founded in truth; on the other, it is 
impossible for him to accept so much of the existing narratives 
as conflicts with the analogies of present natural phenomena 
if such things ever had been, they would still continue to be — 
but they never have so occurred; and the extra-analogical features 
of the stories are to be ascribed to the license of the poets. Pala 

phatus wishes to adopt a middle course, neither accepting al* 
nor rejecting all: accordingly, he had taken great pains to sepa: 
rate the true from the false in many of the narratives; he hac 
visited the localities wherein they had taken place, and mad 

careful inquiries from old men and others.2 The results of his 


' The work of Palephatus, probably this original, is alluded to in the 
Ciris of Virgil (88):— 

“Docta Palsphatia testatur voce papyrus.” 

The date of Palephatus is unknown—indeed this passage of the Ciris 
seems the only ground that there is for inference respecting it. That which 
we now possess is probably an extract from a larger work — made by another 
person at some later time: see Vossius de Historicis Grecis, p. 478, ed. 
Westermann. 

? Palephat. init. ap. Script. Mythogr. ed. Westermann, p. 268. Τῶν 
ἀνϑρώπων οἱ μὲν πείϑονται πᾶσι τοῖς λεγομένοις, ὡς ἀνομίλητοι σοφίας καὶ 
ἐπιστῆμης --- οἱ δὲ πυκνότεροι τὴν φύσιν καὶ πολυπράγμονες ἀπιστοῦσι τὸ 
παράπαν μηδὲν γενέσϑαι τούτων. Ἐμοὶ δὲ δοκεῖ γενέσϑαι πάντα τὰ λεγό. 
μενα". ....«γενόμενα δέ τινα οἱ ποιηταὶ καὶ λογόγραφοι παρέτρεψαν εἰς τὰ 
ἀπιστότερον καὶ ϑαυμασιώτερον τοῦ ϑαυμάζειν ἕνεκα τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. "Eye 
δὲ γινώσκω, ὅτι οὐ δύναται τὰ τοιαῦτα εἶναι οἷα καὶ λέγεται" τοῦτο ὀὲ κα. 
heiAnga, ὅτι εἰ μὴ ἐγένετο, οὐκ ἄν ἐλέγετο. 

The main assumption of the semi-historical theory is here shortly and 
learly stated. - 

One of the early Christian writers, Minucius Felix, is astonished at the 
esy belief of his pagan forefathers in miracles If ever such thiag: bov 


416 HISTORY OF GREECE. 
researches are presented in a r.ew version of fifty legends, among 


the most celebrated and the most fabulous, comprising the Cem 
taurs, Pasiphaé, Aktwon, Kadmus and the Sparti, the Sphinx, 
Cycnus, Daedalus, the Trojan horse, Zolus, Scylla, Geryén, 
Bellerophon, ete. 
It must be confessed that Palzephatus has performed his promise 
of transforming the “incredibilia” into narratives in themselves 
plausible and unobjectionable, and that in doing so he always 
follows some thread of analogy, real or verbal. ‘The Centaurs 
(he tells us) were a body of young men from the village of 
Nephelé in Thessaly, who first trained and mounted horses for 
the purpose of repelling a herd of bulls belonging to Ixi6n king 
of the Lapithe, which had run wild and done great damage: 
they pursued these wild bulls on horseback, and pierced them 
with their spears, thus acquiring both the name of Prickers 
(xévzogeg) and the imputed attribute of joint body with the 
horse. Aktaén was an Arcadian, who neglected the cultivation 
of his land for the pleasures of hunting, and was thus eaten up 
by the expense of his hounds. The dragon whom Kadmus 
killed at Thébes, was in reality Drako, king of Thébes; and the 
dragon’s teeth which he was said to have sown, and from whence 
sprung a crop of armed men, were in point of fact elephants’ 
teeth, which Kadmus as a rich Phoenician had brought over with 
him: the sons of Drako sold these elephants’ teeth and employed 
the proceeds to levy troops against Kadmus. Dedalus, instead 
of flying across the sea on wings, had escaped from Kréte in a 
swift sailing-boat' under a violent storm: Kottus, Briareus, and 
Gygés were not persons with one hundred hands, but inhabitants 
of the village of Hekatoncheiria in Upper Macedonia, who 
warred with the inhabitants of Mount Olympus against the 
Titans: Scylla, whom Odysseus so narrowly escaped, was a fast- 


-_——— 


been done in former times (he affirms), they would continue to be done now; 
as they cannot be done new, we may be sure that they never were really dene 
formerly (Minucius Felix, Octav. c. 20): “ Majoribus enim nostris tam fac.lis 
in mendaciis fides fuit, ut temeré crediderint etiam alia monstruosa mira 
miracula, Scyllam multiplicem, Chimeram multiformem, Hydram, et Cen- 
tauros. Quid illas aniles fabulas —de hominibus aves, et feras homines, Θ] 
de hominibus arbores atque flores? Qua, si essent facta, fierent; quia fier’ 
gon possunt, ideo nec facta sunt.” 


Ν.- ee oe (hm em mm Rene ΒΨ 


ΜΥΤΗΕΒ AS HANDLED BY THE PHILOSOPHERS. 417 


aailing piratical vessel, as was also Pegasus, the alleged winged 
horse of Bellerophon.' 

By such ingenious conjectures, Palephatus eliminates all the 
incredible circumstances, and leaves to us a string of tales per- 
fectly credible and commonplace. which we should readily believe, 
provided a very moderate amount of testimony could be pro- 
duced in their favor. If his treatment not only disenchants thc 
original mythes, but even effaces their generic and essential char- 
acter, we ought to remember that this is not more than what is 
done by Thucydidés in his sketch of the Trojan war. Palxpha- 
tus handles the mythes consistently, according to the semi-his- 
torical theory, and his results exhibit the maximum which that 
theory can ever present. By aid of conjecture, we get out of the 
impossible, and arrive at matters intrinsically plausible, but to- 


' Palephat. Narrat. 1, 3, 6, 13, 20,21, 29. Two short treatises on the same 
subject as this of Palephatus, are printed along with it, both in the collection 
of Gale and of Westermann; the one, Heracliti de Incredibilibus, the other 
Anonymi de Incredibilibus. They both profess to interpret some of the extra- 
ordinary or miraculous mythes, and proceed in a track not unlike that of 
Palezphatus. Scylla was a beautiful courtezan, surrounded with abominable 
parasites: she ensnared and ruined the companions of Odysseus, though he 
himself was prudent enough to escape her (Heraclit. c. 2. p. 313, West.) 
Atlas was a great astronomer: Pasiphaé fell in love with a youth named 
Taurus ; the monster called the Chimera was in reality a ferocious queen, 
who had two brothers called Leo and Drako; the ram which carried Phryxus 
and Hellé across the A{gean was a boatman named Krias (Heraclit. c. 2, 6. 
15, 24). 

A great number of similar explanations are scattered throughout the 
Scholia on Homer and the Commentary of Eustathius, without specification 
of their authors. 

The6n considers such resolution of fable into plausible history as a proof 
of surpassing ingenuity (Progymnasmata, cap. 6, ap. Walz. Coll. Rhett 
Gree. i.p. 219). Others among the Rhetors, too, exercised their talents 
sometimes in vindicating, sometimes in controverting, the probability of the 
ancient mythes. See the Progymnasmata of Nicolaus— Karaoxevi ὅτι 
εἰκότα τὰ κατὰ Νιόβην ᾿Ανασκευὴ ὅτι οὐκ εἰκότα τὰ κατὰ Νιόβην (ap. Walz. 
Coll. Rhetor. i. p. 284-318), where there are many specimens of this fanciful 
mode of handling. 

Plutarch, however, in one of his treatises, accepts Minotaurs, Splinxes, 
Centaurs, etc. as realities; he treats them as products of the monstrous, 
icestuous, and ungovernable lusts of man, which he contrasts with the 
simple and moderate passions of animals (Plutarch, Gryllus, p. 990) 

VOL. I. 18* 27oc 


“18 HIsTORY OF GREECE 


tally uncertified ; beyond this point we cannot penetrate, without 
the light of extrinsic evidence, since there is no intrinsic mark to 
distinguish truth from plausible fiction.! 3 
It remains that we should notice the manner in which the an 
cient mythes were received and dealt with by the philosophers, 
The earliest expression which we hear, on the part of philosophy, 
is the severe censure bestowed upon them on ethical grounds by 
Xenophanés of Kolophén, and seemingly by some others of his 
contemporaries.” It was apparently in reply to such charges, 
which did not admit of being directly rebutted, that Theagenés 
of Rhégium (about 520 B.c.) first started the idea of a double 
meaning in the Homeric and Hesiodic narratives, — an interior 
sense, different from that which the words in their obvious mean- 
ing bore, yet to a certain extent analogous, and discoverable by 
Upon this principle, he allegorized espe- 


1 The icarned Mr. Jacob Bryant regards the explanations of Palsphatus as 

if they wure founded upon real fact. Ile admits, for example, the city Ne 
phelé alleed by that author in his exposition of the fable of the Centaurs. 
Moreove:, he speaks with much commendation of Palephatus generally: 
“ He (Palephatus) wrote early, and seems to have been a serious and sen- 
sible person; one who saw the absurdity of the fables upon which the 
theology of his country was founded.” (Ancient Mythology, vol. i. p. 411- 
435.) 
So also Sir Thomas Brown (Enquiry into Vulgar Errors, Book I. chap. 
vi. p. 221, ed. 1835) alludes to Palephatus as having incontestably pointed 
out the real basis of the fables. “ And surely the fabulous inclination of 
those Gays was greater than any since; which swarmed so with fables, and 
from such slender grounds took hints for fictions, poisoning the world ever 
after: wherein how far they succeeded, may be exemplified from Palzpha- 
tus, in his Book of Fabulous Narrations.” 

® Xenophan. ap. Sext. Empir. adv. Mathemat. ix. 198. He also disap- 
proved of the rites, accompanied by mourning and wailing, with which the 
Eleatés worshipped Leukothea: he told them, εἰ uév Gedv ὑπολαμβάνουσι, 
μὴ Spnveiv: el δὲ ἄνϑρωπον, μὴ ϑύειν (Aristotel. Rhet. ii. 23). 

Xenophanés pronounced the battles of the Titans, Gigantes, and Centaurs 
to be “ fictions of our predecessors,” πλάσματα τῶν προτέρων (Xenophan. 
Fragm. 1. p. 42, ed. Schneidewin). 

See a curious comparison of the Grecian and Roman theology in Dicnys, 
‘Halicarn. Ant. Rom. ii. 20. 

3 Schol. Iliad. xx. 67: Tatian. adv. Gree. c.48. Hérakleitus indignantly 
repelled the impudent atheists who found fault with the divine mythes of the 


ALLEGORIZING TENDENCY. 419 


tary, Anaxagoras and Metrodorus carried out the allegorical ex 
planation more comprehensively and systematically ; the former 
representing the mythical personages as mere mental conceptions, 
invested with name and gender, and illustrative of ethical pre- 
cepts, — the latter connecting them with physical principles and 
phenomena. Metrodorus resolved not only the persons of Zeus, 
Heré,and Athéné, but also those of Agamemnon, Achilles, and Hee- 
tor, into various elemental combinations and physical agencies, and 
treated the adventures ascribed to them as natural facts concealed 
under the veil of allegory.|| Empedoklés, Prodikus, Antisthenés, 
Parmenidés, Hérakleidés of Pontus, and in a later age, Chrysip- 
pus, and the Stoic philosophers generally,2 followed more or less 


saloaiinninniane A 


Tiiad, ignorant of their true allegorical meaning: ἡ τῶυ ἐπεφυομένων τῷ 
Ὁμήρῳ τόλμα τοὺς Ἥρας δεσμοὺς αἰτιᾶται, καὶ νομίζουσιν ὕλην τινα δαψιλῇ 
τῆς ἀϑέου πρὸς Ὅμηρον ἔχειν μανίας ταῦτα--- Ἢ οὐ μέμνῃ ὃτι τ᾽ ἐκρέμω 
ὕψοϑεν, ete. λέληϑε δ' αὐτοὺς ὅτι τούτοις τοῖς ἔπεσιν ἐκτεϑεολόγηται ἡ τοῦ 
παντὸς γένεσις, καὶ τὰ συνεχῶς ᾳδόμενα τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα τούτων τῶν στίχων 
ἐστὶ τάξις (Schol. ad Hom. Iliad. xv. 18). 

 Diogen. Laért. ii. 11; Tatian. adv. Gree. c. 37; Hesychius, v. ᾿Αγαμέμ- 
vova. See the ethical turn-given to the stories of Circé, the Sirens and 
Scylla, in Xenoph. Memorab. i. 3, 7; ii. 6, 11-31. Syncellus, Chvende: p. 
149. ‘Epunvevovor dé οἱ ᾿Αναξαγόρειοι τοὺς μυϑώδεις ϑεοὺς, νοῦν μὲν τὸν Δία, 
τὴν δὲ ᾿Αϑηνᾶν τέχνην, ete. 

Uschold and other modern German authors seem to have adopted in its 
full extent the principle of interpretation proposed by Metrodorus — treat- 
ing Odysseus and Penelopé as personifications of the Sun and Moon. ete 
See Helbig, Die Sittlichen Zustinde des Griechischen Helden Alters, Einlei 
tung, p. xxix. (Leipzig, 1839.) 

Corrections of the Homeric text were also resorted to, in order to escape 
the necessity of imputing falsehood to Zeus (Aristotel. De Sophist. Elench. 
δ. 4). 

ἢ Sextus Empiric. ix. 18; Diogen. viii. 76; Plutarch, De Placit. Philo 
soph. i. 3-6; De Poesi Homerica, 92-126; De Stoicor. Repugn. p. 1050 
Menander, De Encomiis, c. 5. 

Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 14, 15, 16, 41; ii. 24-25. “Physica ratio non 
imelegans inclusa in impias fabulas.” ἢ 

In the Bacche of Euripidés, Pentheus is made to deride the tale of the 
motherless infant Dionysus having been sewn into the thigh of Zeus. ‘Tei 
resias_ while reproving him for his impiety, explains the story away in ἃ sort 
of allegory: the μηρὸς Δεὸς (he says) was a mistaken statement in place of 
the αἰϑὴρ χϑόνα ἐγκυκλούμενος (Bacch 235-290). 

Lucretius (iii. 995-1036) allegorizes the conspicuous sufferers in Hadés, — 
Tantalus, Sisyphus, Tityus, and the Danaids, as well as the ministers of 


490 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the same principle of treating the popular gods as allegurical per 
sonages ; while the expositors of Homer (such as Stesimbrotus, 
Glauk6n, and others, even down to the Alexandrine age), though 
none of them proceeded to the same extreme length as Metrodé- 
rus, employed allegory amongst other media of explanation for 
the purpose of solving difficulties, or eluding reproaches against 
the poet. 

In the days of Plato and Zenophén, this allegorizing interpre- 
tation was one of the received methods of softening down the ob- 
noxious mythes — though Plato himself treated it as an insuffi- 
cient defence, seeing that the bulk of youthful hearers could not 
see through the allegory, but embraced the story literally as it 
was set forth.' Pausanias tells us, that when he first began to 
write his work, he treated many of the Greek legends as silly and 
undeserving of serious attention ; but as he proceeded, he gradu- 
ally arrived at the full conviction, that the ancient sages had de- 
signedly spoken in enigmatical language, and that there was val- 
uable truth wrapped up in their narratives: it was the duty of a 
pious man, therefore, to study and interpret, but not to reject, 


penal infliction, Cerberus and the Furies. The first four are emblematic 
descriptions of various defective or vicious characters in human -nature, — 
the deisidemonic, the ambitious, the amorous, or the insatiate and querulous 
man ; the last two represent the mental terrors of the wicked. 

Oi viv περὶ “Ὅμηρον decvoi —so Plato calls these interpreters (Kratylus, 
p- 407); see also Xenoph. Sympos. iii. 6; Plato, Ion. p. 530; Plutarch, De 
Audiend. Poet. p. 19. ὑπόνοια was the original word, afterwards succeeded 
by ἀλληγορία. 

"Hpac dé δεσμοὺς καὶ Ἡφαίστου ῥίψεις ὑπὸ πατρὸς, μέλλοντος τῇ μητρὶ τυπ- 
τομένῃ ἀμυνεῖν, καὶ ϑεομαχίας ὅσας "Ὅμερος πεποίηκεν, οὐ παραδεκτέον εἰς 
τὴν πόλιν, οὔτ᾽ ἐν ὑπονοίαις πεποιημένας, οὔτ᾽ ἄνευ brovoe 
ὧν. Ὁ γὰρ νέος οὐχ᾽ οἷός te κρίνειν ὅ,τι τε ὑπόνοια καὶ ὃ μὴ, ἀλλ᾽ ἃ ἂν 
τηλικοῦτος ὧν λάβῃ ἐν ταῖς δόξαις, δυσέκνιπτά τε καὶ ἀμετάστατα φιλεῖ γιγ- 
veodat (Plato, Republ. ii. 17. p. 378). 

The idea of an interior sense and concealed purpose in the ancient poets 
occurs several times in Plato (Theztet. c. 93. p. 180): παρὰ μὲν τῶν ἀρχαίων, 
weTa ποιήσεως ἐπικρυπτομένων τοὺς πολλοὺς, etc.; also Protagor. c. 20. p 
816. 

“ Modo Stoicum Homerum faciunt, — modo Epicureum, — modo Peripe 
teticam,— modo Academicum. Apparat nihil horum esse in illo, quis 
omnia sunt.” (Seneca, Ep. 88.) Compare Plutarch, De Defectu Oracul e« 
"1-12. t. ii. p. 702, Wytt., and Julian, Orat. vii. p. 216 


PAUSANIAS AND HIS VIEW OF THE MYTHES. 421 


sorics current and accredited respecting the gods. And others, 
— arguing from the analogy of the religious mysteries, which could 
not be divulged without impiety to any except such as had been 
specially admitted and initiated, — maintained that it would be a 
profanation to reveal directly to the vulgar, the genuine scheme 
of nature and the divine administration: the ancient poets and 
philosophers had taken the only proper course, of talking to the 
many in types and parables, and reserving the naked truth for 
privileged and qualified intelligences.2 The altegorical mode of 
explaining the ancient fables? became more and more popular in 


* Pausan. viii. 8,2. To the same purpose (Strabo, x. Ρ. 474), allegory is 
admitted to a certain extent in the fables by Dionys. Halic. Ant. Rom. ii. 20. 
The fragment of the lost treatise of Plutarch, on the Platwan festival of the 
Deedala, is very instructive respecting Grecian allegory (Fragm. ix. t. 5. p. 
754-763, ed. Wyt. ; ap. Euseb. Preepar. Evang. iii. Tid Γ 

* This doctrine is set forth in Macrobius (i. 2). He distinguishes between 
faiula and fabulosa narratio: the former is fiction pure, intended either to 
amuse or to instruct —the latter is founded upon truth, either 
human or respecting divine agency. The gods did not like to be publicly 
talked of (according to his view) except under the respectful veil of a fabl 
(the same feeling as that of Herodotus, which led him to refrain from insert- 
ing the ἱεροὶ λόγοι in his history). The supreme god, the τἀγαϑὸν, the 
πρῶτον αἴτιον, could not be talked of in fables: but the other gods, the aéria. 
or sthereal powers and the soul, might be, and ought to be, talked of in that 
manner alone. Only superior intellects ought to be admitted to a knowledge 
of the secret reality. “ De Diis ceteris, et de anima, non frustra se, nec ut 
oblectent, ad fabulosa convertunt; sed quia sciunt inimicam esse nature apere 
tam nudamque expositionem sui: qus sicut vulgaribus sensibus hominum 
intellectum sui, vario rerum tegmine operimentoque, subtraxit ; ita ἃ pra 
dentibus arcana sua voluit per fabulosa tractari...... Adeo semper ita se et 
sciri et coli numina maluerunt, qualiter in vulgus antiquitus fabulata est. 

Secundum hee Pythagoras ipse atque Empedocles, Parmenides quo- 
que et Heraclides, de Diis fabulati sunt: nec secus Timeus.” Compare also 
Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. x. and xxxii. Arnobius exposes the allegorical 
interpretation as mere evasion, and holds the Pagans to literal historical fact 
{Adv. Gentes, v. p. 185, ed. Elm.). 

Respecting the allegorical interpretation applied to the Greek fables, 
Bottiger (Die Kunst — Mythologie der Griechen, Abschn. ii. p. 176): 
Nitzsch (Heldensage der Griech. sect. 6. p. 78); Lobeck (Aglaopham. p. 
133-155). 

* According to the anonymous writer ap. Westermann (Script. Myth. p. 
828), every personal or denominated god may be construed in three differen: 
Ways: either πραγματικῶς (historically, as having been a king or a man)— 


422 HL3TORY OF GREECE. 


the third and fourth centuries after the Christian era, especially 
among the new Platonic philosophers; being both congenial te 


er ψυχικῶς, m which theory Héré signifies the soul; Athéné, prudence, 
Aphrodité, desire ; Zeus, mind, etc. — or στοιχειακῶς, in which system Apollo 
signifies the sun ; Poseid6én, the sea; Héré, the upper stratum of the air, or 
ether ; Athéné, the lower or denser stratum ; Zeus, the upper hemisphere ; 
Kronus, the lower, etc. This writer thinks that all the three principles of 
construction may be resorted to, each on its proper occasion, and that neither 
of them excludes the others. It will be seen that the first is pure Euemer- 
ism ; the two latter are modes of allegory. 

The allegorical construction of the gods and of the divine mythes is copi- 
ously applied in the treatises, both of Phurnutus and Sallustius, in Gale’s 
collection of mythological writers. Sallustius treats the mythes as of divine 
origin, and the chief poets as inspired (ϑεόληπτοι) : the gods were propitious 
to those who recounted worthy and creditable mythes respecting them, and 
Sallustius prays that they will accept with favor his own remarks (cap. 3 
and 4. pp. 245-251, Gale). He distributes mythes into five classes ; theo- 
logical, physical, spiritual, material, and mixed. He defends the practice of 
speaking of the gods under the veil of allegory, much in the same way as 
Macrobius (in the preceding note): he finds, moreover, a good excuse even 
for those mythes which imputed to the gods theft, adultery, outrages towards 
a father, and other enormities: such tales (he says) were eminently suitable, 
since the mind must at once see that the facts as told are not to be taken as 
being thernselves the real truth, but simply as a veil, disguising some interior 
truth (p. 247). 

Besides the Life of Homer ascribed to Plutarch (see Gale, p. 325-332). 
Héraclidés (not Héraclidés of Pontus) carries out the process of allegorizing 
the Homeric mythes most earnestly and most systematically. The applica- 
tion of the allegorizing theory is, in his view, the only way of rescuing 
Homer from the charge of scandalous impiety —avry γὰρ ἠσέβησεν, εἰ 
μηδὲν ἠλληγόρησεν (Heérac. in init. p. 407, Gale). Hie proves at length, that 
the destructive arrows of Apollo, in the first book of the Iliad, mean nothing 
at the bottom except a contagious plague, caused by the heat of the summer 
sun in marshy ground (pp. 416-424). Athéné, who darts down from Olym- 
pus at the moment when Achilles is about to draw his sword on Agamem- 
non, and seizes him by the hair, is a personification of repentant prudence 
({p. 435). The conspiracy against Zeus, which Homer (Iliad, i. 400) relates 
to have been formed by the Olympic gods, and defeated by the timely aid of 
Thetis and Briareus — the chains and suspension imposed upon Héré — the 
sasting of Héphzstos by Zeus out of Olympus, and his fall in Lémnus — 
the destruction of the Grecian wall by Poseid6én, after the departure of the 
Greeks — the amor.us scene between Zeus and Héré on Mount Gargarus — 
the distribution of the universe between Zeus, Poseid6én, and Hadés — all 
these he resolves into peculiar manifestations and conflicts of the elemental 
@ubstances in nature. To the much-decried battle of the gods, he gives a 


LATER PLATONIC PHILOSOPHERS. 428 


their orientalized turn of thought, and useful as a shield against 
the attacks of the Christians. 

It was from the same strong necessity, of accommodating the 
old mythes to a new standard both of belief and of appreciation, 
that both the historical and the allegorical schemes of transform- 
ing them arose; the literal narrative being decomposed for the 
purpose of arriving at a base either of particular matter of fact, 


tarn partly physical, partly ethical (p. 481). In like manner, he transforms 
and vindicates the adventures of the gods in the Odyssey: the wanderings 
of Odysseus, together with the Lotophagi, the Cyclops, Circé, the Sirens, 
olus, Scylla, etc., he resolves into a series of temptations, imposed as a 
trial upon a man of wisdom and virtue, and emblematic of human life (p. 
496). The story of Arés, Aphrodité, and Héphestos, in the eighth book of 
the Odyssey, seems to perplex him more than any other: he offers two 
explanations, neither of which seems satisfactory even to himself (p. 494). 

An anonymous writer in the collection of Westermann (pp. 329-344) has 
discussed the wanderings of Odysseus upon the same ethical scheme of in- 
terpretation as Héraclidés: he entitles his treatise “A short essay on the 
Wanderings of Odysseus in Homer, worked out in conjunction with ethical 
reflections, and rectifying what is rotten in the story, as well as may be, for 
the benefit of readers.” (τὸ μύϑου σαϑρὸν ϑεραπεύουσα.) The author 
resolves the adventures of Odysseus into narratives emblematic of different 
situations and trials of human life, Scylla and Charybdis, for example (c. 8 
Ρ. 338), represent, the one, the infirmities and temptations arising out of the 
body, the other, those springing from the mind, between which man is called 
upon to steer. The adventure of Odysseus with Aolus, shows how little good 
& virtuous man docs himself by seeking, in case of distress, aid from conjurors 
and evil enchanters ; the assistance of suah allies, however it may at first 
promise well, ultimately deceives the person who accepts it, and renders him 
worse off than he was before (c. 3. p. 332). By such illustrations does the 
author sustain his general position, that there is a great body of valuable 
ethical teaching wrapped up in the poetry of Homer. 

Proclus is full of similar allegorization, both of Homer and Hesiod: the 
third Excursus of Heyne ad Iliad. xxiii. (vol. viii. p- 563), De Allegorid 
Homerica, contains a valuable summary of the general subject. 

The treatise De Astrologid, printed among the works of Lucian, contains 
Specimens of astrological explanations applied to many of the Grecian 
αὖϑοι, which the author as a pious man cannot accept in their literal mean- 
ing. “How does it consist with holiness (he asks) to believe that Aineas 
was son of Aphrodité, Minés of Zeus, or Askalaphus of Mars? No; these 
were men born under the favorable influences of the planets Venus, Jupiter, 
ani Mars.” He considers the principle of astrological explanation peculiarly 
fit to be applied to the mythes of Homer and Hesiod (Lucian, De AstrologiA 

9] -22). 


424 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


or of general physical or moral truth. Instructed men were 
commonly disposed to historicize only the heroic legends, and to 
allegorize more or less of the divine legends: the attempt of 
Euémerus to historicize the latter was for the most part denounced 
as irreligious, while that of Metrodorus to allegorize the former 
met with no success. In allegorizing, moreover, even the divine 
legends, it was usual to apply the scheme of allegory only to the 
inferior gods, though some of the great Stoic philosophers car- 
ried it farther, and allegorized all the separate personal gods, 
Jeaving only an all-pervading cosmic Mind,' essential as a co- 
efficient along with Matter, yet not separable from Matter. But 
Many pious pagans seem to have perceived that allegory pushed 
to this extent was fatal to all living religious faith,? inasmuch as 
it divested the gods of their character of Persons, sympathizing 
with mankind and modifiable in their dispositions according to 
the conduct and prayers of the believer: and hence they per- 
mitted themselves to employ allegorical interpretation only to 
some of the obnoxious legends connected with the superior gods, 
leaving the personality of the latter unimpeached. 

One novelty, however, introduced seemingly by the philosopher 
Empedoklés and afterwards expanded by others, deserves notice, 
inasmuch as it modified considerably the old religious creed by 
drawing a pointed contrast between gods and demons, — a dis- 
tinction hardly at all manifested in Homer, but recognized in the 
Works and Days of Hesiod.3 Empedoklés widened the gap be- 
tween the two, and founded upon it important consequences. The 
gods were good, immortal, and powerful agents, having freewill 


1 See Ritter, Geschichte der Philosophie, 2nd edit. part 3. book 11. chap. 4. 
p. 592; Varro ap. Augustin. Civitat. Dei, vi. 5,ix. 6; Cicero, Nat. Deor. ii. 
94--28. 

Chrysippus admitted the most important distinction between Zeus and the 
other gods (Plutarch. de Stoicor. Repugnant. p. 1052.) 

3 Plutarch. de Isid. et Osirid. c. 66. p. 377; c. 70. p. 379. Compare on 
this subject O. Miiller, Prolegom. Mythol. p. 59 seg., and Eckermann, Lehr 
buch der Religions Geschichte, vol. i. sect. ii. p. 46. 

3 Hesiod, Opp. et Di. 122: to the same effect Pythagoras and Thalés 
_rhogen. Laér. viii. 32; and Plutarch, Placit. Philos. i. 8). 

The Hesiodic daemons are all good: Athenagoras (Legat. Chr. p. 8) says 
tha: Thalés admitted a distinction between good and bad d.emurs. waick 


seems very doubtful. 


CHARACTER OF THE DEMONS. 495 


and intelligence, but without appetite, passion, or infirmity: the 
dzmons were of a mixed nature between gods and men, ministers 
and interpreters from the former to the latter, but invested also 
with an agency and dispositions of their own. They were very 
long-lived, but not immortal, and subject to the passions and pro- 
pensities of men, so that there were among them beneficent and 
maleficient demons with every shade of intermediate difference.! 


' The distinction between Θεοὶ and Aaiuovec is especially set forth in the 
treatise of Plutarch, De Defectu Oraculorum, capp. 10, 12, 13, 15, ete. He 
seems to suppose it traceable to the doctrine of Zoroaster or the Orphic 
mysteries, and he represents it as relieving the philosopher from great per- 
plexities : for it was difficult to know where to draw the line in admitting or 
rejecting divine Providence : errors were committed sometimes in affirming 
God to be the cause of everything, at other times in supposing him to be the 
cause of nothing. ᾿Επεὶ τὸ διορίσαι πῶς χρηστέον καὶ μέχρι τινων τῇ προνοίᾳ, 
χαλεπὸν, οἱ μὲν οὐδενὸς ἁπλῶς τὸν ϑεὸν, οἱ δὲ ὁμοῦ τι πάντων αἴτιον ποι- 
οὔντες, ἀστογοῦσι τοῦ μετρίου καὶ πρέποντος. Εὖ μὲν οὖν λέγουσιν οἱ Aé- 
γοντες, ὅτι Πλάτων τὸ ταῖς γεννωμέναις ποιότησιν ὑποκείμενον στοιχεῖον 
ἐξευρὼν, ὃ νῦν ὕλην καὶ φύσιν καλοῦσιν, πολλῶν ἀπήλλαξε καὶ μεγάλων ἀπο- 
ριῶν τοὺς φιλοσόφους " ἐμοὶ δὲ δοκοῦσι πλείονας λῦσαι καὶ μείζονας ἀπορίας οἱ 
τὸ τῶν δαιμόνων γένος ἐν μέσῳ ϑεῶν καὶ ἀνϑρώπων, καὶ τρόπον τινα τὴν 
κοινωνίαν ἡμῶν σύναγον εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ σύναπτον, ἐξευρόντες (ες. 10). Ἡ dac- 
μόνων φύσις ἔχουσα καὶ πάϑος ϑνητοῦ καὶ ϑεοῦ δύναμιν (c. 18). 

Εἰσὶ γὰρ, ὡς ἐν ἀνϑρώποις, καὶ δαίμοσιν ἀρετῆς διάφοραὶ, καὶ τοῦ παϑητικοῦ 
καὶ ἀλόγου τοῖς μὲν ἀσϑενὲς καὶ ἀμαυρὸν ἔτι λείψανον, ὥσπερ περίττωμα, τοῖς 
λὲ πολὺ καὶ δυσκατάσβεστον ἔνεστιν, ὧν ἴχνη καὶ σύμβολα πολλαχοῦ ϑύσιαι 
καὶ τελεταὶ καὶ μυϑολογίαι σώζουσι καὶ διαφυλάττουσιν ἐνδιεσπαρμένα (ib.). 
compare Plutarch. de Isid. et Osir. 25. p. 860. 

Kai μὴν ὅσας Evre μύϑοις καὶ ὕμνοις λέγουσι καὶ ἄδουσι, 
τοῦτο μὲν ἁρπαγὰς, τοῦτο δὲ πλάνας ϑεῶν, κρύψεις τε καὶ φυγὰς καὶ λατρείας, 
οὐ ϑεῶν εἰσίν ἀλλὰ δαιμόνων παϑήματα, ete. (c. 15): also c. 23; also De Isid, 
et Osir. c. 25. p. 366. 

Human sacrifices and other objectionable rites are excused, as necessary 
for the purpose of averting the anger of bad demons (c. 14-15). 

Empedoklés is represented as the first author of the doctrine which im- 
puted vicious and abominable dispositions to many of the demons (c. 15, 
16, 17, 20), τοὺς εἰσαγομένους ὑπὸ ᾿Εμπεδοκλέους δαίμονας. expelled from 
heaven by the gods, ϑεήλατοι καὶ obpavorereic (Plutarch, De Vitand. Aér, 
Alien. p. 830); followed by Plato, Xenokratés, and Chrysippus, c. 17 : com- 
pare Plato ‘Apolog. Socrat. p. 27; Politic. p. 271; Symposion, c. 28. p. 203), 
though he seems to treat the δαίμονες as defective and mutable beings, rather 
than actively maleficent. Xenokratés represents some of them both as wick: 
ed and powerful in a high degree: — Ξενοκράτης καὶ τῶν ἡμερῶν τὰς ἀπο 


426 HISTORY OF GREECR. 


It had been the mistake (according to these philosophers) of the 
old mythes to ascribe to the gods proceedings really belonging to 
the demons, who were always the immediate communicants with 
mortal nature, inspiring prophetic power to the priestesses of the 
oracles, sending dreams and omens, and perpetually interfering 
either for good or for evil. The wicked and violent demons, 
having committed many enormities, had thus sometimes incurred 
punishment from the gods: besides which, their bad dispositicns 
had imposed upon men the necessity of appeasing them by reli- 
gious ceremonies of a kind acceptable to such beings: hence, the 
human sacrifices, the violent, cruel, and obscene exhibitions, the 
wailings and fastings, the tearing and eating of raw flesh, which 
it had become customary to practise on various consecrated occa- 
sions, and especially in the Dionysiac solemnities. Moreover, the 
discreditable actions imputed to the gods, — the terrific combats, 
the ‘T'yphonic and Titanic convulsions, the rapes, abductions, flight, 
servitude, and concealment, — all these were really the doings and 
sufferings of bad demons, placed far below the sovereign agency 
— equable, undisturbed, and unpolluted — of the immortal gods. 
The action of such demons upon mankind was fitful and inter- 
mittent: they sometimes perished or changed their local abode, 
80 that oracles which had once been inspired became after a time 
forsaken and disfranchized.! 

This distinction between gods and demons appeared to save 
in a great degree both the truch of the old legends and the dige 


φράδας, καὶ τῶν ἑορτῶν ὅσαι πληγάς τινας ἢ κοπετοὺς, ἢ νηστείας, ἢ δυσφημίας, 
ἢ αἰσχρολογίαν ἔχουσιν, οὔτε ϑεῶν τιμαὶς οὔτε δαιμόνων οἴεται προσήκειν 
χρηστῶν, ἀλλ᾽ εἶναι φύσεις ἐν τῷ περιέχοντι μεγάλας μὲν καὶ ἰσχυρὰς, δυστρό- 
πους δὲ καὶ σκυϑρωπὰς, αἱ χαίρουσι τοῖς τοιούτοι ¢, καὶ τυγχά 
vovoat πρὸς οὐϑὲν ἄλλο χεῖρον τρέπονται (Plutarch, De Isid. 
ut Osir. c. 26. p. 361; Question. Rom. p. 283): compare Stobzeus, Eclog. 
Phys. i. p. 62. 

' Plutarch, De Defect. Orac. ς. 15. p. 418. Chrysippus admitted, among 
the various conceivable causes to account for the existence of evil, the suppo 
sition of some negligent and reckless demons, δαιμόνια φαυλὰ ἐν οἷς τῷ ὄντι 
γίνονται καὶ ἐγκλητέαι ἀμέλειαι (Plutarch, De Stoicor. Rept gnant. p. 1051). 
A distinction, which I do not fully understand, between ϑεοὶ and δαίμονες, 
was also adopted among the Locrians at Opus: δαΐμων with them seems te 
have been equivalent to ἥρως (Plutarch, Questioz. Graec. c. 6. p. 292) 9668 
the note above, pp. 350-351. 


INTERPRETATION OF THE MYTHES. 497 


nity of the gods: it obviated the necessity of pronouncing either 
that the gods were unworthy, or the legends untrue. Yet although 
devised for the purpose of satisfying a more scrupulous religious 
sensibility, it was found inconvenient afterwards, when assailants 
arose against paganism generally. For while it abandoned as 
indefensible a large portion of what had once been genuine faith, 
it still retained the same word demons with an entirely altered 
signification. The Christian writers in their controversies found 
ample warrant among the earlier pagan authors! for treating all 
the gods as demons — and not less ample warrant among the later 
pagans for denouncing the demons generally as evil beings.2 
Such were the different modes in which the ancient mythes 
were treated, during the literary life of Greece, by the four classes 
above named — poets, logographers, historians, and philosophers. 
Literal acceptance, and unconscious, uninquiring faith, such as 
they had obtained from the original auditors to whom they were 
addressed, they now found only among the multitude — alike 
retentive of traditional feeling? and fearful of criticizing the pro- 


’ Tatian. adv. Greecos, c. 20; Clemens Alexandrin. Admonit. ad Gentes, 
pp- 26-29, Sylb.; Minuc. Felix, Octav. c. 26. “Isti igitur impuri spiritus, ut 
dstensum a Magis, a philosophis, a Platone, sub statuis et imaginibus conse- 
“ΤΑΙ delitescunt, et afflatu suo quasi auctoritatem presentis numinis conse- 
quuntur,” etc. This, like so many other of the aggressive arguments of the 
Christians against paganism, was taken from the pagan philosophers them 
selves. 

Lactantius, De Vera Philosophia, iv. 28. “ Ergo iidem sunt Demones, 
. 10s fatentur execrandos esse: iidem Dii, quibus supplicant. Si nobis cre- 
@-ndum esse non putant, credant Homero; qui summum illum Jovem De 
monibus aggregavit,” etc. 

ἢ See above, Chapter II. p. 70, the remarks on the Hesiodic Theogony. 

* A destructive inundation took place at Pheneus in Arcadia, seemingly 
m the time of Plutarch: the subterranean outlet (βάραϑρον) of the river 
had become blocked up, and the inhabitants ascribed the stoppage to the 
anger of Apollo, who had been provoked by the stealing of the Pythian 
tripod by Héraklés: the latter had carried the tripod to Pheneus and de- 
posited it there. ‘Ap’ οὖν οὐκ ἀτοπώτερος τούτων ὁ ᾿Απόλλων, εἰ Φενεάτας 
ἀπύλλυσι τοὺς νῦν, ἐμφράξας τὸ βάραϑρον, καὶ κατακλύσας τὴν χώραν ἅπασαν 
αὐτῶν, ὅτι πρὸ χιλίων ἔτων, ὥς φασιν, ὁ Ἡρακλῆς ἀνασπάσας τὸν 1 ρίποδα 
τον μαντικὸν εἰς Φενεὸν ἀπήνεγκε; (Plutarch. de Sera Numin. Vindicta, 
Ρ 577; compare Pausan. viii. 14, 1.’ The expression of Platarch, that 
the abstraction of the tripod by Héraklés had taken place 1000 years 


428 HISTORY OF GREECE 


ceedings of the gods.! Bat with instructed men they became 
rather subjects of respectful and curious analysis — all agreeing 
that the Word as tendered to them was inadmissibl2, yet all equally 
convinced that it contained important meaning, though hidden 
yet not undiscoverable. A very large proportion of the force 
of Grecian intellect was engaged in searching after this unknown 
base, by guesses, in which sometimes the principle of semi-his 
torical interpretation was assumed, sometimes that of allegori 
cal, without any collateral evidence in either case, and without 
possibility of verification. Out of the one assumption grew 8 
string of allegorized phenomenal truths, out of the other a long 
series of seeming historical events and chronological persons, — 
both elicited from the transformed mythes and from nothing 


else.? 


before, is that of the critic, who thinks it needful to historicize and chronol- 
ogize the genuine iegend ; which, to an inhabitant of Pheneus, at the time of 
the inundation, was doubtless as little questioned as if the theft of Héraklés 
had been laid in the preceding generation. 

Agathoclés of Syracuse committed depredations on the coasts of Ithaca 
and Korkyra: the excuse which he offered was, that Odysseus had come to 
Sicily and blinded Polyphémus, and that on his return he had been kindly 
received by the Phseakians (Plutarch, i.). 

This is doubtless a jest, either made by Agathoclés, or more probably im» 
vented for him ; but it is founded upon a popular belief. 

' “ Sanctiusque et reverentius visum, de actis Deorum credere quam scire.” 
(Tacit. German. c. 34.) 

Aristidés, however, represents the Homeric theology (whether he would 
have included the Hesiodic we do not know) as believed quite literally among 
the multitude in his time, the second century after Christianity ( Aristid. Orat. 
fii. p. 25). ᾿Απορῶ, ὅπη πότε χρῇ μὲ διαϑέσϑαει ped ὑμῶν, πότερα ὡς τοῖς 
πολλοῖς δοκεῖ καὶ Ὁμήρῳ δὲ συνδοκεῖ, ϑεῶν παϑήματα συμπεισϑῆναι καὶ ἡμᾶς, 
οἷον ᾿Αρέος δέσμα καὶ ᾿Απόλλωνος ϑητείας καὶ Ἡφαίστου ῥίψεις εἰς ϑάλασσαν, 
οὕτω δὲ καὶ Ἰνοῦς ἄχη καὶ φυγάς τινας. Compare Lucian, Ζεὺς Τραγῶδος, 
6. 20, and De Luctu, ec. 3; Dionys. Halicar. A. R. ii. p. 90, Sylb. 

Kallimachus (Hymn. ad Jov. 9) distinctly denied the statement of the 
Kretans that they possessed in Kréte the tomb of Zeus, and treated it as ag 
instance of Kretan mendacity; while Celsus did not deny it, but explained 
it in some figurative manner — αἰνιττόμενος τροπικὰς ὑπονοίας (Origen. cont 
Celsum, iii. p. 137). 

* There is here a change as compared with my first edition; 1 had inserted 
bere some remarks on the allegorical theory of interpretation, as compared 
with the semi-historical. An able article on my work (in the Edirburgh 


SCHEME OF INTERPRETATION. 429. 


fhe utmost which we accomplish by means of the semi-his 
wrical theory, even in its most successful applications, is, that 
after leaving out from the mythical narrative all that is miracu- 
lous or high-colored or extravagant, we arrive at a series of credi- 
ble incidents — incidents which may, perhaps, have really ocour 
red, and against which no intrinsic presumption can be raised. 
This is exactly the character of a well-written modern novel (as, 
for example, several among the compositions of Defoe), the whole 
story of which is such as may well have occurred in real life: it 
is plausible fiction, and nothing beyond. To raise plausible fic- 
tion up to the superior dignity of truth, some positive testimony 
9r positive ground of inference must be shown; even the highest 
measure of intrinsic probability is not alone sufficient. A man 
who tells us that, on the day of the battle of Platea, rain fell on 
the spot of ground where the city of New York now stands, will 
neither deserve nor obtain credit, because he can have had no 
means of positive knowledge; though the statement is not in the 
slightest degree improbable. On the other hand, statements in 
themselves very improbable may well deservé belief, provided 
they be supported by sufficient positive evidence; thus the canal 
dug by order of Xerxés across the promontory of Mount Athos, 
and the sailing of the Persian fleet through it, is a fact which 1 
believe, because it is well-attested — notwithstanding its remark- 
able improbability, which so far misled Juvenal as to induce him 
to single out the narrative as a glaring example of Grecian men- 
dacity.! Again, many critics have observed that the general tale 
of the Trojan war (apart from the superhuman agencies) is not 
more improbable than that of the Crusades, which every one ad- 
mits to be an historical fact. But (even if we grant this position, 
which is only true to a small extent), it is not sufficient to show 
an analogy between the two cases in respect to negative presump- 
tions alone; the analogy ought to be shown to hold between them 


Review, October 1846), pointed out that those remarks required modification 
and that the idea of allegory in reference to the construction of the mythes 
was altogether inadmissible, 
Δ Juvenal, Sat. x. 174:— 
“Creditur olim 
Velificatus Athos, et quantum Grecia mendax 
Audet in histori4,” etc. 


480 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


in respect to positive certificate also. The Crusades are a curious 
phenomenon in history, but we accept them, nevertheless, as an 
unquestionable fact, because the antecedent improbability is sur- 
mounted by adequate contemporary testimony. When the like 
testimony, both in amount and kind, is produced to establish the 
historical reality of a Trojan war, we shall not hesitate to deal 
with the two events on the same footing. 

In applying the semi-historical theory to Grecian mythical nar- 
rative, it has been often forgotten that a certain strength of testi- 
mony, or positive ground of belief, must first be tendered, before 
we can be called upon to discuss the antecedent probability or 
improbability of the incidents alleged. The belief of the Greeks 
themselves, without the smallest aid of special or contemporary 
witnesses, has been tacitly assumed as sufficient to support the 
case, provided only sufficient deduction be made from the mythi- 
cal narratives to remove all antecedent improbabilities. It has 
been taken for granted that the faith of the people must have 
rested originally upon some particular historical event, involving 
the identical persons, things, and places which the original mythes 
exhibit, or at least the most prominent among them. But when 
we examine the pyschagogic influences predominant in the so- 
ciety among whom this belief originally grew up, we shall see 
that their belief is of little or no evidentiary value, and that the 
growth and diffusion of it may be satisfactorily explained without 
supposing any special basis of matters of fact. The popular 
faith, so far as it counts for anything, testifies in favor of the en- 
tire and literal mythes, which are now universally rejected as 
incredib:.| We have thus the very minimum of positive proof, 
' Colonel Sleeman observes, respecting the Hindoo historical mind — 
“ History to this people is all a fairy tale.” (Rambles and Recollections of 
an Indian Official. vol. i. ch. ix. p. 70.) And again, “ The popular poem of 
the Ramaen describes the abduction of the heroine by the monster king of 
Ceylon, Rawun ; and her recovery by means of the monkey general, Hun- 
nooman. Every word of this poem, the people assured me was written, if 
not by the hand of the Deity himself, at least by his inspiration, which was 
the same thing— and it must consequently be true. Ninety-nine out of a 
hundred, among the Hindoos, implicitly believe, not only every word of the 
poem, but every word of every poem that has ever been written in Sanscrit. 


If you ask a man whether he really believes any very egregious absurdity 
quoted from these books, he replies, with the greatest nv tveté in the world, Is 


TRUTH UNDISTINGUISHABLE FROM FICTION. 48] 


and the maximum of negative presumption: we may diminish 
the latter by conjectural omissions and interpolations, but we can- 
not by any artifice increase the former: the harrative ceases to 
be incredible, but it still remains uncertified, — a mere common. 
place possibility. Nor is fiction always, or essentially, extrava- 
gant and incredible. It is often not only plausible and coherent, 
but even more like truth (if a paradoxical phrase may be allow- 
ed) than truth itself. Nor can we, in the absence of any extrin 
sic test, reckon upon any intrinsic mark to discriminate the one 
from the other.! 


it not written in the book ; and how should it be there written, if not true? 
The Hindoo religion reposes upon an entire prostration of mind, — thag 
continual and habitual surrender of the reasoning faculties, which we are 
accustomed to make occasionally, while engaged at the theatre, or in the 
perusal of works of fiction. We allow the scenes. characters, and incidents, 
to pass before our mind’s eye, and move our feelings — without stopping 8 
moment to ask whether they are real or true. There is only this difference 
— that with people of education among us, even in such short intervals of 
illusion or abandon, any extravagance in the acting, or flagrant improbability 
in the fiction, destroys the charm, breaks the spell by which we have been 30 
mysteriously bound, and restores us to reason and the realities of ordi 

life. With the Hindoos, on the contrary, the greater the improbability, the 
more monstrous and preposterous the fiction — the greater is the charm it 
has over their minds; and the greater their learning in the Sanscrit, the 
More are they under the influence of this charm. Believing all to be written 
by the Deity, or under his inspirations, and the men and things of former 
days to have been very different from men and things of the present day, 
and the heroes of these fables to have been demigods, or people endowed 
with powers far superior to those of the ordinary men of their own day — 
the analogies of nature are never for a moment considered ; nor do questions 
of probability, or possibility, according to those analogies, ever obtrude to 
dispel the charm with which they are so pleasingly bound. They go oa 
through life reading and talking of these monstrous fictions, which shock 
the taste and understanding of other nations, without ever questioning ‘he 
trath of one single incident, or hearing it questiened. There was a time, 
end that not far distant, when it was the same in England, and in every 
other European nation ; and there are, I am afraid, some parts of Europe 
where it is so still. But the Hindoo faith, so tar as religious questions are 
eoncerned, is not more capacious or absurd than that of the Greeks or Ro- 
mans in the days of Socrates or Cicero: the only difference is, that among 
the Hindoos a greater number of the questions which interest mankinc are 
brought under the head of religion.” (Sleeman, Rambles, etc., vol. i ch 
ΧΧΥΪ. p. 227: compare vol. ii. ch. v. p. 51 ; viii. p. 97.) 

* Lord Lyttleton, in commenting on the tales of the Irish bards, in his 


Vol. 1 20 


452 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


In the semi-historical theory respecting Grecian mythical ὍΣ 
rative, the critic unconsciously transports into the ee | > 
those habits of classification and distincticn, and that — Oo 
acceptance or rejection, which he finds current in ee 
Amongst us, the distinction between historiwal fact and seg ig 
highly valued as well as familiarly understood: we have a ong 
history of the past, deduced from a study of contemporary ct 
dences ; and we have a body of fictitious literature, nit 
with its own mark and interesting in its own way. pe ng 
generally, no man could now hope to succeed permanently “ 
transferring any striking incident from the latter category bn 
the former, nor could any man deliberately attempt it withou 
incurring well-merited obloquy. But this historical sense, Now 80 
deeply rooted in the modern mind that we find a difficulty - po 
ceiving any people to be without it, is the fruit of recor . a 
inquiries, first applied to the present, and then — den 
studied by subsequent generations 3 while in a society w τ : " 
not yet formed the habit of recording its present, the rea τν 
of the past can never be known; the difference between attes 


History of Henry IL., has the following just remarks ΜΕ iv. we eae t 
uarto): “One may reasonably suppose that in MSS. written mee Ὁ 

; eived the Roman letters from St. Patrick, some traditional truths recor 
before by the bards in their unwritten poems may have been preserved to our 


times. Yet these cannot be so separated from many fabulous stories derived 
from the same sources, as to obtain a firm credit; it not being tonnage 5 
i ity iti that they can be shown no 
the authority of suspected traditions, ; 

ti tS > absurd as others with which they are mixed —sinca 
there may be specious as well as senseless fictions. Nor can a poet or bard, 
who lived in the sixth or seventh century after Christ, if his poem " still 
extant, be any voucher for facts supposed to have happened before the nd 
carnation ; though hie evidence (allowing for poetical apt > 

ai + 

i h matters as come within his own time, or t e remem 

et with ann he conversed. The most judicious historians pay no 
sl to the Welsh or British traditions delivered by Geoffrey “ Monmouth, 
though it is not impossible but that some of these may be true. Sn 

One definition of a mythe given by Plutarch coincides exactly wi 
wus fiction: Ὃ μῦϑος εἶναι βούλεται λόγος ψευδὴς ἐοικὼς ἀληϑινῷ (Pla- 
i Bellone an pace clariores fuerunt Athenienses, p. 348). ὥς. 
“Der Grund-Trieb des Mythus (Creuzer justly expresses eo od 

dachte in ein Geschehenes umzusetzen.” (Symbolik der Alten t, 


48. p. 99." 


SEMI HISTORICAL THEORY. 498 


matter of fact and plausible fiction — between truth and that 
which is like truth—can neither be discerned nor sought for. 
Yet it is precisely upon the supposition that this distinction js 
present te men’s habitual thoughts, that the semi-historical theory 
of the mythes is grounded. 

It is perfectly true, as has often been Stated, that the Grecian 
epic contains what are called traditions respecting the past — the 
larger portion of it, indeed, consists of nothing else. But what 
are these traditions? They are the matter of those songs and 
stories which have acquired hold on the public mind; they are 
the creations of the poets and storytellers themselves, each of 
whom finds some preéxisting, and adds others of his own, new 
ind previously untold, under the impulse and authority of the 
mspiring Muse. Homer doubtless found many songs and stories 
current with respect to the siege of Troy; he received and trans- 
mitted some of these traditions, recast and transformed others, 
and enlarged the whole mass by new creations of his own. To 
the subsequent poets, such as Arktinus and Leschés, these Ho- 
meric creations formed portions of preexisting tradition, with 
which they dealt in the same manner; so that the whole mass of 
traditions constituting the tale of Troy became larger and larger 
rith each successive contributor. To assume a generic differ- 
ce between the older and the newer strata of tradition — to 
reat the former as morsels of history, and the latter as appen- 
lages of fiction —is an hypothesis gratuitous at the least, not to 
say inadmissible. For the further we travel back into the past, 
the more do we recede from the clear day of positive history, 
and the deeper do we plunge into the unsteady twilight and 
gorgeous clouds of fancy and feeling. It was one of the agree- 
able dreams of the Grecian epic, that the man who travelled far 
*nough northward beyond the Rhipwan mountains, would in time 
teach the delicious country and genial climate of the virtuous 
Hyperboreans — the votaries and favorites of Apollo, who dwelt 
un the extreme north beyond the chilling blasts of Boreas. Now 
‘he hope that we may, by carrying our researches up the stream 
of time, exhaust the limits of fiction, and land ultimately upon 
some points of solid truth, appears to me no less illusory than 
his northward journey in quest of the Hyperborean elysium. 


VOL. I. 19 2800. 


434 AISTORY OF GREECE. 


The general disposition to adopt the semi-historical theory aa 
to the genesis of Grecian mythes, arises in part from reluctance 
in critics to impute to the mythopm@ic ages extreme credulity or 


fraud ; together with the usual presumption, that where much is 


believed some portion of it must be true. There would be some 


weight in these grounds of reasoning, if the ages under discus- 
sion had been supplied with records and accustomed to critical 
inquiry. But amongst a people unprovided with the former and 
strangers to the latter, credulity is naturally at its maximum, as 
well in the narrator himself as in his hearers: the idea of delib- 
erate fraud is moreover inapplicable,' for if the hearers are dis- 
posed to accept what is related to them as a revelation from the 
Muse, the estrus of composition is quite sufficient to impart 8 
similar persuasion to the poet whose mind is penetrated with it. 
The belief of that day can hardly be said to stand apart by itself 


as an act of reason. It becomes confounded with vivacious im- 


agination and earnest emotion; and in every case where these 
mental excitabilities are powerfully acted upon, faith ensues un- 


consciously and as a matter of course. How active and promi- 


nent such tendencies were among the early Greeks, the extraor- 
dinary beauty and originality of their epic poetry may teach us. 
It is, besides, a presumption far too largely and indiscriminately 


applied, even in our own advanced age, that where much is be- 


lieved, something must necessarily be true—that accredited 
fiction is always traceable to some basis of historical truth.2 The 


‘In reference to the |oose statements of the Highlanders, Dr. Johnson ob- 
serves, “He that goes into the Highlands with a mind naturally acquies- 
cent, and a credulity eager for wonders, may perhaps come back with an 
opinion very different from mine ; for the inhabitants, knowing the ignorance 
of all strangers in their language and antiquities, are perhaps not very scru- 
pulous adherents to truth; yet I do not say that they deliberately speak stud- 
ied falsehood, or have a settled purpose to deceive. They have acquired and 
considered little, and do not always feel their own ignorance. They are not 
much accustomed to be interrogated by others, and seem never to have thought 
of interrogating themselves ; so that tf they do not know what they tell to be true, 
they likewise do not distinctly perceive it to be false. Mr. Boswell was very dili- 
gent in his inquiries, and the result of his investigations was, that the answer 
to the second question was commonly such as nullified the answer to the 
first.” (Journey to the Western Islands, p. 272, Ist edit., 1775). 

£ J considered this position more at large in an article in the “ Westminstes 


PLATSIBLE FICTION, HOW GENERATED 435 


mfinence of imagination and feeling ia nut confined simply to the 
process of retouching, transforming, ὁ ἌΡΗ ἥν“ 
originally founded on fact: it will Roars i. aa a 
its own, without any such preliminary basis. εν, = 
general body of sentiment pervading men living in i fe mtd 
it be religious or political — love. admiration, or ant μέθῃ a 
mncidents tending to illustrate that sentiment are so i τῇ 
comed, rapidly circulated and (as a general rule) easil ‘i é Ν "4 
ited. If real incidents are not at hand. impressive mis ᾿ oie 
be provided to satisfy the demand. The perfect tice y | f “ 
fictions with the prevalent feeling stands in the sine ak - 
fying testimony, and causes men to hear them not merely with 
credence, but even with delight: to call them in qnestion ‘a 
require proof, is a task which eannot be undertaken withor Pi 
curring obloquy. Of such tendencies in the human him ype τῇ 
dant evidence is furnished by the innumerable religious Seite 
which have acquired currency in various parts of the world Fi 
of which no country was more fertile than Greece ἢ ] Ἶ ai 
which derived their origin, not from special facts fa 23 
exaggerated, but from pious feelings pervading the ite mr 
translated into narrative by forward and "ἀν τέβαςρδνι προ ‘ia 
legends, in which not merely the incidents. hei often pra 
personages are unreal, yet in which the generating sentiment 7 
conspicuously discernible. providing its own misttor as well ‘ y 
— form. Other sentiments also. as well as tlie κἄν, τῇ 
vided they be fervent and widely diffused, will find suis Ye 
current narrative, and become portions of the general pablic he- 
lief — every celebrated and notorious character is the niles f 
a thcusand fictions exemplifying his peculiarities, kul if it be 
true, as | think present observation may show us, thee such ol. 
tive agencies are even now visible and effective. when the tie. 
rials of genuine history are copious and critically studied as il 
more are we warranted in concluding that, in ages destitute of 
records, strangers to historical testimony, and fall of belief a) 
oe gfe apr both as to the future and as to the past pawn 
ives u = were. ΄ ἘΨΞ . - " 
purely fictitious will acquire ready and uninquiring credence, 


Review” for May 1843 ‘ viel s Greek. i ἃ acl seal 
r May, 1843, on Niebuhr’s Greek Le i ; ' 
gends, with which ; 
much in the present chapter will be found to coincide. 


436 HISTORY OF GREECE 


provided only they be plausible and in harmony witl: tke precon- 
ceptions of the auditors. 
The allegorical interpretation of the mythes has been by seve- 

ral learned investigators, especially by Creuzer, connected with 
the hypothesis of an ancient and highly instructed body of priests, 
having their origin either in Egypt or in the East, and communi- 
eating to the rude and barbarous Greeks religious, physical, and 
historical knowledge under the veil of symbols. At a time (we 
are told) when language was yet in its infancy, visible symbols 
were the most vivid means of acting upon the minds of ignorant 
hearers: the next step was to pass to symbolical language and 
expressions — for a plain and literal exposition, even if understood 
at all, would at least have been listened to with indifference, as 
not corresponding with any mental demand. In such allegoriz 

ing way, then, the early priests set forth their doctrines respect 
ing God, nature, and humanity —a refined monotheism and a 
theological philosophy — and to this purpose the earliest mythes 
were turned. But another class of mythes, more popular and 
more captivating, grew up under the hands of the poets — mythes 
purely epical, and descriptive of real or supposed past events. 
The allegorical mythes, being taken up by the poets, insensibly 
became confounded in the same category with the purely narra- 
tive mythes —the matter symbolized was no longer thought of, 
while the symbolizing words came to be construed in their own, 
literal meaning — and the basis of the early allegory, thus lost 
among the general public, was only preserved as a secret among 
various religious fraternities, composed of members allied together 
by initiation in certain mystical ceremonies, and administered by 
hereditary families of presiding priests. In the Orphic and Bac- 
chic sects, in the Eleusinian and Samothracian mysteries, was 
thus treasured up the secret doctrine of the old theological and 
philosophical mythes, which had once constituted the primitive 
legendary stock of Greece, in the hands of the original priest- 
hood and in ages anterior to Homer. Persons who had gone 
through the preliminary ceremonies of initiation, were permitted 
at length to hear, though under strict obligation of secrecy, thit 
ancient religious and cosmogonic doctrine, revealing the destina- 
tion of man and the certainty of posthumous rewards and punish- 


THEORIES OF LEARNED MEN. 437 


ments — all disengaged from the corruptions of poets, as well as 
from the symbols and allegories under which they still remained 
buried in the eyes of the vulgar. The mysteries of Greece were 
thus traced up to the earliest ages, and represented as the only 
faithful depository channels of that purer theology and physics 
which had originally been communicated, though under the 
unavoidable inconvenience of a symbolical expression, by an 
enlightened priesthood coming from abroad to the then rude 
barbarians of the country.! 


' For this general character of the Grecian mysteries, with their concealed 
treasure of doctrine, see Warburton, Divine Legation of Moses, book ii. sect. 4. 

Payne Knight, On the Symbolical Language of ancient Art and Mytholo- 
gy, sect. 6, 10, 11, 40, ete. 

Saint Croix, Recherches sur les Mysttres du Paganisme, sect. 3, p. 106; 
sect 4,/p. 404, etc. 

Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der Alten Volker, sect. 2, 3, 23, 39, 
42, etc. Meiners and Heeren adopt generally the same view, though there 
are many divergences of opinion between these different authors, on a sub- 
ject essentially obscure. Warburton maintained that the interior doctrine 
communicated in the mysteries was the existence of one Supreme Divinity, 
combined with the Euemeristic creed, that the pagan gods had been mere 
men. 

See Clemens Alex. Strom. v. p. 582, Sylb. 

The view taken by Hermann of the ancient Greek mythology is in many 
points similar to that of Creuzer, though with some considerable difference. 
He thinks that it is an aggregate of doctrine — philosophical, theological, 
physical, and moral — expressed under a scheme of systematic personifica- 
tions, each person being called by a name significant of the function personi- 
fied: this doctrine was imported from the East into Greece, where the poets, 
retaining or translating the names, but forgetting their meaning and connec- 
tion, distorted the primitive stories, the sense of which came to be retained 
only in the ancient mysteries. That true sense, however, (he thinks,) may be 
recovered by a careful analysis of the significant names: and his two disser- 
tations (De Mythologid Greecorum Antiquissima, in the Opuscula, vol. ii.) 
exhibit a specimen of this systematic expansion of etymology into narrative. 
The dissent from Creuzer is set forth in their published correspondence, 
especially in his concluding “ Brief an Creuzer iiber das Wesen und die 
Behandlung der Mythologie,” Leipzig, 1819. The following citation from 
his Latin dissertation sets forth his general doctrine : — 

Hermann, De MythologiA Grecorum Antiquissima, p. 4 (Opuscula, vol. 
fi. p. 171): “ Videmus rerum divinarum humsnarumque scientiam ex 
Asia per Lyciam migrantem in Kuropam: videmus fabulosos poétas pere- 
grinam doctrinam, monstruoso tumore orientis sive exutam, sive nondwm, 


428 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


But this theory, though advocated by several learned men, has 


been shown to be unsupported and erroneous. It implies a mis- 


taken view both of the antiquity and the purport of γεν: ss 
ries, which cannot be safely carried up even to the age ὁ — 
and which, though imposing and venerable as religious ceremo- 
nies, included no recondite or esoteric teaching.! 


i antes; videmus poétas, ill 
indutam, quasi de integro Gracd specie procreantes; vicemus poéta Ἢ ne, 
π᾿ ὩΣ νὰ ἷ ini Ὁ arte, qua clarebant, petitis —- 
‘ra nomina nominibus — ab arte, q ‘ 
uorum omnium vera I ! ne ig 
i ea sunt, din in Thracid herentes, raroque tandem a a feos 
celle i ipse niens 
G ie partibus commercio junctos: qualis Pamphus, non ipse Ath« ee Ν 
ete ‘iil i ide ni etrus aulatir 
Atheniensibus hymnos Deorum fecit. Videmus denique retrusam ee 
in myst riorum secretam illam sapientum doctrinam, vitiatam relig = 
i | | itia i itate amcenio 
rturbatione corruptam inscitid interpretum, obscuratam “eo at seer 
a ntium —adeo ut eam ne illi quidem intelligerent, qui heerec itarié oy 
ἯΝ a ἐν ἱ ii stantiA stinguere 
μεν wibus poésin colentes, quum ingenil prestantia omnes stent πέρβερσς 
Ε Γ ' " , Nae * ᾿ ᾿ m Ν j ic 
ate illos oblivione merserunt, ut ipsi sint primi auctores omnis eru 
nta { rs 
abiti.” ui ne 
᾿ Hermann thinks, however, that by pursuing the suggestions of dt vey, 
. 1 ᾿ ing like a history compiled, 
i 5 ike a his i 
i i . discovered, and something ᾿ ἱ 
vestiges may still be d gk Pg RB 
Grecian belief as it stood anterior to Homer and Hesiod: ni oO 
ΟἹ: ὃ ‘ide i * ae g ur, se 
hac omni ratione judicio maxime opus, quia non te _ - a ct 
" 5 , , 
interpretandi solertiam omnia revocanda sunt (Ρ. bea}, " τ sp Ss 
l : 56 the French work of M. Emérie David, Recherches ses ; ᾿ 
UrpOSs Fata Militlliems ων νὰ 
ie / “s reviewed by O. Miiller: see the Kleine Schriften of the lat 
upiter —~ ν᾿ . 
: 9 | 3 
᾿" .B ant has also employed a profusion of learning, and numerous 
r. Bry 80 6 thes into mistakes, perver- 
etymological conjectures, to resolve the Greek mythes into = ye | ὧν 
« 7 * mn ne ca ᾿ ribes : . 
sions, and mutilations, of the exploits and doctrines of orienta πῆρ : a 
Ἴ i <i 2 " as Noa 
1 by-vone. -— Amonians, Cuthites, Arkites, etc. It ν᾿ 5 ᾿ 
nse st he different names of Thoth, Hermés, 
thinks) who was represented under the diffe ce cee 
. : : τ s, to which lis 
; iris, Zeut Phordéneus, Prométheus, 
Menés, Osiris, Zeuth, Atlas, pea nee 
number of great extent might be added: the Νοῦς of peta ap thy 
δὴ on* ‘é aC ω 
reality the patriarch Noah” (Ant. Mythol. vol. ii. PP. 258; og ig bi 
ites or Amonians, descendants of Noah, settled in Greece oe hogs 
) i ill i ilding and the arts” (2b. 1. p. 502; 1]. p. 
celebrated for their skill in building an : ΣΝ μὰ 
! i y misconce 
ἢ the Grecian theology arose from 
ro nanan tigi on their gods and heroes were founded on terms 
ies ni 
blunders, the stories concer ssa 
misinterpreted or abused” (ib. i. p. 452). “ The — of δὴ τῷ 4 
ascribed to the various Grecian gods or ἫΝ all " a ἮΝ ΠΡ 
, ib. ii. p. 57). 
i ne and the same history 
family. and are at bottom o oe 
; Ti sient Amonian temples, 
ethe us were taken from ancie 
fables of Prométheus and Tity ont Den ae 
i i : Σ ned” (i. p. : see 
from hieroglyphics misunderstood and badly explai (i. p 


especially vol. ii. p. 160. 
The Anti-Symbolik of Voss, and still more the Aglaophan-us of Lobeck, 


TRIPLE THEOLOGY or PAC ANTS.A. 439 


Che doctrine, supposed to have been originally symbolize. and 
suvsequently overclouded, in the Greek mythes, was in reality 
first intruded into them by the unconscious fancies of later inter- 
preters. It was one of the various roads which instructed men 
took to escape from the literal admission of the ancient mythes, 
and to arrive at some new form of belief, more consonant with 
their ideas of what the attributes and character of the gods ought 
to be. It was one of the ways of constituting, by help of the 
mysteries, a philosophical religion apart from the general public, 
and of connecting that distinction with the earliest periods of 
Grecian society. Such a distinction was both avowed and justi- 
fied among the superior men of the later pagan world. Varro 
and Scevola distributed theology into three distinct departments, 
-—the mythical or fabulous, the civil, and the physical. The 
first had its place in the theatre, and was left without any inter- 
ference to the poets; the second belonged to the city of political 
community as such, — it comprised the regulation of all the public 
worship and religious rites, and was consigned altogether to the 
direction of the magistrate ; the third was the privilege of philo- 
sophers, but was reserved altogether for private discussion in the 
schools, apart from the general public.' As a member of the 


are full of instruction on the subject of this supposed interior doctrine, and 
on the ancient mysteries in general: the latter treatise, especially, is not 689 
distinguished for its judicious and circumspect criticism than for its copious 
learning. 

Mr. Halhed (Preface to the Gentoo Code of Laws, pp. xiii—xiv.) has good 
observations on the vanity of all attempts to allegorize the Hindu mytholo- 
gy: he observes, with perfect truth, “ The vulgar and illiterate have always 
understood the mythology of their country in its literal sense; and there 
was a time to every nation, when the highest rank in it was equally vulgar 
and illiterate with the lowest..........A Hindu esteems the astonishing 
miracles attributed to a Brima, or a Kishen, as facts of the most indubitable 
authenticity, and the relation of them as most strictly historical.” 

Compare also Gibbon’s remarks on the allegorizing tendencies of the later 
Platonists (Hist. Decl. and Fall, vol. iv. Ρ. 71). 

' Varro, ap. Augustin. De Civ. Dei, iv. 27; vi. 5-6. “ Dicis fabulosos 
Deos accommodatos esse ad theatrum, naturales ad mundum, civiles ad 
urbem.” “ Varro, de religionibus loquens, multa esse vera dixit, quz non 
modo vulgo scire non sit utile, sed etiam tametsi falsa sint, aliter existimare 
populum expediat: et ideo Grecos teletas οἱ mysteria taciturnitate parieti 
busque clausisse” (ibid iv 21) See Villoison, De Triplici Theolugia Com 


440 HISTORY OF GREECE 


city, the philcsopher sympathized — ; pe a 
tre, and took a devout share in the esta is Θ ᾿ re sas “i 
was he justified in trying what he heard in : gs private 88» 
the other by his own ethical standard. But in " tthe fallest 
semblies of instructed or psn ae vont re ahaa his 
liberty of canvassing every receives enet, ὁ a it 1 nature 

\ oares unreservedly, respecting the emeaaacamnth and . 
ae rien By these aii the activity of psig a4 
cal mind was maintained and truth elicited ; ng: ah ysthe a 
as the body of the people ought not . . prea ἢ" ᾿ μιαιβ ἡνραμονηθααη 
their own established religious worship shou : 2 198 ii 
In thus distinguishing the civil theology from the ta . a pe 
was enabled to cast upon ee = apatite! the neces- 
tionable points in the popular theology, ων « = es, 
ing censure On the magistrates, who (ἢ 


ity of pronounc . mite: 
ened good a compromise with the settled prejudices 


ed) had made as ' 
of the public as the case permitted. 

The same conflicting sentiments trolled the histo 
decompose the divine myth Hythes into something Uke contin 

“ans to melt down the heroic mythes ᾿ me . 

nous political history, with a long series of chronology calculator 
upon the heroic pedigrees. The one process as γμμδρηνασ νι el 
was interpretative guesswork, proceeding pie while it 
sumptions, and without any verifying _ μὴ πὰ, μπϑὼν 
frittered away the characteristic beauty of t μέρες site an Na 
thing essentially anti-mythical, it snag " ᾿ πὰ es ag" 
and philosophy by impracticable roads. ἀξ" vi tail 
antiquity should have striven hard to save the ir te be aa 
which constituted the charm of their eno epee sich ag 8 
stance of the popular religion, - — pst ta aan lt 


which led the philosophers to 


De Origin. Error. ii. 3. The doctrine of 
“Magn. v. TeAerai — Χρύσιππος de 
ἱκότως καλεῖσϑαι τελετὰς, χρῆναι δ 
ἐπὶ πᾶσι διδάσκεσϑαι, τῆς ψυχῆς ἐχούσης ἕρμα 


i ; tius, 
mentatio, p. 8; and Lactantius, ᾿ 
the Stoic Chrysippus, 80. Etymologic on 
ψησι, τοὺς περὶ τῶν ϑείων λόγους ε 

ὑτους τελευταίους καὶ ; ‘ γυχῆς Exe 
pes A καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἀμνήτους σιωπᾷν δυναμένης ᾿ μέγα 


ὧν ἀκοῦσαί αἱ ἐγκρατεῖς γενέσϑαι αὐτῶν. 
ὑπὲρ ϑεῶν ἀκοῦσαι TE ὀρϑὰ, κ : di 
"a triple division of Varro is reproduced in Platarch, πυριρνξῃ 5: ἃ 
μύϑῳ, τὰ δὲ νόμῳ, τὰ δὲ λόγῳ, πίστιν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἔσχηκε τῆς δ' ο — 
po ἄμ ὦ παντάπασιν ἡγεμόνε, καὶ διδάσκαλοι γεγόνασιν ἡμῖν 


ποιπταὶ, καὶ κἱ νουόϑεται καὶ τρίτον, ak φιλόσοφοι 


γὰρ εἶναι τὸ 


OPINION OF PLATQ 441 


it is gratifying to find Plato discussing the subject in a more 
philosophical spirit. The Platonic Socratés, being asked whether 
he believed the current Attic fable respecting the abduction of 
Oreithyia (daughter of Erechtheus) by Boreas, replies, in sub- 
stance, — “It would not be strange if I disbelieved it, as the 
clever men do; I might then show my cleverness by saying that 
a gust of Boreas blew her down from the rocks above while she 
was at play, and that, having been killed in this manner, she was 
reported to have been carried off by Boreas. Such speculations 
are amusing enough, but they belong to men ingenious and busy- 
minded overmuch, and not greatly to be envied, if it be only for 
this reason, that, after having set right one fable, they are under the 
necessity of applying the same process to a host of others — Hippo- 
centaurs, Chimeras, Gorgons, Pegasus, and numberless other 
monsters and incredibilities. A man, who, disbelieving these 
stories, shall try to find a probable basis for each of them, will 
display an ill-placed acuteness and take upon himself an endless 
burden, for which I at least have no leisure: accordingly, I 
forego such researches, and believe in the current version of the 
stories.”! 

These remarks of Plato are valuable, not simply because they 
point out the uselessness of digging for a supposed basis of truth 
in the mythes, but because they at the same time suggest the 
true reason for mistrusting all such tentatives. The mythes form 


! Plato, Pheedr. c. 7. p. 229: — 

Puzprvus. Εἰπέ μοι, ὦ Σώκρατες, od τοῦτο τὸ μυϑολόγημα πείϑει dAndic 
εἶναι ; 

Socrates. ‘AAA’ εἰ ἀπιστοίην, ὥσπερ οἱ σοφοὶ, οὐκ ἂν ἄτοπος εἴην, εἶτα 
σοφιζόμενος φαΐην αὐτὴν πνεῦμα Βορέου κατὰ τῶν πλῆσιον πετρῶν σὺν φαρ- 
wakeia παίζουσαν ὦσαι, καὶ οὕτω δὴ τελευτήσασαν λεχϑῆναι ὑπὸ τοῦ Βορέου 
ἀναρπαστὸν γεγονέναι .« «ἸἘΝγὼ δὲ, ὦ Φαῖδρε, ἄλλως μὲν τὰ τοιαῦτα 
χαρίεντα ἡγοῦμαι, λίαν δὲ δεινοῦ καὶ ἐπιπόνου καὶ οὐ πάνυ εὐτυχοῦς ἀνδρὸς, 
κατ᾽ ἄλλο μὲν οὐδὲν, ὅτι δ᾽ αὐτῷ ἀνάγκη μετὰ τοῦτο τὸ τῶν Ἱπποκενταύρων 
εἶδος ἐπανορϑτῦσϑαι, καὶ αὖϑις τὸ τῆς Χιμαίρας. Καὶ ἐπιῤῥει δὲ ὄχλος τοιοῦ» 
τῶν Γοργόνων καὶ Πηγάσων, καὶ ἄλλων ἀμηχάνων πλήϑη τε καὶ ἀτόπιαι τερα» 
τολόγων τινῶν φύσεων" αἷς εἴ τις ἀπιστῶν προσβιβᾷ κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἕκαστον͵ 
ἅτε ἀγροίκῳ τινι σοφίᾳ χρώμενος, πολλῆς αὐτῷ σχολῆς δεήσει. "Epot δὲ πρὸς 
ταῦτα οὐδαμῶς ἔστι σχολῇ ............. Ὄϑεν δὴ χαίρειν ἐάσας ταῦτα, 
πειϑύμενος δὲ τῷ νοωμιζομένῳ περὶ αὐτῶν, ὃ νὲν δὴ ἔλεγον, σκοπῶ οὐ ταῦγα ἀλλ 
ἐμουτὸν, etc. 

195 


442 HISTORY OF GREECE 
well as peculiar: to remove any ind 
Jass into that of history or philosophy, 
any collateral evidence, is of no 
age, unless you can perform a similar process on the re- 
If the process be trustworthy, it ought to be applied to 
it be not applicabie to all, it is not trust- 
worthy as applied to any one specially ; always assuming no 
evidence to be accessible. To detach any individual 
it belongs, is to present it in an 


a class apart, abundant as 
vidual mythe from its own ¢ 
by simple conjecture, and without 
advant 


mainder. 
all: and ὁ converso, if 


special 
rom the class to which 


mythe { 
we have no choice except to admit them 


erroneous point of view ; 
as they stand, by putting 
frame of mind of those for w 
they appeared worthy of credit. 

If Plato thus discountenances all atte 
ation into history or philosophy, indirectly 
recognizing the generic difference between them — we find sub- 
stantially the same view pervading the elaborate precepts in his 
treatise on the Republic. He there regards the mythes, not as 
embodying either matter-of-fact or philosophical principle, but as 


ourselves approximatively into the 
hom they were destined and to whom 


mpts to transform the 


mythes by interpret 


and patriotic faith, and instruments of ethical 


portions of religious 
tuition. Instead of allowing the poets to frame them according 
Go a 


to the impulses of their own eenius, and with a view to imme 

liate popularity, he directs the legislator to provide types of his 
own for the characters of the gods and heroes, and to suppress all 
such divine and heroic legends as are not in harmony with these 
preéstablished canons. In the Platonic system, the mythes are 
not to be matters of history, nor yet of spontaneous or casual fic- 
tion, but of prescribed faith: he supposes that the people will 
believe, as a thing of course, what the poets circulate, and he 


that the latter shall circulate nothing which does 
He conceives the 


1 sentiments 


therefore directs 
not tend to ennoble and improve the feelings. 


stories composed to illustrate the genera 


mythes as 
respecting the character and 


of the poets and the community, 
attributes of the gods and heroes, or respecting the social relations, 
and ethical duties as well as motives of mankind: hence the obli- 
gation upon the legislator to prescribe beforehand the types of 
character which shall be illustrated, and to restrain the poets from 
following out any opposing fancies. “ Let us neither believe our: 
selves (he exclaims), nor permit any one to circulate, that The 


OPINION OF PLATU. 448 


seus son of Poseidén and Peirithéus son of Ze 

hero or son of a god, could ever have b ΜΝ ΨΗΣ ΨΕΜΝ 
commit abductions or where rought themselves to 

nn ons or other enormities such as are now fal 

ascribed to them. We must compel the poets to sa 7 sely 
such persons were not the sons of gods, or that the 8 ee 
perpetrators of such misdeeds.” Te 
Most of the mythes which the youth hear and ‘ 

me © Plato) are false, but some of them ‘si cat ee cannes 
promnent mythes which appear in Homer and Hesiod iin i 
Beticna than the rest. But fiction constitutes ot oe sie [688 
pensable instruments of mental training as well as : οἱ — 
ane legislator must take care that the fiction so em ' rn Bes 
beneficent and not mischievous.2. ΑΒ the πόνον se ΚἊΝ ἫΝ 
(he says) take their rise from wrong ΘΈΡΟΣ ee 
me character of the*gods and heroes, so the an ἰὼ τῷ fib 
is to enforce, by authorized compositions, the adopti mai psn 
forrect standard.* pion of a mora 


' Plato, Repub. iii. 5. p. 391. The perfect igt ; ie 
oe — pice task of fiction τῶν lane Waa zx 1071 isi 
ὡς δ eae gg 16. p. gible appar δὲ διττὸν εἶδος, τὸ μὲν ἀληϑὲς͵ Wed- 
f κα I τ Παιδευτέον ὁ ἐν ἀμφοτέροις, πρότερον δ' ἐν τοῖς ψεύδε. 
ee μὰν ἄνεες, ὅτι πρῶτον τοῖς παιδίοις μύϑους λέγομεν " τοῦτο δέ 
᾿ ς Ὁ set ψεῦδος, ἕνε δὲ καὶ ἀληϑῆ.......ςς Πρῶτον ἡμῖν é 
ag pra ry eet, Kai ὃν μὲν ἂν καλὸν μῦϑον ποιῆσωσιν, ee: 
οὗς Ἡσίοδος cane τῇ 5: fest λέγουσι, τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐκβλητέον 
γάρ που μύϑους τοῖ delete thes ἐλεγέτην, καὶ of ἄλλοι ποιηταί. Οὗτοι 
Hloiov δὴ, ἡ & bc, καὶ ν αὐτῶν; wae haptic Sete τε pli sage 
Ποίους 8 8 ὅς, καὶ τί αὐτὸν μειφόμενος λέγεις Ὅπερ, ἣν δ᾽ ἐνὸς, χρὴ καὶ 
τοῦτο; Ὅταν τις phe aa po 4 =e μη Ἂς pga neg ag 
wa γραφεὺς μηδὲν ἐοικότα ων» με ων ated pie ia = wii 
am erg bie wd thought, and the precepts founded upon it, are followed 
ei 7 aps. 17, 18, and 19; compare De Legg. xii. p. 941. 
snares or hore setineiomemaeasoean at 
ey ger and merges it as — ὀθονλομ ον 
ὦ pid typ ty 21. p- 382. Τὸ ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ψεῦδος πότε καὶ τί γρῇ- 
iil alan Bigs salitetig ᾿ Ap’ οὐ πρός τε τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ τῶν 
"ὦ dike Pesach ᾿ ιὰ μανίαν ἥ τινα ἄνοιαν κακόν τι ἐπιχειρῶσι πράτ- 
νῦν δὴ ἐλέγο " 4 fon ee a. χρήσιμον yiyverar; Καὶ ἐν αἷς 
ἡ φήαρ ἐηρην μ αἷς μυϑολογίαις, dea τὸ μὴ εἰδέναι bag 
hee ς ἔχει περὶ τῶν παλαιῶν, ἀφομοιοῦντες τῷ GA 
»ν ἃ ψεῦὺ δος, ὅτι μάλιστα, οὕτω χρήσιμον ποιοῦμεν. ΠΥ » 


444 HISTORY OF GREECE 


The comments which Plato has delivered with so much ἣν 
3 whic from them, 
i ttments which he deduces | 
his Republic, and the enac ' oe é 
: ate an expansion of that sentiment of oe 
which he shared with so many other philosophers, igi a ~~ 
iodi ies.! ut the man 
d Hesiodic stories. 
rtion of the Homeric and Hes eseatyerter varie 
i i as set forth this opinion, unfolds to us mo 
in which he has set for Th -ὡμδν dil 
‘thical narratives. ey are ὁ 
real character of the my ‘ ν 
the productive minds in the community, deduced from ; Ῥ' 
sed attributes of the gods and heroes: so Plato iii ᾿ 
; haracter he proposes to amend them. The py 
tor would cause to be prepared a better and truer picture of t “ 
: . ; is to say, mo 
i ‘aus ‘ould start from truer (that 18 
foretime, because he wou ἀνρημηβρ a ae 
creditable) conceptions of the gods and heroes. For Pla 
jects the mythes respec ἤν 
Peirithéus i from any want of evidence, but because — are 
ropos 5 new 
unworthy of gods and heroes: he proposes to call ρῆμα be 
mythes, which, though he admits them at the outset to be fic ; δ 
he knows will soon be received as true, and supply more valua 
" a. »t, 
ble lessons of conduc Lal a 
We may consider, then, that Plato disapproves of the attemp 


old mythes either with exaggerated history or 
he current faith, with- 


and in such ¢ 


ting Zeus and Here, or Théseus and 


to identify the 
with disguised philosophy. He shares " t sept ay ee 
out any suspicion or criticism, as to <P neue, Pipe caret 
lus, Amphidén, ‘Théseus, Achilles, Cheiron, an ty let 
personages ;~ but what chiefly fills his mind is, the . a 
_ timent of deep reverence ~ om oe er ee 
for the age to which they belonged, — | si nine 
nder him not only an unbeliever in such leg | 
pn gle it, but also a deliberate creator - ge gies = 
the purpose of expanding and gratifying τὸ “- τ it sales 
amine this sentiment, both in the mind ὁ Ξ st sth 


i nds 

1 The censure which Xenophanés ig — ype 9 = 

οναβιν θήραν hae Re ae at ce von not less profuse in their 

on ve sng sage ἄσι τοσούτοις τῷ ποιητῇ λελουδόρηται (Plutarch, Nop 

πὴ ν ntl cinailien Epicurum, p. 1086). He even advised pecans 

; raise μι ἃ to confess their utter ignorance of Homer, to the pe 
tes πον ὼν Hector was a Greek or a Trojan (Plut. wh. p. 1094 

ety Republic iii. 4-5. p. 391; De Legg. iii. 1. p. 677. 


GRECIAN CHRONOLOGY FOUNDED UN MYTHES., 445 


that of the Greeks generally, the more shall we be con\ inced 
that it formed essentially and inseparably a portion of Hellenic 
religious faith. The mythe both presupposes, and springs out of, 
a settled basis, and a strong expansive force of religious, social, 
and patriotic feeling, operating upon ἃ past which is little better 
than a blank as to positive knowledge. It resembles history, in 
so far as its form is narrative; it resembles philosophy, in 
as it is occasionally illustrative ; but in its essence and substance, 
in the mental tendencies by which it is created as well as in those 
by which it is judged and upheld, it is a popularized expression 
of the divine and heroic faith of the people. 
Grecian antiquity cannot be at all understood except in con- 
nection with Grecian religion. It begins with gods and it ends 
with historical men, the former being recognized not simply as 
gods, but as primitive ancestors, and connected with the latter by 
a long mythical genealogy, partly heroic and partly human. Now 
the whole value of such genealogies arises from their being taken 
entire ; the god or hero at the topis in point of fact the most im- 
portant member of the whole ;! for the length and continuity of 
the series arises from anxiety on the part of historical men to join 
themselves by a thread of descent with the being whom they 
worshipped in their gentile sacrifices. Without the ancestorial 
god, the whole pedigree would have become not only acephalous, 
but worthless and uninteresting. The pride of the Herakleids, 
Asklepiads, Aakids, Neleids, Dedalids, ete. was attached to the 
primitive eponymous hero and to the god from whom they sprung, 
not to the line of names, generally long and barren, through which 
the divine or heroic dignity gradually dwindled down into com- 
mon manhood. Indeed, the length of the genealogy (as I have 
before remarked) was an evidence of the humility of the his- 
torical man, which led him to place himself at a respectful dis- 
tance from the gods or heroes; for Hekateus of Milétus, who 
ranked himself as the fifteenth descendant of a god, might per- 


SO far 


‘For a description of similar tendencies in the Asiatic religions, see 
Movers Die Phénizier, ch. v. p. 153 (Bonn, 1841): he points out the same 
phznomena as in the Greek, — coalescence between the ideas of ancestry 


and worship,— confusion between gods and men in the past, — imcreasing 
tendency to Euemerize (pp. 156-157). 


=a 


446 HISTORY OF GREECE 


haps have accounted it an overweening impiety in any living man 
to claim a god for his immediate father. 

The whole chronology of Greece, anterior to 776 B. C., consists 
of calculations founded upon these mythical genealogies, espe- 
cially upon that of the Spartan kings and their descent from 
Héraklés, —thirty years being commonly taken as the equiva- 
lent of a generation, or about three generations to a century. 
This process of computation was altogether illusory, as applying 
historical and chronological conditions to a case on which they 
had no bearing. Though the domain of history was seemingly 
enlarged, the religious element was tacitly set aside: when the 
heroes and gods were chronologized, they became insensibly ap- 
proximated to the limits of humanity, and the process indirectly 
gave encouragement to the theory of Euémerus. Personages 
originally legendary and poetical were erected into definite land- 
marks for measuring the duration of the foretime, thus gaining in 
respect to historical distinctness, but not without loss on the score 
of religious association. Both Euémerus and the subsequent 
Christian writers, who denied the original and inherent divinity 
of the pagan gods, had a great advantage in carrying their chro- 
nological researches strictly and consistently upwards — for all 
chronology fails as soon as we suppose a race superior to common 
humanity. 

Moreover, it is to be remarked that the pedigree of the Spartan 
kings, which Apollodérus and Eratosthenés selected as the basis 
of their estimate of time, is nowise superior in credibility and 
trustworthiness to the thousand other gentile and family pedigrees 
with which Greece abounded ; it is rather indeed to be numbered 
among the most incredible of all, seeing that Héraklés as a pro- 
genitor is placed at the head of perhaps more pedigrees than any 
other Grecian god or hero.! The descent of the Spartan king 

Leonidas from Héraklés rests upon no better evidence than that 
of Aristotle or Hippocratés from Asklépius,? — of Evagoras or 


' According te that which Aristotle seems to recognize (Histor. Animal. 
vii. 6), Héraklés was father of seventy-two sons, but of only one daughter — 
he was essentially ἀῤῥενόγονος, illustrating one of the physical peculiarities 
noticed by Aristotle. Euripidés, f owever, mentions daughters of Héraklés ir 


the plural number (Euripid. Herakleid. 45). 
? Hippecratés was twentieth in descent from Héraklés, and nineteenth 


Δ... oe ek OOS σας και 


MYTHICAL GENEALOGIES. 447 


Thucydidés from /Eakus,— of Socratés from Dedalus, — of the 
Spartan heraldic family from Talthybius,— of the prophetic 
[amid family in Elis from lIamus,— of the ucvaaiacael in 
Pelion from Cheirdén,—and of Hekatzus and his rens am 
some god in the sixteenth ascending line of the seule hws 
is little exaggeration in saying, indeed, that no permanent com- 
bination ot ‘men in Greece, religious, social, or professional, was 
without a similar pedigree ; all arising out of the same exicenc 
of the feelings and imagination, to personify as well as be senile 
the bond of union among the members. Every one of these 
gentes began with a religious and ended with an historical person, 
At some point or other in the u, ward series, entities of history 
were exchanged for entities of religion; but where that point is 
to be found we are unable to say, nor had the wisest of the an- 
cient Greeks any means of determining. Thus much μον ονων 
we know, that the series taken as a whole, though dear and "ὦ 
cious to the believing Greek, possesses no value as μου  γαρονἰερημ 
evidence to the historian. i 
W hen Hekatzeus visited Thébes in Egypt, he mentioned to the 
Egyptian priests, doubtless with a feeling of satisfaction and 
pride, the imposing pedigree of the gens to which he belon 6a ie 
with fifteen ancestors in ascending line, and a god as the initial 
progenitor. But he found himself immeasurably overdone by the 
priests “ who genealogized against him.”! They showed ὠμὸν 
three hundred and forty-one wooden colossal statues, representing 
the succession of chief priests in the temple in uninterrupted 
series trom father to son, through a space of 11,300 years. Prior 
to the commencement of this long period (they said), the gods 
dwelling along with men, had exercised sway in Egypt; but they 


from Asklépius (Vita Hippocr. by Soranus, ap. Westermann, Scripto 
a viii. 1); about Aristotle, see Diogen. Laért. v. 1. Kenoolina. te 
ging of the emperor Claudius, was also an Asklepiad (Tacit. Ann. xii. 
In Rhodes, the neighboring island to Kés, was the gens ᾿Αλεάδαι, or 5 
of Hélios, specially distinguished from the ᾿Αλιασταὶ of mere ere 
worshippers of Hélios, τὸ κοινὸν τῶν ᾿Αλιαδῶν καὶ τῶν ᾿Αλιαστῶν ( πῆς the 
meenription in Boeckh’s Collection, No. 2525, with Boeckh’s comment). 
Herodot. ii. 144. Ἑκαταίῳ δὲ γενεηλογήσαντι ἑωῦτὸν, καὶ ἀναδήσαντε 
ἐς ἐκκαιδέκατον ϑεὸν, ἀντεγενεηλόγησαν ἐπὶ τῇ ἀριϑμήσει, οὐ δεκόμενοι παρ 
αὐτοῦ, ἀπὸ ϑεοῦ γένεσϑαι ἄνϑρωπον᾽" ἀντεγενεηλόγησαν δὲ ὧδε, ete. 


448 HISTORY OF GRFECE. 


repudiated altogetner the idea of men begotter by god: or of 
= nes counter genealogies, are, in respect to trustw¢ rthiness 
and evidence, on th: same footing. Each represents μοὴν ee 
religious faith, partly the retrospective imagination, - a pe sons 
from wliom it emanated ; in each, the lower members of t e poi 
(to what extent we cannot tell) are ral, the et eens ‘ a 
lous ; but in each also the series derived all its agg an Ἢ 
its imposing cifect from being conceived unbroken anc — 
Herodotus is much perplexed by the capital discrepancy betw “a 
the Grecian and Egyptian chronologies, and vainly espera ia 
ingenuity in reconciling them. There is no standard of o posi 
evidence by which either the one or the other of them i 
tried: each has its own subjective value, in conjunction with the 
faith and feelings of Egyptians and Greeks, and each presup- 
poses in the believer certain mental prepossessions which are not 
to be found beyond its own local limits. Nor is the eromne > 
less extent of duration at all important, when we once μ-" " 
limits of evidence and verifiable reality. One century of ~— e 
time, adequately studded with authentic and orderly ΤῊΝ a 
sents a greater mass and a greater difficulty of transition a : 
imagination than a hundred centuries of barren api er- 
odotus, in discussing the age of Homer and Hesiod, exp an an- 
terior point of 400 years as if it were only yesterday δ t " eo 
of Henry VI. is separated from us by an equal interval, an ἘΣ 
reader will not require to be reminded how long that intery 
“1 el age was peopled with a mingled aS 
gods, heroes, and men, so confounded together that it was often 
impossible to distinguish to which class any SS σὸν 
belonged. In regard to the Thracian god Zalmoxis, the — 
pontic Greeks interpreted his character and attributes a 
to the scheme of Euémerism. They affirmed that he had en 
a man, the slave of the philosopher Pythagoras at sang ΒΡ 
that he had by abilities and artifice established a Ἣν 
dency over the minds of the Thracians, and obtained from the 


\ Herod. ii. 143-145. Kai ταῦτα Αἰγύπτιοι ἀτρεκέως φασὶν émiosucvas, ace: 
τε λογιζόμενοι καὶ αἰεὶ ἀπογραφόμενοι τὰ ἔτεα. 


CONFUSION BETWEEN GODS AND ΜΕΝ. 41. 


divine honors. Herodotus cannot bring himself to believe this 
stury, but he frankly avows his inability to determine whether 
Zalmoxis was a god or a man,! nor can he extricate himself from 
a similar embarrassment in respect to Dionysus and Pan. Amidst 
the confusion of the Homeric fight, the goddess Athéné confers 
upon Diomédés the miraculous favor of dispelling the mist from 
his eyes, so as to enable him to discriminate gods from men; and 
nothing less than a similar miracle could enable a critical reader 
of the mythical narratives to draw an ascertained boundary-line 
between the two2 But the original hearers of the mythes felt 
neither surprise nor displeasure from this confusion of the divine 
with the human individual. They looked at the past with a film 


' Herod. iv. 94-96. After having related thé Euemeristic version given 
by the Hellespontic Greeks, he concludes with his characteristic frankneag 
and simplicity —’Eyo δὲ, περὶ μὲν τούτου καὶ τοῦ καταγαίου οἰκήματος, οὔτε 
ἀπιστέω, οὔτε ὧν πιστεύω τι λίην. δοκέω δὲ πολλοῖσι ἔτεσι πρότερον τὸν Ζάλ- 
ὠοξιν τοῦτον γενέσϑαι Πυϑαγόρεω. Eire δὲ ἐγένετό τις Ζάλμοξις ἄνϑρωπος, 
εἶτ᾽ ἐστὶ δαίμων τις Τέτησι οὗτος ἐπιχώριος, χαιρέτω. So Plutarch (Numa 
6. 19) will not undertake to determine whether Janus was a god or a king 
εἶτε δαίμων, εἴτε βασιλεὺς γενόμενος, ete. 

Herakleitus the philosopher said that men were ϑεοὶ ϑνητοὶ, and the gods 
were ἄνϑρωποι ἀϑάνατοι (Lucian, Vitar. Auctio. c. 13. vol. i. p- 303, Tauch. 
compare the same author, Dialog. Mortuor. iii. vol. i Ρ. 182, ed. Tauchn). 

? Tliad, v. 127: — 

᾿Αχλὺν & αὖ τοι ἀπ᾽ ὀφθαλμῶν ἕλον, ἣ πρὶν ἐπῆεν, 
Ὄφρ᾽ εὖ γιγνώσκῃς ἠμὲν ϑεὸν, ἠδὲ καὶ ἄνδρα. 

Of this undistinguishable confusion between gods and men, striking illus- 
trations are to be found both in the third book of Cicero de Naturi Deorum 
(16-21), and in the long disquisition of Straho (x. pp. 467-474) respecting 
the Kabeiri, the Korybantes, the Dactyls of Ida; the more so, as he cites the 
statements of Pherekydés, Akusilaus, Démétrius of Sképsis, and others. 
Under the Roman empire, the lands in Greece belonging to the immortal 
gods were exempted from tribute. The Roman tax-collectors refused to 
recognize as immortal gods any persons who had once been men ; but this 
rale could not be clearly applied (Cicero, Nat. Deor. iii. 20). See the re- 
marks of Pausanias (ii. 26, 7) about Asklépius: Galen, too, is doubtfal about 
Asklépius and Dionysus — ᾿Ασκληπιός γέ Tot καὶ Διόνυσος, εἶτ᾽ ἄνϑρωποι 
πρότερον ἤστην, εἴτε καὶ ἀρχῆϑεν ϑεοί (Galen in Protreptic. 9. tom. i. p. 22, 
ed. Kahn). Xenophén (De Venat. c. i} considers Cheirén as the brother οἵ 
Zeus. 

The ridicule of Lucian (Deerum Concilium, t. iii. p 527-538, Hema.) 
wrings out still more forcibly the confusion here indicated. 


¥e Το I. ῷ 9 


450 HISTORY OF GRE EC¥. 


of faith over their eyes — neither knowing the value, nor desiring 
the attainment, of an unclouded vision. ‘The intimate companion- 
ship, and the occasional mistake of identity between gods and 
men, were in full harmony with their reverential restrospect. 
And we, accordingly, see the poet Ovid in his Fasti, when he un- 
dertakes the task of unfolding the legendary antiquities of early 
Rome, reacquiring, by the inspiration of Juno, the power of 
seeing gods and men in immediate vicinity and conjunct action, 
such as it existed before the development of the critical and his- 
torical sense.! 

To resume, in brief, what has been laid down in this and the 
preceding chapters respecting the Grecian mythes : — 

1. They are a special product of the imagination and feelings, 
radically distinct both from history and philosophy: they cannot 
be broken down and decomposed into the one, nor allegorized into 
the other. There are indeed some particular and even assignable 
mythes, which raise intrinsic presumption of an allegorizing ten- 
dency ; and there are doubtless some others, though not specially 
assignable, which contain portions of matter of fact, or names of 
real persons, embodied in them. But such matter of fact cannot 
be verified by any intrinsic mark, nor we are entitled to presume 
its existence in any given case unless some collateral evidence 
can be produced. 

2. We are not warranted in applying to the mythical world 
the rules either of historical credibility or chronological sequence. 
Its personages are gods, heroes, and men, in constant juxtaposition 
and reciprocal sympathy ; men, too, of whom we know a large 
proportion to be fictitious, and of whom we can never ascertain 
how many may have been real. No series of such personages 
ean serve as materials for chronological calculation. 


? Ovid, Fasti, vi. 6-20 -— 
“Fas mihi precipue vultus vidisse Deorum, 
Vel quia sum vates, vel quia sacra cano....-.- 
... Eece Deas vidi 
Horrueram, tacitoque animum pallore fatebar: 
Cum Dea, quos fecit, sustulit ipsa metus. 
Namaque ait — O vates, Romani conditor anni, 
Ause per exiguos magna referre modos ; 
Jus tibi fecisti numen cceleste videndi, 
Cum placuit numeris condere festa tais.” 


GENERAL RECAPITULATION. 451 


8. The mythes were originally produced in an age which had 
no records, no philosophy, no criticism, no canon of belief, and 
searcely any tincture either of astronomy or geography — but 
which, on the other hand, was full of religious faith, distinguished 
for quick and susceptible imagination, seeing personal agents 
where we look only for objects and connecting laws ;— an age, 
moreover, eager for new narrative, accepting with the unconscious 
impressibility of children (the question of truth or falsehood being 
never formally raised) all which ran in harmony with its pre- 
existing feelings, and penetrable by inspired prophets and poets 
in the same proportion that it was indifferent to positive evidence. 
To such hearers did the primitive poet or story-teller address 
himself: it was the glory of his productive genius to provide 
suitable narrative expression for the faith and emotions which he 
shared in common with them, and the rich stock of Grecian 
mythes attests how admirably he performed his task. As the 
gods and the heroes formed the conspicuous object of national 
reverence, so the mythes were partly divine, partly heroic, partly 
both in one.! The adventures of Achilles, Helen, and Diomédés, 
of (Edipus and Adrastus, of Meleager and Athza, of Jason and 
the Argé, were recounted by the same tongues, and accepted with 
the same unsuspecting confidence, as those of Apollo and Artemis, 
of Arés and Aphrodité, of Poseidén and Héraklés. 

4. The time however came, when this plausibility ceased to be 
complete. The Grecian mind made an important advance, social- 
ly, ethically, and intellectually. Philosophy and history were 
constituted, prose writing and chronological records became famil- 
iar; a canon of belief more or less critical came to be tacitly 
recognized. Moreover, superior men profited more largely by 
the stimulus, and contracted habits of judging different from the 


1 The fourth Eclogue of Virgil, under the form of a prophecy, gives 8 
faithful picture of the heroic and divine past, to which the legends of Tree 
and the Argonauts belonged : — 

- Tle Dedm vitam accipiet, Divisque videbit 
Permixtos heroas,” etc. 

“ Alter erit tum Tiphys et altera que vehat Argo 
Delectos heroas : erunt etiam altera bella, 
Atque iterum ad Trojam magnus mittetur Achilles.” 


452 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


vulgar: the god Elenchus! (to use a personification of ——— 
the giver and prover of truth, descended into their minds. ta 
the new intellectual medium, thus altered in its elements, and no 
longer uniform in its quality, the mythes descended by inherit- 
ance; but they were found, to a certain extent, out of harmony 
even with the feelings of the people, and altogether dissonant 


i ὯἋ 
with those of instructed men. But the most superior Greek waa 


still a Greek, and cherished the common reverential sentiment 


towards the foretime of his country. Though he could neither 


believe nor respect the mythes as they stood, he was under an 
imperious mental necessity to transform them into a state — 
of his belief and respect. Whilst the literal mythe still continu 

to float among the poets and the people, critical men interpreted, 
altered, decomposed, and added, until they found something which 
satisfied their minds as a supposed real basis. They manutae- 


tured some dogmas of supposed original philosophy, and a long 
series of fancied history and chronology, retaining the mythical 


names and generations even when they were obliged to discard 
or recast the mythical events. The interpreted mythe was thus 
promoted into a reality, while the literal mythe was degraded into 


a fiction.? 


1 Lucian, Pseudol. c. 4. Παρακλητέος ἡμῖν τῶν Μενάνδρου ee $4 
Ἔλεγχος, Φίλος ἀληϑείᾳ καὶ παῤῥησίᾳ ϑεὸς, οὐχ ὁ ἀσημότατος τῶν 
σκήνην ἀναβαινύντων. (See Meineke ad Menandr. p. 284.) ls 

4 The following passage from Dr. ste Essay on Civil Society (part 

bears well on the subject before us :— 

αἱ πο. and opinions formed at ἃ distance have not 8 eufficient 
y in the history of mankind, the domestic antiquities of every nation 
must for this very reason be received with caution. They are, for the ie 
part, the mere conjectures or the fictions of subsequent ages j and even 7 = 
at first they contained some resemblance of trath, they still vary wit 
imagination of those by whom they were transmitted, and in every genera- 
. rent form. They are made to bear the stamp of the times 
ed in the form of tradition, not of the ages to 

i ir «retended descriptions relate When _traditionary 
ee pon st by the vulgar, they bear the marks of a national bee 
ter, and though mixed with absurdities, often raise the imagination τορος 
én heart: when made the materials of poetry, and adorned 7 = i fy 
the eloquence of an ardent and superior mind, they instruct the open 
ing as well as engage the passions. It is only in the ee aaa = 
antiquaries, or stript of the ornaments which the laws of history 


authorit 


tion receive a diffe 
through which they have puss 


SUBSEQUENT AGE OF INTERF 2ETATION. 453 


The habit of distinguishing the interpreted from the literal 
mythe has passed from the literary men of antiquity to those of 
the modern world, who have for the most part construed the 
divine mythes as allegorized philosophy, and the heroic mythes 
as exaggerated, adorned, and over-colored history. The early 
ages of Greece have thus been peopled with quasi-historical per- 
sons and quasi-bistorical events, all extracted from the mythes 
after making certain allowances for poetical ornament. But we 
must not treat this extracted product as if it were the original 
substance ; we cannot properly understand it except by viewing 
it in connection with the literal mythes out of which it was ob- 
tained, in their primitive age and appropriate medium, before the 
superior minds had yet outgrown the common faith in an all- 
personified Nature, and learned to restrict the divine free-agency 
by the supposition of invariable physical laws. It is in this point 
of view that the mythes are important for any one who would 
correctly appreciate the general tone of Grecian thought and 
feeling ; for they were the universal mental stock of the Hellenic 
world— common to men and women, rich and poor, instructed 
and ignorant; they were in every one’s memory and in every 
one’s mouth,' while science and history were confined to come 


to wear, that they become unfit even to amuse the fancy or to serve any purpose 
whatever. 

“It were absurd to quote the fable of the Iliad or the Odyssey, the 
legend of Hercules, Theseus, and CZdipus, as authorities in matters of fact 
relating to the history of mankind ; but they may, with great justice, be cited 
to ascertain what were the conceptions and sentiments of the age in which 
they were composed, or to characterize the genius of that people with whose 
imaginations they were blended, and by whom they were fondly rehearsed 
and admired. In this manner, fiction may be admitted to vouch for the 
genius of nations, while history has nothing to offer worthy of credit.” 

To the same purpose, M. Paulin Paris (in his Lettre ἃ M. H. de Mon 
merqué, prefixed to the Roman de Berte aux Grans Piés, Paris, 1836), re 
specting the “romans” of the Middle Ages: “Pyar bien connaitre Vhis- 
toire du moyen 4ge, non pas celle des faits, mais celle des moeurs qui rendent 
les faits vraisemblables, il faut l’avoir étudiée dans les romans, et voila 
pourquoi I’Histoire de France n’est pas encore faite.” (p. xxi.) 

ΤᾺ curious evidence of the undiminished popularity of the Grecian mythes 
to the exclusion even of recent history, is preserved by Vopiscus at the be- 
ginning of his Life of Aurelian. 

The preefect of the city of Rome, Junius Tiberianus, toxk Vopiscus inta 


--«.--» -----τὐὦὦὄ» ae Ee 


454 HISTORY OF GREECE 


paratively few. We know from Thucydidés how erroneously 
and carelessly the Athenian public of his day retained the his- 
tory of Peisistratus, only one century past;'! but the adventures 
of the gods and heroes, the numberless explanatory legends at- 
tached to visible objects and periodical ceremonies, were the 
theme of general talk, and any man unacquainted with them 
would have found himself partially excluded from the sympathy 
of his neighbors. The theatrical representations, exhibited to the 
entire city population, and listened to with enthusiastic interest, 
both presupposed and perpetuated acquaintance with the great 
lines of heroic fable: indeed, in later times even the pantomimic 
dancers embraced in their representations the whole field of my- 
thical incident, and their immense success proves at once how 
popular and how well known such subjects were. The names 
and attributes of the heroes were incessantly alluded to in the 
way of illustration, to point out a consoling, admonitory, or re- 
pressive moral: the simple mention of any of them sufficed to 
call up in every one’s mind the principal events of his life, and 
the poet or rhapsode could thus calculate on touching chords not 


less familiar than susceptible.? 


his carriage on the festival-day of the Hilaria ; he was connected by the ties 
of relationship with Aurelian, who had died about a generation before — and 


as the carriage passed by the splendid Temple of the Sun, which Aurelian 
had consecrated, he asked Vopiscus, what author had written the life of that 
emperor? Τὸ which Vopiscus replied, that he had read some Greek works 
which touched upon Aurelian, but nothing in Latin. Whereat the venerable 
prefect was profoundly grieved: “ Dolorem gemitis sui vir sanctus per hee 
verba profudit: Ergo Thersitem, Sinonem, οαίεγαψμε illa prodiyia vetustatis, 
et nos bene scimus, et posteri frequentabunt: divum Aurelianum, clarissimum 
principem, severissimum Imperatorem, per quem totus Romano nomini orbis 
est restitutus, posteri nescient? Deus avertat hance amentiam! Et tamen, 
si bene memini, ephemeridas illius viri scriptas habemus,” etc. (Histories 
August. Scriptt. p. 209, ed. Salmus.) 

This impressive remonstrance produced the Life of Aurelian by Vopiscus 
The materials seem to have been ample and authentic ; it is to be regretted 
that they did not fall into the hands of an author qualified to turn them te 
better account. 

' Thueyd. vi. 56. 

ὃ Pausan. ἱ. 3, 38. Λέγεται μὲν δὴ καὶ ἄλλα οὐκ ἀληϑῆ παρὰ τοις πολλοῖς͵ 
οἷα ἱστορίας ἀνηκόοις οὖσι, καὶ ὅποσα ἤκουον εὐθὺς ἐκ παιδῶν ἔν τε χόροις καὶ 
τραγῳδίαις πιστὰ ἡγουμένοις. etc. The treatise of Lucian, De Saltatione, iz 


POPULARITY OF GRECIAN MY dés. 455 


A similar effect was produced by the multiplied religious fes 
tivals and processions, as well as by the oracles and propaecies 


acurious proof how much these mythes were in every ones memory, and 
how large the range of knowledge of them was which a good pa 
sessed (see particularly c. 76-79. t. ii. p. 308-310, Hemst). a 
Antiphanés ap. Athen. vi. p. 223 :- 
Μακάώριόν ἐστιν ἡ τραγῳδία 

ποίημα κατὰ πώντ᾽, ei γε πρῶτον οἱ λόγοι 

ὑπὸ τῶν ϑεατῶν εἰσιν ἐγνωρίσμενοι 

πρὶν καί τιν᾽ εἰπεῖν " ὡς ὑπομνῆσαι μόνον 

δεῖ τὸν ποιητήν. Οἰδίπουν γὰρ ἄν γε φῶ, 

τὰ δ' ἄλλα παντ᾽ ἴσασιν" ὁ πατὴρ Λαῖος. 

μήτηρ ᾿Ιοκάστη, ϑυγατέρες, παῖδες τίνες " 

τί πείσεϑ' οὗτος, τι πεποίηκεν. “Ay πάλιν 

εἴπῃ τις ᾿Αλκμαίωνα, καὶ τὰ παιδία 

πάντ᾽ ευϑὺς εἴρηχ᾽, ὅτι μανεὶς ἀπέκτονε 

τὴν μήτερ᾽ - ἀγανακτῶν δ᾽ "Αδραστος εὐθέως 

ἥξει, πάλιν δ᾽ ἄπεισιν, ete. 

The first pages of the eleventh Oration of Dia Chrysostom contain some 
striking passages both as to the universal acquaintance with the mythes, and 
as to their extreme popularity (Or. xi. p. 307-312, Reisk). See also the 
commencement of Heraklidés, De Allegorid Homerica (ap. Scriptt. Myth. 
ed. Gale, p. 408), about the familiarity with Homer. 

The Lydé of the poet Antimachus was composed for his own consolation 

under sorrow, by enumerating the ἡρωϊκὰς συμφοράς (Plutarch, Consolat, 
ad Apollon. c..9.p. 106: compare ARschines cont. Ktesiph. c. 48): a sepul- 
chral inscription in Théra, on the untimely death of Admétus, a youth of the 
heroic gens Augide, makes a touching allusion to his ancestors Péleus and 
Pherés (Boeckh, C. I. t. ii. p. 1087). 
A curious passage of Aristotle is preserved by Démétrius Phalereus (Llept 
Ἑρμηνείας, c. 144), -- Ὅσῳ γὰρ αὐτίτης καὶ μονώτης εἰμὶ, φιλομυϑότερος 
γέγονα (compare the passage in the Nikomachean Ethics, i 9, μονώτης καὶ 
ἄτεκνος). Stahr refers this to a letter of Aristotle written in his old age, the 
mythes being the consolation of his solitude ( Aristotelia, 1. p. 201). 

For the employment of the mythical names and incidents as topics of 
pleasing and familiar comparison, see Menander, [lepi ᾿Ἐπιδεικτίκ. § iv. 
capp. 9 and 11, ap. Walz. Coll. Rhett. t. ix. pp. 283-294. The degree in 
which they passed into the ordinary songs of women is illustrated by a 
touching epigram contained among the Chian Inscriptions published im 
Boeckh’s Collection (No. 2236) :— 

Burro καὶ Φαινὶς, φίλη ἡμέρη (1), al συνέριϑοι, 
Ai πενιχραὶ. γραῖαι, τῇδ᾽ ἐκλίϑημεν ὁμοῦ. 
᾿Αμφότεραι Κώαι, πρῶται γένος --- ὦ γλυκὺς ὄρϑρος, 
Πρὸς λύχνον ᾧ μύϑους Ἦδομεν ἡμιϑέων. 
These two poor women were rot afraid to boast of their family doserms 


Vol. 1 21 


456 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


which circulated in every city. The annual departure of the 
Theoric ship from Athens to the sacred island of Délos, kept 
alive, in the minds of Athenians generally, the legend of Théseus 
and his adventurous enterprise in Krete;' and in like manner 
most of the other public rites and ceremonies were of a com- 
memorative character, deduced from some mythical person or 
incident familiarly known to natives, and forming to strangers a 
portion of the curiosities of the place2 During the period of 
Grecian subjection under the Romans, these curiosities, together 
with their works of art and their legends, were especially clung 
to as a set-off against present degradation. The Théban citizen 
who found himself restrained from the liberty enjoyed by all 
other Greeks, of consulting Amphiaraus as a prophet, though 
the sanctuary and chapel of the hero stood in his own city — 


they probably belonged to some noble gens which traced its origin to a god 
or a hero. About the songs of women, see also Agathias, i. 7. p. 29, ed. 
Bonn. 

In the family of the wealthy Athenian Démocratés was a legend, that his 
primitive ancestor (son of Zeus by the daughter of the Archégetés of the 
déme Aixoneis, to which he belonged) had received Heraklés at his table: 
this legend was so rife that the old women sung it, —darep ai γραῖαι ἄδουσι 
(Plato, Lysis, p. 205). Compare also a legend of the déme ᾿Αναγυροῦς, 


mentioned in Suidas ad! voc. 
“ Who is this virgin ?” asks Orestés from Pyladés in the Iphigeneia in 


Tauris of Euripidés (662), respecting his sister Iphigeneia, whom he does 
wot know as priestess of Artemis in a foreign land : — 

Tic gore ἡ νεᾶνις; ὡ Ἑλληνικῶς 

᾿Ανήῆρεϑ᾽ ἡμᾶς τοὺς τ᾽ ἐν ᾿Ιλίῳ πόνους 

Νόστον τ᾽ ᾿Αχαιῶν, τόν τ᾽ ἐν οἰωνοῖς σοφὸν 

KaAyavr’, ᾿Αχιλλέως τ᾽ οὔνομ᾽, ete. 


‘ Plato, Phado, c. 2. 
» The Philopseudes of Lucian (t. iii. p. 31, Hemst. cap. 2, 3, 4) shows not 


enly the pride which the general public of Athens and Thébes took in their 
old mythes (Triptolemus, Boreas, and Oreithyia, the Sparti, etc.), but the 
way in which they treated every man who called the stories in question as 8 
fool or as an atheist. He remarks, that if the guides who showed the anti- 
quities had been restraired to tell nothing but what was true, they would 
have died of hunger ; for the visiting strangers would not care to hear plain 
truth, even if they could have got it for nothing {μηδὲ ἀμισϑὲ τῶν ξένων 
ἀληϑὲς ἀκούειν ἐϑελησάντωνῚ. 


VARIETY OF MYTHICAL RELICS 457 


ssuld not be satisfied without a knowledge of the story which 
explained the origin of such prohibition,! and which conducted 
him back to the originally hostile relations between Amphiaraus 
and Thébes. Nor can we suppose among the citizens of Sikydn 
anything less than a perfect and reverential conception of the 
levend of Thébes, when we read the account given by Herodotus 
of the conduct of the despot Kleisthenés in regard to Adrastus 
and Melanippus.2. The ‘Troezenian youths and maidens,’ who 
universally, when on the eve of marriage, consecrated an offering 
of their hair at the Heréon of Hippolytus, maintained a lively 
recollection of the legend of that unhappy recusant whom Aphro- 
dité had so cruelly punished. Abundant relics preserved in many 
Grecian cities and temples, served both as mementos and attes- 
tations of other legendary events; and the tombs of the heroes 
counted among the most powerful stimulants of mythical remin- 
iscence. The sceptre of Pelops and Agamemnon, still preserved 
in the days of Pausanias at Cheroneia in Boedtia, was the work 
of the god Héphzstos. While many other alleged productions 
of the same divine hand were preserved in different cities of 
Greece, this is the only one which Pausanias himself believed to 
be genuine: it had been carried by Elektra, daughter of Aga- 
memnon to Phokis, and received divine honors from the citizens 
of Chxroneia.t The spears of Mérionés and Odysseus were treas- 
ared up at Engyium in Sicily, that of Achilles at Phasélis ; the 
sword of Memnon adorned the temple of Asklépius at Nicomé- 
dia; and Pausanias, with unsuspecting confidence, adduces the 
two latter as proofs that the arms of the heroes were made of 
brass.5 The hide of the Kalydénian boar was guarded and shown 
by the Tegeates as a precious possession; the shield of Kuphor- 
bus was in like manner suspended in the temple of Branchidz 
near Milétus, as well as in the temple of Héré in Argos. Visible 


1 Herodot. viii. 134. 3 Herodot. v. 67. 

° Ruripid. Hippolyt. 1424; Pausan. ii. 32, 1; Lacian, De Ded Syria, c. 
60. vol. iv. p. 287, Tauch. 

It is curious to see in the account of Pausanias how all the petty peculiar. 
ities cf the objects around became connected with explanatory details grow 
ing out of this affecting legend. Compare Pausan. i 22, 2. 

“ Pausan. ix. 40, 6. 

® Plutarch, Marcell. c 20; Pausan. iii. 3,6 


VOL. I. 20 


458 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


relics of Epeius and Philoktétés were not wanting, while Strabe 
raises his voice with indignation against the numerous Palladia 
which were shown in different cities, each pretending to be the 
genuine image from Troy.! It would be impossible to specify 
the number of chapels, sanctuaries, solemnities, foundations of 
one sort or another, said to have been first commenced by heroic 
or mythical personages, — by Héraklés, Jasén, Médea, Alkmzon, 
Diomédés, Odysseus, Danaus, and his daughters,” etc. Perhaps 
in some of these cases particular critics might raise objections, but 
the great bulk of the people entertained a firm and undoubted 
belief in the current legend. 

If we analyze the intellectual acquisitions of a common Gre- 
cian townsman, from the rude communities of Arcadia or Phokis 
even up to the enlightened Athens, we shall find that, over and 
above the rules of art or capacities requisite for his daily wants, 
it consisted chiefly of the various mythes connected with his gens, 
his city, his religious festivals, and the mysteries in which he 
might have chosen to initiate himself, as well as with the works of 
art and the more striking natural objects which he might see 
around him, — the whole set off and decorated by some knowl- 
edge of the epic and dramatic poets. Such was the intellectual 
and imaginative reach of an ordinary Greek, considered apart 
from the instructed few: it was an aggregate of religion, of so- 
cial and patriotic retrospect, and of romantic fancy, blended into 
one indivisible faith. And thus the subjective value of the 
mythes, looking at them purely as elements of Grecian thought 
and feeling, will appear indisputably great, however little there 
may be of objective reality, either historical or philosophical, 
discoverable under them. 

Nor must we omit the incalculable importance of the mythes 
as stimulants to the imagination of the Grecian artist in sculp- 
ture, in painting, in carving, and in architecture. From the 
divine and heroic legends and personages were borrowed those 


| Pausan. viii. 46, 1; Diogen. Laér. viii. 5; Strabo, vi. p. 263; Appian, 
Bell. Mithridat. c. 77; Aschyl. Eumen. 380. 

Wachsmuth has collected the numerous citations out of Pausanias on this 
subject ( Hellenische Alterthumskunde, part ii. sect. 115. p. 111). 

3 Herodot. ii. 182; Platarch, Pyrrh. c. 32; Schol. Apoll. Rhod iv. 1217: 
Diodér. iv. 56. 


MYTHES STIMULANTS TO GRECIAN ART. 453 


paintings, statues, and reliefs, which rendered the tempi's, por- 
ticos, and public buildings, at Athens and elsewhere, objects of 
surpassing admiration ; and such visible reproduction contributed 
again to fix the types of the gods and heroes familiarly and in- 
delibly on the public mind.! The figures delineated on cups and 
vases, as well as on the walls of private houses, were chiefly 
drawn from the same source —the mythes being the great store- 
house of artistic scenes and composition. 

To enlarge on the characteristic excellence of Grecian art 
would here be out of place: I regard it only in so far as, having 
originally drawn its materials from the mythes, it reacted upon 
the mythical faith and imagination —the reaction imparting 
strength to the former as well as distinctness to the latter. To 
one who saw constantly before him representations of the battles 
of the Centaurs or the Amazons,? of the exploits performed by 
Perseus and Bellerophén, of the incidents composing the Trojan 
war or the Kalydénian boar-hunt — the process of belief, even 
in the more fantastic of these conceptions, became easy in pro- 
portion as the conception was familiarized. And if any person 
had been slow to believe in the efficacy of the prayers of 28» 
kus, whereby that devout hero once obtained special relief from 
Zeus, at a moment when Greece was perishing with long-con- 
tinued sterility, his doubts would probably vanish when, on visit- 
ing the ZZakeium at A®gina, there were exhibited to him the 
statues of the very envoys who had come on the behalf of the 
distressed Greeks to solicit that ASakus would pray for them. A 
Grecian temple was not simply a place of worship, but the 
actual dwelling-place of a god, who was believed to be introduced 
by the solemn dedicatory ceremony, and whom the imagination 
of the people identified in the most intimate manner with his 


1 Ἡμιϑέων ἀρεταῖς, the subjects of the works of Polygnotus at Athens 
(Melanthius ap. Plutarch. Cimon. c. 4): compare Theocrit. xv. 138. 

2 The Centauromachia and the Amazonomachia are constantly associated 
together in the ancient Grecian reliefs (see the Expedition Scientifique de 
Moreée, τ. ii. p. 16, in the explanation of the temple of Apollo Epikureius at 
Phigaleia). 

3 Pausan. ii. 29, 6. 

¢ Ernst Curtius, Die Akropolis von Athen, Berlin, 1844, p. 18. Arnobin 
adv Gentes, vi. p 203, ed. Elmenhorst 


460 Hisiony OF GREEC2. 


statue. The presence or removal of the statue was conceived a& 
identical with that of the being represented, — and while the 
statue was solemnly washed, dressed, and tended with all the re- 
spectful solicitude which would have been bestowed upon a real 
person,' miraculous tales were often rife respecting the manifesta- 
tion of real internal feeling in the wood and the marble. At 
perilous or critical moments, the statue was affirmed to have 
sweated, to have wept, to have closed its eyes, or brandished the 
spear in its hands, in token of sympathy or indignation.” Such 
legends, springing up usually in times of suffering and danger, 
and finding few men bold enough openly to contradict them, ran 
in complete harmony with the general mythical faith, and tended 


1 See the case of the Auginetans lending the /Eakids for a time to the 
Thebans (Herodot. v. 80), who soon, however, returned them: likewise send- 
ing the Aakids to the battle of Salamis (viii. 64-80). The Spartans, when 
they decreed that only one of their two kings should be out on military 
service, decreed at the same time that only one of the Tyndarids should go 
out with them (v. 75): they once lent the Tyndarids as aids to the envoys 
of Epizephyrian Locri, who prepared for them a couch on board their ship 
(Diodér. Excerpt. xvi. p- 15, Dindorf ). The Thebans grant their hero 
Melanippus to Kleisthenés of Sikyén (v. 68). What was sent, must proba- 
bly have been a consecrated copy of the genuine statue. 

Respecting the solemnities practised towards the statues, see Plutarch, 
Alkibiad. 34; Kallimach. Hymn. ad Lavacr. Palladis, init. with the note 
of Spanheim; K. Ὁ. Maller, Archeologie der Kunst, § 69; compare 
Plutarch, Question. Romaic. § 61. p. 979: and Tacit. Mor. Germ. c. 40; 
Diodor. xvii. 49. 

The manner in which the real presence of a hero was identified with his 
statue (τὸν δίκαιον δεῖ ϑεὸν οἴκοι μένειν σώζοντα τοὺς ἱδρυμένους. --- Menan- 
der, Fragm. Ἡνίοχος, p. 71, Meineke), consecrated ground, and oracle, is 
nowhere more powerfally attested than in the Heroica of Philostratus (capp. 
2-20. pp. 674-692 ; also De Vit. Apollén. Tyan. iv. 11), respecting Prétesi- 
laus at Eleus, Ajax at the Aianteium, and Hectér at Ilium: Prétesilaus 
appeared exactly in the equipment of his statue, — χλαμύδα ἐνῆπται, ξένε, 
τὸν Θετταλικὸν τρόπον, ὥσπερ καὶ TO ἄγαλμα τοῦτο (p. 674). The presence 
and sympathy of the hero Lykus is essential to the satisfaction of the Athe- 
nian dikasts (Aristophan. Vesp. 389-820) : the fragment of Lucilius, quoted 
by Lactantius, De Falsd Religione (i. 22), is curious. — Τοῖς ἦρωσι τοῖς κατὰ 
τὴν πόλιν καὶ τὴν χώραν ἱδρυμένοις (Lycurgus cont. Leocrat. c. 1). 

® Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 12; Strabo, vi. p. 264. Theophrastus treats the 
perspiration as a natural phenomenon ‘n the statues made of cedar-wood 
(Histor. Plant. v. 10). Plutarch discusses the credibility of this sort of 


miracles in his Life of Coriolanus, c. 37-38. 


ANCIENT AND MODERN MYTHICAL VEDN. 461 


fo strengthen it in all its various ramifications. The renewed 
activity of the god or hero both brought to mind and accredited 
the preéxisting mythes connected with hisname. When Boreas, 
during the invasion of Greece by Xerxés, and in compliance 
with the fervent prayers of the Athenians, had sent forth a provi- 
dential storm, to the irreparable damage of the Persian armada,! 
the sceptical minority (alluded to by Plato), who doubted the 
mythe of Boreas and Oreithyia, and his close connection thus ac- 
quired with Erechtheus, and the Erechtheids generally, must for 
the time have been reduced to absolute silence. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


THE GRECIAN MYTHICAL VEIN COMPARED WITH THAT OF 
MODERN EUROPE. 


I wave already remarked that the existence of that popular 
narrative talk, which the Germans express by the significant 
word Sage or Volks-Sage, in a greater or less degree of perfection 
or development, is a phenomenon common to almost all stages 
of society and to almost all quarters of the globe. It is the 
natural effusion of the unlettered, imaginative, and believing man, 
and its maximum of influence belongs to an early state of the 
human mind; for the multiplication of recorded facts, the diffu- 
sion of positive science, and the formation of a critical standard 
of belief, tend to discredit its dignity and to repress its easy and 


1 Herodot. vii. 189. Compare the gratitude of the Megalopolitans to 
Boreas for having preserved them from the attack of the Lacedamonian king 
Agis (Pausan. viii. 27, 4. — viii. 36,4). When the Ten Thousand Greeks 
were on their retreat through the cold mountains of Armenia, Boreas blew 
in their faces, “ parching and freezing intolerably.” One of the prophets 
recommended that a sacrifice should be offered to him, which was done, 
“and the painful effect of the wind appeared to every one forthwith to cease 
in 8 marked manner ;” (καὶ πᾶσι δὴ περιφανῶς ἔδοξε λῆξαι τὸ χαλεπὸν τοῦ 
φπινεύματος. --- Xenoph. Anab. iv. 5, 3.) 


462 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


abundant flow. It supplies to the poet both materials te recom 
bine and adorn, and a basis as well as a stimulus for further im 
ventions of his own; and this at a time when the poet is religious 
teacher, historian, and philosopher, all in one, — not, as he be- 
comes at a more advanced period, the mere purveyor of avowed, 
though interesting, fiction. 

Such popular stories; and such historical songs (meaning by 
historical, simply that which is accepted as history) are found in 
most quarters of the globe, and especially among the Teutonis 
and Celtic populations of early Europe. The old Gothic songs 
were cast into a continuous history by the historian Ablavius ;! 
and the poems of the Germans respecting Tuisto the earth-born 
god, his son Mannus, and his descendants the eponyms of the va 
rious German tribes,2 as they are briefly described by Tacitus, 
remind us of Hesiod, or Eumélus, or the Homeric Hymns. 
Jacob Grimm, in his learned and valuable Deutsche Mythologie, 
has exhibited copious evidence of the great fundamental analogy, 
along with many special differences, between the German, Scan- 
dinavian, and Grecian mythical world; and the Dissertation of 
Mr. Price (prefixed to his edition of Warton’s History of En 
glish Poetry) sustains and illustrates Grimm’s view. T he same 
personifying imagination — the same ever-present conception of 
the will, sympathies, and antipathies of the gods as the producing 
causes of phanomena, and as distinguished from a course of na- 
ture with its invariable sequence — the same relations between 
gods, heroes, and men, with the like difficulty of discriminating 
the one from the other in many individual names —a similar 
wholesale transfer of human attributes to the gods, with the ab- 
sence of human limits and liabilities — a like belief in Nymphs, 
Giants, and other beings, neither gods nor men — the same co- 
alescence of the religious with the patriotic feeling and faith 
— these are positive features common to the early Greeks with 
the early Germans: and the negative conditions of the two 


1 Jornandes, De Reb. Geticis, capp. 4-6. 

2 Tacit. Mor. German.c.2 “Celebrant carminibus antiquis, quod unum 
apud eos memoriz et annaliom genus est, Tuistonem Deum terra editum, δὲ 
filium Mannum, originem gentis conditoresque. Quidam licentid vetustatis, 
plures Deo ortos, pluresque gentis appellationes, Marsos, Gambrivios Sa 
vos Vandaliosque affirmant : eaque vera et antiqua nomina.” 


MYTHES AMONG THE EARLY GERMANS. 468 


are not less analogous— the absence of prose writing, positive 
records, and scientific culture. The preliminary basis and 
encouragements for the mythopeeic faculty were thus extremely 
similar. 

But though the prolific forces were the same in kind, the re- 
sults were very different in degree, and the developing circum. 
stances were more different still. 

First, the abundance, the beauty, and the long continuance of 
early Grecian poetry, in the purely poetical age, is a phenome- 
non which has no parallel elsewhere. 

Secondly, the transition of the Greek mind from its poetical to 
its comparatively positive state was self-operated, accomplished 
by its own inherent and expansive force — aided indeed, but by 
no means either impressed or provoked, from without. From the 
poetry of Homer, to the history of Thugydidés and the philoso- 
phy of Plato and Aristotle, was a prodigious step, but it was the 
native growth of the Hellenic youth into an Hellenic man; and 
what is of still greater moment, it was brought about without 
breaking the thread either of religious or patriotic tradition — 
without any coercive innovation or violent change in the mental 
feelings. The legendary world, though the ethical judgments and 
rational criticisms of superior men had outgrown it, still retained 
its hold upon their feelings as an object of affectionate and reve- 
rential retrospect. 

Far different from this was the development of the early Ger 
mans. We know little about their early poetry, but we shall run 
no risk of error in affirming that they had nothing to compare 
with either [liad or Odyssey. Whether, if left to themselves, 
they would have possessed sufficient progressive power to make 
a step similar to that of the Greeks, is a question which we 
cannot answer. Their condition, mental as well as political, was 
violently changed by a foreign action from without. The in- 
fluence of the Roman empire introduced artificially among them 
new institutions, new opinions, habits, and luxuries, and, above 
all, a new religion; the Romanized Germans becoming them- 
selves successively the instruments of this revolution with regard 
to such of their brethren as still remained heathen. It was 8 
revolution often brought about by penal and coercive means: the 


464 (ISTORY OF GREECE. 


old gods Thor and Woden were formally deposed and ges 
their images were erumbled into dust, and the sacred 8 
worship and prophecy hewn down. But even where —_ 
sion was the fruit of preaching and persuasion, 1t did not the vied 
preak up all the associations of a German with respect to = 
mythical world which he called his past, and of wich the ioe 
god: constituted both the charm and the sanctity: he ha .-" 
only the alternative of treating them either as men or as dzemons. 
That mixed religious and patriotic retrospect, formed by the 
coalescence of piety with ancestral feeling, whies constituted 
appropriate sentiment both of Greeks and οἱ Germans towar 
their unrecorded antiquity, was among the latter banished by 
Christianity: and while the root of the old mythes was thus 
eankered, the commemorative ceremonies and customs with which 
they were connected, either lost their consecrated character oF 


[oreov 2W ἢ ’ great im- 
disappeared altogether. Moreover, new influences of gr 


portance were at the same time brought to bear. The Latin 

lancuage, together with some tinge of Latin literature — the habit 
an Ως : ἅ 

of writing and of recording present events — the idea of a 578» 


tematic law and pacific adjudication of disputes, — all these form 


ed a part of the general working of Roman civilization, even after 
the decline of the Roman empire, upon the Teutonic and Celtis 


1 On the hostile influence exercised by the change of religion on the old 
Scandinavian poetry, see an interesting article of Jucob Grimm ᾿ "τα κενῇ 
tingen Gelehrte Anzeigen, Feb. 1830, pp. 268-273 ; a review of _ | yt 
son’s Saga. The article Helden, in his Deutsche Mythologie, is also full οἱ 

instruction on the same subject: see also the Einleitung to the book, p. 11, 

: n. 

τ» observation has been made with respect to the old mythes of 
the pagan Russians by Eichhoff: “ L’établissement du ΠΉΡΑΝ, ce 
gage du bonheur des nations, fut vivement apprecie par les omar qui ἀρ Ἢ 
leur juste reconnaissance, le personnifiérent dans = héros. pipers” 8 
Grand, ami des arts, protecteur de la religion qu il protégea, et τοὶ 68 
fenits Grent oublier les fautes, devint PArthus et le Charlemagne de la Rus- 
sie, et ses hauts faits furent un mythe national qui domina tous ceux da 
paganisme. Antour de lui se groupérent ces guerriers aux formes athléti- 
ques, au cur générenx, dont la poésie aime ἃ entourer le berceau a. 
eux des peuples: et les exploits du vaillant Dobrinia, de Rogdai, - pede 
Curilo, animérent les ballades nationales. et vivent encore dans de ae 
récits.” (Eichhoff, Histoire de la Langue et Littérature des Slaves, 


1839, part iii. ch. 2. p. 190.) 


SA&LY GERMAN GENEALOGIES TO ODIN. 465 


tribes. A class of specially-educated men was formed, upon 9 
Latin basis and upon Christian principles, consisting too almost 
entirely of priests, who were opposed, as well by motives of rival- 
ry as by religivus feeling, to the ancient bards and storytellers of 
the community: the “ lettered men”! were constituted apart from 
“the men of story,” and Latin literature contributed along with 
religion to sink the mythes of untaught heathenism. Charle- 
magne, indeed, at the same time that he employed aggressive and 
violent proceedings to introduce Christianity among the Saxons, 
also took special care to commit to writing and preserve the old 
heathen songs But there can be little doubt that this step was 
the suggestion of a large and enlightened understanding peculiar 
to himself. The disposition general among lettered Christians 
of thai xge is more accurately represented by his son Louis le 
Debonnaire, who, having learned these songs as a boy, came to 
abhor them when he arrived at mature years, and could never 
be induced either to repeat or tolerate them.2 

According to the old heathen faith, the pedigree of the Saxon, 
Anglian, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish kings, — probably also 
those of the German and Scandinavian kings generally, — was 
traced to Odin, or to some of his immediate companions or heroie 
sons.’ I have already observed that the value of these genealo- 


' This distinction is curiously brought to view by Saxo Grammaticus, 
where he says of an Englishman named Lucas, that he was “ literis quidem 
tenuiter instructus, sed historiarum scientid apprime eruditus” (p. 330, apud 
Dahlmann’s Historische Forschungen, vol. i. p. 176). 

* “ Barbara et antiquissima carmina (says Eginhart, in his Life of Charle- 
magne), quibus veterum regum actus et bella canebantur, conscripsit.” 

Theganus says of Louis le Debonnaire, “ Poetica carmina gentilia, qué 
in juventute didicerat, respuit, nec legere, nec audire, nec docere, voluif 
(De Gestis Ludovici Imperatoris ap. Pithceum, p. 304, c. xix.) 

* See Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, art Helden, p. 356, 2nd edit. Hen 
gist and Horsa were fourth in descent from Odin (Venerable Bede, Hist. i 
15). Thiodolff, the Scald of Harold Haarfager king of Norway, traced the 
pedigree of his sovereign through thirty generations to Yngarfrey, the som 
of Niord, companion of Odin at Upsal; the kings of Upsal were called Yng- 
linger, and the song of Thiodolff, Ynglingatal (Dahlmann, Histor. Forschung, 
2 p. 379). Eyvind, another Scald, a century afterwards, deduced the pedi- 

gree of Jarl Hacon from Saming, son of Yngwifrey (p. 381). Are Frode, 
the Icelandic historian, carried up his own genealogy through thirty-six 
generations to Yngwe; a genealogy which Torfsus accepts as trustworthy 

VOL. I. 20* 300c 


486 HISTORY OF GREECE 


gies consisted not 80 much in their length, as in the reverence 
attached to the name serving as primitive source. After the 
worship attached to Odin had been extinguished, the genealogi- 
eal line was lengthened up to Japhet or Noah, —and Udin, no 
longer accounted worthy to stand at the top, was degraded into 
one of the simple human members of it.! And we find this 
alteration of the original mythical genealogies to have taken 
en among the Scandinavians, although the introduction 


place ev 
in those parts both longer deferred, so as to 


of Christianity was 


opposing it to the line of kings given by Saxo Grammaticus (p. 352). Tor 


fseus makes Harold Haarfager a descendant from Odin through twenty-seven 
land through twenty-three generations ; Offa of 


generations ; Alfred of ng 
Mercia through fifteen (p. 362). See also the translation by Lange of P. A. 
Miiller’s Saga Bibliothek, Introd. p. xxviii. and the genealogical tables pre- 


fixed to Snorro Sturleson’s Edda. 
Mr. Sharon Turner conceives the human existence of Odin to be distinet- 
ly upon the same evidence as Euémerus believed in the 


ly proved, seeming 
f Zeus (History of the Anglo-Saxons, Appendix to b. it 


human existence 0 
ch. 3. p. 219, 5th edit). 

! Pahlmann, Histor. Forschung. t. i. p. 230 There is a valuable article 
Zeitschrift fir Gescl.ichts Wissenschaft (Berlin, vol. i 
ἐς Uber einige Hauptfragen des Nirdischen Alterthums,” 
e strong motive and the effective ten- 
ergy who had to deal with these newly- 
,erize the old gods, and to represent & 
fface from men’s minds, as if it con 


on this subject in the 

pp. 237-282) by Stuhr, 
wherein the writer illustrates both th 
dency, on the part of the Christian cl 
converted Teutonic pagans, to Euén 
genealogy, which they were unable to ¢ 


sisted only of mere men. 
Mr. John Kemble (Uber die Stammtafel der Westsachsen, ap. Stuhr, p. 


954) remarks, that * nobilitas,” among that people, consisted in descent from 
Odin and the other gods 

Colonel Sleeman also deals in the same m 
of the Hindoos, — so natural is the proceeding of 
religion in which a critic does not believe : — 

“ They (the Hindoos) of course think that the incarnation of their three 
great divinities were beings infinitely superior to prophets, being in all their 
attributes and prerogatives equal to the divinities themselves. But we are 
disposed to think that these incarnations were nothing more than great men whom 
their flatterers and poets have exalted into gods,— this was the way m which men 
made their gods in ancient Greece and Egypt. — All that the poets have sang 
of the actions of these men is now received as revelauion from heaven: 
though nothing can be more monstrous than the actions ascribed to the best 
incarnation, Krishna, of the best of the gods, Vishnoo.” (Sleeman, Rambles 
and Recollections of an Indian Official, vol. i. ch. viii. 61.) 


anner with the religious legends 
Euémerus, towards any 


SCANDINAVIAN SCALDS. 467 


leave tine for a more ample development of the heathen poetical 
vein -—and seems to have created a less decided feeling of anti 
pathy (especially in Iceland) towards the extinct faith.! The 
poems and tales composing the Edda, though first committed to 
writing after the period of Christianity, do not present the ancient 
gods in a point of view intentionally odious or degrading. 

The transposition above alluded to, of the guncalogicel root 
from Odin to Noah, is the more worthy of notice, as it iHastrates 
the genuine character of these genealogies, and shows that the 
sprung, not from any erroneous historical data, but from the i 
of the religious feeling; also that their true value is derived 
from their being taken entire, as connecting the existing race of 
men with a divine original. If we could imagine that Grecian 
paganism had been superseded by Christianity in the year 500 
B.C., the great and venerated gentile genealogies of Greece would 
have undergone the like modification; the Herakleids, Pelopids 
fEakids, Asklepiads, &c., would have been merged in sina ii 
aggregate branching out from the archzology of the Old Testa 
ment. The old heroic legends connected with these ancestral 
names would either have been forgotten, or so transformed as to 
suit the new vein of thought; for the altered worship, ceremo- 
nies, a.d customs would have been altogether at δῶν with 
them, a J the mythical feeling would have ceased to dwell u 
those to shom pray*rs were no longer offered. If the “ὦ ὦ 
Dodona δα been c*: down, or the Thedric ship had ceased to be 
sent from Ations to Délos, the mythes of Theseus and of the twa 
black deves νῷ 11“ have lost their pertinence, and died away. As 
it was, the chas4e from Homer to Thucydidés and Aristotle took 
place interne/ty, gradually, and imperceptibly. Philosophy and 
history wer superiaduced in the minds of the superior μαμὰ but 
the feelings of the general public continued unshaken — the sa- 
cred objects remained the same both to the eye and to the heart 


See P. E. Miiller, Uber den Urspru i 
ἈΝ κε, Tam prung und Verfall der Islandischen 
In the Leitfaden zur Nordischen Alterth 
t rdis umskunde, 4-5 (Ὁ 
1837), is an instructive saixmary of the different εὐ νὰ of enmee 


gpplied to the northern 1a)vaves: 1, the historical 
wes: 1, ; 2, the geographical 
the astronomical; 4, the plus» al’ 5, the allegorical aie 


468 HISTORY OF GREECE 


—and the worship of the ancient gods was even adorned by new 
architects and sculptors who greatly strengthened its imposing 
effect. 

While then in Greece the mythopeic stream continued in the 
game course, only with abated current and influence, in modern 
Europe its ancient bed was blocked up, and it was turned into 
new and divided channels. ‘The old religion — though as an as- 
cendent faith, unanimously and publicly manifested, it became 
extinct —still continued in detached scraps and fragments, and 
under various alterations of name and form. The heathen gods 
and goddesses, deprived as they were of divinity, did not pass 
out of the recollection and fears of their former worshippers, but 
were sometimes represented (on principles like those of Euéme- 
rus) as having been eminent and glorious men — sometimes de- 
graded into demons, magicians, elfs, fairies, and other supernatural 
agents, of an inferior grade and generally mischievous cast. 
Christian writers, such as Saxo Grammaticus and Snorro Stur- 
leson, committed to writing the ancient oral songs of the Scandiv- 
ian Scalds, and digested the events contained in them into contin- 
uous narrative — performing in this respect a task similar to that 
of the Grecian logographers Pherekydés and Hellanikus, in 
reference to Hesiod and the Cyclic poets. But while Pherekydés 
and Hellanikus compiled under the influence of feelings substan- 
tially the same as those of the poets on whom they bestowed 
their care, the Christian logographers felt it their duty to point out 
the Odin and Thor of the old Sealds as evil daemons, or cunning 
enchanters, who had fascinated the minds of men into a false belief 
in their divinity.!. In some cases, the heathen recitals and ideas 


! Interea tamen homines Christiani in numina non credant ethnica, nec 
aliter fidem narrationibus hisce adstruere vel adhibere debent, quam in libri 
hujus procemio monitum est de causis et oceasionibus cur et quomodo genus 
humanum a vera fide aberraverit.” (Extract from the Prose Edda, p. 75, 
in the Lexicon Mythologicum ad calcem Edde Szmund. vol. iii. p. 357, Co- 
penhiag. edit.) 

A similar warning is to be found in another passage cited by P. E. Miller 
Ube: den Ursprung und V>rfall der Islindischen Historiographie, p. 138 
Copenhagen, 1813 ; compare the Prologue to the Prose Edda, p. 6, and Mal. 
let, Introduction ἃ Histoire de Dannemare, ch. vii. pp. 114-132. 

Saxo Grammaticus represents Odin sometimes as a magician, sometimes 
@ an evil demon, sometimes as a high priest or pontiff of heathenism, whe 


LEGENDS OF THE SAINTS. 469 


were modified so as to suit Christian feeling. But when preserved 
without such a change, they exhibited themselves palpably, and 
were designated by their compilers, as at variance with med ‘reli- 
gious belief of the people, and as associated either with impos 
ture or with evil spirits. 

A new vein of sentiment had arisen in Europe, unsuitable in- 
deed to the old mythes, yet leaving still in force the demand for 
mythical narrative generally. And this demand was satisfied 
speaking generally, by two classes of narratives,— the lowniall 
of the Catholic Saints and the Romances of Chivalry conte. 
sponding to two types of character, both perfectly eal 
to the feelings of the time,— the saintly ideal and the chivalrous 
ideal. 

Both these two classes of narrative correspond, in character as 
well as in general purpose, to the Grecian mythes— being ste 
ries accepted as realities, from their full conformity with the pre- 
dispositions and deep-seated faith of an uncritical audience, and 
prepared betorehand by their authors, not with any reference to 


imposed so powerfully upon the people around him as to receive divine hon- 
ors. ‘Thor also is treated as having been an evil demon. (See Lexicon 
Mythologic. ut supra, pp. 567, 915.) 

Respecting the function of Snorro as logographer, see Prefat. ad Eddam, 
at supra, p. xi. Heis much more faithful, and less unfriendly to the old re- 
ligion, than the other logographers of the ancient Scandinavian Sagas. (Leit- 
faden der Nordischen Alterthiimer, p. 14, by the Antiquarian Society of 
Copenhagen, 1837.) 

By a singular transformation, dependent upon the same tone of mind, the 
authors of the French Chansons de Geste, in the twelfth century, turned 
Apollo into an evil demon, patron of the Mussulmans (see the Roman of 
Garin Je Loherain, par M. Paulin Paris, 1833, p. 31): “ Car mieux vant Diex 
que ne fait Apollis.”. M. Paris observes, “ Cet ancien Dieu des beaux arts 
est l’un des démons le plus souvent désignés dans nos poémes, comme patror 
des Musulmans.” | : 

The prophet Mahomet, too, anathematized the old Persian epic anterior to 
his religion. “C’estal’occasion de Naser Ibn al-Hareth, qui avait apporté de 
Perse |’ Histoire de Rustem et d’Isfendiar, et la faisait réciter par des chan- 
tenses dans les assemblées des Koreischites, quae Mahomet pronon¢a le vers 
suivant (of the Koran): Il y a des hommes qui achetent des contesfrivoles, 
pour dé-ourner par-la les hommes de la voie de Dieu, d’une maniéreimseuseée, 
et pour la livrer ἃ la risée: mais leur punit on les couvrira de honte, 
(Mohi, Préface au Livre des Rois de Ferdoasi, p. xiii.) 


470 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the conditions of historical proof, but for the purpose of — 
forth sympathy, emotion, or reverence. — The type of ape “ y 
character belongs to Christianity, being the history o a 
Christ as described in the gospels, and that of the prophets in 
the Old Testament; whilst the lives of holy men, who acquired 
a religious reputation from the fourth to the reurvoenth ον 
of the Christian era, were invested with attributes, and agente 
with ample details, tending to assimilate them to »» pies: 
model. The numerous miracles, the cure of diseases, the expul- 
sion of demons, the temptations and sufferings, the long 
and commands, with which the biography of Catholic ie 
abounds, grew chiefly out of this pious feeling, Lessons to the 
Many of the other incidents, recounted 
in the same performances, take their rise from geen te al- 
legories, from ceremonies and customs of which it was P age 
to find a consecrated origin, or from the disposition to ~~ οὐ v4 
etymology of a name into matter of history: many ner ee 
suggested by local peculiarities, and by the “sii ᾿ — : _ 
or justifying the devotional emotions of — who ons : bee 
consecrated chapel or image. The dove was — 2 tsi 
faith of the age, with the Holy Ghost, the serpent oy A " ἣν 
lions, wolves, stags, unicorns, etc. were the subjects : ο ihe 
blematic associations ; and such modes of belief foun — ime 
for themselves in many narratives which | brought the 4 : ee 
conflict or conjoint action with these various animals. ὯΝ 
of this kind, so indefinitely multiplied and so preéminently Hp 
ular and affecting, in the Middle Ages, are not exaggerations 

icular matters of fact, but emanations 1m detail of some δ 
rent faith or feeling, which they served to satisfy, - by w 
they were in turn amply sustained and accredited. 


writer and to his readers. 


“ἢ The legends of the Saints have been touched upon by M. Guizot (Cours 


W#Histoire Moderne, lecon xvii.) and by M. Ampere (Histoire Littéraire de οἱ 
Fran ἡ cap. 14, 15, 16); but a far more copious and elaborate accoun 
spon 5 i Age is to be found in the valuable 


led with much just criticism, 

rear Légendes Pieuses du Moyen Age, par L. F. Alfred Maury, 
= + nese scarcely adverts at all to the more or less of matter of fact μεν 

tained in these biographies : he regards them altogether as they νοὶ out 

and answered to the predominant emotions and mental exigences of the age: 

* Au milieu d’un Céluge de fables absurdes, la morale éclate avec un grand 


LEGENDS OF THE SAINTS. 471 


Every reader of Pausanias will recognize the great general 
analogy between the stories recounted to him at the temples 


which he visited, and these legends of the Middle Ages. Though 
the type of character which the latter illustrate is indeed mate- 
fially different, yet the source as well as the circulation, the gen- 
erating as well as the sustaining forces, were in both cases the 
same. Such legends were the natural growth of a religious faith, 


empire δ (p. 159, ed. 1829). “ Les légendes ont été pour les Chrétiens de ce 
temps (qu’on me permette cette comparaison purement littéraire) ce que sont 
pour les Orientaux ces longs récits, ces histoires si brillantes et si variées, 
dont les Mille et une Nuits nous donnent un échantillon. C’était JA que 
Pimagination populaire errait librement dans un monde inconnu, merveil- 
leux, plein de mouvement et de poésie” (p. 175, ibid). 

M. Guizot takes his comparison with the tales of the Arabian Nights, as 
heard by an Oriental with uninquiring and unsuspicious credence. Viewed 
with reference to an instructed European, who reads these narratives as 
pleasing but recognized fiction, the comparison would not be just ; for no one 
in that age dreamed of questioning the truth of the biographies. All the 
remarks of M. Guizot assume this implicit faith in them as literal histories: 
perhaps, in estimating the feelings to which they owed their extraordinary 
popularity, he allows too little predominance to the religious feeling, and too 
much influence to other mental exigences which then went along with it; 
more especially as he remarks, in the preceding lecture (p. 116), “ Le carac- 
vere général de l'epoque est la concentration du développement intellectuel 
dans la sphére religieuse.” 

How this absorbing religious sentiment operated in generating and accred- 
iting new matter of narrative, is shown with great fulness of detail in the 
work of M. Maury: “Tous les écrits du moyen ἂρ nous apportent la 
preuve de cette préoccupation exclusive des esprits vers l’Histoire Sainte et 
jes prodiges qui avaient signalé l’avénement du Christianisme. Tous nous 
montrent la pensée de Dieu et du Ciel, dominant les moindres ceuvres de 
cette époque de naive et de crédule simplicité. Drailleurs, n’étaite-ce pas le 
moine, le clerc, qui constituaient alors les seuls écrivains? Qu’y a-t-il 
@étonnant que le sujet habituel de leurs méditations, de leurs études, se 
reflétat sans cesse dans leurs ouvrages ? Partout reparaissait ἃ imagination 
Jésus et ses Saints: cette image, l’esprit l’accueillait avec soumission et 
obéissance: il n‘osait pas encore envisager ces célestes pensées avec l’ceil de 
la critique, armé de defiance et de doute; au contraire, Vintelligence les 
acceptait toutes indistinctement et s’en nourrissait avec avidité. Ainsi s’ac- 
eréditaient tous les jours de nouvelles fables. Une foi vive veut sans cesse de 
nouveaux faits qu'elle puisse croire, comme la charité veut de nouveaux bien: 
faits pours s’exercer” (p. 43). The remarks on the History of St. Christo- 


pher, whose perscnality was allegorized by ~ather and Melancthon, ase 
eurious (p. 57). 


472 MISTORY OF GREEC2. 


earnest, unexamining, and irterwoven with the feelings at. a time 
when the reason does not need to be cheated. The lives of the 


Saints bring us even back to the simple and ever-operative theo 
logy of the Homeric age; 80 constantly is the hand of God ex 
hibited even in the minutest details, for the succor of a favored 
al,—so completely is the scientific point of view, re- 


individu | pila 
of nature, absorbed into the religious. 


specting the phenomena 


During the intellectual vigor of Greece and Rome, a sense of the 


‘nvariable course of nature and of the scientific explanation of 
phanomena had been created among the superior minds, ~ 
indirect! aining Ὁ ity; thus 
through them indirectly among the remaining community ; 
limiting to a certain extent the ground open to be occupied by a 
[ i ‘the pagan literature and 
religious legend. W ith the decline of the pagan : 
philosophy, before the sixth century of the Christian 2ra, this 
scientific conception gradually passed out of sight, and lett the 
mind free to a religious interpretation of nature not less simple 
and naif than that which had prevailed under the Homeric pa- 
ganism.? ‘The great religious movement of the Reformation, and 
i Ἷ ἃ . Ξ , : > .? Ἷ 7 
1“ Pans les prodiges que l’on admettait avoir di nécessairement 5 opérer 
gn tombeau du saint nouvellement canonisé, Pexpression, ἢ Ceci bso 
claudi gressum, muti loquelam, surdi auditum, paralytici debitum mem re 
rum officium, recuperabant,’ était devenue plitot une formule d’usage gh 
rélation littérale du fait.” (Maury, Essai sur les Légendes Pieuses 
Moyen Age, p. 5.) 
To the same purpose M. Ampere, ch. 14. p. 361: “Il y a un egaeal πῆρ 
i I it cons son her 
bre de faits que l’agiographie reproduit constamment, quelque sot son. ὐψὶ 
ordinairement ce persomnage ἃ eu dans sa jeunesse une view a : 
révélé son avenir: ou bien, une prophétie lui a annonce ce qu il serait : 
Plus tard, il opére un certain nombre de miracles, toujours ea 
᾿ te des morts, il est averti de sa fin 
lissent d’autres merveilles 


jour. 
+l il exorcise des possédés, ressusci 
par un songe. Puis sur son tombeau s’accomp 
-peu- semblables.” ie 
; τὰ oe aie from M. Ampere to illustrate this: “ C’est done au — 
siecle que la légende se constitue: c’est alors qu'elle prend Se : 
earactére naif qui lui appartient : qu'elle est elle-méme, qu el e se 8 ent ᾿ 
toute influence étrangere. En méme temps, Vignorance devient de plus es 
plus grossiére, et par suite la crédulité s’accroit: les calamités du temps sont 


P a pl nd besoin de reméde et de consolation 
et Pon aun plus gra othe ee 


. p. 373). ! 
“in : 17. p. 401: “ Un des earactéres de la légende est de méler con 


LEGENDS OF THE SAINTS. 478 


the gradual furmation of critical and philosophical habits in the 
modern mind, have caused these legends of the Saints, — once 


stamment le puéril au grand: il faut lavouer, elle défigure parfois un peu 
ces hommes d’une trempe si forte, en mettant sur leur compte des anecdotes 
dont le caractére n’est pas toujours sérieux; elle en a usé ainsi pour St. 
Columban, dont nous verrons tout ἃ l’heure le réle vis-A-vis de Brunehaut 
et des chefs Mérovingiens. La légende auroit pu se dispenser de nous 
apprendre, comment un jour, il se fit rapporter par un corbeau les gants 
qu'il avait perdus: comment, un autre jour, il empécha la biére de couler 
d’un tonnzau percé, et diverses merveilles, certainement indignes de sa 
mémoire.” 

The miracle by which St. Columban employed the raven to fetch back his 
lost gloves, is exactly in the character of the Homeric and Hesiodic age: the 
earnest faith, as well as the reverential sympathy, between the Homenc man 
and Zeus or Athéné, is indicated by the invocation of their aid for hus own 
sufferings of detail, and in his own need and danger. The criticism of M. 
Ampére, on the other hand, is analogous to that of the later pagans, after 
the conception of a course of nature had become established in men’s minds, 
so far as that exceptional interference by the gods was understood to be, 
comparatively speaking, rare, and only supposable upon what were called 
great emergences. 

In the old Hesiodic legend (see above, ch. ix. p. 245), Apollo is apprized 
by a raven of the infidelity of the nymph Kordonis to him — τῷ μὲν dp’ dyye- 
λος ἦλϑε κόραξ, ete. (the raven appears elsewhere as companion of Apollo, 
Plutarch. de Isid. et Os. p. 379, Herod. iv. 15.) Pindar, in his version of the 
legend, eliminated the raven, without specifying how Apollo got his knowl 
edge of the circumstance. The Scholiasts praise Pindar much for having 
rejected the puerile version of the story —4ravei τὸν Πίνδαρον ὁ ᾿Αρτέμων 
ὅτι παρακρουσάμενος τὴν περὶ τὸν κόοακα ἱστορίαν, αὐτὸν δι᾽ ἑαυτοῦ ἐγνωκέ- 
vat φησὶ τὸν ᾿Απόλλω...... .... χαίρειν οὖν ἐάσας τῷ τοιούτῳ μύϑῳ τέλεως 
ὄντι ληρώδει, etc. — compare also the criticisms of the Schol.gd Soph. 
(Edip. Kol. 1378, on the old epic Thebals; and the remarks of Arrian 
(Exp. Al. iii. 4) on the divine interference by which Alexander and his 

army were enabled to find their way across the sand of the desert to the 
temple of Ammon. 

In the eyes of M. Ampere, the recital of the biographer of St. Columban 
appears puerile (οὔπω ἴδον ὧδε ϑεοὺς ἀνάφανδα φιλεῦντας, Odyss. iii. 221): 
in the eyes of that biographer, the criticism of Μ. Ampére would have ap- 
peared impious. When it is once conceded that phenomena are distributa 
ble under two denominations, the natural and the miraculous, it must be left 
to the feelings of each individual to determine what is and what is not, a 
suitable occasion for a miracle. Diodorus and Pausanias differed in opinion 
(as stated in a previous chapter) about the death of Actzén by his own 
moands,— the former maintaining that the case was one fit for the special] 
imervention of the goddess Artemis, ‘he latter, that it was not so. Th 


474 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the charm and cherished creed of a numerous public,! to pass 
altogether out of credit, without even being regarded, along 
Protestant; at least, as worthy of a formal scrutiny into the evie 
dence, —a proof of the transitory value of public belief, how- 
ever sincere and fervent, as a certificate of historical truth, if it 
be blended with religious predispositions. 


γπτττνκκντ. κ. 5... Ὅτ τ» 


question is one determinable only by the religious feelings and conscience of 
the two dissentients: no common standard of judgment can be imposed upon 
them ; for no reasonings derived from science or philosophy are available, inas- 
much as in this case the very point in dispute is, whether the scientific point 
Those who are disposed to adopt the supernatural 


of view be admissible. ι | 
n to them wherewith Diony 


belief, will find in every case the language ope " 
sius οἵ Halicarnassus (in recounting a miracle wrought by Vesta, in the 
early times of Roman history, for the purpose of rescuing an unjustly 
᾿ 9 of his time: “It is well worth while 
(he observes) to recount the special manifestation (ἐπιφάνειαν) which the 
goddess showed to these unjustly accused virgins. For these circumstances, 
extraordinary as they are, have been held worthy of belief by the sh the 
and historians have talked much about them. Those persons, indeed, = 
adopt the atheistical schemes of philosophy (if, indeed, we 008 - 86 
philosophy), pulling in pieces as they do all the special manifestions —s 
διασύροντες τὰς ἐπιφανείας τῶν ϑεῶν) of the gods which have τὴν | 
among Grecks or barbarians, will of course turn these stories also isa ridi 
eule. ascribing them to the vain talk of men, as if none of the gods cared at 
all for mankind. But those who, having pushed their researches furtlier, 
believe the gods not to be indifferent to human affairs, but favorable to good 
men and hostile to bad — will not treat these special manifestations as more 
incredible than others.” (Dionys. Halic. ii. 68-69.) Plutarch, after oe 
the great number of miraculous statements im circulation, expresses hie 
anxiety to draw a line between the true and the false, but cannot ΡῈ 
where : “excess, both of credulity and of incredulity (he tells us) in ΡΩΝ 
matters is dangerous ; caution, and nothing too much, is the best _—. 
(Camillus, c. 6.) Polybius is for granting permission to historians to recount 
a sufficient rumber of miracles to keep up a feeling of piety in the mult 
tude, but not τὸ τὸ : to measure out the proper quantity (he observes) is 
difficult, but not impossible (δυσπαρώγραφός ἐστιν ἢ ποσότης, Ov μὴν ἀπαρά 
γραφύς γε, Xvi. 12). 
''The great Bollanc 
comprise the whole y 
January to October, which oce 


of April fills three of those volume 
Had the collection run over the entire year, the total number of such biog 


raphies could hardly have been less than 25,000, and might have been evel 
greater (see Guizot, Cours d@’Histoire Moderne, lecon xvii- p. 157! 


accused virgin) reproves the sceptic 


jist collection of the Lives of the Saints, intended to 
ear, did not extend beyond the nine months from 
upy fifty-three large volumes. The month 
s, and exhibits the lives of 1472 saints 


LEGENDS OF CHIVALRY. as 


The same mythopeic vein, and the same susceptibility and 
facility of belief, which had created both supply and demand for 
the legends of the Saiuts, also provided the abundant stock of 
romantic narrative poetry, in amplification and illustration of the 
chivalrous ideal. What the legends of Troy, of Thébes, of the 
Kalydénian boar, of CXdipus, Théseus, etc. were to an early 
Greek, the tales of Arthur, of Charlemagne, of the Niebelungen, 
were to an Englishman, or Frenchman, or German, of the twelfiu 
er thirteenth century. They were neither recognized fiction nor 
authenticated history: they were history, as it is felt and wel- 
eomed by minds unaccustomed to investigate evidence, and un- 
conscious of the necessity of doing so. That the Chronicle of 
Turpin, a mere compilation of poetical legends respecting Charle- 
magne, was accepted as genuine history, and even pronounced to 
be such by papal authority, is well known; and the authors of 
the Romances announce themselves, not less than those of the 
old Grecian epic, as being about to recount real matter of fact.! 
{ is certain that Charlemagne is a great historical name, and it 


1 See Warton’s History of English Poetry, vol. i. dissert. i. p. xvii. Again, 
ἴῃ sect. iii. p. 140: “ Vincent de Beauvais, who lived under Louis ΙΧ. of 
France (about 1260), and who, on account of his extraordinary erudition, 
was appointed preceptor to that king’s sons, very gravely classes Archbishop 
Turpin’s Charlemagne among the real histories, and places it on a level 
with Suetonius and Cesar. He was himself an historian, and has left a 
large history of the world, fraught with a variety of reading, and of high 
repute in the Middle Ages; but edifying and entertaining as this work might 
nave been to his contemporaries, at present it serves only to record their 
prejudices and to characterize their credulity.” About the full belief in 
Arthur and the Tales of the Round Table during the fourteenth century, 
and about the strange historical mistakes of the poet Gower in the fifteenth, 
see the same work, sect. 7. vol. ii. p. 33; sect. 19. vol. ii. p. 239. 

“L’auteur de la Chronique de Turpin (says M. Sismondi, Littérature du 
Midi, vol. i. ch. 7. p. 289) n’avait point l’intention de briller aux yeux du 
public par une invention heureuse, ni d’amuser les oisifs par des contes mer- 
veilleux qu’ils reconnoitroient pour tels: il présentait aux Francais tous ces 
faits étranges comme de l’histoire, et la lecture des légendes fabuleuses avait 
accoutumé A croire ἃ de plus grandes merveilles encore; aussi plusieurs de 
ces fables furent elles reproduites dans la Chronique de St. Denis.” 

Again, ib. p. 290: “ Souvent les anciens romanciers, lorsqu’ils entreprenner.t 
an récit de la cour de Charlemagne, prennent un ton plus élevé: ce ne sont 
zoint des falles qu’ila vont coiter, c’est de histoire nationale, ~c’est la 


475 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


is possible, though not certain, that the name of Arthur may be 
historical also. But the Charlemagne of history, and the Chagle- 
magne of romance, have little except the name in common nor 
could we ever determine, except by independent evidence (which 
in this case we happen to possess), whether Charlemagne was 
a real or a fictitious person.! That illustrious name, as well as 
the more problematical Arthur, is taken up by the romancers, not 
with a view to celebrate realities previously verified, but for the 
purpose of setting forth or amplifying an ideal of their own, in 
such manner as both to rouse the feelings and captivate the faith 
of their hearers. i 
To inquire which of the personages of the Carlovingian epic 
were real and which were fictitious, — to examine whether the 
expedition ascribed to Charlemagne against Jerusalem had ever 
taken place or not, — to separate truth from exaggeration In tha 
exploits of the Knights of the Round Table, — these were probe 


: ἱ ant célébre i lroit alors 4 deman- 
gloire de leurs ancétres qu’ils veulent célebrer, et ils ont droit alo 


F "5. écoute aver respect.” 
ae yma of Turpin . inserted, even so late as the year 1 566, im 
the collection printed by Scardius at Frankfort of early πων historians 
(Ginguené, Histoire Littéeraire d’ Italie, vol. iv. part ii. ch. 3. p. 157). 

To the same point -— that these romances were listened to 80 real stories 
—see Sir Walter Scott’s Preface to Sir Tristram, p. lxvii. The authors of 
the Legends of the Saints are not less explicit in their assertions that every- 
thine which they recount is true and well-attested (Ampere, c. 14. p. 358). 

Ὶ The series of articles by M. Faariel, published in the Revue des Deux 
Mondes, vol. xiii. are full of instruction respecting the origin, tenor, and 
influence of the Romances of Chivalry. Though the name of ( harlemegne 
appears, the romancers are really unable to distinguish him from Charles 
Martel or from Charles the Bald (pp. 537-539). They ascribe to him an 
expedition to the Holy Land, in which he conquered Jerusalem from the 
Saracens, obtained possession of the relics of the passion of Christ, the 
crown of thorns, etc. These precious relics he carried to Rome, from 
whence they were taken to Spain by a Saracen emir, named Balan, at she 
head of an army. The expedition of Charlemagne against the ὌΝ in 
Spain was undertaken for the purpose of recovering the ΝΟ Ces 
divers romans peuvent étre regardés comme la suite, comme te μηνίον 
ment, de la fiction de la conquéte de Jérusalem par Charlemagne. 

Respecting the Romance of Rinaldo of Montauban ( sigan: ws agay- 
gles of a feudal lord against the emperor) M. Fauriel observes, “ Hi n’y a je 
crois, aucun fondement historique: c’est selon toute apparence, la pure ex 
pression poétique du fait général, ’ etc. (p. 542.> 


CHARLEMAGNE. 477 


bems which an audience of that day had neither disposition te 
undertake nor means to resolve. They accepted the narrative 
as they heard it, without suspicion or reserve; the incidents ree 
lated, as well as the connecting links between them, were in full 
harmony with their feelings, and gratifying as well to their 
sympathies as to their curiosity: nor was anything farther want- 
ing to induce them to believe it, though the historical basis might 
be ever so slight or even non-existent.! 


1 Among the “formules consacrées” (observes M. Fauriel ) of the roman- 
cers of the Carlovingian epic, are asseverations of their own veracity, and of 
the accuracy of what they are about to relate— specification of witnesses 
whom they have consulted — appeals to pretended chronicles: “Que ces 
citations, ces indications, soient parfois sérieuses et sincéres, cela peut étre; 
mais c’est une exception et une exception rare. De telles allégations de la 
part des romanciers, sont en général un pur et simple mensonge, mais non 
toutefois un mensonge gratuit.’ C’est un mensonge qui a sa raison et sa 
convenance: il tient au désir et au besoin de satisfaire une opinion accoutu- 
mée ἃ supposer et ἃ chercher du vrai dans les fictions du genre de celles ou 
Pon allégue ces prétendues autorités. La maniére dont les auteurs de ces 
fictions les qualifient souvent eux-mémes, est une conséquence naturelle de 
leur prétention d’y avoir suivi des documens vénérables. IIs les qualifient 
de chansons de vieille histoire, de haute histoire, de bonne geste, de grande baron- 
mie: et ce n’est pas pour se vanter qu’ils parlent ainsi: la vanité d’auteur 
n’est rien chez eux, en comparaison du besoin qu’ils ont d’étre crus, de passer 
pour de simples traducteurs, de simples répétiteurs de légendes ou d’histoire 
consacrée. Ces protestations de véracité, qui, plus ou moins expresses, sont 
de rigueur dans les romans Carlovingiens, y sont aussi fréquemment accom 
pagnées de protestations accessoires contre les romanciers, qui, ayant deja 
traité un sujet donné, sont accusés d’y avoir faussé la vérité.” (Fauriel, 
Orig. ἃ ’Epopée Chevaleresque, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. xiii. 
p. 554.) 

About the Cycle of the Round Table, see the same series of articles 
(Rev. Ὁ. M. t. xiv. pp. 170-184). The Chevaliers of the Saint Graal were a 
sort of ¢déal of the Knights Templars: “Une race de princes hérotques, 
originaires de |’ Asie, fut prédestinée par le ciel méme a la garde du Saint 
Graal. Perille fut le premier de cette race, qui s’étant converti au Chris- 
tianisme, passa en Europe sous l’Empereur Vespasien,” etc.; then follows ἃ 
string of fabulous incidents: the epical agency is similar to that of Homer 
— Διὸς δ᾽ ἐτελείετο βουλῆ. 

M. Paulin Paris, in his Prefaces to the Romans des Douze Pairs de 
France, has controverted many of the positions of M. Fauriel, and with sue- 
cess, so far as regards the Provencal origin of the Chansons de Geste, 
@eserted by the latter. In regard to the Romances of the Round Table, he 


478 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The romances of chivalry represented, to those who heard 


them, real deeds of the foretime — “ glories of the foregone men,” 


to use the Hesiodic expression! — at the same time that they emt 
bodied and filled up the details of an heroic ideal, such as thas 
age could conceive and admire — a fervent piety, combined with 
strength, bravery, and the love of adventurous aggression, directed 
sometimes against infidels, sometimes against enchanters or mon- 
sters, sometimes in defence of the fair sex. Such characteristics 
were naturally popular, in a century of feudal struggles and uni- 


agrees substantially with M. Fauriel ; but he tries to assign a greater histo- 
rical value to the poems of the Carlovingian epic, — very unsuccessfully, in 
my opinion. But his own analysis of the old poem of Garin Ge Loherain 
bears out the very opinion which he is confating: “ Nous sommes au regne 
de Charles Martel, et nous reconnaissons sous d’autres noms les détails 
exacts de la fameuse défaite d’Attila dans les champs Catalauniques. Saint 
Loup et Saint Nicaise, glorieux prélats du quatrieme siécle, reviennent 
figurer autour du pere de Pépin le Bref: enfin pour compléter la confusion, 
Charles Martel meurt sur le champ de bataille, ἃ la place du roi des Vist- 
goths, Theodoric.....-. Toutes les parties de la narration sont vraies: seule- 
ment toutes s’y trouvent déplacées. En général, les peuples n’entendent rien ἃ 
la chronologie : les év@nemens restent: les individus, les lieux et les €poques, 
ne laissent aucune trace: c’est pour ainsi dire, une decoration scénique que 
fon applique indifféremment ἃ des récits souvent contraires.” (Preface to 
the Roman de Garin le Loherain, pp. xvi—xx.: Paris, 1833.) Compare also 
his Lettre ἃ M. Monmerqué, prefixed to the Roman de Berthe aux Grans 
Piés, Paris, 1836. 

To say that ail the parts of the narrative are true, is contrary to M. Paris's 
own showing: some parts may be true, separately taken, but these fragments 
of truth are melted down with a large mass of fiction, ana cannot be dis- 
criminated unless we possess some independent test. The pvuet who picka 
out one incident from the fourth century, another from the tifen, and a few 
more from the eighth, and then blends them all into a continuous tale along 
with many additions of his own, shows that he takes the items of fact because 
they suit the purposes of his narrative, not because they happen to be attested 
by historical evidence. His hearers are not critical : they desire to have 
their imaginations and feelings affected, and they are ccutent to accept with- 
out question whatever accomplishes this end. 

‘ Hesiod, Theogon. 100 —«Aéa προτέρων ἀαϑρώπων. Puttenham talks of 
the remnant of bards existing in his time (1589): “ Blind Harpers, or such 
like Taverne Minstrels, whose matters are for the most part stories of old 
time, as the Tale of Sir Topaze, the Reportes of Bevis of Southampton, Adam 
Bell, Clymme of the Clough, and sach other old Romances or Historical 


Rhymes.” (Arte of English Poesis, book ii. cap. 9.) 


NIEBELUNGEN LIED.— EDDA. 478 


versal insecurity, when the grand subjects of common respect and 
imterest were the Church and the Crusades, and when the latter 
especially were embraced with an enthusiasm truly astonishing. 
The long German poem of the Niebelungen Lied, as well as 
the Volsunga Saga and a portion of the songs of the Edda, relate 
to a common fund of mythical, superhuman personages, and of 
fabulous adventure, identified with the earliest antiquity of the 
Teutonic and Scandinavian race, and representing their primitive 
sentiment towards ancestors of divine origin. Sigurd, Brynhilde, 
Gudrun, and Atle, are mythical characters celebrated as well by 
the Scandinavian Scalds as by the German epic poets, but with 
many varieties and separate additions to distinguish the one from 
the other. The German epic, later and more elaborated, includes 
various persons not known to the songs in the Edda, in particu- 
lar the prominent name of Dieterich of Bern — presenting, more- 
over, the principal characters and circumstances as Christian, while 
in the Edda there is no trace of anything but heathenism. There 
is, indeed, in this the old and heathen version, a remarkable anal- 
ogy with many points of Grecian mythical narrative. As in the 
case of the short life of Achilles, and of the miserable Labdakids 
of Thébes —so in the family of the Volsungs, though sprung from 
and protected by the gods — a curse of destiny hangs upon them 
and brings on their ruin, in spite of preéminent personal quali 
ties. The more thoroughly this old Teutonic story has been 
traced and compared, in its various transformations and accom- 
paniments, the less can any well-established connection be made 
out for it with authentic historical names or events. We must 
acquiesce in its personages as distinct in original conception from 
common humanity, and as belonging to the subjective mythical 
world of the race by whom they were sung. 
Such were the compositions which not only interested the 


Respecting the Volsunga Saga and the Niebelungen Lied, the work of 
Lange — Untersuchungen dber die Geschichte und das Verhdltniss der 
Nordischen und Deutschen Heldensage — is a valuable translation from the 
Danish Saga-Bibliothek of P. E. Maller. 

P. E. Maller maintains, indeed, the historical basis of the tales respecting 
the Volsungs (see pp. 102-107)— upon arguments very unsatisfactory ; 
though the genuine Scandinavian origin of the tale is perfectly made out, 
The chapter added by Lange himeelf, at the chose (see p. 432, ctc.), containg 


Vol. 1 22 


«οὐ HISTORY OF GREECE. 


emotions, but also satisfied the undistinguishing historical curio 
sity, of the ordinary public in the middle ages. ‘The exploits of 
many of these romantic heroes resemble in several points those 
of the Grecian: the adventures of Perseus, Achilles, Odysseus, 
Atalanta, Bellerophén, Jason, and the Trojan war, or Argonautic 
expedition generally, would have fitted in perfectly to the Car- 
lovingian or other epics of the period.’ That of the middle ages, 


juster views as to the character of the primitive mythology, though he too 
advances some positions respecting a something “ reinsymbolisches ” in the 
background, which I find it difficult to follow (see p. 477, etc). — There are 
very ancient epical ballads still sung by the people in the Faro Islands, many 
of them relating to Sigurd and his adventures (p. 412). 

Jacob Grimm, in his Deutsche Mythologie, maintains the purely mythical 
character, as opposed to the historical, of Siegfried and Dieterich (Art. Helden, 
pp. 344-346). 

So, too, in the great Persian epic of Ferdousi, the principal characters are 
religious and mythical. M. Mohl observes, —“ Les caractéres des person- 
nages principaux de |’ancienne histoire de Perse se retrouvent dans le livre 
des Rois (de Ferdousi) tels que les indiquent les parties des livres de Zoro- 
aster que nous possédons encore. Kaioumors, Djemschid, Feridoun, Gush- 
tasp, Isfendiar, etc. jouent dans le po’me épique le méme réle que dans les 
Livres sacrées: ἃ cela prés, que dans les derniers ils nous apparaissent ἃ 
travers une atmosphere mythologique qui grandit tous leurs traits: mais 
cette différence est précisement celle qu’on devait s’attendre 4 trouver entre 
la tradition religieuse et la tradition épique.” (Mohl, Livre des Rois par 
Ferdousi, Préface, p. 1.) 

The Persian historians subsequent to Ferdousi have all taken his poem as 
the basis of their histories, and have even copied him faithfully and literally 
(Mohl, p. 53). Many of his heroes became the subjects of long epical biog- 
raphies, written and recited without any art or grace, often by writers whose 
names are unknown (ib. pp. 54-70). Mr. Morier tells us that “the Shah 
Nameh is still believed by the present Persians to contain their ancient his- 
tory” (Adventures of Hadgi Baba, c. 32). As the Christian romancers 
transformed Apollo into the patron of Mussulmans, so Ferdousi makes Alex- 
ander the Great a Christian: “La critique historique (observes M. Mohl) 
était du temps de Ferdousi chose presqu’ inconnue.” (ἐδ. p. xlviii.) About the 
absence not only of all historiography, but also of all idea of it, or taste for it 
among the early Indians, Persians, Arabians, etc., see the learned book of 
Nork, Die Gotter Syriens, Preface, p. viii. seqq. (Stuttgart, 1842.) 

1 Several of the heroes of the ancient world were indeed themselves popu: 
lar subjects with the romancers of the middle ages, Théseus, Jas6n, etc.: 
Alexander the Great, more so than any of them. 

Dr. Warton observes, respecting the Argonautic expedition, “ Few stories 


EXPANSIVE CHARACTER OF EPIC LEGEND. 483 


like the Grecian, was eminently expansive in its nature: new 
stories were successively attached to the names and companions 
of Charlemagne and Arthur, just as the legend of Troy was 
enleiged by Arktinus, Leschés, and Stesichorus, — that of Thébes, 
by fresh miseries entailed on the fated head of C&dipus, — and 
that of the Kalydénian boar, by the addition of Atalanta. Allto- 
gether, the state of mind of the hearers seems in both cases to 
have been much the same,— eager for emotion and sympathy, 
and receiving any narrative attuned to their feelings, not merely 
with hearty welcome, but also with unsuspecting belief. 
Nevertheless, there were distinctions deserving of notice, which 
render the foregoing proposition more absolutely exact with re- 
gard to Greece than with regard to the middle ages. The tales 
of the epic, and the mythes in their most popular and extended 
signification, were the only intellectual nourishment with which 
the Grecian public was supplied, until the sixth century before 
the Christian «ra: there was no prose writing, no history, no 
philosophy. But such was not exactly the case at the time when 
the epic of the middle ages appeared. At that time, a portion of 
wociety possessed the Latin language, the habit of writing, and 
some tinge both of history and philosophy: there were a series 
of chronicles, scanty, indeed, and imperfect, but referring to con- 


of antiquity have more the cast of one of the old romances than this of Jasén. 
An expedition of a new kind is made into a strange and distant country, 
attended with infinite dangers and difficulties. The king’s daughter of the 
new country is an 2nchantress; she falls in Jove with the young prince, who 
is the chief adventurer. The prize which he seeks is guarded by brazen-foot- 
ed bulls, who breathe fire, and by a hideous dragon, who never sleeps. The 
princess lends him the assistance of her charms and incantations to conquer 
these obstacles; she gives him possession of the prize, leaves her father’s 
court, and follows him into his native country.” (Warton, Observations on 
Spenser, vol. i. p. 178.) 
To the same purpose M. Ginguené: “ Le premier modéle des Fées n’est- 
il pas dans Cireé, dans Calypso, dans Médée? Celui des géans, dans Poly- 
phéme, dang Cacus, et dans les géans, ou \es Titans, cette race ennemie de 
\upiter 8 8 serpens et les dragons des romans ne sont-ils pas des succes- 
burs du dragon des Hesperides et de celui de la Toison d’or? Les Magi- 
jens! la Thessalie en ¢toit pleine. Les armes enchantées impénétrables! 
elles sont de la méme trempe, et Pon peut les croire forgées au méme four 
mean que celles d’Achille et d’Enée.” (Ginguend, Histoire Littéraire d’Italie, 
vol. iv. part ii. ch. 3, p. 151.) 
VOL. L 41 Sloe 


482 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


temporary events and preventing the real history of tha past 
from passing into oblivion : there were even individual scholars, 
in the twelfth century, whose acquaintance with Latin literature 
was sufficiently considerable to enlarge their minds and to im- 
prove their judgments. Moreover, the epic of the middle ages, 
though deeply imbued with religious ideas, was not directly amak 
gamated with the religion of the people, and did not always find 
favor with the clergy; while the heroes of the Grecian epic 
were not only linked in a thousand ways with existing worship, 
practices, and sacred localities, but Homer and Hesiod pass with 
Herodotus for the constructors of Grecian theology. We thus 
see that the ancient epic was both exempt from certain distract- 
ing influences by which that of the middle ages was surrounded, 
and more closely identified with the veins of thought and feeling 

valent in the Grecian public. Yet these counteracting in- 
@uences did not prevent Pope Calixtus Il. from declaring the 
Chronicle of Turpin to be a genuine history. | 

If we take the history of our own country as it was conceived 
and written from the twelfth to the seventeenth century by Hard- 
yng, Fabyan, Grafton, Hollinshed, and others, we shall find that 
it was supposed to begin with Brute the Trojan, and was carried 
down from thence, for many ages and through a long succession 
of kings, to the times of Julius Cesar. A similar belief of de- 
acent from Troy, arising seemingly from a reverential imitation 
of the Romans and of their Trojan origin, was cherished in the 
fancy of other European nations. With regard to the English, 
the chief circulator of it was Geoffrey of Monmouth, and it pass- 
ed with little resistance or dispute into the national faith — the 
kings from Brute downward being enrolled in regular chronolo- 
gical series with their respective dates annexed. In a dispute 
which took place during the reign of Edward I. (a. p. 1801) 
between England and Scotland, the descent of the kings of Eng- 
land from Brute the Trojan was solemnly embodied in ἃ docus 
ment put forth to sustain the rights of the crown of England, as 
an argument bearing on the case then in discussion: and it pass 


ed without attack from the opposing party,! — an incident which 


i See Warton’s History of English Poetry, sect. iii. p. 181, note. “ Ne 
gan befor the sixteenth century presumed to doubt that the Francs derived 


EARLY HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 483 


geminds as of the appeal made by A‘schinés, in the contention 
between the Athenians and Philip of Maced6n, respecting Am- 
phinolis, to the primitive dotal rights of Akamas son of Théseus 
—and also of the defence urged by the Athenians to sustain their 
eonquest of Sigeium, against the reclamations of the Mityleneans, 
herein the former alleged that they had as much right to the 
rlace as any of the other Greeks who had formed part of the 
victorious armament of Agamemnén.! 

The tenacity with which this early series of British kings was 
@efended, is no less remarkable than the facility with which it 
was admitted. The chroniclers at the beginning of the seven- 
teenth century warmly protested against the intrusive scepticism 
which would cashier so many venerable sovereigns and efface so 
many noble deeds. They appealed to the patriotic feelings of 
their hearers, represented the enormity of thus setting up a pre- 
sumptuous criticism against the belief of ages, and insisted on 
the danger of the precedent as regarded history generally.2, How 
this controversy stood, at the time and in the view of the illus- 


their origin from Francus son of Hector; that the Spaniards were descend- 
ed from Japhet, the Britons from Brutus, and the Scotch from Fergus.” 
(Zbid. p. 140.) : 

According to the Prologue of the prose Edda, Odin was the supreme 
king of Troy in Asia, “in θὰ terra quam nos Turciam appellamus 
Hinc omnes Borealis plagze magnates vel primores genealogias suas refer- 
unt, atque principes illius urbis inter numina locant: sed in primis ipsum 
Priamum pro Odeno ponunt,” etc. They also identified Tros with Thor. 
(See Lexicon Mythologicum ad caleem Eddz Semund, p. 552. vol. iii.) 

1 See above, ch. xv. p. 458; also AUschinés, De Falsd Legatione, c. 14, 
Herodot. v. 94. The Herakleids pretended a right to the territory in Sicily 
near Mount Eryx, in consequence of the victory gained by their progenitor 
Héraklés over Eryx, the eponymous hero of the place. (Herodot. νυ. 43.) 

3 ΤῊΘ remarks in Speed’s Chronicle (book v. c. 3. sect. 11-12), and the 
preface to Howes’s Continuation of Stow’s Chronicle, published in 1631, are 
curious as illustrating this earnest feeling. The Chancellor Fortescue, in 
impressing upon his royal pupil, the son of Henry VL, the limited character 
of English monarchy, deduces it from Brute the Trojan: “ Concerning the 
different powers which kings claim over their subjects, I am firmly of opin- 
ion that it arises solely from the different nature of their original institution. 
So the kingdom of England had its original from Brute and the Trojans, 
who attended him from Italy and Greece, and became a mixed kind of 
government, compounded of the regal and the political” (Hallam, Hist 
Mid. Ages, ch. viii. P. 3, page 230.) 


484 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


trious author of Paradise Lost, I shall give in his own words, @ 
they appear in the second page of his History of England. After 
having briefly touched upon the stories of Samothes son of Ja 
phet, Albion son of Neptune, etc., he proceeds : — 

« But now of Brutus and his line, with the whole progeny ot 
kings to the entrance of Julius Cesar, we cannot 80 easily be 
discharged: descents of ancestry long continued, laws and ex- 
ploits not plainly seeming to be borrowed or devised, which on 
the common belief have wrought no small impression : defended 
by many, denied utterly by few. For what though Brutus and the 
whole Trojan pretence were yielded up, seeing they, who first de- 
vised to bring us some noble ancestor, were content at first with 
Brutus the Consul, till better invention, though not willing to fore- 
go the name, taught them to remove it higher into a more fabu- 
lous age, and by the same remove lighting on the Trojan tales, 
in affectation to make the Briton of one original with the Roman, 
pitched there: Yet those old and inborn kings, never any to have 
been real persons, or deme in their lives at least some part of what 
so long hath been remembered, cannot be thought without too strict 
incredulity. For these, and those causes above mentioned, that 
which hath received approbation from so many. | have chosen 
not to omit. Certain or uncertain, be that upon the credit of those 
whom I must follow: so faras keeps aloof from impossible or 
abeurd, attested by ancient writers from books more ancient, I 
refuse not, as the due and proper subject of story.”! 

Yet in spite of the general belief of so many centuries — in 
spite of the concurrent persuasion of historians and poets — in 
spite of the declaration of Milton, extorted from his feelings 
rather than from his reason, that this long line of quasi-historical 
kings and exploits could not be all unworthy of belief — in spite 
of so large a body of authority and precedent, the historians of 
the nineteenth century begin the history of England with Julius 
Cwsar. They do not attempt either to settle the date of king 
Bladud’s accession, or to determine what may be the basis of 
truth in the affecting narrative of Lear.2 The standard of his 


δὼ Antiquitas enim recepit fabulas fictas etiam Lonnunquam incondite : 
hheec estas autem jam exculta, presertim eludens omne quod fieri non potest, 
respuit,” etc. (Cicero, De Republica, ii. 10, p. 147, ed. Maii.) 

3 Dr. Zachary Grey has the following observations in his Notes on Shake 


HISTORICAL STANDARD OF CREDIBILITY. 485 


torical credibility, especially with regard to modern events, hae 
indeed been greatly and sensibly raised within the last hundred 
years. 

But in regard to ancient Grecian history, the rules of evidence 
still continue relaxed. The dictum of Milton, regarding the ante- 
Cesarian history of England, still represents pretty exactly the 
feeling now prevalent respecting the mythical history of Greece 
« Yetthose old and inborn kings (Agamemné6n, Achilles, Odys 
seus, Jason, Adrastus, Amphiarius, Meleager, etc.), never any 
to have been real persons, or done in their lives at least some 
part of what so long hath been remembered, cannot be thought 
without too strict incredality.”. Amidst much fiction (we are still 
told), there must be some truth: but how is such truth to be 
singled out? Milton does not even attempt to make the seve- 
rance: he contents himself with “ keeping aloof from the impos- 
sible and the absurd,” and ends in a narrative which has indeed 
the merit of being sober-colored, but which he never for a moment 
thinks of recommending to his readers as true. So in regard to 
the legends of Greece, — Troy, Thébes, the Argonauts, the Boar 
of Kalyd6n, Héraklés, Théseus, (Edipus, — the conviction still 
holds in men’s minds, that there must be something true at the 
bottom; and many readers of this work may be displeased, i 
fear, not to see conjured up before them the Eidédlon of an aa- 


thentic history, even though the vital spark of evidence be 
altogether wanting,' 

peare (London, 1754, vol. i. p. 112). In commenting on the passage in King 
Lear, Nero is an angler m the lake of darkness, he says, “ This is one of 
Shakspeare’s most remarkable anackronisms. King Lear succeeded his 
father Bladud anno mundi 3105; and Nero, anno mundi 4017, was sixteem 
years old, when he married Octavia, Cesar’s daughter. See Funcii Chre- 
nologia, p. 94.” 

Sach a supposed chronological discrepancy would hardly be pointed out 
im any commentary now written. 

The introduction prefixed by Mr. Giles, to his recent translation of Geaf 
frey of Monmonth (1842), gives a just view both of the use which our ald 
poets made of his tales, and of the general credence so long and so ansus 
pectingly accorded to them. The list of old British kings given by Mr. 
Giles also deserves attention, as a parallel to the Grecian genealogies anterior 
to the Olympiads. 

3 ‘The following passage, from the Preface 2f Mr. Price to Warton’s His 
any of English Poetry, is alike just and forcibly <‘teracterned ; the whole 


486 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


I presume to think that our great poet has proceeded upoa 
mistaken views with respect to the old British fables, not less in 


Preface is, indeed, full of philosophical reflection on popular fables gene- 
rally. Mr. Price observes (p. 79) : — 

“The great evil with which this long-contested question appears to be 
threatened at the present day, is an extreme equally dangerous with the 
incredulity of Mr. Ritson, —a disposition to receive as authentic history, 
ander a slightly fabulous coloring, every incident recorded in the British 
Chronicle. An allegorical interpretation is now inflicted upon all the mar- 
yellous circumstances ; a forced construction imposed upon the less glaring 
deviations from probability ; and the usual subterfuge of baffled research, — 
erroneous readings and etymological sophistry, —is made to reduce every 
stubborn and intractable text to something like the consistency required. It 
might have been expected that the notorious failures of Dionysius and Plu- 
tarch, in Roman history, would have prevented the repetition of an error, 
which neither learning nor ingenuity can render palatable ; and that the 
havoc and deadly ruin effected by these ancient writers (in other respects so 
valuable) in one of the most beautiful and interesting monuments of tradi- 
tional story, would have acted as sufficient corrective on all future aspirants. 
The favorers of this system might at least have been instructed by the phi- 
losophic example of Livy, — if it be lawful to ascribe to philosophy a line 
of conduct which perhaps was prompted by a powerful sense of poetic 
beauty, —that traditional record can only gain in the hands of the future 
historian by one attractive aid, — the grandeur and lofty graces of that in- 
comparable style in which the first decade is written ; and that the best duty 
towards antiquity, and the most agreeable one towards posterity, is to trans- 
mit the narrative received as an unsophisticated tradition, in all the plenitude 
of its marvels and the awful dignity of its supernatural agency. For, how- 
ever largely we may concede that real events have supplied the substance of 
any traditive story, yet the amount of absolute facts, and the manner of those 
facts, the period of their occurrence, the names of the agents, and the local- 
ity given to the scene, are all combined upon principles so wholly beyond 
our knowledge, that it becomes impossible to fix with certainty upon any 
single point better authenticated than its fellow. Probability in such decis- 
ions will often prove the most fallacious guide we can follow ; for, independ- 
ently of the acknowledged historical axiom, that ‘le vrai n’est pas toujours 
le vraisemblable,’ innumerable instances might be adduced, where tradition 
has had recourse to this very probability to confer a plausible sanction upon 
her most fictitious and romantic incidents. It will be a much more useful 
labor, wherever it can be effected, to trace the progress of this traditional 
story in the country where it has become located, by a reference to those 
natural or artificial monuments which are the unvarying sources of fictitious 
events ; and, by a strict comparison of its details with the analogous memo- 
rials of other nations, to separate those elements which are obviously of ἃ 
native growth, from the occurrences bearing the impress of a foreign origi 


SUBJECTIVE VIEW OF THE MYTHES. 487 


that which he leaves out than in that which he retains. To omit 
the miraculous and the fantastic, (it is that which he really means 
by “the impossible and the absurd,”) is to suck the lifeblood out 
of these once popular narratives, — to divest them at once both 
of their genuine distinguishing mark, and the charm by which 
they acted on the feelings of believers. Still less ought we to 
consent to break up and disenchant in a similar manner the mythes 
of ancient Greece, — partly because they possess the mythical 
beauties and characteristics in far higher perfection, partly be- 
cause they sank deeper into the mind of a Greek, and pervaded 
both the public and private sentiment of the country to a much 
greater degree than the British fables in England. 

Two courses, and two only, are open; either to pass over the 
mythes altogether, which is the way in which modern historians 
treat the old British fables, or else to give an account of them 
as mythes; to recognize and respect their specific nature, and to 
abstain from confounding them with ordinary and certifiable his- 
tory. There are good reasons for pursuing this second method 
in reference to the Grecian mythes; and when so considered, 
they constitute an important chapter in the history of the Grecian 
mind, and indeed in that of the human race generally. The his- 
torical faith of the Greeks, as well as that of other people, in 
reference to early and unrecorded times, is as much subjective 
and peculiar to themselves as their religious faith: among the 
Greeks, especially, the two are confounded with an intimacy 
which nothing less than great violence can disjoin. Gods, heroes, 
and men — religion and patriotism — matters divine, heroic, and 
human — were all woven together by the Greeks fnto one indi- 
visible web, in which the threads of truth and reality, whatever 
they might originally have been, were neither intended to be, 


We shall gain little, perhaps, by such a course for the history of human events ; 
but it will be an important accession to our stock of knowledge on the his- 
tory of the human mind. It will infallibly display, as in the analysis of every 
similar record, the operations of that refining principle which is ever obliter. 
ating the monotonous deeds of violence that fill the chronicle of a nation’s 
early career, and exhibit the brightest attribute in the catalogue of man’s 
intellectual endowments, —a glowing and vigorous imagination, — bestowing 
upon all the impulses of the mind a splendor and virtuous dignity, which, 
however fallacious historically considered, are never without a powerfully 
wedeeming good, the ethical tendency of all their lessons” 


488 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


nor were actually, distinguishable. Composed of such materials 
and animated by the electric spark of genius, the mythical an- 
tiquities of Greece formed a whole at once trustworthy and 
captivating to the faith and feelings of the people ; but neither 
trustworthy nor captivating, when we sever it from these sub- 
jective conditions, and expose its naked elements to the scrutiny 
of an objective criticism. Moreover, the separate portions of 
Grecian mythical foretime ought to be considered with reference 
to that aggregate of which they form a part: to detach the divine 
from the heroic legends, or some one of the heroic legends from 
the remainder, as if there were an essential and generic difference 
between them, is to present the whole under an erroneous point 
of view. The mythes of Troy and Thébes are no more to be 
handled objectively, with a view to detect an historical base, than 
those of Zeus in Kréte, of Apollo and Artemis in Delos, of 
Hermés, or of Prométheus. ‘To single out the Siege of Troy 
from the other mythes, as if it were entitled to preeminence as 
an ascertained historical and chronological event, is a proceeding 
which destroys the true character and coherence of the mythical 
world: we only transfer the story (as has been remarked in the 
preceding chapter) from a class with which it is connected by 
every tie both of common origin and fraternal affinity, to another 
with which it has no relationship, except such as violent and 
gratuitous criticism may enforce. 

By drawing this marked distinction between the mythical and 
the historical world, -- between matter appropriate only tor sub- 
jective history, and matter in which objective evidence is attain- 
able, — we shall only carry out to its proper length the just and 
well-known position long ago laid down by Varro. That learned 
man recognized three distinguishable periods in the time pre- 
ceding his own age; “First, the time from the beginning of 
mankind down to the first deluge; a time wholly unknown. Sec- 
ondly, the period from the first deluge down to the first Olympiad, 
which is called the mythical period, because many fabulous things 
are recounted in it. Thirdly, the time from the first Olympiad 
down to ourselves, which is called the historical period, because 
the things done in it are comprised in true histories.”! 


«--».-«».....-..."..ς.-ς.-.ς 


- Varro ap. Censorir. de Die Natali; Varronis Fragm. p. 219, ed. Scali 
ger, 1693. “ Varro tria discrimina temporum esse tradit. Primum eb bom 


PARTITION OF PAST TIME BY VAPRO. 485 


Taking the commencement of true or objective history at the 
point indicated by Varro, I still consider the mythical and histor. 
ical periods to be separated by a wider gap than he would havo 
admitted. ‘Io select any one year as an absolute point of com- 
mencement, is of course not to be understood literally: but im 
point of fact, this is of very little importance in reference to the 
present question, seeing that the great mythical events — the 
sieges of Thébes and Troy, the Argonautic expedition, the Kaly- 
donian boar-hunt, the Return of the Hérakleids, etc.—are all 
placed long anterior to the first Olympiad, by those who have 
applied chronological boundaries to the mythical narratives. The 
period immediately preceding the first Olympiad is one exceed- 
ingly barren of events; the received chronology recognizes four 
hundred years, and Herodotus admitted five hundred years, from 
that date back to the Trojan war. 


inum principio usque ad cataclysmum priorem, quod propter ignorantiam 
vocatur ἄδηλον. Secundum, a cataclysmo priore ad Olympiadem primam, 
quod quia in eo multa fabulosa referuntur, Mythicon nominatur. Tertium 
a prima Olympiade ad nos; quod dicitur Historicon, quia res in eo geste 
veris historiis continentur.” 

To the same purpose Africanus, ap. Eusebium, Prep. Ev. xx. p. 487: 
Μέχρι μὲν 'OAvuriadar, οὐδὲν ἀκριβὲς ἱστόρηται τοῖς Ἕλλησι, πάντων συγκθ 
χυμένων, καί κατὰ μηδὲν αὐτοῖς Trav πρὸ τοῦ συμφωνούντων, ete. 


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GREECE 


|. LEGENDARY GREECE 
Il. GRECIAN iISTORY TO THE REIGN 
OF PEISISTRATUS AT ATHENS 


BY 
GEORGE GROTE, ESQ. 


REPRINTED FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION 


ILLUSTRATED 


VOLUME II 


NEW YORK 


PETER FENELON COLLIER & SON 


MCMI 


ROSERT 5. FREEOMAS GUEST 


CONTENTS. 


VOL. IL 


PART I. 


OONTINUATION OF LEGENDARY GREEC®#,. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


‘OBERT 5. FREEDMAN BEQUEST : , 
OLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE. -- PERIOD OF INTERMEDIATS 
DARKNESS, BEFORE THE DAWN OF HISTORICAL GREECE. 


Section I.— Return of the Herakl::ds into Peloponnésus. 


fixile and low condition of the Herakleids.— Their reappearance as a pow 
erful force along with the Dorians. — Mythical account of this alliance, as 
well as of the three tribes of Dorians.— Témenus, Kresphontés, and 
Aristodémus, invade Peloponnésus across the gulf of Corinth. — The 
prophet Karnus slain by Hippotés.— Oxylus chosen as guide. — Division 
of the lands of Peloponnésus among the invaders. — Explanatory value 
of these legendary events. — Mythical title of the Dorians to Peloponné- 
sus. — Plato makes out a different title for the same purpose. — Other 
legends respecting the Achzans and Tisamenus. — Occupation of Argos, 
Sparta, and Messénia, by the Dorians. — Dorians at Corinth — Alétés. — 
Oxylus and the #tolians at Elis. — Rights of the Eleians to superintend 
the Olympic games. — Family of Témenus and Kresphontés lowest in 
the series of subjects for the heroic drama.— Pretence of the historical 
Spartan kings to Achwan origin. — Emigrations from Peloponnésus con- 
sequent on the Dorian occupation. — Epeians, Pyleans, Achzans, Ionians. 
—lIonians in the north of Peloponnésus —not reeognized by Homer. — 
Date assigned by Thucydidés to the return of the Herakleids..pages 1-14 


Srcrron II. — Migration of Thessalians and Beotians. 


“hessalians move from Thesprétis into Thessaly. — Non-Hellenie character 
of the Thessalians. — Beotians—their migration from Thessaly into 
Beotia. — Discrepant legends about the Beeotians. — Affinities between 
Beotia and Thessaly.— Transition from mythical to historical Bo- 


CONTENTS 


Szcricn 11] — £n ivrations from Greece to Asia and the Islands of tha 


LE gean. 
1. Molic Emigration. 


Secession of the mythical races of Greece.— Zolic migration under the 
Pelonids .... ime so nn 


Ionic Emigration. 


fonic emigration — branches off from the legendary history of Athens. — 
Théseus and Menestheus. — Restoration of the sons of Théseus to theiz 
father’s kingdom. — ‘They are displaced by the Neleids. — Melanthus and 
Kodrus. — Devotion and death of Kodrus — No more kings at Athens, 
— Quarrel of the sons of Kodrus, and emivration of Neileus. Different 
races who furnished the emigrants to Idnia 


3. Doric Emivrations. 


Dorian colonies in Asia. — ‘Théra. — Legend of the Minyw# from Lemnos. 
— Minye in Triphylia.— Migrations of Dorians to Krete. — Story of 
en founder of Rhodes. — Kos, Knidus, and Karpa- 
thus .. 


Intervening blank between legend and history.— Difficulty of explaining 
that blank, on the hypothesis of continuous tradition. — Sucb an interval 
essentially connected with the genesis of legend.............. 31-34 


CRAFTER AI. 
APPLICATION OF CHRONOLOGY TO GRECIAN LEGEND. 


Different schemes of chronology proposed for the mythical events. — The data 
essential to chronological determination are here wanting. — Modern chro- 
nologists take up the same problem as ancient, but with a different canon 
%f belief.— Mr. Clinton’s opinion on the computations of the date of the 
Trojan war.— Value of the chronological computations depends on the 
trustworthiness of the genealogies.— Mr. Clinton’s vindication of the 
ee — his proofs. —- 1. Inscriptions — none of proved antiquity. — 

enealogies — numerous, and of unascertainable date. —2. Early poets 
— Mr. Clinton’s suparation of the genealogical persons into real and fabu- 
lous: principles on which it is founded. — Remarks on his opinion. — 
His concessions are partial and inconsistent, yet sufficient to render the 
nealogies inapplicable for chronology. — Mr. Clinton’s positions respect- 
ing historical evidence. — To what extent presumption may stand in 


CONTENTS. Vv 


favor of the early poets. — Plausible fiction satisfies the conditions laid 
down by Mr. Clinton — not distinguishable from truth without the aid of 
evidence. — Kadmus, Danaus, Hyllus, ete., all eponyms, and falling under 
Mr. Clinton’s definition of fictitious persons. — What is real in the geneal- 
ogies cannot be distinguished from what is fictitious. — At what time did 
the poets begin to produce continuous genealogies, from the mythical to 
the real world ?— Evidence of mental progress when men methodize the 
past, even on fictitious principles. ... + sss. τ sanesecesoncves 34-57 


CHAPTER XX. 
STATE OF SOCIETY AND MANNERS AS EXHIBITED IN GRECIAN LEGEND 


Legendary poems of Greece valuable pictures of real manners, though 
«ving no historical facts. — They are memorials of the first state of 
Grecian society — the starting-point of Grecian history.— Comparison 
of legendary with historical Greece —government of the latter — of 
the former. — The king —in legendary Greece.— His overruling per- 
sonal ascendency. — Difficulty which Aristotle found in explaining to 
himself the voluntary obedience paid to the early kings. — The boulé — 
the agora: their limited intervention and subordination to the king. — 
The agora —a medium for promulgation of the intentions of the king. — 
Agora summoned by Telemachus in Ithaka. — Agora in the second book 
of the Iliad —picture of submission which it presents. — Conduct of 
Odysseus to the people and the chiefs. —Justice administered in the agora 
by the king or chiefs. — Complaints made by Hesiod of unjust judgment 
in his own case.— The king among men is analogous to Zeus among 
gods. — The Council*and Assembly originally media through which the 
king acted, become, in historical Greece, the paramount depositaries of 
power. — Spartan kings an exception to the general rule — their limited 
powers. — Employment of public speaking as an engine of government — 
coeval with the earliest times. —Its effects in stimulating intellectual 
development. — Moral and social feeling in legendary Greece. — Omnipo 
tence of personal feeling towards the gods, the king, or individuals. — 
Effect of special ceremonies. — Contrast with the feelings in historical 
Athens. — Force of the familyetie.— Marriage — respect paid to the wife. 
— Brothers, and kinsmen. — Hospitality. — Reception of the stranger and 
the suppliant. — Personal sympathies the earliest form of sociality. — 
Ferocious and aggressive passions unrestrained. — Picture given by 
Hesiod still darker. — Contrast between heroic and historical Greece. — 
Orphans. — Mutilation of dead bodies. — Mode of dealing with homicide, 
—Appeased by valuable compensation (ποινὴ) to the kinsman of the 
murdered man. — Punished in historical Greece as a crime against society. 
— Condition, occupations, and professions of the Homeric Greeks. — 
Slaves. — Thétes.— Limited commerce and navigation of the Homeric 
Grevks. — Kretans, Taphians, Phoenicians. — Nature of ἔβαν νον 88 
indicated by Homer.— Weapons and mode of fighting of the omeric 
Greeks. — Contrast with the military array of historical Greece. — Analo- 
gous change —in military array and in civil society. — Fortification of 
towns. — Earliest residences of the Greeks — hill-villages lofty and diffi- 
cult of access. — Homeric society recognizes walled towns, individaa) 


vi CONTENTS. 


property, and strong local attachments.— Means of defence superior te 
those of attack.— Habitual piracy. — Hxtended geographical knowledge 
in the Hesiodic poems, as compared with Homer.— Astronomy and 
physics. — Coined money, writing, arts. — Epic poetry. — Its great and 
permanent influence on the Greek mind. : ooo δ" 


CHAPTER XXI 
GRECIAN EPIC.— HOMERIC POEMS. 


Two classes of epic poetry — Homeric — Hesiodic. — Didactic and mystie 
Hexameter poetry — later as a genus than the epic. — Lost epic poems. 
—Epic poets and their prebable dates. — Epic cycle. —What the epic 
cycle was — an arrangement of the poems according to continuity of nar- 
rative.— Relation of the epic cycle to Homer.— What poems were in- 
cluded in the cycle.— The Iliad and Odyssey are the only poems of the 
cycle preserved. — Curiosity which these two poems provoke —no data 
to satisfy it.— Different poems ascribed to Homer.— Nothing known, 
and endless diversity of opinion, respecting the person and date of Ho 
mer. — Poetical gens of the [Hlomérids. — Homer, the superhuman epony- 
mus and father of this gens. — What may be the dates of the Iliad and 
Odyssey.— Date assigned by Herodotus the most probable. — Probable 
date of the Iliad and Odyssey between 850 and 776 Β. c.—Epic poems 
recited to assembled companies, not read by individuals apart. — Lyric 
and choric poetry, intended for the ear.— Importance of the class of 

es, singers, and reciters. — Rhapsodes condemned by the Socratic 
philosophers — undeservedly, — Variations in the mode of reciting the 
ancient epic. — At what time the Homeric poems began to be written. — 
Prolegomena of Wolf— raised new questions respecting the Homeric 
text — connected unity of authorship with poems written from the be- 
ginning. — The two questions not necessarily connected, though com- 
monly discussed together. — Few traces of writing, long after the Homeric 
age. — Bards or rhapsodes of adequate memory, less inconsistent with the 
conditions of the age than long MSS.— Blind bards. — Possibility of 
preserving the poems by memory, as accurately as in fact they were pre- 
served. — Argument from the lost letter Digamma.— When did the Ho- 
meric poems begin to be written ?— Reasons for presuming that they 
were first written about the middle of the seventh century B. Ο. — Con- 
dition of the Tliad and Odyssey down to the reign of Peisistratus. — 
Theory of Wolf. — Authorities quoted in its favor. — Objections against 
it. — Other long epic poems besides the Iliad and Odyssey. — Catalogue 
in the Iliad — essentially a part of a long poem — its early authority. — 
Iliad and Odyssey were entire poems long anterior to Peisistratus, whether 
they were originally composed as entire or not.— No traces in the Ho- 
meric poetns, of ideas or customs belonging to the age of Peisistratus. — 
Homeric poems. 1. Whether by one author or several. 2. Whether of 
one date and scheme. — Question raised by Wolf —Sagen-poesie. — New 
standard applied to the Homeric poems. —Homeric unity — generally re- 
jected by German critics in the last generation — now again partially 
revived. — Scanty evidence —- difficulty of forming any conclusive opinion. 
— Method of studying the question of Homeric unity. —Odyssey to be 
studied first. as of more simple and intellig‘ble structure than the liad: — 


CONTENTS. vil 


Odyssey — cridences of one design throughout its structure. — Exhibits 
very few marks of incoherence or contradiction. — Chronological reckon- 
ing in the Odyssey, inaccurate in one case. — Inference erroncously drawn 
from hence, that the parts of the poem were originally separate. — Double 
start and double stream of events, ultimately brought into confluence in 
the Odyssey. -— Skill displayed in this point by the poet. — Difficulty of 
imagining the Odyssey broken up into many existing poems or songs. — 
Structure of the Odyssey — essentially one — cannot have been pieced 
together out of preéxisting epics — Analogy of the Odyssey shows that 
long and premeditated epical composition consists with the capacities of 
the early Greek mind — Iliad — much less coherent and uniform than 
the Odvssey. — Incoherence prevails only in parts of the poem — mani- 
fest coherence in other parts. — Wolfian theory explains the former, but 
not the latter. — Theory of Welcker, Lange, and Nitzsch. — Age of the 
it of the Epopee. — Iliad essentially an organized 
‘heme does not comprehend the whole poem. — 
[liad — originally an Achilléis built upon a narrower plan, then enlarged. 
— Parts which constitute the primitive Achilléis exhibit a coherent se- 
quence of events. — Disablement of Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Diomé- 
dés, all in the battle of the eleventh book. — The first book concentrates 
attention upon Achilles, and upon the distress which the Greeks are to 
incur in consequence of the injury done to him. τ Nothing done to realize 
this expectation until the eichth boek. — Primitive Achilléis includes books 
i, viii, xi, to XXil. — Ninth book an unsuitable addition. — Transition from 
the Achilléis into the Liiad, in the beginning of the second book. — Transi- 
tion from the Iliad back into the Acbilléis at the end of the seventh book 
— Fortification of the Greciun camp.— Zeus in the fourth book, or Iliad, 
different from Zeus in the first and eighth, or Achilléis. — Continuous 
Achilléis — from the eleventh book onward. — Supposition of an enlarged 
Achilléis is the most consonant to all the parts of the poem as it stands.— 
Question of one or many authors — difficult to decide. — Odyssey all by 
one author, Iliad probably not. — Difference of style in the last six books 
—may be explained without supposing difference of authorship. — Last 
two books — probably not parts of the original Achilléis. — Books ii. to 
vii. inclusive. — Book x. — Odyssey — probably by a different author from - 
the Iliad — but perhaps of the same age. — Real character of the Ho- 
meric poems — essentially popular. — Addessed to unlettered minds, but 


hinge those feelings which all men here in cominon.— No didactic 
AH Sy aoe ee 


Epos preparatory to that 
poem — but the original s¢ 


purpose in Homer.....- oe e@ # © eeeeoeneee eeeeeeeee 


CONTENTS. eneenirs. “i 


ical sovereignty attached to each separate city — essential t» the sage 
mind. — Each city stood to the rest in an international relation. — Ἢ city 
T government is essential — village residence 1s looked upon as am in — 
sande scale of living. — Village residents — numerous Im early Greece — many 
ove δ" S : 3 ἷ : ᾿ 
of them coalesced into cities. — Sparta retained its old — ΚΣ 
i ‘ts power. — Hellenic aggregate nccepted as 
ia sa at the height of its power. ΟἹ ἐν Neale abi 
HISTORICAL GREECE. fact — its “ preéxisting elements untraceable. — Ancient I elasgians = 
knowable — Historical Pelasgians — spoke a barbarous ore τ᾿ ᾿ 
, , Ϊ i are also. — Statements Of good Wit- 
ic: ves — barbarians in language also. — Stateme 
torical Leleges — barbarians 11 langué ᾿ i . 
nesses regarding the historical Pelasgians and Leleges are to be ἀρ τ τιον 
_ whether thev fit the legendary Pelasgians and Leleges i not. τ . ; eged 
; he pe ic ὁ ies fr *hoenicia ἃ toypt — neither verifiabie ἢ 
CHAPTER I. unte-Hellenic colonies from Phoenicia and Egy] re oe 
probable. — Most ancient Hellas — Gree 


GENERAL GEOGRAPHY AND LIMITS OF GREECE. 


Northern boundary of Greece — Olympus. — Scardus and Pindus — tnen CHAPTER III. 
extension and dissemination through southern Greece and Peloponnesus, 
—QQOssa and Pelion — to the Cyclades. — Geological features. — Irrega sl ies ΘΕΈ ΤΡ ΤΣ 
larity of the Grecian waters — rivers dry in summer. — Frequent marshes MEMBERS OF THE οὐκ cst : 
and lakes. — Subterranean course of rivers, out of land-locked basins. — Sete ΟΣ 
Difficulty of land communication and transport in Greece. — Indentations 
in the line of coast — universal accessibility by sea. — Sea communica: Amphiktyonte Sac Second period —from 560-300 8. Ο. --- 
tion essential for the islands and colonies. — Views of the ancient philoso history — from 4; plied we Ν 6 two —the first period preparatory and 

hers on the influence of maritime habits and commerce. — Difference Important ditferences between t ot ἐσ τῆς Greeks (north of Attiea) not 
rol the land-states and the sea-states in Greece. — Effects of the con- very little known: — Eire? es Genel sketch of them. — Greeks 
figuration of Greece upon the political relations of the inhabitants. — known at all during = "ΠῚ P salians and their dependents. — Thessalian 
Effects upon their intellectual development. — Limits of Greece. — Its north of hermopylx. “of cee lation of Thessaly — 4 villein race — 
chief productions. — Climate — better and more healthy in ancient times character. — Condition 0 Ἂς a. 3 wand — doubtful. — Quadruple division 
than it is now.— Great difference between one part of Greece and the Penestx. — Who the : pever τ Pe - of the Thessalian cities. — Great 
another. — Epirots, Macedonians, ete. — Islands in the ®gean. —Greeks of Thessaly. va riage 2 fe x gore of unanimity. — Acheans, Perrhebi, 
on the coast of Asia Minor eps οἵ chosen: Dolo sa μία. all tributaries of the Thessalians, but 

Magnétes, Malians, Jolopes, Εἰ \Tacnétes. — The Malians. — The Ctei. 

all Amphiktyonic races. — Asiatic Magnetes. —~ ~ The Phocians. — Do- 

— The Anianes. — Lokrians, Phocians, pgs τς am aa το τα Akarna- 

CHAPTER E 1]. ris — Dryopis. — Historical Dryopes. — ee to a πῶς he iad 

xians. — Ozolian Lokrians, Miolians, and 4 epee ee f Boeotia. — 

of all Greeks. — The Bosotians. — Orchomenus. — (ities ¢, eed 

Confederation of Beeotia. — Early legislation of Thebes. — Σ nilovaus * 


269-298 
The Hellens generally. — Barbarians — the word used as antithesis to Hel- ἐδ amanda aii hide 

lens. — Hellenic aggregate — how held together. 1. Fellowship of blood 
2. Common language. — (rreek language essentially one with a variety 
of dialects. 3. Common religious sentiments, localities, and sacrifices. — CHAPTER IV. 
Olympic and other sacred games. — Habit of common sacrifice an early 
feature of the Hellenic mind — began on a small scale.— Amphiktyonies 3T HISTORICAL VIEW 
-— exclusive religious partnerships. — Their beneficial influence in creating — ND THE NEIGHBORING CITIES. 
sympathies. — What was called the Amphiktyonic Council. — Its twelve ” 
constituent members and their mutual position. — Antiquity of the Coun- ee 6] asus about 450 B.c. — Continuous Dorian states. — 
cil — simplicity of the old oath.— Amphiktyonic meeting originally at Distribution of Pe Seon. ἀπ μα Peloponnesus — Achaia. — Central 
Thermopyle. — Valuable influence of these Amphiktyonies and festivals Western ων agent etal between this distribution and that of 776 
in promoting Hellenic union. — Amphiktyons had the superintendence of ΤΟΡΊΟΣ --- ΔΈΟΝ κα sopulation which were believed to be indigenous 
the temple of Delphi. — But their interference in Grecian affairs is only 5:6. - Portions oS Pr 


: ions — Dorians, A&tolo 
; . . κα : rau . Acheans. — Emigrant portio : 
rare and occasional. — Many Hellenic states had no participation in it. — Arcadians, Kynurians gendary account of the Dorian em 


: : ἷ ijans. — Le : 
Temple of Delphi.— Oracles generally — habit of the Greek mind te Eleians, Dryopes, Triphylians rom the return of the Herakleids te 


AGGREGATE, SEPA RATELY TAKEN. -~ GREEKS 
PELOPONNESUS. 


races. — Non-Amphiktyonic races. — First period of Grecian 


THE HELLENIC PEOPLE GENERALLY IN THE EARLY HISTORICAL TIMES. 


OF PELOPONNESUS. DORIANS IN ARGOS 


Ξ - i Ϊ : : 
consult them. — General analogy of manners an ong the Greeks. — Polit- ; or = μον ar oe 2 ne Herakleid kings of Corinth. 


CONTENTS. 


and the neighboring Dorians greater than Sparta in 776 B.C. - 
Early settlements of the Dorians at ion 
Hill of Solygeius. — Dorian settlers arvived by sea. — E 
Krete. — The Dryopians — their settlements formed by se 
tlements in Argos quite distinct from those in Sparta’ 
Early position of Arcos — metropolis of the neix 
Pheidén the Temetit--king of Aros. — His claims and 
representative of TVéracdlés.— He claims the right of 
Olympic games. — Relations of Pisa with Pheiddn, 
Elis. — Conflict between Pheidén and the Spartin 
Olympiad, 747 Bs. c. — Pheidén the earliest Greek 
determined a seale of weight. — Coincidence of th 
the Babylonian. — Argos at this time the 
Her subsequent decline, from the relaxation of her confedern: 
Durians in the Argolic peninsula — their early commerce with the Doris 
islands in the Augean. — From hence arose the coinage of : 
Pheidon. — Pheidonian coinage and statical 
Argos, not to gina 


n 
money, ete. by 
scale — belony originally to 

.. 298~325 


CHAPTER V. 


#TOLO DORIAN EMIGRA Τ I” Υ IN ΤῸ I ELOF ON NESUS. oe ELIS I ACONIA 
Ϊ᾽ vy } 
AND MESSENIA. 


tclian emigration into Peloponnesus. — Dorians of 
klérus — accompanying or following them across the 
Settlement at Sparta made by marching alone the 
and Eurotas. — Causes which favored the settlement. — Settlements con- 
fined at first to Sparta and Stenyklérus. — First view of historical Sparta 
— Messenian kings. — Analogous representations in regard to the early 
roceedings both of Spartans and Messenians. — The kings of Steny- 
lérus did not possess all Messenia. — ( Mlympic festival — the early poins 
of union of Spartans, Messenians, and Eleians. — Previous inhabitants of 
southern Peloponnesus — iow far different from the Dorians. — Doric ané 
MMolic dialect ... 325-337 


Sparta and Steny 
Corinthian gulf. —- 
valleys of the Alpheus 


CHAPTER VI. 
LAWS AND DISCIPLINE OF LYKURGUS AT SPARTA. 


Lykurgus — authorities of Plutarch re 
his genealogy. — Probable date of Lykurgus. — Opinion of O. Miiller 
(that Sparta is the perfect: type of Dorian character and tendencies) is 
correct. — Peculiarity of Sparta. — Karly date of Lykureus. — View 
taken of Lykurgus by Herodotus.— Little said about Lykurgus in the 
earlier authors. — Copious details of Plutarch. — Regency of Lykurgus — 
his long absence from Sparta.— He is sent by the Delphian oracle to 
reform the state. — His institutions ascribed to him — senate and popular 
assembly — ephors. — Constitution ascribed to Lykurgus agrees with that 
which we find in Homer. —- Pair of kings at Sparta — their constant dis- 
sensions — a security to the state against despotism. — Idea of Kleomenés 
the Third respecting the first appointment of the ephors. — Popular origin 
f the board of ephors — oath interchanged between them and the kinge 


specting him. — Uncertainties about 


Argos and Corinth — Temenion ~ 
arly Dorians in 
ἢ. --- Dorian set- 
rand in Messenia, — 
ixhborine Dorixn cities. — 
projects as 
presiding at the 

and οἵ Sparta with 
. at or about the 8th 
who eomed money and 
the AAvinzan seale with 
first state in Peloponnesus, —- 
acy of cities. — 


CONTENTS. a 


— Subordination of the kings, and supremacy of the who. casing, δ 
nistorical times. -- Position and privileges of the kings. — κὸν ca Ὁ» 
ephors. — Public assembly. — The Senate. — Spartan ome i nt _— 
close oligarchy. — Long duration of the constitution without ee ΜῈ» 
— one cause of the respect in Greece and pride in the a gee t enenne 
— Dorians divided into three tribes, — Hylleis, Pamphy ae : 

— Local distinctions known among the Spartans. — ΣΌΝ gon; nee 
nia — 1. Spartans. — 2. Periceki. — Special meaning of ee we ki 
in Laconia. — Statement of Isokratés as to the origin 0 _ gl “a 
Statement of Ephorus — different from Isokratés, yet pees olly ws . μὸν 
cilable. — Spartans and Perieki — no distinction of race que 5 
them in historical times. — 3. Helots — essentially Ppa = ey i 
serfs — adscripti glebs — their condition and treatment. — ταῦ ‘De _ 
energy of the Helots — fear and cruelty of the Spartans. — ease 
the character of the Spartan government. — The ape. = aoe ig 
Helots. — Economical and social regulations ascribe to Ly τ τϑιμῃ 
Partition of lands. — Syssitia, or public mess. — Public traiming " ree 
pline. — Manners and training of the Spartan women Σ re ααορα 
totle. — Statement of Xenophon and Plutarch. — — ro goth — 
in the time of Aristotle — they had probably pone “ oe — 
the general training. — Earnest and lofty patriotism of the te κε : = 
— Lykurgus is the trainer of age κα ecteereni nqpaedic ny t τν ΕΓῚ ag 

“politic: nstitution. — His end exclusively wé ἐστ i 
over ak — Statements of Plutarch about Lykurgus fibers es" ἣν" 
mance in them. — New partition of lands — no such — bg ba 
Lykurgus by earlier authors down to Aristotle. — The νὴ ο τ τον 
as an equal partitioner of lands belongs to the century : Ὰ gis saa ἢ ἀτνᾷ 
menés. — Circumstances of Sparta down to the reign 0 ἵ gis. Jie eel 
ished number of citizens and degradation of Sparta in ὃν reign al gis 
-- His ardent wish to restore the dignity of the state. a re Υ - 
Lykurgus as an equal partitioner of lands grew out of this a ing- wr inl 
tition proposed by Agis. — Opinion that Lykurgus propens: 8 οἷς ἐᾷ 
rian interference, but not an entire repartition, gratuitous anc re —— 
— The statement of Plutarch is best explained by supposing i gr se 
of the time of Agis. — Acknowledged difficulty of understan ing A : 
means the fixed number and integrity of gas σον hy benim sg ms τκάμα 
: «ἢ, — La f 
ae ee beak, τ δε: which tended to 


equalize it.— Opinions gard 
to the Spartan law and 

originally applied only to Sparta: 

not equality of propert Origin 

unknown — probably not 

of the new force imparte 

Amyklz, Pharis, and Geronthre, 

by Alkamenés. — Progressive incr 


CHAPTER VII. 


FIRST AND SECOND MESSENIAN WARS. 


iti i — Chiefly belong to the 

orities for the history of the Messenian wars. C 

— after the foundation of Messéné by Epameinondas. -— ——s of ἊΝ 
or ancient traditions concerning these wars: comtradicticus abut 


xu CONTENTS. 


senian hero Aristomenés.— Dates of the first wars —s.c. 743-724.—~ 

Causes alleged by the Spartans.— Spartan king Téleklus slain by the 

Messenians at the temple of Artemis Limnatis. — First Messenian war. 

— Messenian kings, Euphaés and Aristodémas.— Messenians concentrate 

themselves on Mount Ithome — after a long siege they are completely 

conquered. — Harsh treatment and Helotism of the conquered Messen 

under Sparta. — Revolt of the Messenians against Sparta — second 

senian war — Aristomenés. — His chivalrous exploits and narrow ese 

—end of the second war.— The Messenians again conquered. — Narra- 

tive of Pausanias, borrowed from the poet Rhianus, is undeserving of 

eredit.— The poet Tyrtzus, the ally of Sparta — his great efficiency and 

influence over the Spartan mind. — Musical susceptibilities of the Spartans. 

— Powerful ethical effect of the old Grecian music. — Sufferings of the 

Spartans in the second Messenian war.— Date of the second war, Β. Ὁ. 

648-631.— Punishment of the traitor Aristokratés, king of the Arcadian 

Orchomenus. — Spartans acquire the ecantry west of Taygetus. — The 

Messenian Dorians had no considerable fortified places — lived in small 

townships and villages. — Relations of Pisa and Elis. — Struggles of the 

Pisatx and Tripbylians for autonomy —the latter in after times sustained met ) 
by the political interests of Sparts ....... eee 421-440 risT GF FELUSTRA TIONS 


GREECE 


YOu. 32 


CHAPTER VIII 


CONQUESTS OF SPARTA TOWARDS ARCADIA AND ARGOLIS. 


Frontispiece—Apollo Belvedere 


Btate of Arcadia. — Tegea and Mantineia the most powerful Arcadian towns, ed a 
before the building of Megalopolis. — Encroachments of Sparta upon the Argonautic Expedition . 
Theatre of Dionysius at Athens . ‘ 


Reconstruction of the Altar on the Acropolis Pergamon 


~ 


southern boundary of Arcadia. — Unsuccessful attempts of the Spartans 
against Tegea. — They are directed by the oracle to bring to Sparta the 
bones of the hero Orestés. -— Their operations against Tegea become more 
successful; nevertheless, Tegea maintains her independence. — Bounda- 
ries of Sparta towards Argos — conquest of Thyreatis by Sparta. — Battle 
of the three hundred select champions, between Sparta and Argos, to decide 
the possession of the Thyreatis — valor of Othryades. — Thryeatis comes 
into possession of Sparta —- efforts of the Argeians to recover it. — Altera- 
tion of Grecian opinion, as to the practice of deciding disputes by select 
champions. — Kynurians in Argolis, said to be of Ionic race, but Dorized. 
— Full acquisition of the southern portion of Peloponnesus, from sea to 
sea, by the Spartans before 540 Β. c. — Great comparative power of Sparta 
at that early time. — Careful personal training of the Spartans at a time 
when other states had no training at all. — Military institutions of Sparta 
— Peculiar and minute military subdivisions, distinct from the civil Euo- 
moties, ete. — Careful drilling of the Enémoties. — In other Grecian cities 
there were no peculiar military divisions distinct from the civil. — Recog- 
nized superiority of Sparta — a part of early Grecian sentiment — coinci- 
dent with the growing tendency to increased communion, — Homeric moda 
of fighting — probably belonged to Asia, not to Greece. — Argos — her 
struggles to recover the headship of Greece. — Her conquest of Mycene, 
Tiryns, and Kleéne#.— Nemean games. — Achaia ~ twelve autonomous 
towns, perhaps more — little known Larande wees) ee 


HISTORY OF GREECE. 


PART IL 
CONTINUATION OF LEGENDARY GREECE. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE.—PERIOD OF INTERME 
DIATE DARKNESS, BEFORE THE DAWN OF HISTORICAL GREECE. 


SECTION I.—RETURN OF THE HERAKLEIDS INTO PELOPONNESUS, 


In one of the preceding chapters, we have traced the descending 
series of the two most distinguished mythical families in Pelopon 
nésus, — the Perseids and the Pelopids: we have followed the 
former down to Héraklés and his son Hyllus, and the latter down 
to Orestés son of Agamemnén, who is left in possession of that 
ascendancy in the peninsula which had procured for his father 
the chief command in the Trojan war. The Herukleids, or sons 
of Héraklés, on the other hand, are expelled fugitives, dependent 
upon foreign aid or protection: Hyllus had perished in single 
combat with Echemus of Tegea, (connected with the Pelopids by 
marriage with Timandra sister of Klytemnéstra,!) and a solemn 
compact had been made, as the preliminary condition of this duel, 
that no similar attempt at an invasion of the peninsula should be 
undertaken by his family for the space of one hundred years. At 
the end of the stipulated period the attempt was renewed, and 
with complete success; but its success was owing, not so much te 


1 Hesiod, Eoiai, Fragm. 58, p. 43, ed. Dimtzer. 
1 


VOL. IL loe. 


— 


2 HISTURY OF GREECE. 


the valor of the invaders as toa powerful body of 1ew allies. The 
Herakleids reappear as leaders and companions of the Dorians, — 
a northerly section of the Greek name, who now first come inte 
importance, — poor, indeed, in mythical renown, since they are 
never noticed in the Iliad, and only once casually mentioned in 
the Odyssey, as a fraction among the many-tongued inhabitants 
of Kréte, — but destined to form one of the grand and predomi- 
nant elements throughout all the career of historical Hellas. 

The son of Hyllus — Kleod#us —as well as his grandson 
Aristomachus, were now dead, and the lineage of Hérakiés was 
represented by the three sons of the latter, —Témenus, Kres- 
phontés, and Aristodémus, and under their conduct the Dorians 
penetrated into the peninsula. The mythical account traced back 
this intimate union between the Ilerakleids and the Dorians to a 
prior war, in which Heéraklés himself had rendered inestimable 
aid tothe Dorian king .Egimius, when the latter was hard pressed 
in a contest with the Lapithe. Héraklés defeated the Lapithe, 
and slew their king JXorOnus; in return for which ®g¢imius 
assigned to his deliverer one third part of his whole territory, and 
adopted Hyllus as his son. Heéraklés desired that the territory 
thus made over might be held in reserve until a time should come 
when his descendants might stand in need of it; and that time did 
come, after the death of Ilyllus, (sec Chap. V.) Some of the 
Herakleids then tound shelter at Trikorythus in Attica, but the 
remainder, turning their steps towards /®gimius, solicited from 
him the allotment of land which had been promised to their val- 
iant progenitor. A¢gimius received them according to his engage- 
ment, and assigned to them the stipulated third portion of his 
territory :'! and.from this moment the Herakleids and Dorians 

' Diod6r. iv. 37-60; Apollodor. ii. 7,7; Ephorus ap Steph. Byz. Avudy, 
Fragm. 10, ed. Marx. 

The Doric institutions are called by Pindar τεϑμοὲ Αἰγεμίου Δωρικοί (Pyth. 
i. 124). | 
’ There existed an ancient epic poem, now lost, but cited on some few occa 
tions by authors still preserved, under the title A/yicoc; the authorship being 
sometimes ascribed to Hesiod, sometimes to Kerkops (Athene. xi. p. 503) 
The few fragments which remain do not enable us to make out the scheme 
of it, inasmuch as they embrace different mythical incidents lying very wide 
of each other, ~ 16, the Argonauts, Péleus, ard Thetis, etc. “Bat the name 


RETURN OF THE HERAKLEIDS. 8 


secame intimately united together into one social communion. 
Pamphylus and Dymas, sons of A°gimius, accompanied Témenus 
and his two brothers in their invasion of Peloponnésus. 

Such is the mythical incident which professes to explain the 
u:igin of those three tribes into which all the Dorian communities 
were usually divided,—the Hylléis, the Phamphyli, and the 
Dymanes, — the first of the three including certain particular fam- 
ilies, such as that of the kings of Sparta, who bore the special 
name of Herakleids. Hyllus, Pamphylus, and Dymas are the 
eponymous heroes of the three Dorian tribes. 

Témenus and his two brothers resolved to attack Peloponnésus, 

ot by a land-march along the Isthmus, such as that in which 
dyllus had been previously slain, but by sea, across the narrow 
inlet between the promontories of Rhium and Antirrhium, with 
which the Gulf of Corinth commences. According to one story, 
indeed, — which, however, does not seem to have been known to 
Herodotus, — they are said to have selected this line of march by 
the express direction of the Delphian god, who vouchsafed to 
expound to them an oracle which had been delivered to Hyllus 
in the ordinary equivocal phraseology. Both the Ozolian Lo- 
rians. and the AStolians, inhabitants of the northern coast of the 
Gulf of Corinth, were favorable to the enterprise, and the former 
granted to them a port for building their ships, from which memo- 
rable circumstance the port ever afterwards bore the name of 


Naupaktus. Aristodémus was here struck with lightning and 


died, leaving twin sons, Eurysthenés and Prokles ; but his remain- 
ing brothers continued to press the expedition with alacrity. 

At this juncture, an Akarnanian prophet named Karnus pre- 
sented himself in the camp! under the inspiration of Apollo, and 


which it bears seems to imply that the war of Aégimius against the Lapithe, 
and the aid given to him by Héraklés, was one of its chief topics. Both O. 
Miiller (History of the Dorians, vol. i. b. 1, ¢. 8) and Welcker (Der Epische 
Kvklus, p. 263) appear to me to go beyond the very scanty evidence which 
we possess, in their determination of this last poem; compare Marktscheffel, 
Preefat. Hesiod. Fragm. cap. 5, p. 159. 

1 Respecting this prophet, compare (Enomaus ap. Eusebium, Preparat. 
Evangel. v. p. 211. According to that statement, both Kleodzus (here called 
Arideus) son of Hyllus, and Aristomachus son of Kleodzus, had made sep- 
arate and successive attempts at the head of the Herakleids to penetrate into 
Peloponnésus through the Isthmus : both had failed and perished, having 


4 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


attered various predictions: he was, however, su much suspected 
of treacherous collusion with the Peloponnesians, that Hippotés, 
great-grandson of Héraklés through Phylas and Antiochus, slew 
him. His death drew upon the army the wrath of Apollo, who 
destroyed their vessels and punished them with famine. Téme- 
nus, in his distress, again applying to the Delphian god for succor 


and counsel, was made acquainted with the cause of so much 


suffering, and was directed to banish Hippotés for ten years, to 
offer expiatory sacrifice for the death of Karnus, and to seek as 
the guide of the army a man with three eyes.! On coming back 
to Naupaktus, he met the “το απ Oxylus, son of Andrzemon, re- 
turning to his country, after a temporary exile in Elis, incurred 
for homicide: Oxylus had lost one eye, but as he was seated on 
a horse, the man and the horse together made up the three eyes 
required, and he was adopted as the guide prescribed by the 
oracle.2, Conducted by him, they refitted their ships, landed on 
the opposite coast of Achaia, and marched to attack Tisamenus 
son of Orestés, then the great potentate of the peninsula. A 
decisive battle was tought, in which the latter was vanquished 
and slain, and in which Pamphylus and Dymas also perished. 
This battle made the Dorians so completely masters of the Pelo- 
ponnésus, that they proceeded to distribute the territory among 
themselves. The fertile land of Elis had been by previous stip- 
ulation reserved tor Oxylus, as a recompense for his services as 
conductor: and it was agreed that the three Herakleids, — Té- 
menus, Kresphonteés, and the infant sons of Aristodémus,— should 
draw lots for Argos, Sparta, and Messéné. Argos fell to Téme- 
nus, Sparta to the sons of Aristodémus, and Messéné to Kres- 
phontés; the latter having secured for himself this prize, the 
most fertile territory of the three, by the fraud of putting into the 


misunderstood the admonition of the Delphian oracle. C£nomaus could 
have known nothing of the pledge given by Hyllus, as the condition of the 
single combat between Hiyllus and Echemus (according to Herodotus), that 
the Herakleids should make no fresh trial for one hundred years; if it had 
been understood that they had given and then violated such a pledge, snch 
violation would probably have been adduced to account for their failure. 

’ Apollodér. ii. 8,3: Pausan. iii. 13 3. 

* Apollodér. ii. 8,3. According to the account of Pausanias, the beast 
upon which Oxylus rode was a mule, and had lost one eye (Pats. νυ. 3, 5) 


MYTHICAL BEARING UF THE STORY. 5 


vessel out of which the lots were drawn, a lump of clay instead 
of a stone, whereby the lots of his brothers were drawn out while 
his own remained inside. Solemn sacrifices were offered by each 
upon this partition: but as they proceeded to the ceremony, a 
miraculous sign was seen upon the altar of each of the brothers, 
—a toad corresponding to Argos, a serpent to Sparta, and a fox 
to Messéné. The prophets, on being consulted, delivered the 
import of these mysterious indications: the toad, as an animal 
slow and stationary, was an evidence that the possessor of Argos 
would not succeed in enterprises beyond the limits of his own 
city; the serpent denoted the aggressive and formidable future 
reserved to Sparta; the fox prognosticated a career of wile and 
deceit to the Messenian. 

Such is the brief account given by Apollodérus of the Return 
of the Herakleids, at which point we pass, as if touched by the 
wand of a magician, from mythical to historical Greece. The 
story bears on the face of it the stamp, not of history, but of 
legend, — abridged from one or more of the genealogical poets,! 
and presenting such an account as they thought satisfactory, of 
the first formation of the great Dorian establishments in Pelo- 
ponnésus, as well as of the semi-Aétolian Elis. Its incidents are 
so conceived as to have an explanatory bearing on Dorian insti- 
tutions, — upon the triple division of tribes, characteristic of the 
Dorians, — upon the origin of the great festival of the Karneia 
at Sparta, alleged to be celebrated in expiation of the murder of 
Karnus, — upon the different temper and character of the Dorian 
states among themselves, — upon the early alliance of the Dorians 
with Elis, which contributed to give ascendency and vogue to the 
Olympic games,— upon the reverential dependence of Dorians 
towards the Delphian oracle, — and, lastly, upon the etymology 
of the name Naupaktus. If we possessed the narrative more in 
detail, we should probably find many more examples of color 


' Herodotus observes, in reference to the Lacedemonian account of their 
first two kings in Peloponnésus, (Eurysthenés and Proklés, the twin sous of 
Aristodémus,) that the Lacedemonians gavs a story not in harmony with ang 
of the ροεί8, --- Λακεδαιμόνιοι γὰρ, ὁμολογέοντες οὐδενὶ TOLNTH, 
λέγουσιν αὐτὸν ᾿Αριστόδημον ......... βασιλεύοντα ἀγαγεῖν σφέας ἐς ταύτην 
τὴν χώρην τὴν νῦν ἐκτέαται, ἀλλ’ ob τοὺς ᾿Αριστοδήμου παῖδας (Herodet. φῇ 
52). 


6 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ing of the legendary past suitable to the circumstaaces of the 


historical present. 

Above all, this legend makes out in favor of the Dorians and 
their kings a mythical title to their Peloponnesian establishments; 
Argos, Sparta, and Messéné are presented as rightfully belong- 
ing, and restored by just retribution, to the children of Héraklés. 
It was to them that Zeus had specially given the territory of 
Sparta; the Dorians came in as their subjects and auxiliaries.! 
Plato gives a very different version of the legend, but we find 
that he, too, turns the story in such a manner as to embody a 
claim of right on the part of the conquerors. According to him, 
the Achzans, who returned from the capture of Troy, found 
among their fellow-citizens at home — the race which had grown 
up during their absence—an aversion to readmit them: after 
a fruitless endeavor to make good their rights, they were at last 
expelled, but not without much contest and bloodshed. A leader 
named Dorieus, collected all these exiles into one body, and from 
him they received the name of Dorians instead of Achzans ; then 
marching back, under the conduct of the Herakleids into Pelo- 
ponnésus, they recovered by force the possessions from which they 
had been shut out, and constituted the three Dorian establish- 
ments under the separate Herakleid brothers, at Argos, Sparta, 
and Messéné. These three fraternal dynasties were founded upon 
a scheme of intimate union and sworn alliance one with the other, 
for the purpose of resisting any attack which might be made upon 
them from Asia,? either by the remaining Trojans or by their allies. 
Such is the story as Plato believed it; materially different in 


1 Tyrteus, Fragm.— 

Αὐτὸς yap Kpoviwy, καλλιστεφάνου πύσις Ἥρας, 
Zev¢ Ἡρακλείδαις τήνδε δέδωκε πόλιν" 

Οἷσιν ἅμα, προλιπόντες ᾿Ερίνεον ἠνεμύεντα, 
Εὐρεῖαν Πέλοπος νῆσον ἀφικόμεϑα. 

In a similar manner Pindar says that Apollo had planted the sons of 
Héraklés, jointly with those of #gimius, at Sparta, Argos, and Pylus (Pyth. 
v. 93). 

Isokratés (Or. vi. Archidamus, p. 120) makes out a good title by a different 
line of mythical reasoning. ‘There seem to have been also stories contain 
ing mythical reasons why the Herakleids did not acquire posses:ion of Arca 
dia (Polyen. i. 7). 

5 Plato, Legg. iii. 6-7, pp. 682-686. 


STORY AS GIVEN BY PLATO. 7 


the incidents related, yet analogous in mythical feeling, and em- 
bodying alike the idea of a rightful reconquest. Moreover, the 
two accounts agree in representing both the entire conquest and 
the triple division of Dorian Peloponnésus as begun and com- 
pleted in one and the same enterprise, —so as to constitute one 
single event, which Plato would probably have called the Return 
of the Achzeans, but which was commonly known as the Returr 
of the Herakleids. Though this is both inadmissible and incon- 
sistent with other statements which approach close to the histori- 
cal times, yet it bears every mark of being the primitive view 
originally presented by the genealogical poets: the broad way in 
which the incidents are grouped together, was at once easy for 
the imagination to follow, and impressive to the feelings. 

The existence of one legendary account must never be under 
stood as excluding the probability of other accounts, current at 
the same time, but inconsistent with it: and many such there 
were as to the first establishment of the Peloponnesian Dorians. 
[In the narrative which I have given from Apollodorus, conceived 
apparently under the influence of Dorian feelings, Tisamenus is 
stated to have been slain in the invasion. But according to 
another narrative, which seems to have found favor with the his- 
torical Achwans on the north coast of Peloponnésus, 'Tisamenus, 
though expelled by the invaders from his kingdom of Sparta or 
Argos, was not slain: he was allowed to retire under agreement, 
together with a certain portion of his subjects, and he directed 
his steps towards the coast of Peloponnésus south of the Cor- 
inthian Gulf, then occupied by the Ionians. As there were re 
lations, not only of friendship, but of kindred origin, between 
Ionians and Achzans, (the eponymous heroes I6n and Achzus 
pass for brothers, both sons of Xuthus, (Tisamenus solicited from 
the Ionians admission for himself and his fellow- fugitives into 
their territory. The leading Ionians declining this request, under 
the apprehension that Tisamenus might be chosen as sovereign 
over the whole, the latter accomplished his object by force. After 
@ vehement struggle, the Ionians were vanquished and put to 
flight, and Tisamenus thus acquired possession of Heliké, as well 
as of the northern coast of the peninsula, westward from Sikyon ; 
which coast continued to be occupied by the Achzans, and re- 
ceived its name from them, throughout all the historical time:. 


8 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The Ionians retired to Attica, many of them taking part in what 
is called the Ionic emigration to the coast of Asia Minor, which 
followed shortly after. Pausanias, indeed, tells us that Tisame- 
nus, having gained a decisive victory over the Jonians, fell in the 
engagement,! and did not himself live to occupy the country of 
which his troops remained masters. But this story of the death 
of Tisamenus seems to arise from a desire, on the part of Pau- 
sanias, to blend together into one narrative two discrepant le 
gends ; at least the historical Achzans in later times continued to 
regard Tisamenus himself as having lived and reigned in their 
territory, and as having left a regal dynasty which lasted down 
to Ogygés,? after whom it was exchanged for a popular govern- 
ment.8 } 
The conquest of Témenus, the eldest of the three Herakleids, 
originally comprehended only Argos and its neighborhood ; it was 
from thence that τω σοι, Epidaurus, AX gina, Sikyén, and Phlius 
were successfully occupied by Dorians, the sons and son-in-law 
of Témenus — Deiphontés, Phalkés, and Keisus — being the 
leaders under whom this was accomplished. At Sparta, the suc- 
cess of the Dorians was furthered by the treason of a man 
named Philonomus, who received as recompense the neighboring 
town and territory of Amyklz.5 Messénia is said to have sub- 
mitted without resistance to the dominion of the Herakleid Kres 
phontés, who established his residence at Stenyklarus : the Py- 
lian Melanthus, then ruler of the country, and representative of 


the great mythical lineage of Néleus and Nestor, withdrew with 
© ne 


' Pausan. vii. 1-3. 

2 Polyb. ii. 45; iv. 1; Strabo, viii. pp. 383-384. This Tisamenus de- 
rives his name from the memorable act of revenge ascribed to his father 
Orestés. So, in the legend of the Siege of Thebes, Thersander, as one of 
the Epigoni, avenged his father Polynikés: the son of Thersander was also 
called Tisamenus (Herodot. iv. 149). Compare Ὁ. Miiller, Dorians, i. p. 69 
note 9, Eng. Trans. 

3 Piodér. iv. 1. The historian Ephorus embodied in his work a narrative 
in considerable detail of this grand event of Grecian legend, the Return of 
the Herakleids, — with which he professed to commence his comsecutive his 
tory : from what sources he borrowed we do not know. 

4 Strabo, viii. p. 389. Pausan. ii. 6, 2; 12, 1. 

* Condy, Nar. 36; Strabo, viii. p. 365 


OXYLUS AND THE ZTOLIANS IN ELIS. 9 


his honsehold gods and with a portion of his subjects te 
Attica.! 

The only Dorian establishment in the peninsula not directly 
connected with the triple partition is Corinth, which is said tc 
have been Dorized somewhat later and under another leader, 
though still a Herakleid. Hippotés— descendant of Héraklés 
in the fourth generation, but not through Hyllus,—had been 
guilty (as already mentioned) of the murder of Karnus the 
prophet at the camp of Naupaktus, for which he had been ban- 
ished and remained in exile for ten years; his son deriving the 
name of Alétés from the long wanderings endured by the father 
At the head of a body of Dorians, Alétés attacked Corinth: he 
pitched his camp on the Solygeian eminence near the city, and 
harassed the inhabitants with constant warfare until he compelled 
them to surrender. Even in the time of the Peloponnesian war, 
the Corinthians professed to identify the hill on which the camp 
of these assailants had been placed. The great mythical dyn- 
asty of the Sisyphids was expelled, and Alétés became ruler 
and Cikist of the Dorian city; many of the inhabitants, however, 
folic or Ionic, departed.2 

The settlement of Oxylus and his 2Etolians in Elis is said by 
some to have been accomplished with very little opposition; the 
leader professing himself to be descended from /Etolus, who had 
been in a previous age banished from Elis into Atélia, and the 
two people, Epeians and /®tolians, acknowledging a kindred 
origin one with the other.’ At first, indeed, according to Epho- 
rus, the Epeians appeared in arms, determined to repel the in- 
truders, but at length it was agreed on both sides to abide the issue 
of asingle combat. Degmenus, the champion of the Epeians, 
confided in the long shot of his bow and arrow; but the A®tolian 
Pyrechmés came provided with his sling, —a weapon then un- 
known and recently invented by the A®tolians,—the range of 
which was yet longer than that of the bow of his enemy: he 


' Strabo, viii. p. 359; Conén, Narr. 39. 
* Thucydid. iv. 42. Schol. Pindar. Olymp. xiii. 17; and Nem. vii. 158. 
Conén, Narrat. 26. Ephor. ap. Strab. viii. p. 389. 
Thucydidés calls the ante-Dorian inhabitants of Corinth AZolians - Cond 
ealls them Ionians. 
* Ephorus ap. Strabo, x. p. 463. 
19 


10 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


thus killed Degmenus, and secured the victory to Oxylus and his 
followers. According to one statement, the Epeians were ex- 
pelled ; according to another, they fraternized amicably with the 
new-comers: Whatever may be the truth as to this matter, it 15 cer- 
tain that their name is from this moment lost, and that they never 
reappear among the historical elements of Greece:! we hear 
from this time forward only of Eleians, said to be of /Etolian 


descent.* 
One most important privilege was connected with the posses- 


sion of the Eleian territory by Oxylus, coupled with his claim on 


the eratitude ot the Dorian kings. 
ministration of the temple at Olympia, which the Achzans are 


The Eleians acquired the ad- 


said to have posse sed before them; and in consideration of this 


sacred function, which subsequently ripened into the celebration 
of the great Olympic eames, their territory was solemnly pro- 


nounced to be inviolable. Such was the statement of Ephorus 3 
we find, in this case as in so many others, that the Return of the 
Herakleids is made tosupply a legendary basis for the historical 
state of things in Peloponnesus. 

It was the practice of the great Attic tragedians, with rare ex- 
ceptions, to select the subjects of their composition from the heroic 
or leeendary world, and Euripides had composed three dramas, 
now lost, on the adventures of Témenus with his daughter Hyrne- 
thé and his son-in-law Déiphontés, —on the family misfortunes 
of Kresphontes and Meropé,—and on the successful valor of 
Archelaus the son of Témenus in Macedonia, where he was al- 
leged to have first begun the dynasty of the Temenid kings. Of 
these subjects the first and second were eminently tragical, and 


the third, relating to Archelaus, appears to have been undertaken 


by Euripides in compliment to his contemporary sovereign and 


1 Strabo, viii. p. 358; Pausan. v. 4, 1. One of the six towns in riphylia 


mentioned by Herodotus is called “Erecov ( Herodot. iv. 149). 

4 Herodot. viii. 73; Pausan. v. 1,2. Hekutsus affirmed that the Epeians 
were completely alien to the Eleians; Strabo does not seem to have been 
able to satisfy himself either of the affirmative or negative (Hekatzus, Fr. 
$48, ed. Didot ; Strabo, viii. p. 341). 

5 Ephorus ap. Strabo. viii. p. 358. 
the territory more immediately bordering upon Olympia, was very different 


from this. 


The tale of the inhabitants of Pisa, 


ACH-EAN LEGENDS ADOPTED BY THE DORIANS. ll 


patron, Archelaus king 0° Macedonia: we are even told that 
those exploits which the usual version of the legend ascribed to 
‘Témenus, were reported in the drama of Euripidés to have been 
performed by Archelaus his son.! Of all the heroes, touched 
upon by the three Attie tragedians, these Dorian Herakleids 
stand lowest in the descending genealogical series, ~ one mark 
amongst others that we are approaching the ground of genuine 
history. 

Though the name Achzans, as denoting a people, is hence- 
forward confined to the North- Peloponnesian territory specially 
called Achaia, and to the inhabitants of Achza, Phthidtis, north 
of Mount Céta,—and though the great Peloponnesian states 
always seem to have prided themselves on the title of Dorians, 
—yet we find the kings of Sparta, ever. in the historical age, 
taking pains to appropriate to themselves the mythical glories of 
the Achwans, and to set themselves forth as the representatives 
af Agamemnon and Orestés. The Spartan king Kleomenés even 
went so far as to disavow formally any Dorian parentage; for 
when the priestess at Athens refused to permit him to sacrifice in 
the temple of Athéné, on the plea that it was peremptorily closed 
to all Dorians, he replied: “I am no Dorian, but an Achzan.”? 
Not only did the Spartan envoy, betore Gelén of Syracuse, con- 
nect the indefeasible title of his country to the supreme command 
of the Grecian military force, with the ancient name and lofty 
prerogatives of Agamemnon,?— but, in farther pursuance of the 
same feeling, the Spartans are said to have carried to Sparta both 
the bones of Orestés from ‘Tegea, and those of Tisamenus from 
Heliké,4 at the injunction of the Delphian oracle. There is also 
a story that Oxylus in Elis was directed by the same vracle to 
invite into his country an Achzan, as C&kist conjointly with hime 


' Agatharchides ap. Photium, Sect. 250, p. 1332, Οὐδ᾽ Εὐριπίδου xarnyo- 
ρῶ, τῷ ᾿Αρχελάῳ περιτεϑεικότος τὰς Τημένου πράξεις. 

Compare the Fragments of the Τημένιδαι, ᾿Αρχέλαος, and Κρεσφύντης, in 
Dindorf’s edition of Euripidés, with the illustrative remarks of Welcker, 
{zriechische Tragodien, pp. 697, 708, 828. 

The Prologue of the Archelaus seems to have gone through the whole 
ries of the Herakleidan lineage, from /Egyptus and Danaus downwards 

* Herodot. v. 72. 3 Herodot. vii. 159. 

4 Barodot. i. 68; Pausan. vii. 1,3 


12 HISTORY OF GREECE 


self; and that he called in Agorius, the great-grandson of Ores. 
tés, from Heliké, with a small number of Achxans who joined 
him.! The Dorians themselves, being singularly poor in native 
legends, endeavored, not unnaturally, to decorate themselves witk 
those legendary ornaments which the Achwans possessed in 
abundance. 

As a consequence of the Dorian establishments in Pelopon- 
nésus, several migrations of the preéxisting inhabitants are rep- 
resented as taking place. 1. The Epeians of Elis are either 
expelled, or merged in the new-comers under Oxylus, and lose 
their separate name. 2. The Pylians, together with the gréat 
heroic family of Néleus and his son Nestor, who preside over 
them, give place to the Dorian establishment of Messenia, and 
retire to Athens, where their leader, Melanthus, becomes king: a 
large portion of them take part in the subsequent lonic emigra- 
tion. 8. A portion of the Achzans, under Penthilus and other 
descendants of Orestés, leave Peloponnésus, and form what is 
called the A£olic emigration, to Lesbos, the ‘Tréad, and the Gulf 
of Adramyttium: the name dilians, unknown to Homer, and 
seemingly never applied to any separate tribe at all, being intro- 
duced to designate a large section of the Hellenic name, partly in 
Greece Proper, and partly in Asia. 4. Another portion of Achex- 
ans expel the Ioniaus from Achaia, properly so called, in the 
north of Peloponnésus; the lonians retiring to Attica. 

The Homeric poems describe Achzans, Pylians, and Epeians, 
in Peloponnésus, but take no notice of lonians in the northern 
district of Achaia: on the contrary, the Catalogue in the Iliad 
distinctly includes this territory under the dominions of Agamem 
ndn. Though the Catalogue of Homer is not to be regarded as an 
historical document, fit to be called as evidence for the actual state 
of Pelopennésus at any prior time, it certainly seems a better 
authority than the statements advanced by Herodotus and others 
respecting the occupation of northern Peloponnésus by the loni- 
ans, and their expulsion from it by Tisamenus. In so far as the 
Catalogue is to be trusted, it negatives the idea of lonians at 
Heliké, and countenances what seems in itself a more natural 


4 Pausan. v. 4, 2. 


HOMERIC PELOPONNESUS. 13 


supposition,— that the historical Achzans in the north part of 
Peloponnésus are a small undisturbed remnant of the powerful 
Achean population once distributed throughout the peninsula, 
until it was broken up and partially expelled by the Dorians. 

The Homeric legends, unquestionably the oldest which we 
possess, are adapted to a population of Achzans, Danaans, and 
Argeians, seemingly without any special and recognized names, 
either aggregate or divisional, other than the name of each sepa 
rate tribe or kingdom. The post-Homeric legends are adapted to 
a population classified quite differently,— Hellens, distributed 
into Dorians, Ionians, and /Zolians. If we knew more of the 
time and circumstances in which these different legends grew up, 
we should probably be able to explain their discrepancy ; but in 
our present ignorance we can only note the fact. 

Whatever difficulty modern criticism may find in regard to the 
event called “The Return of the Herakleids,” no doubt is ex- 
pressed about it even by the best historians of antiquity. Thuey- 
didés accepts it as a single and literal event, having its assignable 
date, and carrying at one blow the acquisition of Peloponnésus. 
The date of it he fixes as eighty years after the capture of Troy. 
Whether he was the original determiner of this epoch, or copied 
it from some previous author, we do not know. It must have 
been fixed according to some computation of generations, for 
there were no other means accessible,— probably by meams of 
the lineage of the Herakleids, which, as belonging to the kings 
of Sparta, constituted the most public and conspicuous thread of 
connection between the Grecian :.al and mythical world, and 
measured the interval between the Siege of Troy itself and the 
first recorded Olympiad. Héraklés himself represents the gen 
eration before the siege, and his son Tlepolemus fights in the be- 
sieging army. If we suppose the first generation after Héraklés 
to commence with the beginning of the siege, the fourth genera 
tion after him will coincide with the ninetieth year after the same 
epoch ; and therefore, deducting ten years for the duration of the 
struggle, it will coincide with the eightieth year after the capture 
of the city ;! thirty years being reckoned for a generation. The 


' The date of Thucydidés is calculate1, μετὰ Ἰλέον ἅλωσιν (i, 13). 


14 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


date assigned by Thucydidés will thus agree with the distance in 
which Témenus, Kresphontés, and Aristodémus, stand removed 
from Heraklés. The interval of eighty years, between the cap- 
ture of Troy and the Return of the Herakleids, appears to have 
been admitted by Apollodérus and Eratosthenés, and some other 
professed chronologists of antiquity: but there were different 
reckonings which also found more or less of support. 


SECTION IL— MIGRATION OF THESSALIANS AND BOOTIANS. 


In the same passage in which Thucydidés speaks of the Return 
of the Herakleids, he also marks out the date of another event a 
little antecedent, which is alleged to have powertully affected the 


condition of Northern Greece. “ Sixty years after the capture 


cf Troy (he tells us) the Beeotians were driven by the Thessa- 


lians from Arné, and migrated into the land then called Kadméis, 
but now Beeotia, wherein there had previously dwelt a section 
of their race, who had contributed the contingent to the Trojan 
war.” 

The expulsion here mentioned, of the Beeotians from Arné 
“ by the Thessalians,” has been construed, with probability, to 
allude to the immigration of the Thessalians, properly so called 
from the Thesprotid in Epirus into Thessaly. That the Thessa- 
lians had migrated into Thessaly from the Thesprotid territory, 
is stated by Herodotus,' though he says nothing about time or 
circumstances. Antiphus and Pheidippus appear in the Homeric 
Catalogue as .ommanders of the Grecian contingent from the 
islands of Kés and Karpathus, on the south-east coast of Asia 
Minor: they are sons of Thessalus, who is himself the son of 
Héraklés. A legend ran that these two chiets, in the dispersion 
which ensued after the victory, had been driven by storms into 
the Ionian Gulf, and cast upon the coast of Epirus, where they 
landed and settled at Ephyré in the Thesprétid.* It was Thes- 


* Herod. vii. 176. 

3 See the Epigram ascribed to Aristotle (Antholog. Gree. t. L p. 181, ed. 
Reisk ; Velleius Patercul. i. 1). 

The Scholia on Lycophrén (912) give a story somewhat different. Ephyré 
ᾧ given as the old legendary name of the city of Krannon in Thessaly ( Kineas, 


MIGRATION OF BE OTIANS FROM THESSALY. 15 


salus, grandson of Pheidippus, who was reported to have con- 
ducted the Thesprotians across the passes of Pindus into These 
saly, to have conquered the fertile central plain of that country, 
and to have imposed upo it his own name instead of its previous 
denomination A¢olis.! 

Whatever we may think of this legend as it stands, the state 
ot Thessaly during the historical ages renders it highly probable 
that the Thessalians, properly so called, were a body of immi- 
grant conquerors. They appear always as a rude, warlike, vio- 
lent, and uncivilized race, distinct from their neighbors the Ach- 
ans, the Magnetes, and the Perrhxbians, and holding all the 
three in tributary dependence: these three tribes stand to them 
in a relation analogous to that of the Lacedemonian Pericki 
towards Sparta, while the Peneste, who cultivated their lands, 
are almost an exact parallel of the Helots. Moreover, the low 
level of taste and intelligence among the Thessalians, as well as 
certain points of their costume, assimilates them more to Mace- 
donians or Epirots than to Hellens.2 Their position in Thessaly 
is in many respects analogous to that of the Spartan Dorians in 
Peloponnésus, and there seems good reason for concluding that 
the former, as well as the latter, were originally victorious in- 
vaders, though we cannot pretend to determine the time at which 
the invasion took place. ‘The great family of the Aleuads,3 and 
probably other Thessalian families besides, were descendants of 
Héraklés, like the kings of Sparta. 

There are no similar historical grounds, in the case of the 
alleged migration of the Beeotians from Thessaly to Beeotia, to 
justify a belief in the main fact of the legend, nor were the 
different legendary stories in harmony one with the other. While 
the Homeric Epic recognizes the Beeotians in Beeotia, but not in 


ap. Schol. Pindar. Pyth. x. 85), which creates the confusion with the Thes- 
protian Ephyré. 

* Herodot. vii. 176; Velleius Patercul. i. 2-3; Charax. ap. Stephan. Byz 
v. Δώριον ; Polyzn. viii. 44. 

There were several different statements, however, about the parentage of 
Thessalus, as well as about the name of the country (Strabo, ix. p. 443 
Stephan. Byz. v. Aiuovic). 

3 See K. O. Miiller, Eistory of the Dorians, Introduction, sect. 4 

¥ Pindar, Pyth. x. 2. 


16 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Thessaly, Thucydidés records a statement which he had eo 
of their migration from the latter into the former ; πὴ - — 
to escape the necessity of flatly contradicting ον ree 
the parenthesis that there had been previously an out ying τι 
tion of Beeotians in Βιωοίία at the time of the Trojan sing ' 
whom the troops who served with Agamemnon — —— 
Nevertheless, the discrepancy with the Iliad, though less naar’ 
ingly obvious, is not removed, inasmuch 8. αν wing = nasi 
unusually copious in enumerating the contingents Esa ἡ a 
without once mentioning Beeotians. Homer > ge ᾿ , 
menus from Beeotia, and he does not specially notice nella 
the Catalogue: in other respects his summneration: ‘ ~ — 
coincides pretty well with the ground historically known atte 
wards under the name of Beotia. | a AO θὰ 
Pausanias gives us a short sketch of the events whic 1e a 
poses to have intervened in this section of Greece betw cen the 
Ὶ "Νὴ . Return of the Herakleids. Peneleds, the 
Siege of Troy and the Return of t 7 Spee ba 
leader of the Bovotians at the siege, having been slain ry εβ 
pylus the son of Telephus, Tisamenus, son of Thersandet pic 
grandson of Polynikés, acted as their commander, eae 
the remainder of the siege and after their return. gg = 
son and successor, became subject to the wrath of the ay enging 
Erinnyes of Laius and (Edipus: the oracle directed him ie 
patriate, and he joined the Dorians. In his place, sar RS oa 
son of Opheltas and grandson of Peneleds, neni ing δι sr 
Beeotians: he was sueceeded by Ptolemzus, who was Limse 
followed by Xanthus. A war having broken out al that time 
between the Athenians and Beeotians, Xanthus engaged in sin- 
gle combat with Melanthus son of Andropompus, the — 
of Attica, and perished by the cunning Οἱ his opponent. = γὴν 
the death οὗ Xanthus, the Beeotians passed from kings ey 
popular government.? As Melanthus was of the Leagan ο we 
Neleids, and had migrated from Pylus to Athens in a 
of the successful establishment of the Dorians in Messénia, " 
due. with Xanthus must have been of course subsequent to the 


Return of the Herakleids. 


ὮΝ ΄ , 
ὑτῶ i amo prepov ἐν TH γῇ TavTy ad 
' Thacyd. i. 12. ἦν δὲ αὐτῶν καὶ ἀποδασμὸς πρότερον ev TY py ταῦτῃ 
ie "1 ἐστρί 3 Pausan ix. 5,& 
ὧν καὶ ἐς Ἴλιον éotparevoar. 


THUCYDIDES AND PAUSANIAS. 17 

Here, then, we have a summary of alleged Beeotian history 
between the Siege of Troy and the Return of the Herakleids, in 
which no mention is made of the immigration of the mass of 
Beotians from Thessaly, and seemingly no possibility left of 
fitting in so great and capital an incident. The legends followed 
by Pausanias are at variance with those adopted by Thucydidés, 
but they harmonize much better with Homer. 

So deservedly high is the authority of Thucydidés, that the 
migration here distinctly announced by him is commonly set 
down as an ascertained datum, historically as well as chronologi- 
cally. But on this oceasien it can be shown that he only followed 
one amongst a variety of discrepant legends, none of which there 
were any means of verifying. 

Pausanias recognized a migration of the Beeotians from Thes- 
saly, in early times anterior to the Trojan war ;! and the account 
of Ephorus, as given by Strabo, protessed to record a series of 
changes in the occupants of the country: First, the non-Hellenie 
Aones and Temmikes, Leleges and Hyantes; next, the Kad- 
meians, who, after the second siege of Thébes by the Epigani, 
were expelled by the Thracians and Pelasgians, and retired into 
Thessaly, where they joined in communion with the inhabitants 
of Arné,—the whole aggregate being called Beotians. After 
the ‘Trojan war, and about the tame of the Aolic emigration, 
these Beeotians returned from Thessaly and reconquered Beeotia, 


driving out the Thracians and Pelasgians, — the former retiring 
to Parnassus, the latter to Attica. 


li was on this occasion (he 
says) that the Minyz of Orchomenus were subdued, and forcibly 
incorporated with the Beeetians. E;phorus seems to have fal- 
lowed, in the main, the same narrative as Thucydidés, about the 
movement of the Boeotians out of Thessaly ; coupling it, however, 
with several details current as explanatory of proverbs and cus- 
tums. 


* Pausan. x. 8, 8. 


* Ephor. Fragm. 30, ed. Marx.; Strabo, ix. pp- 401-402. The story of 
the Beeotians at Arné, in Polysenus (1. 12), probably comes from Ephoras. 


Diodorus (xix. 53) gives a summary of the legendary history of Thébes 
from Deukalion downwards: he tells us that the Beotians were expelled 


from their country, and obliged to return into Thessaly during the Trojan 
YOu. IL 2oc. 


18 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The only fact which we make out, independent of these legends, 
is. that there existed certain homonymies and certain affinities of 
religious worship, between parts ef Boeotia and parts of ‘Thessaly, 
which appear to indicate a kindred race. A town named Arne,! 
similar in name to the Thessalian, was enumerated in the Boeo- 
tian Catalogue of Homer, and antiquaries identified it sometimes 
with the historical town Cheroneia,2 sometimes with Akriephium. 
Moreover, there was near the Beeotian Koréneia a river named 
Kuarius, or Koralius, and a venerable temple dedicated to the 
Itonian Athéné, in the sacred ground of which the Pambceotia, 
or public council of the Beeotian name, was held; there was also 
atemple and a river of similar denomination in Thessaly, near 
to a town called Iton, or Iténus.3 We may from these circum- 
stances presume a certain ancient kindred between the population 
of these regions, and such a circumstance is sufficient to explain 
the generation of legends describing migrations backward and 
forward, whether true or not in point of fact. 
war, in consequence of the absence of so many of their brave warriors at 
Troy; they did not find their way back into Beeotia until the fourth generation. 

! Stephen. Byz. v. “Apv7, makes the Thessalian Arné an dzoxoc of the 
Beeotian. 

2 Homer, Iliad, ii.; Strabo, ix. p. 413; Pausan. ix. 40,3. Some of the 
families at Cheeroneia, even during the time of the Roman dominion in 
Greece, traced their origin to Peripoltas the prophet, who was said to have 
accompanied Opheltas in his invading march out of Thessaly (Plutarch, 
Cimon, 6. 1). 

2 Strabo, ix. 411--435; Homer, Iliad, il. 696 ; Hekateus, Fr. 338, Didot. 

The fragment from Alkseus (cited by Strabo, but briefly, and with a muti- 
lated text,) serves only to identify the river and the town. 

Iténus was said to be son of Amphiktyon, and Beedtus son of Itonus 
(Pausan. ix. 1, 1. 34, 1: compare Steph. Byz. v- Βοιωτία) by Melanippe 
By another legendary genealogy (probably arising after the name “Holic had 
obtained footing as the class-name for a large section of Greeks, but as old 
as the poet Asius, Olympiad 30), the eponymous hero Boedtus was fastened 
on to the great lineage of olus, through the paternity of the god Poseidon, 
either with Melanippé or with Arné, daughter of olus (Asius, Fr 8, ed. 
Diintzer; Strabo, vi. p. 265; Dioddér. v. 67; Hellanikus ap. Schol. Iliad. i 
494). Two lost plays of Euripidés were foundéd on the misfortunes of 
Melanippé, and her twin children by Poseidon, — Bedtus and olus 
(Hygin. Fab. 186; see the Fragments of Μελανίππη Σοφὴ and Μελανίππη 
Δεσμῶτις in Dindorf’s edition, and the instructive comments of Weicker, 
Griech. Tragid. vol. ii. pp. 840-860). 

Vol. 2 


MYTHICAL AND HISTORICAI BCOTIA. 19 


What is most important to remark is, that the stories of Thu- 
eydidés and Ephorus bring us out of the mythical into the histor- 
ical Beeotia. Orchomenus is Beeotized, and we hear no more of 
the once-powertul Minyz: there are no more Kadmeians at 
Thébes, nor Beeotians in Thessaly. The Minyz and the Kad- 
meians disappear in the Ionic emigration, which will be presently 
adverted to. Historical Beeotia is now constituted, apparently 
in its federative league, under the presidency of Thébes, just as 
we find it in the time of the Persian and Peloponnesian were: 


SECTION Il.--EMIGRATIONS FROM GREECE TO ASIA AND THE 
ISLANDS OF THE EAGEAN. 


1. HOLIC. — 2, IONIC. — 8. DORIC. 
Ὕ * + ε͵ Ὕ 
To complete the transition of Greece from its mythical to its 
historical condition, tl secessi Ὶ | 
, the secession of the races be 
former must follow agp haa 
ormer must follow upon the introduction of those belonging to 
» « γ ἢ» A =i i = | ᾿ 7 
the latter. ‘This is accomplished by means of the JEolic and 
Ionic migrations. 
The presiding chiefs of the /Kolic i 
, pre ling chiefs of the /Zolic emigration are the represen 
t rec ; ᾿ μ evs ῳ ᾿ Ων , ν 
ἰδεῖν 68 of the heroic lineage of the Pelopids: those of the Ionic 
emigration belong to the Neleids ; and even in what is called the 
Doric emigration to Théra, the C&kist Théras is not a Dorian 
but a Kadmeian, the legitimate descendant of C2dipus and Kad 
mus. | 
I'he ASolic, Ionic, and Doric colonies were planted along the 
ah - ΞΕ. ν = . ᾿ ν᾿ ᾿ τ 
western coast of Asia Minor, from the coasts of the Propontis 
southward down to Lykia (I shall in a future chapter speak more 
exactly of their boundaries) ; the Aolic occupying the northern 
portion, together with the islands of Lesbos and Tenedos: the 
Doric occupying the s i alah 
3 OCC g the souther 5 ther w i i 
Pp) southernmost, together with the neighboring 


> as Oo I : ι C C be - < 


1. KLKOLIC EMIGRATION. 


The olic emigration was conducted by the Pelopids: the 
original story seems to have been, that Orestés himself was at the 
head of the first batch of colonists, and this version of the event 


20 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


is still preserved by Pindar and by Hellanikus.! But the more 
current narratives represented the descendants of Orestés as 
chiefs of the expeditions to Aolis,— his illegitimate son Pen- 
thilus, by Erigoné daughter of Adgisthus,? together with Kchela- 
tus and Gras, the son and grandson of Penthilus, together with 
Kleués and Malaus, descendants of Agamemn6n through another 
lineage. According to the account given by Strabo, Orestes be- 
gan the emigration, but died on his route in Arcadia; his son 
Penthilus, taking the guidance of the emigrants, conducted them 
by the long land-journey through Beeotia and Thessaly to 
Thrace:3 from whence Archelaus, son of Penthilus, led them 
across the Hellespont, and settled at Daskylium on the Propon- 
tis. Gras, son of Archelaus, crossed over to Lesbos and pos- 
sessed himself of the island. Kleués and Malaus, conducting 
another body of Achans, were longer on their journey, and 
lingered a considerable time near Mount Phrikium, in the terri- 
tory of Lokris; ultimately, however, they passed over by sea to 
Asia and took possession of Kymé, south of the Gulf of Adra- 
myttium, the most considerable of all the olic cities on the 
eontinent.4 From Lesbos and Kymé, the other less considerable 
ZKolic towns, spreading over the region of Ida as well as the 
Tréad, and comprehending the island of Tenedos, are said to 
have derived their origin. 

Though there are many differences in the details, the accounts 
agree in representing these /olic settlements as formed by the 


1 Pindar, Nem. xi. 43; Hellanic. Fragm. 114, ed. Didot. Compare Ste 
phan. Byz. νυ. [spervoe. 

3 Kinethon ap. Pausan, ii. 18,5. Penthilids existed in Lesbos during the 
historical times ( Aristot. Polit. v. 10, 2). 

3 Jt has sometimes been supposed that the country called Thrace here 
means the residence of the Thracians near Parnassus; but the length of the 
journey, and the number of years which it took up, are so specially marked, 
that I think Thrace in its usual and obvious sense must he intended. 

4 Strabo, xiii. p. 582. Hellanikus seems to have treated of this delay near 
Mount Phrikium (see Steph. Byz. v. @pixcov). In another account (xiii. p. 
621), probably copied from the Kymean Ephorus, Strabo connects the estab- 
lishments of this colony with the sequel of the Trojan war: the Pelasgians, 
the occupants of the territory, who had been the allies of Priam, were 
weakened by the defeat which they had sustained and unable to resist the 


emigrants 


IONIC EMIGRATION. 91 


Achzans expatriated from Laconia under the egnidance of the 
dispossessed Pelopids.' We are told that in their journey tlirough 
Beeotia they received considerable reinforcements, and Strabo 
adds that the emigrants started from Aulis, the port from whence 
Agamemnon departed in the expedition against Troy.2 He also 
informs us that they missed their course and experienced many 
losses from nautical ignorance, but we do not know to what par 
ticular incidents he alludes. 


2. IONIC EMIGRATION. 


The Ionic emigration is described as emanating from and di- 
rected by the Athenians, and connects itself with the previous 
legendary history of Athens, which must therefore be here briefly 
recapitulated. 

The great mythical hero Théseus, of whose military prowess 
and errant exploits we have spoken in a previous chapter, was 
still more memorable in the eyes of the Athenians as an internal 
political reformer. He was supposed to have performed for them 
the inestimable service of transforming Attica out of many states 
into one. Each déme, or at least a great many out of the whole 
number, had before his time enjoyed political independence under 
its own magistrates and assemblies, acknowledging only a federal 
union with the rest under the presidency of Athens: by a mix- 
ture of conciliation and force, Théseus succeeded in putting down 
all these separate governments, and bringing them to unite in one 
political system, centralized at Athens. He is said to have es- 
tablished a constitutional government, retaining for himself a de- 
fined power as king, or president, and distributing the people into 
three classes: Eupatrid, a sort of sacerdotal noblesse ; Gedmori 
and Demiurgi, husbandmen and artisans.4 Having brought these 
important changes into efficient working, he commemorated them 
for his posterity by introducing solemn and appropriate festivals. 
In confirmation of the dominion of Athens over the Megarid ter- 
ritory, he is said farther to have erected a pillar at the extremity 
of the latter towards the Isthmus, marking the boundary between 
Peloponuésus and Ionia. 


tern 


1 Velleius Patercul. i.4: compare Antikleidés ap. Athene. xi. ¢. 3; Paw 
ganias, ili. 2, 1. 
* Strabo, ix. p.401. *Strabo,i.p.10. “ Plutarch, Théseus, c. 24, 25, 26 


99 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


But a revolution so extensive was not consummated withouw 
creating much discontent ; and Menestheus, the rival of Theseus, 
— the first specimen, as we are told, of an artful demagogue, — 
took advantage of this feeling to assail and undermine him. Thé- 
seus had quitted Attica, to accompany and assist his friend Deiri- 
théus, in his journey down to the under-world, in order to carry 
off the goddess Persephoné, — or (as those who were critical in 
legendary story preferred recounting) in a journey to the resi- 
dence of Aidoéneus, king of the Molossians in Epirus, to carry off 
his daughter. In this enterprise, Peirithous perished, while Thé- 
seus was cast into prison, from whence he was only liberated by 
the intercession of Iiéraklés. It was during his temporary ab- 
sence, that the Tyndarids Castor and Pollux invaded Attica for the 
purpose of recovering their sister Helen, whom Théseus had at 

former period taken away from Sparta and deposited at 
Aphidne ; and the partisans of Menestheus took advantage both 
of the absence of Théseus and -of the calamity which his licen- 
tiousness had brought upon the country, to ruin his popularity 
with the people. When he returned, he found them no longer 
disposed to endure his dominion, or to continue to him the honors 
feelings of gratitude had conferred. Hav- 


which their previous 
his sons under the protection of Elephenor, 


ing, therefore, placed 
in Euboea, he sought an asylum with Lykomédés, prince of Scy- 
ros. from whom, however, he received nothing but an insidious 


welcome and a traitorous death.! 
Menestheus, succeeding to the honors of the expatriated hero, 


commanded the Athenian troops at the Siege of Troy. But 
though he survived the capture, he never returned to Athens, — 
different stories being related of the place where he and his com- 
panions settled. During this interval, the feelings of the Athe- 
nians having changed, they restored the sons of Théseus, who 
had served at Troy under Elephenor, and had returned unhurt, 
to the station and functions of their father. The Theseids Demo- 
phoon, Oxyntas, Apheidas, and Thymeetés had successively filled 
this post for the space of about sixty years,? when the Dorian in- 
vaders of Peloponnésus (as has been before related) compelled 
Melanthus and the Neleid family to abandon their kingdom of 


' Plutarch, Théseus, c. 34-35. 
5 Busebias, Chronic. Can. pp. 228-229, ed. Scaliger; Pausan. ii. 18, 7. 


i 


| 
( 
H 


THE THESEID KINGS IN ATTICA --MELANTHUS. 25 


Pylus. The refugees found shelter at Athens, where a fortunate 
adventure soon raised Melanthus to the throne. A war breaking 
out between the Athenians and Beeotians, respecting the boundary 
tract of (ποῦ, the Beotian king Xanthus challenged Thyme- 
tes to single combat: the latter declining to accept it, Melanthus 
not only stood forward in his place, but practised a cunning 
stratagem with such success as to kill his adversary. He was 
forthwith chosen king, Thymeetés being constrained to resign.! 
Melanthus and his son Kodrus reigned for nearly sixty years 
during which time large bodies of fugitives, escaping from ihe 
recent invaders throughout Greece, were harbored by the Athen- 
lans: so that Attica became populous exough to excite the alarm 
and jealousy of the Peloponnesian Dorians. A powerful Dorian 
force, under the command of Alétés from Corinth and Althex- 
menés from Argos, were accordingly despatched to invade the 
Athenian territory, in which the Delphian oracle promised them 
success, provided they abstained from injuring the person of Ko- 
drus. Strict orders were given to the Dorian army that Kodrus 
should be preserved unhurt; but the oracle had become known 
among the Athenians,? and the generous prince determined te 
bring death upon himself as a means of salvation to his country. 
Assuming the disguise of a peasant, he intentionally provoked a 
quarrel with some of the Dorian troops, who slew him without 
suspecting his real character. No sooner was this event known, 
than ‘he Dorian leaders, despairing of success, abandoned their 


ἢ Ephorus ap. Harpocration. v. ’Amaroupia: "Ἑφορος ἐν δευτέρῳ, ὡς διὰ 
τὴν ὑπὲρ τῶν ὁρίων ἀπάτην γενομένην, ὅτι πολεμούντων ᾿Αϑηναίων πρὸς 
Βοιωτοὺς ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν Μελαινῶν χώρας, Μέλανϑος ὁ τῶν ᾿Αϑηναίων Βασι- 
λεὺς Ξάνϑον τὸν Θηβαῖον μονομαχῶν ἀπέκτεινεν. Compare Strabo, ix. Ρ. 
393, 

Ephorus derives the term ᾿Απατούρια from the words signifying a trick 
with reference to the boundaries, and assumes the name of this great Tonie 
festival to have been derived from the stratagem of Melanthus, described in 
Conér (Narrat. 39) and Polyznus (i. 19). The whole derivation is fanciful 
and erroneous, and the story is a curious specimen of legend growing out 
of etymology. 

* The orator Lykurgus, in his eulogium on Kodrus, mentions a Delphiap 
citizen named Kleomantis, who secretly communicated the oracle to th 
Athenians, and was rewarded by them for doing so with σίτησις ἐν Tlovre 
vei (Lycurg. cont. Leocrat. c. 20). 


24 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


enterprise and evacuated the country.! In retiring, however, 
they retained possession of Megara, where they established per- 
manent settlers, and which became from this moment Dorian, — 
seemingly at first a dependency of Corinth, though it afterwards 
acquired its freedom and became an autonomous community.? 
This memorable act of devoted patriotism, analogous to that of 
the daughters of Erechtheus at Athens, and of Mencekeus at 
Thébes, entitled Kodrus to be ranked among the most splendid 
characters in Grecian legend. 

Kodrus is numbered as the last king of Athens: his descend- 
ants were styled Archons, but they held that dignity for life, — 
a practice which prevailed during a long course of years after- 
wards. Medon and Neileus, his two sons, having quarrelled 
about the succession, the Delphian oracle decided in favor of the 
former; upon which the latter, affronted at the preference, re- 
solved upon seeking a new home.* There were at this moment 
many dispossessed sections of Greeks, and an adventitious popu- 
lation accumulated in Attica, who were anxious for settlements 
beyond sea. The expeditions which now set forth to cross the 
ZEgean, chiefly under the conduct of members of the Kodrid 
famity, composed collectively the memorable Ionic Emigration, 
of which the Ionians, recently expelled from Peloponnésus, form- 
ed a part, but, as it would seem, only a small part; for we hear 
of many quite distinct races, some renowned in legertd, who with- 
draw from Greece amidst this assemblage of colonists. The 
Kadmeians, the Minyze of Orchomenus, the Abantés of Eubcea, 
the Dryopes ; the Molossi, the Phokians, the Boeotians, the Arca- 
dian Pelasgians, and even the Dorians of Epidaurus,— are re- 
presented as furnishing each a proportion of the crews of these 
emigrant vessels.4 Nor were the results unworthy of so mighty 


1 Pherekydés, Fragm. 110, ed. Didot; Vell. Paterc. i. 2; Condon, Narr. 26, 
Polyen. i. c. 18. 

Hellanikus traced the genealogy of Kodrus, through ten generations, uf 
to Deukalién (Fragment 10, ed. Didot.) 

? Strabo, xiv. p. 653. 3 Pausan. vii. 2, 1. 

4 Herodot. i. 146; Pausan. vii. 2, 8, 4. Isokratés extols his Athenian 
ancestors for having provided, by means of this emigration, settlements for 
so large a number of distressed and poor Greeks at the expense of Barba 
rians (Or. xii. Panathenaic. p. 241) 


νος ee ἮΝ ΟΡ ΣΡ ΤῊΝ 


KODRUS AND THE KODRIDS. 25 


a confluence of different races. Not only the Cyclades islands 
in the Agean, but the great islands of Samos and Chios, near 
the Asiatic coast, and ten different cities on the coast of Asia 
Minor, from Milétus in the south to Phokza in the north, were 
founded, and all adopted the Ionic name. Athens was the me- 
tropolis or mother city of all of them: Androklus and Neileus, 
the Cékists of Ephesus and Milétus, and probably other Cikists 
also. started from the Prytaneium at Athens,' with those solem- 
nities, religious and political, which usually marked the departure 
of a swarm of Grecian colonists. 

Other mythical families, besides the heroic lineage of Néleus 
and Nestér, as represented by the sons of Kodrus, took a lead- 
ing part in the expedition. Herodotus mentions Lykian chiefs, 
jeseendants from Glaukus son of Hippolochus, and Pausanias 
tells us of Philétas deseendant of Peneleds, who went at the 
head of a body of Thebans: both Glaukus and Peneledés are 
commemorated in the Iliad.2 And it is a remarkable fact men- 
tioned by Pausanias (though we do not know on what authority), 
that the inhabitants of Phoksa,— which was the northernmost 
city of Ionia on the borders of Eolis, and one of the last found- 
ed, — consisting mostly of Phokian colonists under the conduct 
of the Athenians Philogenés and Dezemén, were not admitted 
into the Pan-Ionic Amphiktyony until they consented to choose 
for themselves chiefs of the Kodrid family. Proklés, the chief 
who conducted the Ionic emigrants from Epidaurus to Samos, 
was said to be of the lineage of Ion, son of Xuthus.4 

Of the twelve Ionic states constituting the Pan-Ionic Amphik- 
tyony — some of them among the greatest cities in Hellas —I 
shall say no more at present, as I have to treat of them again 
when I come upon historical ground. 


8. DORIC EMIGRATIONS. 


The Zolic and Ionic emigrations are thus both presented to 
us as direct. consequenzes of the event called the Return of the 


1 Herodot. i. 146; vii. 95; iii 46. Vellei: Paterc. i. 4. Pherekydéa 
Frag. 111, ed. Didot 3 Herodot. i. 147; Pausan: vir 2: 2: 


4 Pausan. vii. 2 2; vii. 3,4 4 Pausan. vii. 4, 3. 
VOL. I. rH 


26 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Herakieids: and in like manner the formation of the Dorian 
Hexapolis in the south-western corner of Asia Minor: Kéa, 
Knidus, Halikarnassus, and Rhodes, with its three separate cities, 
as well as the Dorian establishments in Kréte, Melos, and Théra, 
are all traced more or less directly to the same great revolution. 

Théra, more especially, has its root in the legendary world. Its 
(Ekist was Théras, a descendant of the heroic lineage of C&dipus 
and Kadmus, and maternal uncle of the young kings of Sparta, 
Eurysthenés and Proklés, during whose minority he had exercised 
the regency. On their coming of age, his functions were at an 
end: but being unable to endure a private station, he determined 
to put himself at the head of a body of emigrants: many came 
forward to join him, and the expedition was farther reinforced by 
a body of interlopers, belonging to the Minyz, of whom the Lace- 
dxmonians were anxious to get rid. These Minyz had arrived 
in Laconia, not long before, from the island of Lemnos, out of 
which they had been expelled by the Pelasgian fugitives from 
Attica. They landed without asking permission, took up their 
abode and began to “ light their fires” on Mount Taygetus. When 
the Lacedemonians sent to ask who they were, and wherefore 
they had come, the Minyz replied that they were sons of the 
Argonauts who had landed at Lemnos, and that, being expelled 
from their own homes, they thought themselves entitled to solicit 
an asylum in the territory of their fathers: they asked, withal, to 
be admitted to share both the lands and the honors of the state. 
The Lacedemonians granted the request, chiefly on the ground 
of a common ancestry, — their own great heroes, the Tyndarids, 
having been enrolled in the crew of the Argo: the Minyx were 
then introduced as citizens into the tribes, received lots of land, 
and began to intermarry with the preéxisting families. It was 
not lon;;, however, before they became insolent: they demanded a 
share in the kingdom (which was the venerated privilege of the 
Herakleids), and so grossly misconducted themselves in other 
ways, that the Lacedemonians resolved to put them to death, and 
began by casting them into prison. While the Minye were thus 
confined, their wives, Spartans by birth, and many of them daugh- 
ters of the principal men, solicited permission to go in and see 
them: leave being granted, they made use of the interview te 


fHERA AND THE MINY4. 97 


change clothes with their husbands, who thus escaped and fled 
again to Mount Taygetus. The greater number of them quitted 
Laconia, and marched to Triphylia, in the western regions of 
Peloponnésus, from whence they expelled the Paroreate and the 
Kaukones, and founded six towns of their own, of which Lepreum 
was the chief. A certain proportion, however, by permission of 
the Lacedmonians, joined Théras, and departed with him to the 
island of Kallisté, then possessed by Phoenician inhabitants, who 
were #escended from the kinsmen and companions of Kadmus, 
and wh had been left there by that prince, when he came forth 
in search of Eurdpa, eight generations preceding. Arriving thus 
among men of kindred lineage with himself, Théras met with a 
fraternal reception, and the island derived from him the name, 
under which it is historically known, of Theéra.! 

Such is the foundation-legend of Théra, believed both by the 
Lacedxmonians and by the Theraans, and interesting as it brings 


before us, characteristically as well as vividly, the persons and 


feelings of the mythical world, — the Argonauts, with the Tynda- 
companions and Miny as their children. In Le- 


rids’ as their 
preum, as in the other towns of Triphylia, the descent from the 
Minyz of old seems to have been believed in the historical times, 
and the mention of the river Minyéius in those regions by Homer 


tended to confirm it.2 But people were not unanimous as to the 


legend by which that descent should be made out; while some 
adopted the story just cited from Herodotus, others imagined that 
Chloris, who had come from the Minyeian town of Orchomenus 


as the wife of Néleus to Pylus, had brought with her a body of 


her countrymen.” 


1 Herodot. iv. 
however, gives 
Lemnos aiding Sparta dur 
lection (viii. 71), though imperfect 
closely to Herodotus. 


5 Homer, Iliad, xi. 721. 
3 Strabo, viii. p. 341. Μ. Raoul Rochette, who treats the legends for the 


most part as if they were 80 much authentic history, is much displeased with 
Strabo for admitting this diversity of stories (Histoire des Colonies Grecques, 
t. ni. ch. 7, p. 54): “ Apres des détails si clairs et si positifs, comment est-il 
possible que ce méme Strabon, bouleversant toute la chronologie, fasee 


145-149; Valer. Maxim. iv. c. 6; Polyzn. vii. 49, who, 
the narrative differently by mentioning “ Tyrrhenians from 
ing the Helotic war :” another narrative in his col 
ly preserved, seems to approach mot 


38 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


These Minyz from Lemnos and Imbros appear again as por- 
tions of another narrative respecting the settlement of the colony 
of Mélos. It has already been mentioned, that when the Herake 
leids and the Dorians invaded Lacénia, Philonomus, an Achzan, 
treacherously betrayed to them the country, for which he received 
as his recompense the territory of Amykle. He is said to have 
peopled this territory by introducing detachments of Minyz from 
Lemnos and Imbros, who, in the third generation after the return 
of the Herakleids, became so discontented and mutinous, that the 
Lacedzmonians resolved to send them out of the country as emi- 
grants, under their chiefs Polis and Delphus. ‘Taking the direc- 
tion of Kréte, they stopped in their way to land a portion of their 
colonists on the island of Mélos, which remained throughoat the 
historical times a faithful and attached colony of Lacedemon.! 
On arriving in Kréte, they are said to have settled at the town 
of Gortyn. We find, moreover, that other Dorian establishments, 
either from Lacedemén or Argos, were formed in Kréte; and 
Lyktos in particular, is noticed, not only as a colony of Sparta, 
but as distinguished for the analogy of its laws and customs.? It 
is even said that Kréte, immediately after the Trojan war, had 


been visited by the wrath of the gods, and depopulated by famine 
and pestilence; and that, in the third generation afterwards, so 
great was the influx of emigrants, the entire population of the 
island was renewed, with the exception of the Eteokrétes at 


Polichnz and Presus.® 


arriver les Minyens dans la Triphylie sous la conduite de Chloris, mére de 
Nestor ?” 

The story which M. Raoul Rochette thus puts aside, is quite equal in 
point of credibility to that which he accepts: in fact, no measure of credibility 
can be applied. 

1 Conén, Narrat. 36. Compare Plutarch, Question. Grac. c. 21, where 
Tyrrhenians from Lemnos are mentioned, as in the passage of Poly znus, 
referred to in a preceding note. 

2 Strabo, x. p. 481; Aristot. Polit. ii. 10. 

8 Herodot. vii. 171 (see above, Ch. xii. vol. i. p. 226). Dioddrus (v. 80), 
as well as Herodotus, mentions generally large emigrations into Kréte from 
Lacedemén and Argos; but even the laborious research of M. Raoul Ro- 
chette (Histoire des Colonies Greeques, t. iii. c. 9, pp. 60-68) fails in collect 


@g any distinct particulars of them. 


C]OSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE. oy 


‘Phere were Dorians in Kréte in the time of the Odyssey: 
Homer mentions different languages and different races of men, 
Eteokrétes, Kydénes, Dorians, Achzans, and Pelasgians, as all 
coexisting in the island, which he describes to be populous, and 
to contain ninety cities. A legend given by Andrén, based seem- 
ingly upon the statement of Herodotus, that Dérus the son of 
Hellen had settled in Histixétis, ascribed the first introduction of 
the three last races to Tektaphus son of Dérus,— who had led forth 
from that country a colony of Dorians, Achzans, and Pelasgians, 
and had landed in Kréte during the reign of the indigenous king 
Krés.! This story of Andrén so exactly fits on to the Homeric 
Catalogue of Kretan inhabitants, that we may reasonably pre- 
sume it to have been designedly arranged with reference to that 
Catalogue, so as to afford some plausible account, consistently 
with the received legendary chronology, how there came to be 
Dorians in Kréte before the Trojan war,—the Dorian colonies 
after the return of the Herakleids being of course long posterior 
in supposed order of time. ‘To find a leader sufficiently early for 
his hypothesis, Andrén ascends to the primitive Eponymus Do. 
rus, to whose son Tektaphus he ascribes the introduction of a 
mixed colony of Dorians, Achzans, and Pelasgians into Kréte: 
these are the exact three races enumerated in the Odyssey, and 
the king Krés, whom Andron affirms to have been then reigning 
in the island, represents the Eteokrétes and Kydénes in the 
list of Homer. The story seems to have found favor among 
native Kretan historians, as it doubtless serves to obviate what 


1 Steph. Byz. v. Δώριον. --- Περὶ ὧν ἱστορεῖ Ανδρων, Κρητὸς ἐν τῇ νήσῳ 
θασιλεύοντος, Τέκταφον τὸν Δώρου τοῦ Ἕλληνος, ὁρμήσαντα ἐκ τῆς ἐν Θετταλίᾳ 
τύτε μὲν Δωρίδος, νῦν δὲ Ἱστιαιώτιδος καλουμένης, ἀφικέσϑαι εἰς Κρήτην μετὰ 
Δωρίεων τε καὶ ᾿Αχαιῶν καὶ Πελασγῶν, τῶν οὐκ ἀπαράντων εἰς Τυῤῥηνίαν. 
Compare Strabo, x. pp. 475-476, from which it is plain that the story was 
adduced by Andrén with a special explanatory reference to the passage in 


the Odyssey (xv. 175.) 
The age of Andrén, one of the authors of Atthidés, is not precisely ascer- 


tainable, but he can hardly be put earlier than 300 B. o.; see the preliminary 
Dissertation of C. Moller to the Fragmenta Historicorum Greecorum, ed. 
Didot, p. lxxxii; and the Prolusio de Atthidum Scriptoribus, prefixed’ te 
Lena’s edition of the Fragments of Phanodémus and Démén, p. xxviit, Lips 


1812. 


30 HISTORY OF GREECE 


would otherwise be a contradiction in the legendary chronol- 
ogy: 

Another Dorian emigration from Peloponnésus to Kréte, which 
extended also to Rhodes and Kéds, is farther said to have been 
conducted by Althawmenés, who had been one of the chiefs in the 
expedition against Attica, in which Krodus pershed. This 
prince, ἃ Herakleid, and third in descent from Témenus, was in 
duced to expatriate by a family quarrel, and conducted a body 
of Dorian colonists from Argos first to Kréte, where some of 
them remained; but the greater number accompanied him te 
Rhodes, in which island, after expelling the Karian possessors, he 
founded the three cities of Lindus, Ialysus, and Kameirus.? 

It is proper here to add, that the legend of the Rhodian arche- 
ologists respecting their cckist Althawmenés, who was worshipped 
in the island with heroic honors, was something totally different 
from the preceding. Althemenés was a Kretan, son of the king 
Katreus, and grandson of Minos. An oracle predicted to him 
that he would one day kill his father: eager to escape so terrible 
a destiny, he quitted Kréte, and conducted a colony to Rhodes, 
where the famous temple of the Atabyrian Zeus, on the lofty 
summit of Mount Atabyrum, was ascribed to his foundation, built 
so as to command a view of Kréte. He had been settled on the 
island for some time, when his father Katreus, anxious again to 
embrace his only son, followed him from Kréte: he landed in 
Rhodes during the night without being known, and a casual collis- 
ion took place between his attendants and the islanders. Althe- 
menés hastened to the shore to assist in repelling the supposed 
enemies, and in the fray had the misfortune to kill his aged 
father.? 

Either the emigrants who accompanied Althemenés, or some 


1 See Diodér, iv. 60; v. 80. From Strabo, (/. c.) however, we see that 
others rejected the story of Andron. 

O. Maller (History of the Dorians, Ὁ. i. c. 1, § 9) accepts the stor; as sub- 
stantially true, putting aside the name Dorus, and even regards it us certain 
that Minos of Knéssus was a Dorian; but the evidence with which he sup- 
ports this conclusion appears to me loose and fanciful. 

® Conén. Narrat. 47; Ephorus, Fragm. 62, ed. Marx. 

3 Diodér. v.59; Apollodér. iii. 2.2. In the Chapter next but one preceding 


BLANK PERIOD WHICH StVC@CEEDs. 31 


other Dorian colonists afterwards, are reported to have settled at 
Kos, Knidus, Karpathus, and Halikarnassus. To the last men- 
tioned city, however, Anthés of Trcezén is assigned as the eekist: 
the emigrants who accompanied him were said to have belonged 
to the Dymanian tribe, one of the three tribes always found in a 
Doric state: and the city seems to have been characterized as a 
colony sometimes of Troezen, sometimes of Argos.! 


We thus have the /olic, the Ionic, and the Doric colonial es 
tablishments in Asia, all springing out of the legendary age, and 
all se; forth as consequences, direct or indirect, of what is called 
the Return of the Herakleids, or the Dorian conquest of Pelo- 
ponnésus. According to the received chronology, they are suc- 
ceeded by a period, supposed to comprise nearly three centuries, 
which is almost an entire blank, before we reach authentic chro- 
nology and the first recorded Olympiad,—and they thus form 
the concluding events of the mythical world, out of which we 
now pass into historical Greece, such as it stands at the last- 
mentioned epoch. It is by these migrations that the parts of the 
Hellenic aggregate are distributed into the places which they oc- 
cupy at the dawn of historical daylight, — Dorians, Arcadians, 
ZEtolo-Eleians, and Achzans, sharing Peloponnésus unequally 
among them, — /olians, Ionians, and Dorians, settled both in 
the islands of the /®gean and the coast of Asia Minor. The 
Return of the Herakleids, as well as the three emigrations, 
JLolic, Ionic, and Doric, present the legendary explanation, 
suitable to the feelings and belief of the people, showing how 


this, Diodérus had made express reference to native Rhodian mythologists, 
—to one in particular, named Zeno (c. 57). 

Wesseling supposes two different settlers in Rhodes, both named Althe- 
menés: this is certainly necessary, if we are to treat the two narratives as 
historical. 

' Strabo, xiv, p. 653; Pausan. ii. 39,3; Kallimachus apud Stephan. Byz. 
v. ᾿Αλικάρνασσος. 

Herodotus (vii. 99) calls Halikarnassus a colony of Troezén; Pomponius 
Mela (i.16,) of Argos. Vitruvius names both Argos and Troezén (ii. 8, 12): 
but the two ekists whom he mentions, Melas and Arevanius, were not se 
well known as Anthés; the inhabitants of Halikarnassus being called An- 
theade (see Stephan. Byz. v. ᾿Αϑῆναι; and a curious inscription in Boeckh’s 
Corpus Inscriptionum, No. 2655). 


32 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Greece passed from the heroic races who besiege¢ ‘I<oy and 
Thébes, piloted the adventurous Argo, and slew the monst-ous 
boar of Kalydon, to the historical races, differently named and class 
ified, who furnished victors to the Olympic and Pythian games. 

A patient and learned French writer, M. Raoul Rochette, — 
who construes all the events of the heroic age, generally speak- 
ing, as so much real history, only making allowance for the mis- 
takes and exaggerations of poets, —is greatly perplexed by the 
blank and interruption which this supposed continuous series of 
history presents, from the Return of the Herakleids down to the 
beginning of the Olympiads. He cannot explain to himself so 
long a period of absolute quiescence, after the important incidents 
and striking adventures of the heroic age; and if there happened 
nothing worthy of record during this long period, —as he pre 
sumes, from the fact that nothing has been transmitted, — he 
concludes that this must have arisen from the state of suffering 
and exhaustion in which previous wars and revolution had lett 
the Greeks: a long interval of complete inaction being required 
to heal such wounds.! 


1“ Ta période qui me semble la plus obscure οὐ la plus remplie de difficul- 
tés n’est pas celle que je viens de parcourir: c’est celle qui sépare l’époque 
des Héraclides de l’institution des Olympiades. La perte des ouvrages 
d’Ephore et de Théopompe est sans doute la cause en grande partie du vide 
immense que nous offre dans cet intervalle histoire de la Gréce. Mais si 
Von en excepte l’établissement des colonies Eoliennes, Doriennes, et Ionien- 
nes, de l’Asie Mineure, et quelques événemens, trés rapprochés de la pre- 
mire de ces époques, l’espace de plus de quatre si¢cles qui les sépare est 
couvert d’une obscurité presque impénétrable, et l’on aura toujours lieu de 
s étonner que les onvrages des anciens n’offrent aucun secours pour remplir 
une lacune aussi considérable. Une pareille absence doit aussi nous faire 
soupconner qu’il se passa dans la Gréce peu de ces grands événemens qui se 
gravent fortement dans la mémoire des hommes: puisque, si les traces ne 
s’en étaient point conservées dans les écrits des contemporains, au moins le 
souvenir s’en seroit il perpétué par des monumens: or les monumens et 
Vhistoire se taisent également. Tl faut donc croire que la Gréce, agitée depuis 
si long temps par des révolutions de toute espéce, épuisée par ses derniéres 
émigrations, se tourna toute entire vers des occupations paisibles, et ne 
chercha, pendant ce long intervalle, qu’a guérir, au sein du repos et de 
Yabondance qui en est la suite, les plaies profondes que sa population avait 
souffertes. (Raoul Rochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecques, t. ii. c. 16. p. 455.1 

To the samv purpose, Gillies (History of Greece, ch. iii. p. 67, quarto‘ 


LEGENDARY PAST FMAGINED AS DISTANT. 82 


᾿Αββυποΐνς M. Rochette’s view of the Leroic ages to be correct, 
and reasoning upon the supposition that the adventures ascribed 
to the Grecian heroes are matters of historical reality, trans- 
mitted by tradition from a period of time four centuries before 
the recorded Olympiads, and only embellished by describing 
peets, — the blank which he here dwells upon is, to say ‘the least 
of it, embarrassing and unaccountable. It is strange that the 
stream of tradition, if it had once begun to flow, should (like 
several of the rivers in Greece) be submerged for two or three 
centuries and then reappear. But when we make what appears 
to me the proper distinction between legend and history, it will 
be scen that a period of blank time between the two is perfectly 
conformabie to the conditions under which the former is gen- 
erated. It is not the immediate past, but a supposed remote past, 
which forms the suitable atmosphere of mythical narrative, —a 
past originally quite undetermined in respect to distance from the 
present, as we see in the Iliad and Odyssey. And even when 
we come down to the genealogical poets, who affect to give a cer- 
tain measure of bygone time, and a succession of persons as well 
as of events, still, the names whom they most delight to honor 
and upon whose exploits they chiefly expatiate, are those of the 
ancestral gods and heroes of the tribe and their supposed con- 
temporaries; ancestors separated by a long lineage from the 
present hearer. The gods and heroes were conceived as re- 
moved from him by several generations, and the legendary mat- 
ter which was grouped around them appeared only the more im- 
posing when exhibited at a respectful distance, beyond the days 
of father and grandfather, and of all known predecessors. The 
Odes of Pindar strikingly illustrate this tendency. We thus see 
how it happened that, between the times assigned to heroic adven- 
ture and those of historical record, there existed an intermediate 
blank, filled with inglorious names; and how, amongst the same 
society which cared not to remember proceedings of fathers and 
grandfathers, there circulated much popular and accredited narra- 
tive respecting real or supposed ancestors long past and gone 


“The obscure transactions of Greece, during the four following centuries 
{ll correspond with the splendor of the Trojan, or even of the Argonautis 


expedition,” etc. 
OL. IL 2 Sou. 


34 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The obscure and barren centuries which immediately precede 
the first recorded Olympiad, form the natural separation between 
the legendary return of the Herakleids and the historical wars 
of Sparta against Messéné,— between the province of legend, 
wherein matter of fact (if any there be) is so intimately combined 
with its accompaniments of fiction, as to be undistinguishable 
without the aid of extrinsic evidence,—and that of history 
where some matters of fact can b2 ascertained, and where a 
sagacious criticism may be usefully employed in trying to add to 
their number. 


CHAPTER XIX. 
APPLICATION OF CHRONOLOGY TO GRECIAN LEGEND. 


I NEED not repeat, what has already been sufficiently set forth 
in the preceding pages, that the mass of Grecian incident anterior 
to 776 B. c. appears to me not reducible either to history or to 
chronology, and that any chronological system which may be 
applied to it must be essentially uncertified and illusory. It was, 
however, chronologized in ancient times, and has continued to be 
so in modern; and the various schemes employed for this pur- 
pose may be found stated and compared in the first volume (the 
last published) of Mr. Fynes Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici. ‘There 
were among the Greeks, and there still are among modern 
scholars, important differences as to the dates of the principal 
events:! Eratosthenés dissented both from Herodotus and from 
Phanias and Kallimachus, while Larcher and Raoul Rochette 


! Larcher and Raoul Rochette, adopting the chronological date of Herodo- 
tus fix the taking of Troy at 1270 B.c., and the Return of the Herakleids at 
1190 p.c. According to the scheme of Eratosthenés, these two events 
stand at 1184 and 1104 8. Ο. 

O. Miiller, in his Chronological Tables (Appendix vi. to History of Do- 
rians, vol ii. p. 441, Engl. transl.), gives no dates or computation of yeart 


MR. CLINTON'S CHRONOLOGY. 35 


(who follow Herodotus, stand opposed to O. Miller and to Mr. 
Clinton. That the reader may have a general conception of 
the order in which these legendary events were disposed, I 
transcribe from the Fasti Hellenica a double chronological table, 
contained in p. 139, in which the dates are placed in series, from 
Phoroneus to the Olympiad of Coreebus in B. c. 776,—in the 
first column according to the system of Eratosthenés, in the 
second according to that of Kallimachus. 

«The following Table (says Mr. Clinton) offers a summary 
view of the leading periods from Phoroneus to the Olympiad of 
Corc-bus, and exhibits a double series of dates ; the one proceed- 
‘ne from the date of Eratosthenés, the other from a date founded 
on the reduced calculations of Phanias and Kallimachus, which 
strike out fifty-six years from the amount of Eratosthenés.. Pha- 
nias, as we have seen, omitted fifty-five years between the Return 
and the registered Olympiads ; for so we may understand the 
account: Kallimachus, fifty-six years between the Olympiad of 
Iphitus and the Olympiad in which Corcebus won.! 


anterior to the Capture of Troy and the Return of the Herakleids, which 
he places with Eratosthenés in 1184 and 1104 B.C. 

C. Miiller thinks (in his Annotatio ad Marmor Parium, appended to the 
Fracmenta Historicorum Grecorum, ed. Didot, pp. 556, 568, 572; compare 
his Prefatory notice of the Fragments of Hellanikus, p. xxviii. of the same 
volume) that the ancient chronologists, in their arrangement of the mythical 
events as antecedent and consequent, were guided by certain numerical 
attachments, especially by a reverence for the cycle of 63 years, product of 
the sacred numbers 7 X 9 = 63. I cannot think that he makes out his 
hypothesis satisfactorily, as to the particular cycle followed, though it is not 
improbable that some preconceived numerical theories did guide these early 
calculators. He calls attention to the fact that the Alexandrine computation 
of dates was only one among 8 number of others discrepant, and that modern 
inquirers are too apt to treat it as if it stood alone, or carried some superior 
authority, (pp. 568-572; compare Clemen. Alex. Stromat. i. p. 145, Sylb.) 
For example, Ὁ. Miiller observes, (Appendix to Hist. of Dorians, p. 442,\ 
that “ Larcher’s criticism and rejection of the Alexandrine chronologists may 
perhaps be found as groundless as they are presumptuous,” — an observation, 
which, to say the least of it, ascribes to Eratosthenés a far higher authority 
than he is entitled to. 

1 ‘The date of Kallimachus for Jphitus is approved by Clavier (Prem 
Temps, tom. ii. p. 203), who considers it as not far from the truth. 


86 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


“The first column of this Table exhibits the current yearg 
before and after the fall of Troy: in the second cc.umn of dates 
the complete intervals are expressed.” 


| 


Sin | Years in-| 
δου tervening| B. C. 
the Fal! bet ween Era- 
of ‘Troy. the diifer-' tosth. 

‘inn jentevents 


(570) |Phoroneus, p. 19 
(283) § Daneus, p. 73 

} Pelasqus Fe ΙΝ wend ae 
(250) Deukalion, i Ges sa sean ae 


anes 
(200) 


Krechtheus 


iat (1383) 
(150) (Azan, Aphida , Elatus ... | (133: 
1.0 = |Kadmus, p. 85 " 1121} | priced 
(100) |\Pelops hh | | gh tly i ih | eae 
78 birth of Flercules i ' iy | “ro 
(42) |Argonaunts often | bi 
30 |First Theban war, p. 51, h. . press 
26 Death of Hercules la 
24 (Death of Lurystheus, p- 106, x | 12 7 
20 ‘Death of Hyllus aT i νοι | 
18 Accession of Agamemnon ....... ° ; ney 1200 
16 Second Theban war, Dae, hones 5 ον ; Ἵ | 1198 


10 ‘Trojan expedition (9. im) eee eeeeecesr 1192 | 


I«ajy “J 


— 


yt Ve 
ΝΠ ΧΕΣ 
ὦ, vl 
~ 


δ ας 


Years 
after | 
the Fall 
of Troy. | 


Troy taken 1183 
8 [Orestes reigns at Argos i 

( /restes reigns al Argos in the 8th year .. 1176 | 1120 | 

The Thessali occupy Thessaly Ι | 
τὶ i ) my i " . Ὁ" 

Phe Baoti return to Beeotia in the 60th γτ. 1124 | 1068 
Holic migration under Penthilus 
|Return of the /fleraclide in the 80th vear' C 1104 1048 
|Aletes reigns at Corinth, p. 130, m a η] 1075} 1019 
Migration of T/eras 2) | ore 1018 
Leshos occupied 130 years after the gra. | 8 1053 | 997 
|Death of Codrus ] | 1045 989 
eine migration 60 years after the Return 11 | 1044 988 
“ πιὸ founded 150 years after the wera .. ig | 1033 977 
Smyrna, 168 years after the wra,p. 105,t.| 131 1015 | 959 


299 
Olympiad of Tp} En 


828 


Olympiad of Corabus 


i 
4 


7 


'These dates, distinguished from 
8, guis the rest by braces, are proposed 
conjectures, founded upon the probable length of ninmutian re 


APPLICATION OF CHRONOLOGY TO LEGEND. a 


Wherever chronology is possible, researches such as those of 
Mr. Clinton, which have conduced so much to the better un- 
derstanding of the later times of Greece, deserve respectfia 
attention. But the ablest chronologist can accomplish nothing, 
unless he is supplied with a certain basis of matters of faet, pure 
and distinguishable from fiction, and authenticated by witnesses 
both knowing the truth and willing to declare it. Possessing 
this preliminary stock, he may reason from it to refute distinct 
falsehoods and to correct partial mistakes: but if all the original 
statements submitted to him contain truth (at least wherever 
there zs truth) in a sort of chemical combination with fietion, 
which he has no means of decomposing, — he is im the condition 
of one who tries to solve a problem without data: he is first 
obliged to construct his own data, and from them to-extract. his 
conclusions. ‘The statements of the epic poets, our only original 
witnesses in this case, correspond to the description here given. 
Whether the proportion of truth contained in them be smaller or 
greater, it is at all events unassignable, — and the constant and 
intimate admixture of fiction is both indisputable in itself, and, 
indeed, essential to the purpose and profession of those from 
whom the tales proceed. Of such a character are all the depos 
ing witnesses, even where their tales agree ; and it is out of a 
heap of such tales, not agreeing, but discrepant in a thousand 
ways, and without a morsel of pure authenticated truth, — that 
the critic is called upon to draw out a methodical series of his- 
torical events adorned with chronological dates. 

If we could imagine a modern critical scholar transported into 
Greece at the time of the Persian war, —endued with his 
present habits of appreciating historical evidence, without sharing 
in the religious or patriotic feelings of the country, — and invited 
to prepare, out of the great body of Grecian epic which then 
existed, a History and Chronology of Greece anterior to 776 
B. C., assigning reasons as well for what he admitted as for what 
he rejected, —I feel persuaded that he would have judged the 
undertaking to be little better than a process of guesswork. But 
the modern critic finds that not only Pherekydés and Hellanikus, 
but also Herodotus and Thucydidés, have either attempted the 
task or sanctioned the belief that it was practicable,—a matter 
not at all surprising, when we consider both their narsaw ex 


38 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


perience of historical evidence and the powerful ascendency of 
religion and patriotism in predisposing them to antiquarian belief, 
— and he therefore accepts the problem as they have bequeathed 
it, adding his own efforts to bring it to a satisfactory solution. 
Nevertheless, he not only follows them with some degree of 
reserve and uneasiness, but even admits important distinctions 
quite foreign to their habits of thought. Thucydidés talks of the 
deeds of Hellén and his sons with as much confidence as we now 
speak of William the Conqueror: Mr. Clinton recognizes Hel. 
lén, with his sons Dérus, Aolus, and Xuthus, as fictitious persons. 
Herodotus recites the great heroic genealogies down from Kad- 
mus and Danaus, with a belief not less complete in the higher 
members of the series than in the lower: but Mr. Clinton admits 
a radical distinction in the evidence of events before and after 
the first recorded Olympiad, or 776 B. c.,— “the first date in 
Grecian chronology (he remarks, p. 123,) which can be fixed 
upon authentic evidence,” — the highest point to which Grecian 
chronology, reckoning upward, can be carried. Of this im por- 
tant epoch in Grecian development, — the commencement of 
authentic chronological life, — Herodotus and Thucydidés had no 
knowledge or took no account: the later chronologists, from 
Timzus downwards, noted it, and made it serve as the basis of 
their chronological comparisons, so far as it went: but neither 
Eratosthenés nor Apollodérus seem to have recognized (though 
Varro and Africanus did recognize) a marked difference in 
respect of certainty or authenticity between the period before 
and the period after. 

In farther illustration of Mr. Clinton’s opinion that the first 
recorded Olympiad is the earliest date which can be fixed upen 
authentic evidence, we have, in p. 138, the following just remarks 
in reference to the dissentient views of Eratosthenés, Phanias, 
and Kallimachus, about the date of the Trojan war: “The chro- 
nology of Eratosthenés (he says), founded on a careful comparison 
of circumstances, and approved by those to whom the same stores 
of information were open, is entitled to our respect. But we must 
remember that a conjectural date can never rise to the authgrity 
of evidence ; that what is accepted as a substitute for testimony 
is not an equivalent : witnesses only can prove a date, and in the 
want of these, the knowledge of it is plainly beyond our reach 


ERATOSTHENES.— THE FIRST OLYMPIAD. 39 


Iv in the absence of a better light we seek for what is probable, 
we are not to forget the distinction between conjecture and proof 
between what is probable and what is certain. The computation, 
then, of Eratosthenés for the war of Troy is open to inquiry; and 
if we find it adverse to the opinions of many preceding writers, 
who fixed a lower date, and adverse to the acknowledged length 
of generation in the most authentic dynasties, we are allowed to 
follow other guides, who give us a lower epoch.” 

Here Mr. Clinton again plainly acknowledges the want of evi 
dence, and the irremediable uncertainty of Grecian chronology 
before the Olympiads; and the reasonable conclusion from his 
argument is, not simply, that “the computation of Eratosthenés 
was open to inquiry,” (which few would be found to deny,) but 
that both Eratosthenés and Phanias had delivered positive opin- 
ions upon a point on which no suflicient evidence was accessible, 
and therefore that neither the one nor the other was a guide to 
be followed.! Mr. Clinton does, indeed, speak of authentic dynas- 
ties prior to the first recorded Olympiad, but if there be any 
such, reaching up from that period to a supposed point coeval 
with or anterior to the war of Troy,—I see no good reason 
for the marked distinction which he draws between chronology 
before and chronology after the Olympiad of Korcebus, or for the 
necessity which he feels of suspending his upward reckoning at the 
last-mentioned epoch, and beginning « different process, called 
“a downward reckoning,” from the higher epoch (supposed to be 
somehow ascertained without any upward reckoning) of the first 
patriarch from whom such authentic dynasty emanates.” Herod- 
otus and Thucydidés might well, upon this supposition, ask of 


1 Karl Miiller observes (in the Dissertation above referred to, appended to 
the Fragmenta Historicum Grecorum, p. 568): “ Quod attinet xram Tro 
janam, tot obruimur et tam diversis veterum scriptorum computationibus, ut 
singulas enumerare negotium sit tedii plenum, eas vel probare vel improbare 
res vana nec vacua ab arrogantid4, Nam nemo hodie nescit quenam fides 
his habenda sit omnibus.” 

2 The distinction which Mr. Clinton draws between an upward and a down- 
ward chronology is one that Iam unable to comprehend. His doctrine is, 
that upward chronology is trustworthy and practicable up to the first record- 
ed Olympiad ; downward chronology is trustworthy and practicable from Pho- 
τόπους, down to the Ionic migration: what is uncertain is, the length of the 
intermediate line which joins the Ionic migration to the first recoré.a Olym 


4 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Mr. Clinton, why he called upon them to alter their methed of 
proceeding at the year 776 B. 0.7 and why they might not be 
allowed to pursue their “ upward chronological reckoning,” with- 
out interruption, from Leonidas up to Danaus, or from Peisistratus 
up to Hellén and Deukalion, without any alteration in the point 
of view. Authentic dynasties from the Olympiads, up to an 
epoch above the ‘lrojan war, would enable us to obtain chrono- 
logical proof for the latter date, instead of being reduced (as Mr. 
Clinton affirms that we are) to “ conjecture” instead of proof. 
The whole question, as to the value of the reckoning from the 


piad, — the downward and the upward terminus. (See Fasti Hellenici, vol. i. 
Introduct. p. ix. second edit. and p. 123, ch. vi.) 
All chronology must begin by reckoning upwards: when by this process 
we have arrived at a certain determined era in earlier time, we may from 
that date reckon downwards, if we please. We must be able to reckon up- 
wards from the present time to the Christian era, before we can employ that 
event as a fixed point for chronological determinations generally. But if 
Eratosthenés could perform correctly the upward reckoning from his own 
time to the fall of Troy, so he could also perform the upward reckoning up 
to the nearer point of the Ionic migration. It is true that Eratosthenés gives 
all his statements of time from an older point to a newer (so far at least as 
we can judge from Clemens Alex. Strom. 1, p. 536); he says “ From the cap- 
ture of Troy to the return of the Herakleids is 80 years; from thence to the 
Ionic migration, 60 years; then, farther on, to the guardianship of Lykurgus, 
159 years ; then to the first year of the first Olympiad, 108 years; from which 
Olympiad to the invasion of Xerxés, 297 years ; from whence to the begin: 
ning of the Peloponnesian war, 48 years,” etc. But here is no difference 
between upward reckoning as high as the first Olympiad, and then down- 
ward reckoning for the intervals of time above it. Eratosthenés first found 
or made some upward reckoning to the Trojan capture, either from his own 
time or from some time at a known distance from his own: he then assumes 
the capture of Troy as an era, and gives statements of intervals going down- 
wards to the Peloponnesian war : amongst other statements, he assigns clearly 
that interval which Mr. Clinton pronounces to be undiscoverable, viz. the 
space of time between the Ionic emigration and the first Olympiad, interpos- 
ing one epoch between them. I reject the computation of Eratosthenés, or 
any other computation, 1o determine the supposed date of the Trojan war: 
bat, if I admitted it, I could have no hesitation in admitting also the space 
which he defines between the Ionic migration and the first Olympiad. Euse- 
bius (Prep. Ev. x. 9, p. 485) reckons upwards from the birth of Christ, 
making various halts, but never breaking off, to the initial phenomena of 
Grecian antiquity, --- the deluge of Deukalion and the conflagration of Phas 


tin. 


CHRONOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF INSCRIPTIONS. 4) 


Olympiads up to Phoréneus, does in truth turn upon this point: 
Are those genealogies, which profess to cover the spaze between 


the two, authentic and trustworthy, or not? Mr. Clinton appears 
to feel that they are not so, when he admits the essential difference 


in the character of the evidence and the necessity of altering the 
method of computation, before and after the first recorded Olym- 
piad; yet, in his Preface, he labors to prove that they possess 
historical worth and are in the main correctly set forth: moreover, 
that the fictitious persons, wherever any such are intermingled, 
may be detected and eliminated. The evidences upon which he 
relies, are: 1. Inscriptions ; 2. The early poets. 

1. An inscription, being nothing but a piece of writing on mar- 
ble, carries evidentiary value under the same conditions as-a pub- 
lished writing on paper. If the inscriber reports.a contemporary 
fact which he had the means of knowing, and if there ‘be no rea- 
son to suspect misrepresentation, we believe his assertion: if, on 
the other hand, he records facts belonging to a long period before 
his own time, his authority counts for little, except in so far as 
we can verify and appreciate his means of knowledge. 

In estimating, therefore, the probative force of any inscriptior, 
the first and most indispensable point is to assure ourselves of its 
date. Amongst all the public registers and inscriptions alluded 
to by Mr. Clinton, there is not one which can be positively refer- 
red to a date anterior to 776 B. c. The quoit of Iphitus, — the 
public registers at Sparta, Corinth, and Elis, — the list of the 
priestesses of Juno at Argos,—are all of a date completely un- 
certified. O. Miller does, indeed, agree with Mr. Clinton 
(though in my opinion without any sufficient proof ) in assigning 
the quoit of Iphitus to the age ascribed to that prince: and if we 
even grant thus much, we shall have an inscription as old (adopt- 
ing Mr. Clinton’s determination of the age of Iphitus) as 828 
s. c. But when Mr. Clinton quotes O. Miller as admitting the 
registers of Sparta, Corinth, and Elis, it is right to add that the 
latter does not profess to guarantee the authenticity of these doc- 
uments, or the age at which such registers began to be kept. It 
is not to be doubted that there were registers of the kings of 
Sparta carrying them up to Héraklés, and of the kings of Elis 
from Oxylus to Iphitus; but the question is, at what time did 
these lists begin to be kept continuously? This is a point which 


42 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


we have no means of deciding, nor can we accept Mr. Clinton’s 
unsupported conjecture, when he tells us: “Perhaps these were 
begun to be writte1 as early as B. C. 1048, the probable time of 
the Dorian conquest.” Again, he tells us: “ At Argos, a register 
was preserved of the priestesses of Juno, which might be more 
ancient than the catalogues of the kings of Sparta or Corinth. 
That register, from which Hellanikus composed his work, con- 
tained the priestesses from the earliest times down to the age of 
Hellanikus himself..... But this catalogue might have been 
commenced as early as the Trojan war itself, and even at a still 
earlier date.” (pp. x. xi.) Again, respecting the inscriptions 
quoted by Herodotus from the temple of the Ismenian Apollo at 
Thébes, in which Amphitryo and Laodamas are named, Mr. 
Clinton says, “ They were ancient in the time of Herodotus, which 
may perhaps carry them back 400 years before his time: and in 
that case they mig/t approach within 300 years of Laodamas and 
within 400 years of the probable time of Kadmus himself.”—* Jt 
is granted (he adds, in a note,) that these inscriptions were not 
genuine, that is, not of the date to which they were assigned by 
Herodotus himself. But that they were ancient, cannot be 
doubted,” &e. 

The time when Herodotus saw the temple of the Ismenian 
Apollo at Thébes can hardly have been earlier than 400 B. Ο. 


reckoning upwards from hence to 776 B. C., we have an interval 


of 326 years: the inscriptions which Herodotus saw may well 
therefore have been ancient, without being earlier than the first 
recorded Olympiad. Mr. Clinton does, indeed, tell us that an- 
cient “may perhaps” be construed as 400 years earlier than He- 
rodotus. But no careful reader can permit himself to convert 
such bare possibility into a ground of inference, and to make it 
available, in conjunction with other similar possibilities before 
enumerated, for the purpose of showing that there really existed 
inscriptions in Greece of a date anterior to 776 B. Ο. Unless 
Mr. Clinton can make out this, he can derive no benefit from in- 
scriptions, in his attempt to substantiate the reality of the mythi- 
cal persons or of the mythical events. 

The truth is, that the Herakleid pedigree of the Spartan kings 
(as has been observed in a former chapter) is only one out of 
the numerous divine and heroic genealogies with which the Hel 


UNKNOWN DATE OF THE INSCRIPTIONS. 48 


lenic world abounded,'—a class of documents which become 
historical evidence only so high in the ascending series as the 


re 


1 See the string of fabulous names placed at the head of the Halikarnas- 
sian Inscription, professing to enumerate the series of priests of Poseidén 
from the foundation of the city (Inscript. No. 2655, Boeckh), with the com- 
mentary of the learned editor: cor-pare, also, what he pronounces to be an 
inscription of a genealogy partially fabulous at Hierapytna in Kréte (No. 
2563). 

The memorable Parian marble is itself an inscription, in which legend and 
history — gods, heroes, and men — are blended together in the various suc- 
cessive epochs without any consciousness of transition in the mind of the 
inscriber. 

That the Catalogue of Priestesses of Héré at Argos went back to the ex- 
treme of fabulous times, we may discern by the Fragments of Hellanikus 
(Frag. 45-53). So also did the registers at Siky6n: they professed to re 
cord Amphion, son of Zeus and Antiopé, as the inventor of harp-musis 
(Plutarch, De Musica, ο. 3, p. 1132). 

I remarked in the preceding page, that Mr. Clinton erroneously cites K 
O. Maller as a believer in the chronological authenticity of the lists of the early 
Spartan kings : he says (vol. iii. App. vi. p. 330), “ Mr. Miiller is of opinion 
that an authentic account of the years of each Lacedemonian reign from the 
return of the Heraclids to the Olympiad of Koroebus had been preserved to 
the time of Eratosthenés and Apollodérus.” But this is a mistake ; for 
Miiller expressly disavows any belief in the authenticity of the lists (Dorians, 
i. p. 146) : he says: “1 do not contend that the chronological accounts in the 
Spartan lists form an authentic document, more than those in the catalogue of 
the priestesses of Héré and in the list of Halikarnassian priests. The chro- 
nological statements in the Spartan lists may have been formed from imper- 
fect memorials: but the Alexandrine chronologists must have found such 
tables in existence,” &c. 

The discrepancies noticed in Herodotus (vi. 52) are alone sufficient to 
prove that continuous registers of the names of the Lacedemonian kings 
did not begin to be kept until very long after the date here assigned by Mr 
Clinton. 

Xenophon (Agesilaus, viii. 7} agrees with what Herodotus mentions to have 
been the native Lacedemonian story,— that Aristodémus (and not his sons) 
was the king who conducted the Dorian invaders to Sparta. What is 
farther remarkable is, that Xenophén calls him — ᾿Αριστόδημος ὁ Ἡρακλέους. 
The reasonable inference here is, that Xenophon believed Aristodémus to be 
the son of Héraklés, and that this was one of the various genealogical βίου! 
current. But here the critics interpose ; “ ὁ ᾿᾽Πρακλέους (observes Schneider,) 
non παῖς, sed ἀπόγονος, ut ex Herodoto, viii. 131, admonuit Weiske.” Surely, 
if Xenophén had meant this, he would have said ὁ ἀφ᾽ Ἡρακλέους. 

Perhaps particular exceptional cases might be quoted, wherein the very 
common phrase of 6, followed by a genitive, means descendant, and net son 


44 HISTORY OF GREEUE. 


names composing them are authenticated by contemporary, or 
nearly contemporary, enrolment. At what period thia practice 
of enrolment began, we have no information. Two remarks, 
however, may be made, in reference to any approximative guess 
as to the time when actual registration commenced: First, that 
the number of names in the pedigree, or the length of past time 
which it professes to embrace, affords no presumption of any 
superior antiquity in the time of registration: Secondly, that, 
looking to the acknowledged paucity and rudeness of Grecian 
writing, even down to the 60th Olympiad (540 B. c.), and to the 
absence of the habit of writing, as well as the low estimate of 
its value, which such a state of things argues, the presumption is, 
that written enrolment of family genealogies, did not commence 
until a long time after 776 B. c., and the obligation of proof falis 
upon him who maintains that it commenced earlier. And this 
second remark is farther borne out, when we observe that there 
is no registered list, except that of the Olympic victors, which 
goes up even so high as 776 B. c. The next list which O. Mil- 
ler and Mr. Clinton produce, is that of the Karneonice, or victors 
at the Karneian festival, which reaches only up to 676 B. c. 

If Mr. Clinton then makes little out of inscriptions to sustain 
his view of Grecian history and chronology anterior to the re- 
corded Olympiads, let us examine the inferences which he draws 
from his ether source of evidence,—the early poets. And here 
it will be found, First, that in order to maintain the credibility of 
these witnesses, he lays down positions respecting historical evi- 
dence both indefensible in themselves, and especially inapplica- 
ble to the early times of Greece: Secondly, that his reasoning is 
at the same time inconsistent, — inasmuch as it includes admis- 
sions, which, if properly understood and followed out, exhibit 
these very witnesses as habitually, indiscriminately, and uncon- 
sciously mingling truth and fiction, and therefore little fit to be 
believed upon their solitary and unsupported testimony. 

To take the second point first, he says, Introduction, p. ii-iii: 
“ The authority even of the genealogies has been called in ques- 


But if any doubt be allowed upon this point, chronological computations, 
founded on genealogies, will be exposed to a serious additional suspicion 
Why are we to assume that Xenoph6én must give the samo story as Herod 
tas, unless his words naturally tell us so ? 


CHRONOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF THE POETS. 45 


tion by many able and learned persons, who reject Danaus, Kad- 
mus, Hercules, Théseus, and many others, as fictitious persons. 
It is evident that any fact would come from the hands of the 
poets embellished with many fabulous additions: and fictitious 
genealogies were undoubtedly composed. Because, however, 
some genealogies were fictitious, we are net justified in concluding 
that all were fabulous........ In estimating, then, the histori- 
eal value of the genealogies transmitted by the early poets, we 
may take a middle course ; not rejecting them as wholly false, 
aor yet implicitly receiving all as true. The genealogies con- 
fain many real persons, but these are incorporated with many fic- 
titious names. ‘The fictions, however, will have a basis of truth: 
the genealogical expression may be false, but the connection 
which it describes is real. Even to those who reject the whole 
as fabulous, the exhibition of the early times which is presented 
in this volume may still be not unacceptable : because it is neces- 
sary to the right understanding of antiquity that the opinions of 
the Greeks concerning their own origin should be set before us, 
even if these are erroneous opinions, and that their story should 
be told as they have told it themselves. The names preserved 
by the ancient genealogies may be considered of three kinds; 
either they were the name of a race or clan converted into the 
name of an individual, or they were altogether fictitious, or lastly, 
they were real historical names. An attempt is made, in the 
four genealogical tables inserted below, to distinguish these three 
classes of names..... Of those who are left in the third class 
(ὦ. ὁ. the real) all are not entitled to remain there. But I have 
only placed in the third class those names concerning which there 
seemed to be little doubt. The rest are left to the judgment of 
the reader.” 

Pursuant to this principle of division, Mr. Clinton furnishes 
four genealogical tables,! in which the names of persons repre- 
senting races are printed in capital letters, and those of purely 
fictitious persons in italics. And these tables exhibit a curious 
sample of the intimate commixture of fiction with that which he 
calls truth: real son and mythical father, real husband and 


mythical wife, or vice versd. 


1 See Mr. Clinton’s work, pp. 82, 40, 100. 


46 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Upon Mr. Clinton’s tables we may remark : — 

1. The names singled out as fictitious are distinguished by ne 
common character, nor any mark either assignable or defensible, 
from those which are left as real. To take an example (p. 40), 
why is Iténus the first pointed out as a fiction, while ltonus the 
second, together with Physcus, Cynus, Salmoneus, Ormenus, etc. 
in the same page, are preserved as real, all of them being epo- 
nyms of towns just as much as Itonus? 

2. lf we are to discard Hellén, Dérus, olus, I6n, ete., as not 
being real individual persons, but expressions for personified 
races, why are we to retain Kadmus, Danaus, Hyllus, and several 
others, who are just as much eponyms of races and tribes as the 
four above mentioned? Hyllus, Pamphylus, and Dymas are the 
eponyms of the three Dorian tribes,' just as Hoplés and the other 
three sons of Ién were of the four Attic tribes: Kadmus and 
Danaus stand in the same relation to the Kadmeians and Dana- 
ans, as Argus and Achzus to the Argeians and Achwans. Be- 
sides, there are many other names really eponymous, which we 
cannot now recognize to be so, in consequence of our imperfect 
acquaintance with the subdivisions of the Hellenic population, 
each of which, speaking generally, had its god or hero, to whom 
the original of the name was referred. If, then, eponymous 
names are to be excluded from the category of reality, we shall 
find that the ranks of the real men will be thinned to a far greater 
extent than is indicated by Mr. Clinton’s tables. 

3. Though Mr. Clinton does not carry out consistently either 
of his disfranchising qualifications among the names and persons 
of the old mythes, he nevertheless presses them far enough to 
strike out a sensible proportion of the whole. By conceding thus 
much to modern scepticism, he has departed from the point of 
view of Hellanikus and Herodotus, and the ancient historians 
generally ; and it is singular that the names, which he has been 
the most forward to sacrifice, are exactly those to which they 
were most attached, and which it would have been most painful 
to their faith to part with,—I mean the eponymous heroes. 
Neither Herodotus, nor Hellanikus, nor Eratosthenés, nor any 


1 “ From these three ” (Hyllus, Pamphylus, and Dymas,) says Mr. Clinton 
rol. i. ch. 5, p. 109, “the three Dorian tribes derived their names.” 


ANCIENT AND MODERN CHRONOLOGISTS. 47 


ene of the chronological reckoners of antiquity, would have ad- 
mitted the distinction which Mr. Clinton draws between persons 
real and persons fictitious in the old mythical world, though they 
might perhaps occasionally, on special grounds, call in question 
the existence of some individual characters amongst the mythical 
ancestry of Greece; but they never dreamed of that general 
severance into real and fictitious persons, which forms the princi- 
ple of Mr. Clinton’s “ middle course.” Their chronological com- 
putations for Grecian antiquity assumed that the mythical char- 
acters, in their full and entire sequence, were all real persons. 
Setting up the entire list as real, they valculated so many genera- 
tions to a century, and thus determined the number of centuries 
which separated themselves from the gods, the heroes, or the 
autochthonous men who formed in their view the historical start- 
ing point. But as soon as it is admitted that the personages in 
the mythical world are divisible into two classes, partly real and 
partly fictitious, the integrity of the series is broken up, and it 
‘an be no longer employed as a basis for chronological calculation. 
In the estimate of the ancient chronologers, three succeeding per- 
sons of the same lineage — grandfather, father, and son, —counted 
for a century; and this may pass in a rough way, so long as you 
are thoroughly satisfied that they are all real persons: but if, in 
the succession of persons A, B, C, you strike out B as a fiction, 
the continuity of data necessary for chronological computation 
disappears. “Now Mr. Clinton is inconsistent with himself in 
this, — that, while he abandons the unsuspecting historical faith 
of the Grecian chronologers, he nevertheless continues his chro- 
nological computations upon the data of that ancient faith, — 
upon the assumed reality of all the persons constituting his ante- 
historical generations. What becomes, for example, of the Hera- 
kleid genealogy of the Spartan kings, when it is admitted that 
eponymous persons are to be cancelled as fictions ; seeing that 
Hyllus, through whom those kings traced their origin to Héra- 
klés comes in the most distinct manner under that category, as 
much so as Hoplés the son of Ion? It will be found that, when 
we once cease to believe in the mythical world as an uninter- 
rupted and unalloyed succession of real individuals, it becomes 
unfit to serve as a basis for chronological computations, and that 
Mr. Clinton, when he mutilated the data of the ancient chronolo. 


48 HISTOR: OF GREECE. 


gists, ought at the same time to have abandoned their problems 
as insoluble. Geneslogies of real persons, such as Herodotus 
and Eratosthenés believed in, afford a tolerable basis for calcula 
tions of time, within certain limits of error: “genealogies contain 
ing many real persons, but incorporated with many fictitious 
names,” (to use the language just cited from Mr. Clinton,) are 
essentially unavailable for such a purpose. 

It is right here to add, that I agree in Mr. Clinton’s view of 
these eponymous persons: I admit, with him, that “ the genea- 
logical expression may often be false, when the connection which 
it describes is real.” ‘Thus, for example, the adoption of Hyllus 
by A°gimius, the father of Pamphylus and Dymas, to the privileges 
of a son and to a third fraction of his territories, may reasonably 
be construed as a mythical expression of the fraternal union of 
the three Dorian tribes, Hyliéis, Pamphyli, and Dymanes: so 
about the relationship of Ién and Achzus, of Dérus and AXolus. 
But if we put this construction on the name of Hyllus, or I6n, or 
Achzus, we cannot at the same time employ either of these 
persons as units in chronological reckoning: nor is it consistent 
to recognize them in the lump as members of a distinct class, 
and yet to enlist them as real individuals in measuring the dura- 
tion of past time. 

4. Mr. Clinton, while professing a wish to tell the story of the 
Greeks as they have told it themselves, seems unconscious how 
capitally his peint of view differs from theirs. The distinction 
which he draws between real and fictitious persons would have 
appeared unreasonable, not to say offensive, to Herodotus or 
Eratosthenés. It is undoubtedly right that the early history (if 
80 it is to be called) of the Greeks should be told as they have 
told it themselves, and with that view I have endeavored in the 
previous narrative, as far as I could, to present the primitive 
legends in their original color and character, — pointing out at 
the same time the manner in which they were transformed and 
distilled into history by passing through the retort of later an- 
nalists. It is the legend, as thus transformed, which Mr. Clinton 
seems to understand as the story told by the Greeks themselves, 
—which cannot be admitted to be true, unless the meaning of 
the expression be specially explained. In his general distine- 
tion, however, between the real and fictitious persons of the 


PRESUMPTIVE VALUE Ol TESTIMONY. 49 


mythical world, he departs essentially from the point of view 
even of the later Greeks. And if he had consistently followed 
out that distinction in his particular criticisms, he would have 
found the ground slipping under his feet in his upward march 
even to Troy,—not to mention the series of eighteen gener» 
tions farther up, to Phoréneus; but he does not consistently fol- 
low it out, and therefore, in practice, he deviates little from the 
footsteps of the ancients. 

Enough has been said to show that the witnesses upon whom 
Mr. Clinton relies, blend truth and fiction habitually, indiserimi- 
nately, and unconsciously, even upon his own admission. Let 
us now consider the positions which he lays down respecting 
historical evidence. He says (Introduct. pp. vi—vil) :— 

- We may acknowledge as real persons all those whom there 
is no reason for rejecting. The presumption is in favor of the 
early tradition, if no argument can be brought to overthrow it. 
The persons may be considered real, when the description of 
them is consonant with the state of the country at that times 
when no national prejudice or vanity could be concerned. in in- 
venting them: when the tradition is consistent and general: when 
rival or hostile tribes concur in the leading facts: when tke acts 
ascribed to the person (divested of their poetical ornament) enter 
into the political system of the age, or form the basis of other 
transactions which fall within known historical times. Kadmus 
and Danaus appear to be real persons: for it is conformable to 
the state of mankind, and perfectly credible, that Phoenician and 
Egyptian adventurers, in the ages to which these persons are 
ascribed, should have found their way to the coasts of Greece: 
nnd the Greeks (as already observed) had no motive from any 
national vanity to feign these settlements. Hercules was a real 
person. His acts were recorded by those who were not friendly 
to the Dorians; by Achzans and A@olians, and Ionians, who had 
no vanity to gratify in celebrating the hero of a hostile and. rival 
people. His descendants in many branches remained in many 
states down to the historical times. His son Tlepolemus, and 
his grandson and great-grandson Cleodzus and Aristomachus, 
are acknowledged (i. 6. by O. Miller) to be real persons: and 
there is no reason that can be assigned for receiving these, whica 
will not be equally valid for establishing the reality both of Hem 


VAL. I! 3 40c. 


50 HISTORY OF GREECE 


cules and Hyllus. Above all, Hercules is authenticated by ths 
testimonies both of the Iliad and Odyssey.” 

These positions appear to me inconsistent with any sound views 
of the conditions of historical testimony. According to what is 
here laid down, we are bound to accept as real all the persons 
mentioned by Homer, Arktinus, Leschés, the Hesiodic poets, 
Eumélus, Asius, etc., unless we can adduce some positive ground 
in each particular case to prove the contrary. If this position 
be a true one, the greater part of the history of England, from 
Brute the Trojan down to Julius Cesar, ought at once to be 
admitted as valid and worthy of credence. What Mr. Clinton 
here calls the early tradition, is in point of fact, the narrative of 
these early poets. The word tradition is an equivocal word, and 
begs the whole question ; for while in its obvious and literal 
meaning it implies only something handed down, whether truth 
or fiction, — ii is tacitly understood to imply a tale descriptive of 
seme real matter of fact, taking its rise at the time when that 
fact happened, and originally accurate, but corrupted by subse- 
quent oral transmission. Understanding, therefore, by Mr. Clin- 
ton’s words early tradition, the tales of the old poets, we shall 
find his position totally inadmissible,— that we are bound te 
admit the persons or statemenis of Homer and I[esiod as real 
unless where we can produce reasons to the contrary. To allow 
this, would be to put them upon a par with good contemporary 
witnesses; for no greater privilege can be claimed in favor even 
of Thucydidés, than the title of his testimony to be believea 
unless where it can be contradicted on special grounds. The 
presumption in favor of an asserting witness is either strong or 
weak, or positively nothing, according to the compound ratio of 
his means of knowledge, his moral and intellectual habits, and 
his motive to speak the truth. Thus, for instance, when Hesiod 
tells us that his father quitted the olic Kymé, and came to 
Askra in Bedtia, we may fully believe him; but when he de- 
scribes to us the battles between the Olympic gods and the Titans, 
or between Héraklés and Cycnus, — or when Homer depicts the 
efforts of Hectér, aided by Apollo, for the defence of Troy, and 
the struggles of Achilles and Odysseus, with the assistance of 
Héré and Poseidén, for the destruction of that city, events pro- 
fessedly long past and gone, — we cannot presume either of thera 
VOL, 3 2 


...»- 


-οοἰ πος κῶνοι | ς,........ 


PLAUSIBLE FICTION. 51 


to be in any way worthy of belief. It cannot be shown that they 
possessed any means of knowledge, while it is certain that they 
could have no motive to consider historical truth: their object 
was to satisfy an uncritical appetite for narrative, and t6’ interest 
the emotions of their hearers. Mr. Clinton says, that “ the per- 
sons may be considered real when the description of them is 
consistent with the state of the country at that time.” But he 
has forgotten, first, that we know nothing of the state of the 
country except what these very poets tell us; next, that fictitious 
persons may be just as consonant to the state of the country as 
real persons. While, therefore, on the one hand, we have no 
independent evidence either to affirm or to deny that Achilles or 
Agamemnon are consistent with the state of Greece or Asia 
Minor, at a certain supposed date 1183 B. c¢., so, on the other 
hand, even assuming such consistency to be made out, this of 
itself would not prove them to be real persons. 

Mr. Clinton’s reasoning altogether overlooks the eaistence of 
plausible fiction, — fictitious stories which harmonize perfectly 
well with the general course of facts, and which are distinguish 
ed from matters of fact not by any internal character, but by the 
circumstance that matter of fact has some competent and well- 
informed witness to authenticate it, either directly or through 
legitimate inference. Fiction may be, and often is, extravagant 
and incredible ; but it may also be plausible and specious, and in 
that case there is nothing but the want of an attesting certificate 
to distinguish it from truth. Now all the tests, which Mr. Clin- 
ton proposes as guarantees of the reality of the Homeric persons, 
will be just as well satisfied by plausible fiction as by actual 
matter of fact: the plausibility of the fiction consists in its satis- 
fying those and other similar conditions. In most cases, the tales 
of the poets did fall in with the existing current of feelings in 
their audience: “ prejudice and vanity” are not the only feelings, 
but doubtless prejudice and vanity were often appealed to, and it 
was from such harmony of sentiment that they acquired their 
hold on men’s belief. Without any doubt, the Iliad appealed 
most powerfully to the reverence for ancestral gods and heroes 
among the Asiatic colonists who first heard it: the temptation ot 
putting forth an interesting tale is quite a sufficient stimulus te 
the invention of the poet, and the plausibility of the tale a suffi- 


52 HISTOKY OF GREECE. 


cient passport to the belief of the hearers. Mr. Clinton talks of 
“ consistent and general tradition.” But that the tale of a poet, 
when once told with effect and beauty, acquired general belief, 
—jis no proof that it was founded on fact: otherwise, what are 
we to say to the divine legends, and to the large portion of the 
Homeric narrative which Mr. Clinton himself sets aside as un- 
true, under the designation of “ poetical ornament?” When a 
mythical incident is recorded as “ forming the basis” of some 
known historical fact or institution, —as, for instance, the suc- 
cessful stratagem by which Melanthus killed Xanthus, in the bat- 
tle on the boundary, as recounted in my last chapt>r,— we may 
adopt one of two views; we may either treat the incident as real, 
and as having actually given occasion to what is described as its 
eflect, — or we may treat the incident as a legend imagined in 
order to assign some plausible origin of the reality, —“ Aut ex 
re nomen, aut ex vocabulo fabula.”! In cases where the legend- 
ary incident is referred to a time long anterior to any records, 
—as it commonly is, —the second mode of proceeding appears 
to me far more consonant to reason and probability than the first. 
It is to be recollected that all the persons and facts, here defended 
as matter of real history, by Mr. Clinton, are referred to an age 
long preceding the first beginning of records. 

I have already remarked that Mr. Clinton shrinks from his 
own rule in treating Kadmus and Danaus as real persons, since 
they are as much eponyms of tribes or races as Dérus and Hellén. 
And if he can admit Héraklés to be a real man, I cannot see 
upon what reason he can consistently disallow any one of the 
mythical personages, for there is not one whose exploits are more 
strikingly at variance with the standard of historical probability. 
Mr. Clinton reasons upon the supposition that “ Herculés was a 
Dorian hero:” but he was Achzan and Kadmeian as well aa 
Dorian, though the legends respecting him are different in all the 
three characters. Whether his son Tlepolemus and his g>andson 
Cleodzus belong to the category of historical men, I will not 
take upon me to say, though O. Miiller (in my opinion without 
any warranty) appears to admit it; but Hyllus certainly is not a 
real man, if the canon of Mr. Clinton himself respecting the 


insite ..............“ ο-................. ....- 


' Pomponius Mela iii. 7. 


VALUE OF THE GENEAL JGIES. 53 


epony.as is to be trusted. “The descendants or Herculés (ob 
serves Mr. Clinton) remained in many states down to the histor. 
ical times.” So did those of Zeus and Apollo, and of that god 
whom the historian Hekatzus recognized as his progenitor in the 
sixteenth generation ; the titular kings of Ephesus, in the histor- 
ical times, as well as Peisistratus, the despot of Athens, traced 
their origin up to AZolus and Hellén, yet Mr. Clinton does not 
hesitate to reject ASolus and Hellén as fictitious persons. I dis- 
pute the propriety of quoting the Iliad and Odyssey (as Mr. 
Clinton does) in evidence of the historic personality of Herculés. 
For, even with regard to the ordinary men who figure in those 
poems, we have no means of discriminating the real from the 
fictitious ; while the Homeric Héraklés is unquestionably more 
than an ordinary man, — he is the favorite son of Zeus, from his 
birth predestined to a life of labor and servitude, as preparation 
for a glorious immortality. Without doubt, the poet himself be- 
lieved in the reality of Herculés, but it was a reality clothed with 
superhuman attributes. 

Mr. Clinton observes (Introd. p. ii.), that “because some gene- 
alogies were fictitious, we are not justified in concluding that all 
were fabulous.” It is no way necessary that we should maintain 
so extensive a position: it is sufficient that all are fabulous so far 
as concerns gods and heroes, — some fabulous throughout, — and 
none ascertainably true, for the period anterior to the recorded 
Olympiads. How much, or what particular portions, may be 
true, no one can pronounce. The gods and heroes are, from our 
point of view, essentially fictitious ; but from the Grecian point 
of view they were the most real (if the expression may be per- 
mitted, 7. e. clung to with the strongest faith) of all the members 
of the series. They not only formed parts of the genealogy as 
originally conceived, but were in themselves fhe grand reason 
why it was conceived, —as a gold.na chain to connect the living 
man with a divine ancestor. The genealogy, therefore, taken as 
a whole, (and its value consists in its being taken as a whole,) 
was from the beginning a fiction; but the names of the father 
and grandfather of the living man, in whose day it first came 
forth, were doubtless those of real men. Wherever, therefore, 
we can verify the date of a genealogy, as applied to some living 
person, we may reasonably presume the two lowest members of 


54 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


it to be also those of real persons: but this has ao application te 
the time anterior to the Olympiads, — still less to the pretended 
times of the Trojan war, the Kalydénian boar-hunt, or the del- 
uge of Deukalion. ‘To reason (as Mr. Clinton does, Introd. Ρ. 
vi.), — “ Because Aristomachus was a real man, therefore his 
father Cleodzeus, his grandfather Hyllus, and so farther upwards, 
etc.. must have been real men,”— is an inadmissible conclusion. 
The historian Hekatwus was a real man, and doubtless his father 
Hegesander, also, —- but it would be unsafe to march up his gene- 
alogical ladder fifteen steps, to the presence of the ancestorial 
god of whom he boasted: the upper steps of the ladder will be 
found broken and unreal. Not to mention that the inference, 
from real son to real father, is inconsistent with the admissions in 
Mr. Clinton’s own genealogical tables; for he there inserts the 
names of several mythical fathers as having begotten real his- 
torical sons. 

The general authority of Mr. Clinton’s book, and the sincere 
respect which I entertain for his elucidations of the later chro- 
nology, have imposed upon me the duty of assigning those grounds 
on which I dissent from his conclusions prior to the first recorded 
Olympiad. ‘The reader who desires to see the numerous and con- 
tradictory guesses (they deserve no better name) of the Greeks 
themselves in the attempt to chronologize their mythical narra- 
tives, will find them in the copious notes annexed to the first half 
of his first volume. As I consider all such researches not merely 
as fruitless, in regard to any trustworthy result, but as serving to 
divert attention from the genuine form and really illustrative 
character of Grecian legend, I have not thought it right to go 
over the same ground in the present work. Differing as I do, 
however, from Mr. Clinton’s views on this subject, I concur with 
him in deprecating the application of etymology (Intr. pp- Xi—xii.) 
as a general scheme of explanation to the characters and events 
of Greek legend. Amongst the many causes which operated as 
suggestives and stimulants to Greek fancy in the creation of these 
interesting tales, doubtless etymology has had its share; but it 
eannot be applied (as Hermann, above all others, has sought to 
apply it) for the purpose of imparting supposed sense and system 
tc the general body of mythical narrative. I have already re 
marked on this topic in a former chapter. 


APPLICATION OF CHRONOLOGY TO LEGEND. 55 


It would be curious to ascertain at what time, or by whom, the 
earliest continuous genealogies, connecting existing persons with 
the supposed antecedent age of legend, were formed and pre- 
served. Neither Homer nor Hesiod mentioned any verifiable 
present persons or circumstances : had they done so, the age of one 
or other of them could have been determined upon good evidence, 
which we may fairly presume to have been impossible, trom the 
endless controversies upon this topic among ancient writers. In 
the Hesiodic Works and Days, the heroes of Troy and Thébes 
are even presented as an extinct race,! radically different from 


the poet’s own contemporaries, who are a new race, far too de- 


praved to be conceived as sprung from the loins of the heroes ; 
so that we can hardly suppose Hesiod (though his father was a 
native of the AZolic Kymé) to have admitted the pedigree of 
the AZolic chiefs, as reputed descendants of Agamemnon. Cer- 
tain it is, that the earliest poets did not attempt to measure or 
bridge over the supposed interval, between their own age and the 
war of Troy, by any deiinite series of fathers and sons: whether 
Eumélus or Asius made any such attempt, we cannot tell, but 
the earliest continuous backward genealogies which we find men- 
tioned are those of Pherekydés, Hellanikus, and Herodotus. It 
is well known that Herodotus, in his manner of computing the 
upward genealogy of the Spartan kings, assigns the date of the 
Trojan war to a period 800 years earlier than himself, equivalent 
about to B. c. 1270-1250; while the subsequent Alexandrine 
chronologists, Eratosthenés and Apollodérus, place that event in 
1184 and 1183 Β. c.; and the Parian marble refers it to an in 
termediate date, different from either,— 1209 B. c. Ephorus, 
Phanias, Timezus, Kleitarchus, and Duris, had each his own con- 
lectural date; but the computations of the Alexandrine chronol- 
ogists was the most generally followed by those who succeeded 
them, and seems to have passed to modern times as the received 
date of this great legendary event, —though some distinguished 
inquirers have adopted the epoch of Herodotus, which Larcher 
has attempted to vindicate in an elaborate but feeble disserta- 
tion.2 It is unnecessary to state that, in my view, the inquiry 


' See the preceding volume of this History, Chap. ii. p. 66. 
3 Larcher, Chronologie d’Hérodote, chap. xiv. pp. 352-401. 
From the capture of Troy down to the passage of Alexander with hig 


56 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


has no other value except to illustrate the ideas which guided 
the Greek mind, and to exhibit its progress from the days of 
Homer to those of Herodotus. For it argues a considerable 
mental progress when men begin to methodize the past, even 
though they do so on fictitious principles, being as yet unprovided 
with those records which alone could put them on a better course. 
The Homeric man was satisfied with feeling, imagining, and 


invading army into Asia, the latter a known date of 334 B. c., the following 
different reckonings were made :— 

Phanias......gave 

s+. " 

Eratosthenés “ 

Timeeus ... ω 

Kleitarchus 

"Ἣν - 
(Clemens Alexand. Strom. 1. p. 337.) 

Democritus estimated a space of seven hundred and thirty years between 
his composition of the Μικρὸς Δεάκοσμος and the capture of Troy (Diogen. 
Laért. ix.41). Isokratés believed the Lacedemonians to have been estab- 
ished in Peloponnésus seven hundred years, and he repeats this in three dif- 
ferent passages (Archidam. p. 118; Panathen. p. 275; De Pace, p. 178). 
The dates of these three orations themselves differ by twenty-four years, the 
Archidamus being older than the Panathendaic by that interval; yet he em- 
ploys the same number of years for each in calculating backwards to the 
Trojan war, (see Clinton, vol. i. Introd. p.v.) In round numbers, his calcu- 
lation coincides pretty nearly with the eight hundred years given by Herod- 
otus in the preceding century. 

The remarks of Boeckh on the Parian marble generally, in his Corpus 
Inscriptionum Gree. t. ii. pp. 322-336, are extremely valuable, but especially 
his criticism on the epoch of the Trojan war, which stands the twenty-fourth 
in the Marble. The ancient chronologists, from Damastés and Hellanikus 
downwards, professed to fix not only the exact year, but the exact month, 
day, and hour in which this celebrated capture took place. {Mr. Clinton 
pretends to no more than the possibility of determining the event within fifty 
years, Introduct. p. vi.] Boeckh illustrates the manner of their argumentation. 

© Miiller observes (History of the Dorians, t. ii. p. 442, Eng. Tr.), “In 
reckoning from the migration of the Heraklide: downward. we follow the 
Alexandrine chronology, of which it should be observed, that our materials 
only enable us to restore it to its original state, not to examine its correctness " 

But I do not see upon what evidence even so much as this can be done, 
Mr Clinton, admitting that Eratosthenés fixed his date by conjecture, sup- 
poses him to have chosen “a middle point between the longer and shorter 
computations of his predecessors.” Boeckh thinks this explanation unsat 
‘efactory (1. c. p. 328) 


STATE OF SOCIETY, ETC. IN LEGENDARY GREECE. 57 


believing particular incidents of a supposed past, without any 
attempt to graduate the line of connection between them and 
himself: to introduce fictitious hypotheses and media of connec- 
tion is the business of a succeeding age, when the stimulus of 
rational curiosity is first felt, without any authentic materials to 


supply it. We have, then, the form of history operating upon 
the matter of legend, — the transition-state between legend and 
history ; less interesting, indeed, than either separately, yet nec- 
essary as a step between the two. 


CHAPTER XxX. 


STATE OF SOCIETY AND MANNERS AS EXHIBITED IN GRECIAN 
LEGEND. 


TuovuGu the particular persons and events, chronicled in the 
legendary poems of Greece, are not to be regarded as belonging 
to the province of real history, those poems are, nevertheless, full 
of instruction as pictures of life and manners; and the very same 
circumstances, which divest their composers of all credibility as 
historians, render them so much the more valuable as unconscious 
expositors of their own contemporary society. While professedly 
describing an uncertified past, their combinations are involuntarily 
borrowed from the surrounding present; for among communities, 
such as those of the primitive Greeks, without books, without 
means of extended travel, without acquaintance with foreign lan- 
guages and habits, the imagination, even of highly gifted men, 
was naturally enslaved by the circumstances around them to a far 
greater degree than in the later days of Solén or. Herodotus; 
insomuch that the characters which they conceived and the 
scenes which they described would for that reason bear a stronger 
yeneric resemblance to the realities of their own time and 
locality. Nor was the poetry of that age addressed to lettered 
and eritical authors, watchful to detect plagiarism, sated with 

ge 


58 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


simple imagery, and requiring something of novelty or peculiarit 
in every fresh production. ΤῸ captivate their emotions, it w : 
sufficient to depict, with genius and fervor, the more ff τ ‘i 
manifestations of human adventure or suffering, and to idealize 
that type of society, both private and velilie, with which ra 
hearers around were familiar. Even in describing the god : 
where a great degree of latitude and deviation wie have D : ᾿ 
expected, we see that Homer introduces into Chromin the aa 
sions, the caprices, the love of power and patronage the alt aa 
tion of dignity and weakness, which animated the “Hats ey 
ordinary Grecian chief; and this tendency, to reproduce Ἂμ b- 
stance the social relations to which he had been seins : ‘1 
would operate still more powerfully when he had to theese i 
ply human characters,— the chief and his people es εν 
and his comrades, the husband, wife, father, and ai ase pi 
a rudiments of judicial and aibininintentive πρόμον 
” his narrative on all these points, even with fictitious charae- 
ters and events, presents a close approximation to general reality 
there can be no reason to doubt.2. The necessity εὐθὴς which va 
my οἱ drawing from a store, then happily unexhausted, of er 
sonal experience and observation, is one of the cunnen of μὴ 
freshness and vivacity of description for which he tent τ 
valled, and which constituted the imperishable charm of the Tliad 
and Odyssey from the beginning to the end of Grecian ecenin > 
W hile, therefore, we renounce the idea of a oiled 
historicizing the events of Grecian legend, we may ton tl he να 
profit as valuable memorials of that state of wale feeli gs a 
intelligence, which must be to us the starting-point of a καἰ τϑδὰ 
of the people. Of course, the legendary see, like all ΗΝ which 
succeeded it, had its antecedent causes cel deterenbnlng: sabi 
tions ; but of these we know nothing, and we are compelled to 


teed δὰ aan ἂν ; ᾿ 
_ τοὺς ϑεοὺς δὲ διὰ τοῦτο πάντες φασι θασιλεύεσϑαι, ὅτι καὶ αὐτοὶ, οἱ 
ε Τ i νῦ ἱ δὲ vl > ; po 1 ' ; 
pew ἔτι καὶ νῦν͵ οἱ δὲ τὸ ἀργαῖον, ἐβασιλεύοντο. “Ὥσπερ δὲ καὶ τὰ εἴδη éavtci 
ἀφομοιοῦσιν οἱ ἄνϑρωποι, οὕτω καὶ τοὺς βίους τῶν ϑεῶν ( Aristot. Politi μῃ 
ae ristot. Politic. i. 
8 all ¥ " 
" ee pictures of the Homeric Heroes, there is no material difference of 
a rs between one race of Greeks and another, —or even 
* " " ὅ 
en reeks and Trojans. See Helbig, Die Sittlichen Zustande ἃ 
Griechischen Heldenalters, part ii. p, 53. if 


POLITICAL SOCIETY. 59 


assume it as ἃ primary fact, for the purpose of following out its 
subsequent changes. To conceive absolute beginning or origin 
(as Nicbuhr has justly remarked) is beyond the reach of our 
an neither apprehend nor verify anything beyond 
: decay,! — change from one set of 
circumstances to another, operated by some definite combination 
of physical or moral laws. In the case of the Greeks, the 
legendary age, as the earliest in any way known to us, must be 

‘nitial state from which this series of changes com- 
ict its prominent characteristics as well as 
artly how it serves to prepare, partly how 
t off, — the subsequent ages of Soldn, of 


faculties : we ὁ 
progress, or development, ὁ 


taken as the 
mences. We must de] 
we can, and show, — p 
it forms a contrast to se 
Periklés, and of Demosthenes. 

1. The political condition, which Grecian legend everywhere 
presents to us, is in its principal features strikingly different from 
tuut which had become universally prevalent among the Greeks 
in the time of the Peloponnésian war. Historical oligarchy, as 
well as democracy, agreed in requiring a certain established sys- 


1e three elements of specialized 
, and ultimate responsibility 


tem of government, comprising tl 
fuuctions, temporary functionaries 


! Niebuhr, Rémische Geschichte, vol. i. p. 55, 2d edit. “ Erkennt man aber 
dass aller Ursprung jenseits unserer nur Entwickelung und Fortgang fassen- 
den Bevriffe liegt ; und beschrankt sich von Stufe auf Stufe im Umfang der 
Geschichte zuriickzugehen, so wird man Vilker eines Stammes (das heisst, 
durch eigenthtmliche Art und Sprache identisch) vielfach eben an sich 
entgegenliegenden Kistenlandern antreffen ohne dass irgend etwas die 
Voraussetzung erheischte, eine von diesen getrennten Landschaften sei die 
urspriingliche Heimath gewesen von wo cin Theil nach der andern gewan- 
dert wire Dies ist der Geographie der Thiergeschlechter und der 
Vegetation analog : deren grosse Bezirke durch Gebiirge geschieden werden, 

7 and beschrankte Meere einschliessen.” 

“ When we once recognize, however, that all absolute beginning lies out of the 
reach of our mental conceptions, which comprehend nothing beyond development 
und progress, and when we attempt nothing more than to go back from 
the later to the earlier stages in the compass of history, we shall often find, 
on opposite coasts of the same sea, people of one stock (that is, of the sime 
peculiar customs and language,) without being warranted in supposing that 
either of these separate coasts was the primitive home from whence emigrants 
crossed over to the other. This is analogous to the geography of animals 
and plants, whose wide districts are severed by mountains and incloge istensal 


was ” 


60 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


(under some forms or other) to the mass of qualified citizens, — 
either a Senate or an Ecclesia, or both. There were. of course, 
many and capital distinctions between one government and 
another, in respect to the qualification of the citizen, the attri- 
butes and efficiency of the general assembly, the admissibility to 
power, etc. ; and men might often be dissatisfied with the way in 
which these questions were determined in their own city. But 
in the mind of every man, some determining rule or system — 
something like what in modern times is called a constitution — 
was indispensable to any government entitled to be called legiti- 
mate, or capable of creating in the mind of a Greek a reeling of 
moral obligation to obey it. The functionaries who exercised 
authority under it might be more or less competent οἱ popular ; 
but his personal feelings towards them were commonly fost in his 
attachment or aversion to the general system. If any energetic 
man could by audacity or craft break down the constitution, and 
render himself perrnanent ruler according to his own will and 
pleasure, — even though he might govern well, he could never in- 
spire the people with any sentiment of duty towards him. His 
sceptre was illegitimate from the beginning, and even the taking 
of his life, far from being interdicted by that moral feeling which 
condemned the shedding of blood in other cases, was considered 
meritorious. Nor could he be mentioned in the language except 
by a name! ( τύραννος, despot,) which branded him as an object 
of mingled fear and dislike. 

If we carry our eyes back from historical to legendary Greece, 
we find a picture the reverse of what has been here sketched. 
We discern a government in which there is little or no scheme or 
system, — still less any idea of responsibility to the governed, — 
but in which the mainspring of obedience on the part of the peo- 
ple consists in their personal feeling and reverence towards the 


sibieininaeininiae — ennai ete 


* The Greek name τύραννος cannot be properly rendered tyrant ; for many 
of the τύραννοι by no means deserved to be 5} ealled, nor is it consistent 
with the use of language to speak of a mild and well-intentioned tyrant. 
The word despot is the nearest approach which we can make to it, since it is 
understood to imply that a man kas got more power than he ought to have, 
while it does not exclude a beneficent use of such power by some individuals 
It is, however, very inadequate to express the full strength »f Greeian feel 
ing which the origival word called forth. 


THE KING OR CHIEF. 
thief. We remark, first and foremost, the king: next, a limite 
number of subordinate kings or chiefs ; afterwards, the “er 
armed freemen, husbandmen, artisans, freebooters, etc. ; lowest ὁ 
all, the free laborers for hire, and the bought slaves. The oe 
is not distinguished by any broad or impassable boundary rom 
the other chiefs, to each of whom the title basileus is applicable as 
well as to himself: his supremacy has been inherited from τῆν 
ancestors, and passes by descent, as a general rule, to his eldest 
son, having been conferred upon the family as 4 privilege by the 


favor of Zeus.! In war, he is the leader, foremost in personal 
c ω “ἘΤιιῶε 


prowess, and directing all military movements; in peace, he is 

J “9 « . = : » . sb ; : 

the general protector of the injured and oppressed ; he farther 
"ἡ ᾿ i) " ὦ . . 

offers up those public prayers and sacrifices W hich are intended 


to obtain for the whole people the favor of the gods. An ample 
domain is assigned to him as an appurtenance of his lofty posi- 
tion, while the produce of his fields and his cattle is ee 
in part to an abundant, though rude hospitality. eaten νρηϊ οὶ 
receives frequent presents, to avert his enmity, to conciliate 118 
favor, or to buy off his exactions ; and when plunder is taken 


| The Pheakian king Alkinous (Odyss. vii. 55-65): there are twelve other 
*hwakian Βασιλῆες, he is himself the thirteenth (vill. 391). 

The chief men in the Iliad, and the suitors of Penelopé in the Odyssey, 
are called usually and indiscriminately both Βασιλῆες and "Avaxteg¢; the lat 
ter word, however, designates them as men of property and masters of slaves, 
(analogous to the subsequent word δεσπότ 6, which word does not occur τ" 
Homer, though δέσποινα is found in the Odyssey, ) while the former tg 
marks them as persons of conspicuous station in the tribe (see ροῦν 
393-401; xiv. 63). A chief could only be Βασιλεὺς of freemen; but he 
micht be “Avaé either of freemen or of slaves. aan 

Agamemnon and Menelaus belong to the most kingly race (γένος sisi 
γέρον : compare Tyrtseus, Fragm. ix. v. 8, p. 9, ed. Schneidewin ) of the Pe o 
pids, to whom the sceptre originally made for Zeus has been given by Hermés 
(Iliad, ii. 101; ix. 160; x. 239); compare Odyss. xv. 539. The race ot 
Oardanus are the favorite offspring of Zeus, βασιλεύτατον among the Tro- 
jans (Iliad, xx. 304). ‘These races are the parallels of the kingly prosapus 
called Amali, Asdingi, Gungingi, and Lithingi, among the Goths, Vandals, 
and Lombards (Jornandes, De Rebus Geticws, c. 14-22; Paul Warnefrid, 
Gest. Langob. c. 14-21); and the ἀρχικὸν γένυς among the Chaonian Epirotws 
(Thucyd. ii. 80). 

® Odyss. i. 392; xi. 184; xiii. 14; xix. 109.— 

Οὐ μὲν yap τι κακὸν βασιλεύεμεν " αἶψά re ol δῶ 
"Agvetov πέλεται, καὶ τιμηέστερος αὐτός. 


9) HISTORY OF GREECE. 


rom ihe enemy, ἃ large previous share, comprising probably the 
most alluring female captive, is reserved for him, apart from the 
general distribution.! 


Tliad, i 94-297 (whe in i 
με , τε, 154-297 (when Agamemnén is promising seven townships te 
chilles, as a means of appeasing his wrath): — | 
Ἔν δ᾽ ἄνδρες ναίουσι π DDI; λυβοῦ 
Peg ναίιουσὲ πολυῤῥῆνες, πολυβδοῦται, 
Οἱ κέ σε δωτίνῃσι, ϑεὸν ὡς, τιμήσουσι, 
Καὶ σοι ὑπὸ σκήπτρῳ λιπαρὰς τελέουσι ϑέμιστας. 
See Ili: ἢ, 319: j ' 
, Iliad, xii. 312; and the reproaches of Thersités (ii. 226)— βασιληας 
θωροφάγους (Hesiod, Opp. Di. 38-264). ἣν 
The Roman kings 
ings had a large τέμενος assi , i 
Lt me gs ἢ ul a large τέμενος assigned to them, — “ agri, arva, et 
arbusta et pascui lzti atque uberes 


“a 


(Cicero, De Republ. v. 2): the Ger 
“gpa ee ays yerman 
kings received presents: “ Mos est civitatibus (observes Tacitus 
the Germans wl I ica ee ee 
: B Ge : ans whom he describes, M. G. 15) ultro ac viritim conferre princip- 

ibus, vel ; 5 m vel trug 
us, vel armentorum vel frugum, quod pro honore acceptum etiam necessi 
tatibus subvenit.” 7 
The oobi of the Persian kings before Darius consisted only of what 
were called δῶρα, or pre iii Ὶ ᾿ 
- e ca ed pa, οἱ presents (Herod. iii. 89): Darius first introduced both 
oH eee of tribute and the determinate assessment. King Polydektés, in 
« ‘Tl LOS ; 1 νῳ is ry "Τῇ ‘ i! ¢ “i ἡ: Ἱ eek 
I invites his friends to a festival, the condition of which is that each 
ruest sh: ontri ‘to an é ( Veaoee, 
rh sige ull contribute to an fpavoc for his benefit (Pherekydés, Fragm. 26 
4, n i vita) mm rer " i ar cae Sagi 
y ot); a case to which the Thracian banquet prepared by Seuthés 
ΠΟΤΩ͂Ν an exact parallel (Xenophon, Anab. vii. 3, 16-32: compare Thucyd 
ii. 97, 1 relcker, Aeschyl. Trilogie. p. ; ike, oe ene ω 
ον a W : ker, Hschyl. Trilogie. p. 381). Such Aids, or Benevolences 
» rhcr ᾿ r . ' , i 
en i originally voluntary, became in the end compulsory. In the Euro- 
sso monarchies of the Middle Ages, what were called free gifts were more 
an , » « Pause ‘ r Ἢ we fl ‘hy " ἢ + Ι 
cient than publi taxes Phe feudal Aids (observes Mr. Hallam ) are the 
py of taxation, of which they for a long time answered the purpos " 
Mi ᾿ reg , “4 awe ὦ "| Ι : ὰ , ᾿ so 
(Middle Ages, ch. ii. part i p. 189.) So about the Aides in the old French 
Monarchy, “ La Cour des Aides avoit été institué ἃ jurisdicti 'étoi 
sc μὴ Ἂμ fa ete instituee, et sa jurisdiction s’étoit 
sque le domaine des Rois suffisoit ὶ : 

“ene >| : que le domain des Rois suffisoit ἃ toutes les dépenses de |’Etat, 
droits d’Aides étoient alors des supplémens peu considérables 
ee. pe siderabies et toujours 

poraires. epuis, le domaine des Rois avoit été anéanti: les Aides, au 
con , Stoie Ive ae Ἵ ' ; ie ye 
με traire, €toient devenues permanentes et formoient presque la totalité des 
mM ” ᾿ . - i 
ssources du trésor.” (Histoire de la Fronde, par M. de St. Aulaire, ch. iii 
p- 124.) en 
1’R 5 _« ΄ 
πὶ ῥητοῖς γέρα πατρικαὶ iat, i ipti i 
Pa ῥητοῖς γέρασι πατρικαὶ βασιλεῖαι, is the description which Thucy 
Bs gives of these heroic governments (i. 13). ‘ 
he lan a δὼ , > . re ᾿ * 
BD pad bl ge of Aristotle ( Polit. iii. 10,1) is much the same: Ἡ βασιλεία 
7 ‘ " ΄ 
ρ ς ἡρωικοὺς χρότους — αὐτὴ δ᾽ hy ἑκόντων μὲν, ἐπί τισι δ᾽ ὡρισμέ. 
δὰ ρατηγὸς δ᾽ ἣν καὶ δικαστὴς ὁ βασιλεὺς, καὶ τῶν πρὸς τοὺς ϑεοὺς 
It can i 
hardly be said correctly, however, that the king’s authority was 
defined : nothing can well be more indefinite. 
Agamemnén enjoyed or assumed the power of putting to death a disube 


AYTRIBUTES AND POWER OF THE KING. 68 


Such is the position of the king, in the heroic times of Greece, 
—the only person (if we except the heralds and priests, each 
both special and subordinate,) who is then presented to us as 
clothed with any individual authority, — the person by whom all 
the executive functions, then few in number, which the society 
requires, are either performed or directed. His personal ascen- 
dency —derived from divine countenance, bestowed both upon 
himself individually and upon his race, and probably from ac- 
credited divine descent —is the salient feature in the picture. 
The people hearken to his voice, embrace his propositions, and 
obey his orders: not merely resistance, but even criticism upon 
his acts, is generally exhibited in an odious point of view, and is, 
indeed, never heard of except from some one or more of the subor- 
dinate princes. ΤῸ keep alive and justify such feelings in the 
public mind, however, the king must himself possess various ac- 
complishments, bodily and mental, and that too in a superior 
He must be brave in the field, wise in the council, 
and eloquent in the agora; he must be endued with bodily strength 
and activity above other men, and must be an adept, not only in 
of his arms, but also in those athletic exercises which the 

Even the more homely varieties of 
an addition to his character, — such as 
or shipwright, the straight furrowing 


degree. ! 


the use 
crowd delight to witness. 
manual acquirements are 
the craft of the carpenter 
of the ploughman, or the indefatigable persistence of the mower 
without repose or refreshment throughout the longest day.2 The 


The words which Aristotle read in the 
ος —are not in our 


dient soldier (Aristot. Polit. iii. 9, 2). 
ch of Agamemnon in the Iliad — Ilap yap ἐμοὶ ϑάνατ 


spee 
the Alexandrine critics effaced many traces of the old 


present copies: 
munners. 

1 Striking phrases on this head 
xii. 310-322). 

Kings are name 
(Hesiod, Theogon. 96 ; 
Διὸς is a sort of paraphrase for the kingly dignity 
Néleus (Odyss. xi. 255; compare Iliad, ii. 204). 

2 Qdysseus builds his own bed and bedchamber, and his own raft (Odyss. 
xxiii. 188; γ. 246-255): he boasts of being an excellent mower and plough. 
xviii. 365-375): for his astonishing proficiency in the athletic contests, 
in building his own house (Iliad, vi 


are put into the mouth of Sarpédén (Hiad, 


ἃ and commissioned by Zeus, —’E« δὲ Διὸς βασιλῆες 


Callimach. Hymn. ad Jov. 79): κρατέρω ϑερώποντε 
in the case of Pelias and 


man ( 
gee Vili. 180-230. Paris took a share 


814). 


64 HISTORY OF GRE):CE. 


conditions of voluntary obedience, during the Grecian hero 
times, are family descent with persoual force and superiority 
mental as well as bodily, in the chief, coupled with the favor of 
the gods: an old chief, such as Péleus and Laértes, cannot retaip 
his position.' But, on the other hand, where these elements of 
force are present, a good deal of violence, caprice, and rapacity 
is tolerated: the ethical judgment is not exact in scrutinizing the 
conduct of individuals so presminently endowed. As in ieee 
of the gods, the general epithets of good, just, etc., are applied to 
them as euphemisms arising from submission and fear, beine not 
only not suggested, but often pointedly belied, by their particular 
acts. ‘These words signify? the man of birth, wealth, influence 
and daring, whose arm is strong to destroy or to protect, whatever 
may be the turn of [115 moral sentiments; while the opposite epi- 
thet, dad, designates the poor, lowly, and weak; from whose dis- 
positions, be they ever so virtuous, society has little either to hope 
or to fear. 

Aristotle, in his general theory of government,2 lays down the 


| een ων ν᾽ * Δ 
Odyss. xi. 496; xxiv. 136-248. 
2c., mil ‘ . . . : ᾿ ᾿ 
pee this prominent meanny of the words ayavor, ἐ σϑλὸς, KaKOC etc, 
é 2 )." de δ. ᾿ 


copiously illustrated in Welcker’s excellent Prolegomena to Theogcnis, sect. 
9-16. Camerarius, in his notes on that poet (v. 19), had already concelnil 
clearly the sense in which these words are used. Iliad, xv. 323. Oia τε τοῖς 
ἀγαϑοῖσι παραδρώωσι γέρηες. Compare Hesiod, Opp. Di. 216, and the line 
in Athenazus, v. p.178, Avrouaro: δ᾽ ἀγαϑοὶ δειλῶν ἐπὶ δαῖτας ἴασιν. 

“ Moralis illarum vocum vis, et civilis—quarum hee a lexicographis et 
commentatoribus plurimis fere ueglecta est — probe discernende erunt. Quod 
quo facilius fieret, nescio an whi posterior intellectus valet, majuscula scriben- 
dum fuisset ᾿Αγαϑοὶ εἰ Kenai.” 

If this advice of Welcker could have been followed, much misconception 
would have been obviated. ‘The reference of these words to power and not 
to worth, is their primitive import in the Greek language, descending from 
the Iliad downward, ani determining the habitual designation of parties 
during the period of active pulitical dispute. The ethical meaning of the 
word hardly appears until the discussions raised by Socrates, and prosecuted 
by his disciples; but the primitive import still continued to maintain concur- 
rent footing. 

I shall have occasion to touch more largely on this subject, when I come 
to expound the Grecian political parties. At presen it is enough to remark 
that the epithets of good men, best men, habitually applied afterwards to the 
aristocratical parties, descend from the rudest period of Grecian society. 

* Aristot. Polit. i. 1, 7. 


REPUBLICAN. FEELING IN HISTORICAL GREECE. 65 


position, that the earliest sources of obedience and authority 
among mankind are personal, exhibiting themselves most perfectly 
in the type of paternal supremacy ; and that therefore the kingly 
government, as most conformable to this stage of social sentiment, 
became probably the first established everywhere. And in fact 
+t still continued in his time to be generally prevalent among the 
non-Hellenic nations, immediately around; though the Pheeni- 
cian cities and Carthage, the most civilized of all non-Hellenic 
states, were republics. Nevertheless, so completely were the 
feelings about kingship reversed among his contemporary Greeks, 
that he finds it difficult to enter into the voluntary obedience paid 
by his ancestors to their early heroic chiefs. He cannot explain 
to his own satisfaction how any one man should have been so 
much superior to the companions around him as to maintain such 
immense personal ascendency: he suspects that in such small 
communities great merit was very rare, so that the chief had few 
competitors.!. Such remarks illustrate strongly the revolution 
which the Greek mind had undergone during the preceding cen- 
turies, in regard to the internal grounds of political submission 
But the connecting link, between the Homeric and the republi 
ean schemes of government, is to be found in two adjuncts of 
the Homeric royalty, which are now to be mentioned, — the 
boulé, or council of chiefs, and the agora, or general assembly 
of freemen. 

These two meetings, more or less frequently convoked, and 
interwoven with the earliest habits of the primitive Grecian com- 
munities, are exhibited in the monuments of the legendary age 


\ Καὶ διὰ τοῦτ᾽ ἴσως ἐβασιλεύοντο πρότερον, ὅτι σπάνιον ἣν εὑρεῖν ἄνδρας 
διαφέροντας κατ᾽ ἀρετὴν, ἄλλως τε καὶ τότε μικρὰς οἰκοῦντας πόλεις (Polit. 
iii. 10,7); also the same treatise, v. 8, ὅ, and v. 8, 22. Οὐ γίνονται δ᾽ ἔτι βα- 
σιλεῖαι νῦν, etc. 

Aristotle handles monarchy far less copiously than either oligarchy or 
democracy: the tenth and eleventh chapters of his third book, in which he 
discusses it, are nevertheless very interesting to peruse. 

In the conception of Plato, also, the kingly government, if it is to work 
well, implies a breed superior to humanity to hold the sceptre (Legg. iv. 6. 
ρ. 713). 

The Athenian dramatic poets (especially Euripidés) often put into the 
mouths of their heroic characters popular sentiments adapted to the demo 
eratical atmosphere of Athens, -- very different from what we find in Homer 

VoL. Il. DOC. 


88 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


A3 Oppo iti νὼ ᾿ 

Τ ᾿ ee for advising the king, and media for promulgat 
12 3 * ᾿ i am we 

i us intentions to the people, rather than as restraint & 
Sf ‘itv a . Straints 

hl: author ily. U nquestionably, they miei ων. upen 


1c } σ cc ne bh oe Ϊ ΓΤ 
tice to the latter result as well as pated in peas 


to » former : hl 
the light in which the Homeric poems Prciriomegoa oe ney 
kings, princes, or gerontes —for the ‘i i saree The chiefs, 
ates botl ‘ H uv mn e word in Greek desig- 
na 0th an old man and a man of conspicuous rauk ; τ 
tion — compose the council,'! in which, sevordine " RN ρους 
ene 97 the Iliad, the resolutions of Wie ( i φόρον 
_ and of Hector on the other, appear uniformly pi | εἢ ὙΠ 
lhe harshness and even contempt with which Hector oe 


~ γευὴ - I Ἢ ᾿ ᾿ Π ἡ 
spe tful Opposition from his ancient ie 


companion Polydamas. — 
inferiority of the latter, and 


the unanimous asse hi ; 
imous assent which the former obtains, even whe ᾿ Ἱ 
ἡ ᾿ on quite 


in the wrong — all this is clearly set forth in 
in the Grecian camp we see 


the desponding tone and conscious 


sib the poem :2 while 
Nestor tendering iS advice i 
most submissive and delicate manner t A xchat oi hg 
L ‘ « - « " 4 oO « ΟἿ > ἢ 
ed or rejected, as “ the ki a ey τὸ Oe δέσουν, 
_Tejected, as 16 King of men” might determine3 T 
council is a purely consultative body ᾿ bl ] a ce 
. ely consult: ; ay, assembled, not wi 
owe wih 7 ν᾽ ' Orroct μ ’ - ' νὴ 7 
| r of peremptorily arresting mischievous resolves of the ki : 
but solely for his information and culidance Ἢ hi fs _ 
eae " ‘ guidance. e himself is tl 
presiding (boulephdrus, or) yi 
- ! a, member* of counci 
: incil ; ‘est. Ὁ 
lectively as well as individually. are hic ‘ah a ee ae 
i Ἶ | ally, are his subordinates. 

e proceed from the council to the agora: 
seems the received custom, the king allan 
his intentions with the ἢ nc 

5 with the former, proceeds 
people. The heralds make the crowd 


according to what 
having talked over 
to announce them to the 
sit down in order,5 and 


᾿᾿Βουλὴν δὶ πρῶτον μεγαϑύμων Ice γερόντων (Iliad, ii. 5 a 
195-415. Ἴλου, παλαιοῦ dyn μογέροντ ο ¢ (xi. 37 rt eee 
* Iliad, xviii. 313. — sii 

Ἕκτορι μὲν γὰρ ἐπήνησαν κακὰ μητιόωντι 
Πουλυδάμαντι δ᾽ dp’ οὔτις, ὃς ἐσϑλὴν boats To βουλή 
Also, xii. 213, where Polydamas says to Hector, τὰ Lica 
: ᾿ ἐπεὶ οὐδὲ μὲν οὐδὲ ἔοικε 
μι core παρὲξ ἀγορεύεμεν, οὔτ᾽ ἐνὶ βουλῇ, 
nian cali ἐν πυλέμῳ, σὸν δὲ κράτος αἰὲν ἀέξειν. 
* Πίδά, vii. 196, Πήλευς --- ᾿Εσϑλὸς Μι 


. "ρμιδό ; 
© Cunsidersble οὐδ ἐδ to be laid putdovav Βουλήφερος hd’ ἀγορῆτης. 


on the necessity that the people im 


AGORA IN ITHAKA. 67 


enforce silence: any one of the chiefs or councillors —- but as it 
seems, no one “lse! — is allowed to address them: the king first 
promulgates his intentions, which are then open to be comment- 
ed upon by others. But in the Homeric agora, no division of 
affirmative or negative voices ever takes place, nor is any forma: 
resolution ever adopted. ‘The nullity of positive function strikes 
us even more in the agora than in the council. It is an assem- 
bly for talk, communication, and discussion, to a certain extent, 
by the chiefs, in presence of the people as listeners and sympath- 
izers, — often for eloquence, and sometimes for quarrel, — but 
here its ostensible purposes end. 

The agora in Ithaka, in the second book of the Odyssey, 1s 
convened by the youthful Telemachus, at the instigation of Athéné, 
not for the purpose of submitting any proposition, but in order to 
give formal and public notice to the suitors to desist from their 
iniquitous intrusion and pillage of his substance, and to absolve 
himself farther, before gods and men, from all obligations towards 
them, if they refuse to comply. For the slaughter of the suitors, 
in all the security of the festive hall and banquet (which forms 
the catastrophe of the Odyssey), was a proceeding invo)ving 
much that was shocking to Grecian feeling,® and therefore re- 
quired to be preceded by such ample formalities, as would leave 
both the delinquents themselves without the shadow of excuse, 
and their surviving relatives without any claim to the customary 
satisfaction. For this special purpose, Telemachus directs the 
heralds to summon an agora: but what seems most of all sur- 


sit down (Iliad, ii. 96): a standing agora is a symptom of 
; an evening agora, to which men come 


the agora should 
tumult or terror (Iliad, xviii, 246) 
ated by wine, is also the forerunner of mischief (Odyss. iil. 138). 

Such evidences of regular formalities observed in the agora are not with- 


elev 


out interest. 

ι Tliad, ii. 

εἵποτ᾽ auTn¢ 
Σχοίατ᾽, ἀκούσειαν δὲ διοτρεφέων βασιλήων. 
Nitasch (ad Odyss ii. 14) controverts this restriction of individual manifes- 
tation to the chiefs: the view of O. Maller (Hist. Dorians, b. iii. c. 3) appears 
such was also the opinion of Aristotle —@qoi τοίνυν 
υ τοῦ ἀκοῦσαι κύριος ἦν, ol δὲ ἡγεμόνες καὶ 
compare the same statement in his Nike 
2 See Iliad, ix. 635; Odyse. xi. 449. 


to me more correct: 
᾿Αριστοτέλης ὅτι ὁ μὲν δῆμος μόνο 
τοῦ πρᾶξαι (Schol. Iliad. ix. 17): 
machean Ethics, iii. 3. 


68 HISTORY OF GREXCE. 


prising is, that none had ever been sumrioned or held since the 
departure of Odysseus himself, —an interval of twenty years. 
“No agora or session has taken place amongst us (says the 
gray -headed A°gyptius, who opens the proceedings) since Odys- 
seus went on shipboard: and now, who is he that has cailed us 
together? what man, young or old, has felt such a strong neces- 
sity? Has he received intelligence from our abse 
has he other public news to communicate ? 


He is our good 
friend for doing this: whatever his projects may be, I pray Zeus 


to grant him success.” ! 


nt warriors, or 


Telemachus, answering the appeal forth- 
with, proceeds to tell the assembled Ithakans th 
public news to communicate, but that he has 
upon his own private necessities, 


at he has no 
convoked them 
Next, he sets forth, pathetic- 


ally, the wickedness of the suitors, calls upon them personally tc 


ain them, and concludes by 
them, that, being henceforward free from all 
them, he will invoke the avenging aid of Zeus, 


desist, and upon the people to restr 
solemnly warning 
obligation towards 
ΒΟ “ that they may be slain in the interior of his own house, with- 
out bringing upon him any subsequent pe 

We are not of course to construe the 
anything more than an ‘déal, Ap] 
But, allowing all that can | 
exhibits the agora more 


2nalty.” 2 

Ilomerie description as 
‘roximating to actual reality. 
e required for such a limitation, it 


as a special medium of publicity and 
intercommunication,? from the 


king to the body of the people, 
than as including any idea of 


responsibility on the part of the 


* Odyss. ii. 25-40, 
Odyss. ii. 43, 77, 145. — 


Νήποινοί κεν ἔπειτα ὃ ὑμὼν ἔντοσθϑεν ὄλοισϑε. 


5.ΑΔ similar character is given of the public assemblies of the early Franks 
and Lombards (Pfeffel, Histoire du Droit Public en Allemagne, t. i ν. 15; 
Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, τὶ i. c. 2. mw 724, 

Dionysius of Halikarnassus (ii. 12) pays rather too high a compliment to 
the moderation of the Grecian heroic kings. 

The kings at Rome, like the Grecian h gan with an ἀρχὴ 
ἀνυπεύϑυνος : the words of Pomponius (De Origine Juris, i. 9.) would be 
perhaps more exactly applicable to the latter than to the former: “ Initio 
¢ivitatis nostre Populus sine certA lege, sine jure certo, primum agere insti- 
tuit: omniaque manu a Regibus gubernabantur.” 
26), “ Nobis Romulus, ut libitum, imperitaverat : 
divino jure populum deyinxit, repertaque quad; 


eroic kings, bee 


Tacitus says (Ann. iii, 
dein Numa religionibus εἰ 
im 2 Tullo et Anco: sed 


GRECIAN AGORA IN THE ILIAD. 69 


turmer or restraining force on the part . μὴ a en 
sequences may indirectly grow ou of it. 

ee canine 4 essentially monarchical, es ypilagd 

sonal feeling and divine right: the memorable ΜΝ — 

Iliad is borne out by all that we hear of the none abhi " 

“ The ruler of many is not ἃ good thing: let us hav : jinn 

only, — one king, — him = whom Zeus has given the sce] 

1 the tutelary sanctions.” ee ἃ Wt 
— ee ae of the Iliad, full as it 18 ot eens pi 
vivacity, not only confirms our idea of the ῬΆΘΡΗ, ip 
listening character of the agora, but even site aft ange 
picture of the degradation of the mass of the ag e be " 
chiefs. Agamemnon convokes the agora for oe purp vied 
immediately arming the Grecian host, under a fu pasting 
that the gods have at last oe shin 

‘ms with complete victory. Such 1 a8 2 
a cig of Oneirus (the Dream-god), sent by ye 
μι τῶν his sleep, — being, indeed, an sprains ag BNA 
part of Zeus, though Agamemnon does not — - i808 
character. At this precise moment, when he may be yeaa 
to be more than usually anxious to get his ape ; μὰ 
and snatch the prize, an unaccountable fancy ἜΡΙΝ ΝΝ - 
instead of inviting the troops to do what he Ἢ y "" = - 
encouraging their spirits for this one last vane: a geste 
course directly contrary: he will try their courage by ἢ 


tw ipuus Servius Tullius sanctor legum fuit, quis etiam Reges aging 
ae” Th »ointment of a Dictator under the Republic was a reproduc 
for a ee definite interval, of this old unbounded authority ( Cicero, 
De Repub. ii. 32; Zonaras, Ann. vii. 13 5 ie Bechet aia 
See Rubino, Untersuchungen iiber ig εμκόὶς e png a οοαξκορρνμι 
Cassel, 1839, buch i. abschnitt 2, πο: anc 8 
ς i. ἃ yp. 81-91. 
a phecctoee3 promises to make over to nage ig 
21) ; nled cities, with a boc y of wealthy inhabitants (Iliad, ix. Ἵ" 
Mi ea if h ould have in iuced Odysseus to quit Ithaka, and settle near 
tang a have dep >pulated one of his neighboring ‘owns in order 
im gos, 
τ ΕΞ = Pa ee ok αὐ ΒΗ (ad Odyss. iv. 171) are inclined 
as a passages as spurious, — ἃ eas — inad 
missible, without more direct grounds than they are Ρ 


70 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


to believe that the siege had become desperate, and that there 
was no choice except to go on shipboard and flee. Announcing 
to Nestér and Odysseus, in preliminary council, his intention to 
hold this strange language, he at the same time tells them that he 
relies upon them to oppose it and counterwork its effect upon the 
multitude.!'| The agora is presently assembled, and the king of 
men pours forth a speech full of dismay and despair, concluding 
by a distinct exhortation to all present to go aboard and return 
home at once. Immediately the whole army, chiefs as well as 
people, break up and proceed to execute his orders: every one 
rushes off to get his ship afloat, except Odysseus, who looks on 
in mournful silence and astonishment. The army would have 
been quickly on its voyage home, had not the goddesses Héré 
and Athéné stimulated Odysseus to an instantaneous interference. 
He hastens among the dispersing crowd and diverts them from 
their purpose of retreat: to the chiefs he addresses flatterine 
words, trying to shame them by gentle expostulation: but the 
people he visits with harsh reprimand and blows from his scep- 
tre,? thus driving them back to their seats in the agora. 

Amidst the dissatisfied crowd thus unwillingly brought back 
the voice of Thersités is heard the longest and the loudest, lee 
man ugly, deformed, and unwarlike, but fluent in speech, and 
especially severe and unsparing in his censure of the chiefs. 
Agamemnon, Achilles, and Odysseus. Upon this occasion, he 
addresses to the people a speech denouncing Agamemnén for 
selfish and greedy exaction generally, but particularly for his 
recent ill-treatment of Achilles,—and he endeavors, moreover 
to induce them to persist in their scheme of departure. In reply, 
Odysseus not only rebukes Thersités sharply for his imapndence 
in abusing the commander-in-chief, but threatens that, if ever 
such behavior is repeated, he will strip him naked, and thrash 
him out of the assembly with disgraceful blows; as an earnest of 
which, he administers to him at once a smart stroke with the 


' Iliad, ii. 74. Πρῶτα ἐ᾽ ἐγὼν ἔπεσιν πειρῆσομαι, ete. i init 
* Jliad, ii. 188-196. — | 

Ὅντινα μὲν βασιλῆα καὶ ἔξοχον ἄνδρα κιχείη, 

Τόνδ᾽ ἀγανοῖς ἐπέεσσιν ἐρητύσασκε παραστάς... ... 

Ov δ᾽ αὖ δήμου τ᾽ ἄνδρα ἴδοι, βοόωντά τ᾽ ἐφεύροι, 

Τὸν σκήπτρῳ ἐλάσασκεν, ὁμοκλήσασκέ τε μύϑῳ, etc. 


ODYSSEUS AND THERSITES. 


studded sceptre, imprinting its painful mark in a bloody weal 
Thersités, terrified and subdued, sits down 


across his back. 
weeping; while the surrounding crowd deride him, and express 


the warmest approbation of Odysseus for having thus by force 


put the reviler to silence.! 

Both Odysseus and Nestér then address the agora, sympathiz- 
ing with Agamemnon for the shame which the retreat of the 
Greeks is about to inflict upon him, and urging emphatically 
upon every one present the obligation of persevering until the 
siege shall be successfully consummated. Neither of them ani- 
madverts at all upon Agamemnon, either for his conduct towards 
Achilles, or for his childish freak of trying the temper of the 
army.? 

There cannot be a clearer indication than this description — 
so graphic in the original poem —of the true character of the 
Homeric agora. The multitude who compose it are listening and 
acquiescent, not often hesitating, and never refractory? to the 
chief. The fate which awaits a presumptuous critic, even where 
his virulent reproaches are substantially well-founded, is plainly 
set forth in the treatment of Thersités ; while the unpopularity 
of such a character is attested even more by the excessive pains 
which Homer takes to heap upon him repulsive personal defor- 
mities, than by the chastisement of Odysseus ; — he is lame, bald, 
crook-backed, of misshapen head, and squinting vision. 

3ut we cease to wonder at the submissive character of the 
agora, when we read the proceedings of Odysseus towards the 
people themselves ; — his fine words and flattery addressed to the 
chiefs, and his contemptuous reproof and manual violence towards 
the common men, at a moment when both were doing exactly the 


1 liad, ii. 213-277. 

3 Iliad, ii. 284-340. Nor does Thersités, in his criminatory speech against 
Agamemnon, touch in any way upon this anomalous point, though, in the 
circumstances under which his speech is made, it would seem to be of all 
others the most natural, — and the sharpest thrust against the commander- 
in-chief. 

. 2 See this illustrated in the language of Theseus, Eurip. Supplic 349-352 
Δόξαι δὲ ypnlw καὶ πόλει πάσῃ τάδε" 
Δόξει δ᾽, ἐμοῦ ϑέλοντος" αλλὰ τοῦ λόγου 
Προσδοὺς, ἔχοιμ᾽ ἂν δῆμον εὐμενέστερον. 


72 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


same thing, — fulfilling the express bidding of Agamemnén, upon 
whom Odysseus does not offer a single comment. This scene, 
which excited a sentiment of strong displeasure among the 
democrats of historica? Athens,! affords a proof that the feeling 
of personal dignity, of which philosophic observers in Greece — 
Herodotus, Xenophén, Hippocratés, and Aristotle — boasted, as 
distinguishing the free Greek citizen from the slavish Asiatic, 
was yet undeveloped in the time of Homer.2 The ancient epic 
is commonly sv filled with the personal adventures of the chiefs, 
and the people are so constantly depicted as simple appendages 
attached to them, that we rarely obtain a glimpse of the treat- 
ment of the one apart from the other, such as this memorable 
Homeric agora affords. 

There remains one other point of view in which we are to re- 
gard the agora of primitive Greece,— as the scene in which jus- 
tice was administered. The king is spoken of as constituted by 
Zeus the great judge of society: he has received from Zeus the 
sceptre, and along with it the powers of command and sanction: 
the people obey these commands and enforce these sanctions, 
under him, enriching him at the same time with lucrative pres- 
ents and payments. Sometimes the king separately, sometimes 
the kings or chiefs or gerontes in the plural number, are named 
as deciding disputes and awarding satisfaction to complainants ; 
always, however, in public, in the midst of the assembled agora.4 


' Xenophén, Memorab. i. 2, 9. 

Aristot. Polit vii. 6,1; Hippocrat. De Aére, Loe. et Aq. v. 85-86; He- 
vodot. vii. 135. 

* The σκῆπτρον, ϑέμιστες, or ϑέμις, and ἀγορὴ, go together, under the pre- 
siding superintendence of the gods. The goddess Themis both convokes 
and dismisses the agora (see Iliad, xi. 806; Odyss. ii. 67; liad, xx. 4) 

The ϑέμεστες, commandments and sanctions, belong properly to Zeus 
(Odyss. xvi. 403), from him they are given in charge to earthly kings along 
with the sceptre (Ihad, i. 238; ii. 206). 

The eommentators on Homer recognized ϑέμες, rather too strictly, as 
ἀγορᾶς wal βουλῆς λέξιν (see Eustath. ad Odyss. xvi. 403). 

The presents and the λεπαραὶ ϑέμεστες (Iliad, ix. 156). 

* Hesiod, Theogon. 85; the single person judging seems to be mentioned 
(Odyss. xii. 439). 

It deserves to be noticed that, in Sparta, the senate decided accusations 
of homicide (Aristot. Polit. iii. 1, 7): im historical Athens, the senate 
ef Areiopagus originally did the same, and retained, even when its powers 


JUDICIAL ATTRIBUTES OF THE AGORA. 73 


In one of the compartments of the shield of Achilles, the details 
of a judicial scene are described. While the agora is μην xe 
eager and excited crowd, two men are disputing about the fine 
of satisfaction for the death of a murdered man,— one averring, 
the other denying, that the fine had already been paid, and Lt 
demanding an inquest The gerontes are ranged on stone seats, 

in the holy circle, with two talents of gold lying before them, to 
be awarded to such of the litigants as shall make out his case to 
their satisfaction. The heralds with their sceptres, repressing 
the warm sympathies of the crowd in favor of one or other of 
the parties, secure an alternate hearing to both.?- his — 
ing picture completely harmonizes with the brief ee oO 

Hesiod to the judicial trial — doubtless a real trial — between 
himself and his brother Persés. The two brothers disputed 


about their paternal inheritance, and the cause was carried to be 


tried by the chiefs in agora; but Persés bribed them, and ob- 
tained ‘an unjust verdict for the whole.2 So at least Hesiod 
affirms, in the bitterness of his heart ; earnestly exhorting his 
brother not to waste a precious time, required for necessary la 
bors, in the unprofitable occupation of witnessing and abetting 


liticants in the agora,— for which (he adds) no man has proper 
leisure, unless his subsistence for the year beforehand be safely 
treasured up in his garners. He repeats, more than once, his 
complaints of the crooked and corrupt judgments of which the 
kings were habitually guilty ; dwelling upon abuse of justice as 


were much abridged, the trial of accusations of intentional homicide and 


wounding. 
Respecting the judicial functions of the early Roman kings, Dionys. Hal. 


A. R. x. 1. Τὸ μὲν ἀρχαῖον οἱ βασιλεῖς ἐφ᾽ αὐτῶν ἔταττον τοῖς δεομένοις τὰς 
δίκας, καὶ τὸ δικαιωϑὲν ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνων, τοῦτο νόμος ἦν (compare iv. 25; and 
Cicero, Republic. v. 2; Rubino, Untersuchungen, i. 2, p. 122). 

* Tliad, xviii. 504. — 

Oi δὲ γέροντες 
Elar’ ἐπὶ ξεστοῖσι λίϑοις, ἱερῷ ἐνὶ κύκλῳ. 
Several of the old northern Sagas represent the old men, assembled for the 
purpose of judging, as sitting on great stones in a circle, called the Urthe- 
ilsring, or Gerichtsring (Leitfaden der Nérdischen Alterth‘imer, p. 31, 
hag. 1837). 

ΩΝ πω ΧΥΪΙ. 497-5 .0. * Hesiod, Upp. Di. 37 

4 Hesiod, Opp. Di. 27-33. 


vOL. IL 


74 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the crying evil of his day, and predicting as well as invoking the 
vengeance of Zeus to repress it. And Ilomer ascribes the tre- 
mendous violence of the autumnal storms to the wrath of Zeus 
against those judges who disgrace the agora with their wicked 
verdicts.! 

Though it is certain that, in every state of society, the feelings 
of men when assembled in multitude will command a certain 
measure of attention, yet we thus find the agora, in judicial mat- 
ters still more than in political, serving merely the purpose of 
publicity. It is the king who is the grand personal mover of 
Grecian heroic society.2_ He is on earth, the equivalent of Zeus 
in the agora of the gods: the supreme god of Olympus is in the 
habit of carrying on his government with frequent publicity, of 
hearing some dissentient opinions, and of allowing himself occa- 
sionally to be wheedled by Aphrodité, or worried into compliance 
by Héré: but his determination is at last conclusive, subject only 
to the overruling interference of the Mora, or Fates. Both the 
society of gods, and the various societies of men, are, according 
to the conceptions of Grecian legend, carried on by the personal 
rule of a legitimate sovereign, who does not derive his title from 


ir 
5 


the special appointment of his subjects, though he governs with 
their full consent. In fact, Grecian legend presents to us hardly 
anything else, except these great individual personalities. ‘The 
race, or nation, is as it were absorbed into the prince : eponymous 
persons, especially, are not merely princes, but fathers and rep- 
resentative unities, each the equivalent of that greater or less 
aggregate to which he gives name. 

But though, in the primitive Grecian government, the king is 
the legitimate as well as the real sovereign, he is always con- 
ceived as acting through the council and agora. loth the one 
and the other are established and essential media through which 
his ascendency is brought to bear upon the society: the absence 
of such assemblies is the test and mark of savage men, as in the 


! Hesiod, Opp. Di. 250-263 ; Homer, Iliad, xvi. 387. 

2 Tittmann (Darstellung der Griechischen Staatsverfassungen, book ii. p. 
63) gives too lofty an idea, in my judgment, of the condition and functions 
of the Homeric agora. 

5 Tliad, i. 520-527 ; iv. 14-56; especially the agora of the gods (xx. 16). 


CONTRAST WITH HISTORICAL GREECE. 75 


ease of the Cyclépes.! Accordingly, he must possess qualities fit 
to act with effect upon these two assemblies: wise reason for the 
council, unctuous eloquence for the agora.2_ Such is the ¢déad of 
the heroic government: a king, not merely full of valor and re- 
source as a soldier, but also sufliciently superior to those around 
him to insure both the deliberate concurrence of the chiefs, and 
the hearty adhesion of the masses.3 That this picture is not, in 
all individual cases, realized, is unquestionable; but the endow- 
ments so often predicated of good kings show it to have been the 
type present to the mind of the describer.* Xenophon, in his 
Cyropedia, depicts Cyrus as an improved edition of the Homeric 
Agamemn6én,—* ἃ gi od king and a powerful soldier,” thus ideal- 
izing the perfection of personal government. 

It is important to point out these fundamental conceptions of 
yovernment, discernible even before the dawn of Grecian his- 
tory, and identified with the social life of the people. It shows 
us that the Greeks, in their subsequent revolutions, and in the 
ch their countless autonomous commu: 


political experiments whi 


' Odyss. ix. 1l4.— 
Τοῖσιν δ᾽ (the Cyclopes) οὔτ᾽ ἀγοραὶ βουλήφοροι, οὗτε ϑέμιστες 
AAW’ oly’ ὑψηλῶν ὀρέων ναίουσι κάρηνα 
Ἐν σπέσσι γλαφυροῖσι" ϑεμιστεύει δὲ ἕκαστος 
Παιδῶν ἠδ᾽ ἀλόχων" οὐδ᾽ ἀλλήλων ἀλέγουσι. 
These lines illustrate the meaning of ϑέμιες. 

? See this point set forth in the prolix discourse of Aristeides, Περὶ Ῥητο- 
ρικῆς (Or. xlv. vol. ii. p. 99): '‘Hoiodoc......TavTa ἀντικρὺς ‘Ounpy λέγων 

weeendTt TE ἡ ῥητορικὴ σύνεδρος τῆς βασιλικῆς, ete. 

3 Péleus, king of the Myrmidons, is called (Iliad, vii. 126) ᾿Εσϑλὸς Μυρμι- 
δόνων βουλήφορος ἠδ᾽ ἀγορητὴς ---- Diomedes, ἀγορῇ δέ τ᾽ ἀμείνω (iv. 400) --- 
Nestér, λιγὺς Πυλίων ἀγορητὴς --- ϑαγρξαδη, A υκίων βουληφόρε ‘Vv. 633); and 
Idomeneus, Κρητῶν βουληφόρε (xiil. 219). 

Hesiod (Theogon. 80-96) illustrates still more amply the idéal of the king 
governing by persuasion and inspired by the Muses. 

4 See the striking picture in Thucydidés (ii. 65). Xenophon, in the Cyro- 
pwdia, puts into the mouth of his hero the Homeric comparison between the 
good king and the good shepherd, implying as it does immense superiority ot 
organization, morality, and intelligence (Cyropeed. viii. p. 450, Hutchinson). 

Volney observes, respecting the emirs of the Druses in Syria : Γ Every- 
thing depends on circumstances: if the governor be ἃ man af ability, he is 
absolute; if weak, he isacipher. This proceeds from the want of tixed 
laws; a want common to all Asia.” (Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol. ii. p 
66.) Such was pretty much the condition of the king in primitive Greeca 


76 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


nities presented, worked upon preéxisting materials, — develop- 
ing and exalting elements which had been at first subordinate, 
and suppressing, or remodelling on a totally new principle, that 
which had been originally predominant. When we approach 
historical Greece, we find that (with the exception of Sparta) 
the primitive hereditary, unresponsible monarch, uniting in him- 
self all the functions of government, has ceased to reign,— while 
the feeling of legitimacy, which originally induced his pone te 
obey him willingly, has been exchanged ior one of erie 
towards the character and title generally. The multifarious 
functions which he once exercised, have been parcelled out among 
temporary nominees. On the other hand, the council, or nemerri 
and the agora, originally simple media through which the king 
acted, are elevated into standing and independent sources of au- 
thority, controlling and holding in responsibility the various spe- 
cial officers to whom executive duties of one kind or another are 
confided. ‘The general principle here indicated is common spay 
to the oligarchies and the democracies which grew up in eal 
torical Greece: much as these two governments differed from 
each other, and many as were the varieties even between one 


oligarchy or democracy and another, they all stood in eqn 
contrast with the principle of the heroic government. Even in 
Sparta, where the hereditary kingship lasted, it was μανοῦ 
with lustre and influence exceedingly diminished,' and such 
timely diminution of its power seems to have been one of the 


“᾿ς Ὁ salt ᾿ . &) ry. . ‘ ’ : ne 
essential conditions of its preservation.2 Though the hg 
editary cc ’ the military forces, ye 
kings had the hereditary command of the militar} . t, 

' Nevertheless, the question put by Leotychides to the deposed Spartan 
kine Demaratus, — ὅκοιόν τὶ εἴη τὸ ἄρχειν μετὰ τὸ βασιλεύειν (Herodot. vi. 

Ἴ : , atar . a 
65), and the poignant insult which those words conveyed, afford on sir 
ν " Ν mf ; « « “oC val r 
many other evidences of the lofty estimate current in Sparta — i“ 
regal dignity, of which Aristotle, in the Politica, seems hardly to take sufl- 
cient account. 

? Q. Miiller ( Hist. Dorians, book iii. i. 3) affirms that the ogeiesneeie 
features of the royalty were maintained in the Dorian states, and gre 
only in the Ionian and democratical. In this point, he has been fie 
by various other authors (see Helbig, Die Sittlich. Zustande des Heldenal- 
ters. p. 73), but his position appears to me substantially incorrect, even as 
regards Sparta; and strikingly incorrect, in regard to the other Dorian 
btates 


PUBLIC SPEAKING. 77 


even in all foreign expeditions, they habitually acted in obedience 
te orders from home ; while in affairs of the interior, the supe- 
rior power of the ephors sensibly overshadowed them. So that, 
unless possessed of more than ordinary force of character, they 
seem to have exercised their chief influence as presiding mem- 
bers of the senate. 

There is yet another point of view in which it behoves us to 
take notice of the council and the agora as integral portions of 
the legendary government of the Grecian communities. We are 
thus enabled to trace the employment of public speaking, as the 
standing engine of government and the proximate cause of obe- 
dience, to the social infaney of the nation. The power of speech 
in the direction of public affairs becomes more and more obvious, 
developed, and irresistible, as we advance towards the cul- 
minating period of Grecian history, the century preceding the 
battle of Cheroneia. That its development was greatest among 
the most enlightened sections of the Grecian name, and smallest 
among the more obtuse and stationary, is matter of notorious 
fact ; nor is it less true, that the prevalence of this habit was one 
of the chief causes of the intellectual eminence of the nation gen- 
erally. At atime when all the countries around were plunged 
comparatively in mental torpor, there was no motive sufficiently 
present and powerful to multiply so wonderfully the productive 
minds of Greece, except such as arose from the rewards of pub- 
lic speaking. The susceptibility of the multitude to this sort of 
guidance, their habit of requiring and enjoying the stimulus 
which it supplied, and the open discussion, combining regular 
forms with free opposition, of practical matters, political as well 
as judicial,— are the creative causes which formed such con- 
spicuous adepts in the art of persuasion. Nor was it only pro- 
fessed orators who were thus produced; didactic aptitude was 
formed in the background, and the speculative tendencies were 
supplied with interesting phenomena for observation and combi- 
nation, at a time when the truths of physical science were almost 
inaccessible. If the primary effect was to quicken the powers 
of expression, the secondary, but not less certain result, was to 
develop the habits of scientific thought. Not only the oratory of 
Demosthenés and Periklés, and the colloquial magic of Socratés, 
but also the philosophical speculations of Plato, and the syste 


a ae 


--- 


-_ 


ΕΝ ......»............»ὕ Ἅὕ...- ξΞακ πα “τε σττουξεώσε» 
— “..-“ἕ--.- 


= 


78 HISTORY OF GREECE. 
matic politics, rhetoric, and logic of Aristotle, are traceable to 
the same general tendencies in the minds of the Grecian people: 
and we find the germ of these expansive forces in the senate and 
avora of their legendary government. ‘The poets, first epic and 
then lyric, were the precursors of the orators, in their power of 
moving the feelings of an assembled crowd; whilst the Homeric 
poems — the general training-book of educated Greeks — consti- 
tuted a treasury of direct and animated expression, full of con- 
crete forms, and rare in the use of abstractions, and thence better 
suited to the workings of oratory. ‘The subsequent critics had 
no difficulty in selecting from the Iliad and Odyssey, samples of 
eloquence in all its phases and varieties. 

On the whole, then, the society depicted in the old Greek poems 
is loose and unsettled, presenting very little of legal restraint, 
and still less of legal protection, — but concentrating such politi- 
cal power as does exist in the hands of a legitimate hereditary 
king, whose ascendency over the other chiefs is more or less com- 
plete according to his personal force and character. Whether 
that ascendency be greater or less, however, the mass of the 
people is in either case politically passive and of little account 
Though the Grecian freeman of the heroic age is above the de- 
graded level of tle Gallic pleds, as described by Cesar,! he is far 
from rivalling the fierce independence and sense of dignity, com- 
bined with individual foree, which characterize the Germanic 
tribes before their establishment in the Roman empire. _ Still 
less does his condition, or the society in which he moves, cor- 
respond to those pleasing dreams of spontaneous rectitude and 
innocence, in which Tacitus and Seneca indulge with regard to 


primitive man.® 


1 Cesar, Bell. Gallic. vi. 12. 

2 Seneca, Epist. xc.; Tacitus. Annal. iii. 26. ™ Vetustissimi mortaliam 
(savs the latter), nulla adhuc mala libidine, sine probro, scelere, eoque sine 
peni aut coéritione, agebant: neque premiis opus erat, cum honesta suopte 
ingenio peterentur ; et ubi nihil contra morem cuperent, nihil per metum 
vetabantur. At postyuam exui xqualitas, et pro modestia et pudore ambitio 
et vis incedebat, provenére dominationes, multosque apud populos xternum 
mansere,” ete. Compare Strabo, vii. p. 301 

These are the same fancies so eloquently set forth by Roussean, in the 
last century. A far more sagacious criticism pervades the preface of Thucy 


didés. 


MORAL AND SOCIAL FEELING. 79 


9. The state of moral and social feeling, prevalent in legendary 
Greece, exhibits a scene in harmony with the rudimentary po- 
litical fabrics just described. ‘Throughout the long stream of 
legendary narrative on which the Greeks looked back as their 
past history, the larger social motives hardly ever come inte 
play: either individual valor and cruelty, or the personal attach- 
ments and quarrels of relatives and war-companions, or the feuds 
of private enemies, are ever before us. There is no sense of 
obligation then existing, between man and man as such, —and 
very little between each man and the entire community of which 
he is a member; such sentiments are neither operative in the 
real world, nor present to the imaginations of the poets. Per- 
sonal feelings, either towards the gods, the king, or some near and 
known individual, fill the whole of a man’s bosom: out of them 
arise all the motives to beneficence, and all the internal restraints 
upon violence, antipathy, or rapacity: and special communion, 
as well as special solemnities, are essential to their existence. 
The ceremony of an oath, so imposing, so paramount, and so in 
dispensable in those days, illustrates strikingly this principle. 
And even in the case of the stranger suppliant, —in which an 
apparently spontaneous sympathy manifests itself, — the succor 
and kindness shown to him arise mainly from his having gone 
through the consecrated formalities of supplication, such as that 
of sitting down in the ashes by the sacred hearth, thus obtaining 
a sort of privilege of sanctuary.'. That ceremony exalts him 


1 Seuthés, in the Anabasis of Xenophdn (vii. 2, 33), describes how, when 
an orphan youth, he formerly supplicated Médokos, the Thracian king, to 
grant him a troop of followers, in order that he might recover his lost do- 
minions, ἐκαϑεζόμην ἐνδίφριος αὐτῷ ἱκέτης δοῦναί μοι avdpag. 

Thucydidés gives an interesting description of the arrival of the exile 
Themistoklés, then warmly pursued by the Greeks on suspicion of treason, 
at the house of Admétus, king of the Epirotic Molossians. The wife of 
Admétus herself instructed the fugitive how to supplicate her husband in 
form: the child of Admétus was placed in his arms, and he was directed to 
sit down in this guise close by the consecrated hearth, which was of the nature 
of an altar. While so seated, he addressed his urgent entreaties to Ad- 
métus for protection: the latter raised him up from the ground and promised 
what was asked. “That (says the historian) was the most powerful form of 
supplication.” Admétus, — ἀκούσας ἀνίστησί τε αὐτὸν μετὰ τοῦ ἑαυτοῦ υἱέος, 
joren καὶ ἔχων αὐτὸν ἐκαϑέζετο, καὶ μέγιστον ἱκέτευμα ἣν τοῦτο 


80 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


fnto something more than a mere suffering man, — it places him 
in express fellowship with the master of the house, under the 
tutelary sanctions of Zeus Hiketésios. ‘There is great difference 
between one form of supplication and another; the suppliant, 
however, in any form, becomes more or less the object of a par- 
ticular sympathy. 

The sense of obligation towards the gods manitests itself 
and libations, or 


separately in habitual acts of worship, sacrifice, 


(Thue. i. 136). 5o Télephus, in the lost drama of Aschylus called Μυσοὶ, 
takes up the child Orestés. See Bothe’s Fragm. 44 ; Schol. Aristoph. Ach. 305 

In the Odyssey, bot! Nausikaa and the goddess Athéné instruct Odysseus 
in the proper form of supplicating Alkimous: he first throws himself down 
at the feet of queen Arété, embracing her knees and addressing to her his 
prayer, and then, without waiting for a reply, sits down among the ashes 
on the hearth,—d¢ εὐπὼν, κατ᾽ ἄρ᾽ Eler’ ἐπ’ ἐσχάρῃ ἐν Kovinot, — Alkinous 
is dining with a large company: for some time both he and the guests are 
silent: at length the ancient Echenéus remonstrates with him on his tardi- 
ness in raising the stranger up from the ashes. At his exhortation, the Phe- 
akian king takes Odysseus by the hand, and, raising him up, places him on 
a chair beside him: he then directs the heralds to mix a bowl of wine, and 
to serve it to every one round, in order that all may make libations to Zeus 
Hiketésios. ‘This ceremony clothes the stranger with the full rights and 
character of a suppliant (Odyss. vi. 310; vii. 75, 141, 166): κατὰ νόμους 
ἀφικτύρων, AUschyl. Supplic. 242. 

That the form counted for a great deal, we see evidently marked: but of 
course supplication is often addressed, and successfully addressed, in circum 
stances where this form cannot be gone through. 

It is difficult to accept the doctrine of Eustathius, (ad Odyss. xvi. 424,) 
that ἱκέτης is a vor media (like ξεῖνος), applicd as well to the ἱκετάδοχος as 
to the ἱκέτης, properly so called: but the word ἀλλήλοισιν, in the passage 
just cited, does seem to justify his observation: yet there is no direct an- 
thority for such use of the word in Homer. 

The address of Theoclymenos, on first preferring his supplication to Tel- 
emachus, is characteristic of the practice (Odyss. xv. 260); compare also 
Tliad, xvi. 574, and Hesiod. Scut. Hercul. 12-85. 

The idea of the ξεῖνος and the ἱκέτης run very much together. I can 
hardly persuade myself that the reading ἱκέτευσε (Odyss. xi. 520) is traly 
Homeric: implying as it does the idea of a pitiable sufferer, it is altogether 
out of place when predicated of the proud and impetuous Neoptolemus: 
we should rather have expected ἐκέλευσε. (See Odyss. x. 15.) 

The constraining efficacy of special formalities of supplication, among 
the Scythians, is powerfully set forth in the Toxaris of Lucian: the suppliant 
sits upon an ox-hide, with his hands confir.ed behind him (Lucian, Toxaria 
c. 48, vol. iii. p. 69, Tauchn.) —the μεγίστη ixernpia among thi t people 


CONTRAST WITH HISTORICAL TIMES. 8] 


by votive presents, such as that of the hair of Achilles, which he 
has pledged to the river-god Spercheius,! and such as the con- 
stant dedicated offerings which men who stand in urgent need of 
the divine aid first promise and afterwards fulfil. But the feel- 
ing towards the gods also appears, and that not less frequently, 
as mingling itself with and enforcing obligations towards some 
particular human person. The tie which binds a man to his 
father, his kinsman, his guest, or any special promisee towards 
whom he has taken the engagement of an oath, is conceived in 
conjunction with the idea of Zeus, as witness and guarantee ; 
and the intimacy of the association is attested by some surname 
or special appellation of the god.2 Such personal feelings com- 
posed all the moral influences of which a Greek of that day was 
susceptible, —a state of mind which we can best appreciate by 
contrasting it with that of the subsequent citizen of historical 
Athens. In the view of the latter, the great impersonal authority, 
called “ The Laws,” stood out separately, both as guide and sanc- 
tion, distinct from religious duty or private sympathies: but of 
this discriminated conception of positive law and positive morali- 
ty,3 the germ only can be detected in the Homeric poems. The 
appropriate Greek word for human laws never occurs. Amidst 
a very wavering phraseology, we can detect a gradual transition 


' Tliad, xxiii. 142. 

? Odyss. xiv. 389. — 
Οὐ γὰρ τοὔνεκ᾽ ἐγώ σ᾽ αἰδέσσομαι, οὐδὲ φιλήσω, 
᾿Αλλὰ Δία ξένιον δείσας, αὐτὲν δ᾽ ἐλεαίρων. 


3 Nagelsbach (Homerische Theologie, Abschn. v. 8. 23) gives a just and 
well-sustained view of the Homeric ethics: “ Es ist der charakteristische 
Standpunkt der Homerischen Ethik, dass die Spharen des Rechts, der Sitt- 
lichkeit, und Religiositat, bey dem Dichter, durchaus noch nicht auseinander 
fallen, so dass der Mensch z. B. δίκαιος seyn konnte ohne ϑεουδὴς zu seyn — 
sondern in unentwickelter Einheit beysammen sind.” 

4 Νόμοι, laws, is not an Homeric word; voyog, law, in the singular, occurs 
twice in the Hesiodic Works and Days (276, 388). 

The employment of the words δίκη, δίκαι, ϑέμις, ϑέμεστες, in Homer, is 
curious as illustrating the early moral associations, but would require far 
more space than can be given to it in a note; we see that the sense of each 
of these words was essentially fluctuating. Themis, in Homer; is sometimes 
decidedly a person, who exercises the important function of opening and 
closing the agora, both of gods and men (Iliad, xx. 4: Odyss. ii. 68), and 

4* 6oc. 


82 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


from the primitive idea of a personal goddess Themis, attached 
to Zeus, first to his sentences or orders called Themistes, and 
next by a still farther remove to various established customs, 
which those sentences were believed to sanctify, — the authority 
of religion and that of custom coalescing into one indivisible 
obligation. 

The family relations, as we might expect, are set forth in our 
pictures of the legendary world as the grand sources of lasting 
union and devoted attachment. The paternal authority is highly 
reverenced: the son who lives to years of maturity, repays by 
affection to his parents the charge of his maintenance in infancy, 
which the language notes by a special word; whilst on the other 
hand, the Erinnys, whose avenging hand is put in motion by the 
curse of a father or mother, is an object of deep dread.! 


who, besides that, acts and speaks (Iliad, xiv. 87-93); always the associate 
and companion of Zeus, the highest god. In Hesiod, (‘Theog. 901,) she is 
the wife of Zeus: in Aschylus, (Prometh. 209,) she 15 the same as aia: 
even in Plato, (Legg. xi. p. 936,) witnesses swear (to want of knowledge of 
matters under inquest) by Zeus, Apollo, and Themis. Themis as a person 
is probably the oldest sense of the word: then we have the plural ϑέμεστες 
(connected with the verb τίϑημι, like ϑεσμὸς and τε ϑμὸς), which are (not 
persons, but) special appurtenances or emanations of the supreme god, or 
of a king acting under him, analogous to and joined with the sceptre. The 
sceptre, and the ϑέμιστες or the δίκαι constantly go together (Iliad, 11. 209; 
ix. 99): Zeus or the king is a judge, not a law-maker; he issues decrees or 
special orders to settle pat ticular disputes, or to restrain particular men ; and, 
agreeable to the concrete forms of ancient language, the decrees are treate< 
as if they were a collection of ready-made substantive things, actually m 
his possession, like the sceptre, and prepared for being delivered out when 
the proper occasion arose: δικώσπολοι, olre ϑέμιστας Πρὸς Διὸς εἰρύαται 
(Il. i. 138), compared with the two passages last cited: "Λῴρονα τοῦτον 
évévrac, ὃς οὔτινα olde ϑέμιστα (Il. v. 761), “Ayptor, οὔτε δίκας ev εἰδότα 
οὔτε ϑέμιστας (Odyss. ix. 215). The plural number dixat is more commonly 
used in Homer than the singular: δίκη is rarely used to denote Justice, as 
an abstract conception ; i more often denotes a special claim of right on 
the part of some given man (1. xviii. 508). It sometimes also denotes, 
simply, established custom, or the known lot, — ἐμώων δίκη, γερόντων, ϑείων 
βασιλήων, ϑεῶν (see Darm’s Lexicon, ad voc.) ϑέμις is used in the same 
manner. 

See, upon this matter, Platner, De Notions Juris ap. Homerun, p. 81, 
and O. Miiller, Prolegg. Mythol. p. 121. 

1 Οὐδὲ τοκεῦσι Θρέπτρα φίλοις ἀπέδωκε (Il. iv. 477): ϑρέπτρα or ϑρεπτηριᾳ 
feompare Π. ix. 454; Odyss. ii. 184; Hesiod, Opp. Di. 186). 
VoL, 2 3 


FAMILY RELATIONS. 848 


In regard to marriage, we find the wife occupying a station of 
great dignity and influence, thoigh it was the practice for the 
husband to purchase her by valuable presents to her parents, —- 
a practice extensively prevalent among early communities, and 
treated by Aristotle as an evidence of barbarism. She even 
seems to live less secluded and to enjoy a wider sphere of action 
than was allotted to her in historical Greece.! Concubines are 
frequent with the chiefs, and occasionally the jealousy of the wife 
breaks out in reckless excess against her husband, as may be 
seen in the tragical history of Phoenix. The eontinence of La- 
értés, from fear of displeasing his wife Antikleia, is especially 
noticed2 A large portion of the romantic interest which Grecian 
legend inspires is derived from the women: Penelopé, Androma- 


1 Aristot. Polit. ii. 5, 11. The édva, or present given by the suitor to the 
father, as an inducement to grant his daughter in marriage, are spoken of 
as yery valuable, — ἀπερείσια Bdva (Il. xi. 244; xvi. 178; xxii. 472): to grant 
a daughter without ἔδνα was a high compliment to the intended son-in-law 
(11. ix. 141: compare xiil. 366). Among the ancient Germans of Tacitus, 
the husband gave presents, not to his wife’s father, but to herself (Tacit. 
Germ. c. 18): the customs of the early Jews were in this respect completely 
Homeric; see the case of Shechem and Dinah (Genesis, xxxiv. 12) and 
others, etc.; also Mr. Catlin’s Letters on the North American Indians, vol 
i. Lett. 26, p. 213. 

The Greek ἔδνα correspond exactly to the mundium of the Lombard and 
Alemannic laws, which is thus explained by Mr. Price (Notes on the Laws 
of King Ethelbert, in the Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, translated 
and published by Mr. Thorpe, vol. i. p 20): “ The Longobardic law is the 
most copious of all the barbaric codes in its provisions respecting marriage, 
and particularly so on the subject of the Mund. From that law it appears 
that the Mundium was a sum paid over to the family of the bride, for trans- 
ferring the tutelage which they possessed over her to the family of the hus- 
band: ‘Si quis pro muliere libera aut puellA mundium dederit et ci tradita 
fuerit ad uxorem, ete. (ed. Rotharis, c. 183.) In the same sense in which 
the term occurs in these dooms, it is also to be met with in the Alemannic 
law: it was also common in Denmark and in Sweden, where the bride was 
called a mund-bought or a mund-given woman.” 

According to the 77th Law of King Ethelbert (p. 23), this mund was 
often paid in cattle: the Saxon daughters were πάρϑενοι ἀλφεσίβοιαι (Iliad, 


xviii. 593). 
3 Odyss. 1. 430; Iliad, ix. 450; see also Terpstra, Antiquitas Homerica, 


capp. 17 and 18. 
Polygamy appears to be ascribed to Priam, but to no one else (Iliad, xxd 


88). 


ee a ὧν. Ὁ... 
———_ Ss = -«-ς “Ὁ 


= = 
a 


84 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ché, Helen, Klytemnéstra, Eriphylé, Iokasta, Hekabé, etc, all 
stand in the foreground of the picture, either from their virtues 
their beauty, their crimes, or their sufferings. 

Not only brothers, but also cousins, and the more distant blood- 
relations and clansmen, appear connected together by a strong 
feeling of attachment, sharing among them universally the obli- 
gation of mutual self-defence and revenge, in the event of injury 
to any individual of the race. The legitimate brothers divide 
between them by lot the paternal inheritance, — a bastard brother 
receiving only a small share; he is, however, commonly very well 
treated,! though the murder of Phokus, by Telamon and Péleus, 
constitutes a flagrant exception. The furtive pregnancy of young 
women, often by a god, is one of the most frequently recurring 
incidents in the legendary narratives; and the severity with 
which such a fact, when discovered, is visited by the father, is 
generally extreme. As an extension of the family connection, 
we read of larger unions, called the phratry and the tribe, which 
are respectfully, but not frequently, mentioned.2 

The generous readiness with which hospitality is afforded to 
the stranger who asks for it,3 the facility with which he is allowed 
to contract the peculiar connection of guest with his host, and the 


* Odyss. xiv. 202-215: compare Iliad, xi. 102. The primitive German 
law of succession divided the paternal inheritance among the sons of a de- 
ceased father, under the implied obligation to maintain and portion out their 
sisters (Eichhorn, Deutsches Privat-Recht. sect. 330. 

5 lliad, ii. 362.— 

᾿Αφρήτωρ, ἀϑέμιστος, ἀνέστιός ἐστιν ἔκεινος, 
Ὃς πολέμου ἔραται, etc. (Il. ix. 63.) 

These three epithets include the three different classes of personal sym 
pathy and obligation: 1. The Phratry, in which a man is connected with 
father, mother, brothers, cousins, brothers-in-law, clansmen, ete.; 2. The 
ϑέμιστες, whereby he is connected with his fellow-men who visit the same 
acora; 8. His Hestia, or Hearth, whereby he becomes accessible to the 
ξεῖνος and the ἱκέτης : — 
᾿ς Τῷ δ᾽ ᾽Οδυσεὺς ξίφος ὀξὺ καὶ ἄλκιμον ἔγχος ἔδωκεν, 
᾽᾿Αρχὴν ξεινοσύνης προσκηδέος οὐδὲ τραπέζῃ 
Γνώτην ἀλλήλοιν (Odvss. xx. 34.) 

Ὁ Tt must be mentioned, however, that when a chief received a stranger 
ad made presents to him, he reimbursed to himself the value of the presents 
‘v collections among the people (Odyss. xiii. 14; xix. 197): ἀργαλέον yap 
‘va προικὸς χαρίσασϑαι, says Alkinous. 


PERSONAL SYMPATHIES. 85 


nee with which that connection, when created by partak- 
same food and exchanging presents, is maintained even 
f separation, and even transmitted from 


permane 
ing of the 
through a long period o "anst 
father to son — these are among the most captivating features 
of the heroic society. The Homeric chief welcomes the stranger 
k shelter in his house, first gives him refresh- 


who comes to as hit 
his name and the purpose of his voyage.! 


ment, and then inquires ) 
Though not inclined to invite strangers to his house, he cannot 
ἢ [-] 


repel them when they spontaneously enter it craving a lodging.? 
The suppliant is also commonly a stranger, but a stranger under 
peculiar circumstances ; who proclaims his own calamitous and 
abject condition, and seeks to place himself in a relation to the 
chief whom he solicits, something like that in which men stand to 
the gods. Onerous as such special tie may become to him, the 
chief cannot decline it, if solicited in the proper form : the cere- 
mony of supplication has a binding effect, and the Erinnys punish 
the hardhearted person who disallows it. A conquered enemy 
may sometimes throw himself at the feet of his conqueror, and 
solicit mercy, but he cannot by doing so acquire the character 
1 claims of a suppliant properly so called: the conqueror has 


an 
to kill him, or to spare him and accept a 


free discretion either 
ransom. : 

There are in the legendary narratives abundant examples of 
particular acts even the holiest of 


individuals who transgress in 


1 Odvss.i 123; iii. 70, ete. 
2 Odyss. xvii. 383.— ΒΕ . 
Ι Τίς γὰρ δὴ ξεῖνον καλεῖ ἄλλοϑεν αὐτὸς ἐπελϑὼν 
"AAAov γ᾽ εἰ μὴ τῶνδ᾽, of δημιόεργοι ἔασιν, ete. ; 
ἶ al cen shre Hesiodic Works and 
which breathes the plain-spoken shrewdness of the 


aes a ‘ustresive case of Lykaon, in vain craving mercy from Achilles. 
is εἰ, 64-97. ’Avri rot εἰμ᾽ ἱκέταο, ete.) 
gover’ el to spare the life of the Trojan Adrastus, who clasps hie 
knees and craves mercy, offering a large ransom, — when Agamemnon repels 
tne idea of quarter, and kills Adrastus with his own hand: his speech to 
Menelaus displays the extreme of violent enmity, yet the poet says, — 
Ὡς εἰπὼν, παρέπεισεν adeAgeiov φρένας ἥρως, 
Αἴσιμα παρειπῶὼν, ete. 
Adrastus is not called an ἱκέτης, nor is the expression used in respect te 
Dolon (Il. x. 456), nor in the equally striking case of Odysseus (Odyss. xiv 


979), when begging for his life. 


86 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


these personal ties, but the savage Cyclops is the only person de- 
scribed as professedly indifferent to them, and careless οὐ tha. 
sanction of the gods which in Grecian belief accompanied them 
all! In fact, the tragical horror which pervades the lineage of 
Athamas or Kadmus, and which attaches to many of the acts of 
Héraklés, of Péleus and Telamon, of Jasén and Médea, of Atreus 
and Thyestés, etc., is founded upon a deep feeling and sympathy 
with those special obligations, which conspicuous individuals, un 
der the temporary stimulus of the maddening Até, are driven to 
violate. In such conflict of sentiments, between the obligation 
generally reverenced and the exceptional deviation in an individ- 
ual otherwise admired, consists the pathos of the story. 

These feelings —of mutual devotion between kinsmen and 
companions in arms —-of generous hospitality to the stranger, 
and of helping protection to the suppliant,— constitute the bright 
spots ina dark age. We find them very generally prevalent 
amongst communities essentially rude and barbarous,— amongst 
the ancient Germans as described by ‘Tacitus, the Druses in 
Lebanon,? the Arabian tribes in the desert, and even the North 
American Indians. 


δ Odyss. ix. 112-275. 

? Tacit. German. c. 21. “ Quemcunque mortalium arcere tecto, nefas ha- 
betur: pro fortun4 quisque apparatis epulis excipit: cum defecére qui modo 
hospes fuerat, monstratur hospitii et comes, proximam domum non invitati 
adeunt: nec interest — pari humanitate accipiuntur. Notum ignotumgque, 
quantum ad jus hospitii, nemo discernit.”. Compare Cesar, Bb. G. vi. 22. 

See about the Druses and Arabians, Volney, Travels in Egypt and Syria 
vol. ii. p. 76, Engl. Transl.; Niebuhr, Beschreibung von <Arabien, Copenh. 
1772, pp. 46-49. 

Pomponius Mela describes the ancient Germans in language not inappli- 
cable to the Homeric Greeks: “Jus in viribus habent, adeo ut ne latrocinii 
quidem pudeat: tantum hospitibus boni, mitesque supplicibus.” (iii. 3.) 

“'The hospitality of the Indians is well known. It extends even to strangers 
who take refuge amoung them. They count it a most sacred duty, from 
which no one is exempted. Whoever refuses relief to any one, commits a 
grievous offence, and not unly makes himself detested and abhorred by all, 
but liable to revenge from the offended person. In their conduct towards 
their enemies they are cruel aud inexorable, and, when enraged, bent npon 
nothing but murder and bloodshed. They are, however, remarkable for con 
eealing their passions, and waiting for a convenient opportunity of gratify- 
ing them. But then their fury knows no bounds. If they cannot satisfy 
their resentment, they will even call upon their friends and posterity to do 


STATE OF SOCIETY, ETC. 87 


They are the instinctive manifestations of human soviality, 
standing at first alone, and for that reason appearing to possess 8 


it. The longest space of time cannot cool their wrath, nor the most distant 
place of refuge afford security to their enemy.” (Loskiel, History of the 
Mission of the United Brethren among the North American Indians, Part 
I. ch. 2, μι 15.) 

« Charlevoix observes, (says Dr. Ferguson, Essay on Civil Society, Part 
II. § 2, p. 145,) that the nations among whom he travelled in North America 
never mentioned acts of generosity or kindness under the notion of duty. 
They acted from affection, as they acted from appetite, without regard to 
its consequences. When they had done a kindness, they had gratified a de- 
sire: the business was finished, and it passed from the memory. The spirit 
with which they give or receive presents is the same as that which Tacitus 
remarks among the ancient Germans: ‘ Gaudent muneribus, sed nec data 
imputant, nec acceptis obligantur” Such gifts are of ee consequence, ex~ 
cept when employed as the seal of a bargain or a treaty.” Lh 

Respecting the Morlacchi (Illyrian Sclavonians), the Abbé Fortis says 
(Travels in Dalmatia, pp. 55-58): — 

“The hospitality of the Morlachs is equally conspicuous ‘among the poor 
as among the opulent. The rich prepares a roasted lamb or sheep, and the 
poor, with equal cordiality, gives his turkey, milk, honey, — whatever he 
has. Nor is their generosity confined to strangers, but generally extends to 
all who are in want......Friendship is lasting among the Morlacchi. They 
have even wade it a kind of religious point, and tie the sacred bond at the 
foot of the altar. The Sclavonian ritual contains a particular benediction, 
for the solemn union of two male or two female friends, in presence of the 
whole congregation. The male friends thus united are called Pobratimi, and 
the females Posestreme, which means half-brothers and half-sisters. ‘The 

of the Pobratimi are, to assist each other in every case of need and 


duties : ; 
- their enthusiasm is often carried so 


danger, to revenge mutual wrongs, etc. 
far as to risk, and even lose their life.... .But as the friendships of the 
Morlacchi are strong and sacred, so their quarrels are commonly unextin- 
They pass from father to son, and the mothers fail not to put 

: venge their father, if he has had the 


still more atrocious and more lasting. eS : ao 
ter is capable of the most barbarous revenge, believing it to be his positive 


dutv.....-A Morlach wko has killed another of a powerful family 1s com- 
monly obliged to save himself by flight, and keep out of the way for several 

ears. If during that time he has been fortunate enough to escape the 
᾿ and has got a small sum of money, he endeavors to 


search of his pursuers, 
: ΤΕ is the custom in some places for the offended 


abtasn pardon and peace 


88 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


greater tutelary force than really belongs to them,— beneficent, 
indeed, in a high degree, with reference to their own appropriate 
period, but serving as a very imperfect compensation for the im- 
potence of the magistrate, and for the absence of any all-per- 
vading sympathy or sense of obligation between man and mau. 
We best appreciate their importance when we compare the Ho- 
meric society with that of barbarians like the Thracians, who 
tattooed their bodies, as the mark of a generous lineage,— sold 
their children for export as slaves,— considered robbery, not 
merely as one admissible occupation among others, but as the 
only honorable mode of life ; agriculture being held contemptible, 
—and above all, delighted in the shedding of blood as a luxury. 
Such were the Thracians in the days of Herodotus and Thucy- 
didés : and the Homeric society forms a mean term between that 
which these two historians yet saw in Thrace, and that which 
they witnessed among their own civilized countrymen.! 

party to threaten the criminal, holding all sorts of arms to his throat, and 
at last to consent to accept his ransom.” 

Concerning the influence of these two distinct tendencies — devoted per- 
sonal friendship and implacable animosities — among the Illyrico-Sclavonian 
population, see Cyprien Robert, Les Slaves de la Turquie, ch. vii. pp. 42-46, 
and Dr. Joseph Μάϊον, Albanicn, Rumelien, und die Césterreichisch-Mon- 
tenegrenische Grinze, Prag. 1844, pp. 24-25. 

“It is for the virtue of hospitality (observes Goguet, Origin of Laws, etc 
vol. i. book vi. ch. iv.), that the primitive times are chiefly famed. But, in 
my opinion, hospitality was then exercised, not so much from generosity and 
greatness of soul, as from necessity. Common interest probably gave rise 
to that custom. In remote antiquity, there were few or no public inns. they 
entertained strangers, in order that they might render them the same service, 
if they happened to travel into their country. Hospitality was reciprocai. 
When they received strangers into their houses, they acquired a right of 
being received into theirs again. ‘This right was regarded by the ancients 
as sacred and inviolable, and extended not only to those who had acquired 
it, but to their children and posterity Besides, hospitality in these times 
could not be attended with much expense. men travelled but little. In a 
word, the modern Arabians prove that hospitality may consist with the 
greatest vices, and that this species of generosity is no decisive evidence of 
goodness of heart, or rectitude of manners.” 

The book of Genesis, amidst many other features cf resemblance to the 
Homeric manners, presents that of ready and exuberant hospitality to the 


stranger. 
} Respecting the Thracians, compire Herodot. v 11, Thucydid vii 


FEROCIOUS PASSIONS UNRESTRAINED. 09 


When, however, among the Homeric men we pass beyond the 
influence of the private ties above enumerated, we find scarcely 
any other moralizing forces in operation. The acts and adven- 


tures commemorated imply a community wherein neither the 
protection nor the restraints of law are practically felt, and where 

in ferocity, rapine, and the aggressive propensities generally, seem 
restrained by no internal counterbalancing scruples. Homicide, 
especially, is of frequent occurrence, sometimes by open violence, 
sometimes by fraud: expatriation for homicide is among the most 
constantly recurring acts of the Homeric poems: and savage 
brutalities are often ascribed, 2*en to admired heroes, with appa- 
rent inflifference. Achilles sacrifices twelve Trojan prisoners on 
the tomb of Patroklus, while his son Neoptolemus not only slaught- 
ers the aged Priam, but also seizes by the leg the child Astyanax 
(son of the slain Hector) and hurls him from one of the lofty 
towers of Troy.!. Moreover, the celebrity of Autolykus, the ma- 
ternal grandfather of Odysseus, in the career of wholesale rob- 
bery and perjury, and the wealth which it enabled him to acquire, 
are described with the same unaffected admiration as the wisdom 


29-30. The expression of the latter historian is remarkable, — τὸ dé γένος 
τῶν Θρᾳκῶν, ὅμοια τοῖς μάλιστα τοῦ βαρβαρικοῦ, ἐν ᾧ ἂν ϑαρσῆή σῇῃ, 
φονικώτατόν ἐστι. a 
Compare Herodot. viii. 116; the cruelty of the Thracian «ing of the 
Bisaltz towards his own sons. 

The story of Odysseus to Eumzeus in the Odyssey (xiv 210-226) furnishes 
a valuable comparison for this predatory disposition among the ‘Thracians. 
Odysseus there treats the love of living by war and plunder as his own 
peculiar taste * he did not happen to like regular labor, but the latter is not 
treated in any way mean or unbecoming a freeman .— 

ἔργον dé μοι οὐ φίλον ἦεν 
Οὐδ᾽ οἰκωφελίη, ἣ τε τρέφει ἀγλαὰ τέκνα, ete. 

1 Ilias Minor, Fragm. 7, p. 18, ed. Dantzer, Iliad, xxiii. 175 Odysseus is 
mentioned once as obtaining poison for his arrows (Odyss. i. 160), but no 
poisoned arrows are ever employed in either of the two poems. 

The anecdotes recounted by the Scythian Toxaris in Lucian’s work 80 
entitled (vol. ii. c. 36, p 544, seqq- ed. Hemst.) afford a vivid picture of this 
combination of intense and devoted friendship between individuals, with the 
most revolting cruelty of manners. “ You Greeks live in peace and tranquil- 
lity,” observes the Scythian, — παρ᾽ ἡμῖν δὲ συνεχεῖς al πόλεμοι, καὶ ἢ ἐπελαῦύ- 
νομεν ἄλλοις, ἢ ὑποχωροῦμεν ἐπιόντας, ἢ συμπεσόντες ὑπὲρ νομῆς ἢ λείας μαχδ 
ωϑα. ἔνϑα μάλιστα δεῖ φίλων ἀγαϑῶν, ete. 


90 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


of Nestér or the strength of Ajax.! Achilles, Menelaus, Odys 
seus, pilluge in person, wherever they can find an eppietenii ͵ 
employing both force and stratagem to surmount resistance.? = 
vocation of a pirate is recognized and honorable, so that a host 
when he asks his guest what is the purpose of his voyage ri 
merates enrichment by indiscriminate maritime plunder ig a 
those projects which may naturally enter into his contemplation.? 
Abduction of cattle, and expeditions for unprovoked ravage as 
well as for retaliation, between neighboring tribes, appear τοῖς. 
nary phenomena;! and the established inviolability of heralds 
seems the only evidence of any settled feeling οἵ obiinatio: 

between one community and another. While the aig and 
property of Odysseus, during his long absence, enjoys no public 


i Odyss. xxi. 397 ; Pherekydés, Fragm. 63, ed. Didot; Autolykus, πλεῖστα 
κλέπτων ἐϑησαύριζεν. The Homeric Hymn to Hermés (the great sainiaani 
of Autolykus) is a farther specimen of the admiration which might be made 
to attach to clever thieving. " 
The ἡμερόκοιτος ἀνὴρ, likely to rob the farm, is one great enemy against 
whom Hesiod advises precaution to be taken, — a sharp-toothed dog "well-fed 
to serve as guard (Opp. Di. 604). η] τ 
: 2 Iliad, xi. 624; xx. 189. Odyss. iv. 81-90; ix. 40; xiv. 230; and the 
indirect revelation (Odyss. xi. 284), coupled with a compliment to the dex- 
terity of Odysseus. non 
3 Even inthe century prior to Thucydidés, undistinguishing plunder at sea 
committed by Greek ships against ships not Greek, seems not to have beans 
held discreditable. The Phokzean Dionysius, after the ill-success of the Ionic 
revolt, goes with his three ships of war to Sicily, and from thence plunders 
Tyrrhenians and Carthaginians (Herod. vi. 17). — ληϊστὴς κατεστήκεε, ‘EAAS 
νων μὲν οὐδενὸς, Καρχηδονίων δὲ καὶ 'Γυρσηνῶν. Compare the akin a 
the Phoksan settlers at Alalia in Corsica, after the conquest of Ionia ἢ 
Harpagus (Herodot. i. 166). ti Te 
In the treaty between the Romans and Carthaginians, made at some period 
subsequent to 509 B. C., it is stipulated, — Τοῦ Καλοῦ ᾿Ακρωτηρίου, Mecriac 
Ταρσηΐου, μὴ ληΐζεσϑαι ἐπέκεινα Ῥωμαίους und’ ἐμπορεύεσϑαι, μηδὲ wise 
κτίζειν (Polyb. iii. 24, 4). Plunder, commerce, and colonization eye 
assumed as the three objects which the Roman ships would cane unless 
they were under special obligation to abstain, in reference to foreigners This 
morality approaches nearer to that of the Homeric age, than to the staw 
lie gu which Thucydidés indicates as current in his day among the 
4 See the interesting bonstfulness esto iad, xi. 67 . 
ὩΣΟΝ, τὰν ἘΝ : Nestor, Iliad, xi. 670-700 ; also Odyss 


KEPRESENTATION BY HESIOD. οι 


arotection,! those ur principled chiefs, who consume his substance, 
find sympathy rather than disapprobation among the people of 
Ithaka. As a general rule, he who cannot protect himself finds 
no protection from society: his own kinsmen and immediate 
companions are the only parties to whom he can look with confi- 
dence for support. And in this respect, the representation given 
by Hesiod makes the picture even worse. In his emphatic 
denunciation of the fifth age, that poet deplores not only the 
absence of all social justice and sense of obligation among his 
contemporaries, but also the relaxation of the ties of family and 
hospitality.2 There are marks of querulous exaggeration in the 
poem of the Works and Days; yet the author professes to de- 
seribe the real state of things around him, and the features of his 
picture, soften them as we may, will still appear dark and calam- 
It is, however, to be remarked, that he contemplates a 
2ace, — thus forming a contrast with the Homeric poems. 


itous. 
state of p 
His copious catalogue of social evils scarcely mentions liability 
to plunder by a foreign enemy, nor does he compute the chances 


of predatory aggression as a source of profit. 

There are two special veins of estimable sentiment, on which 
it may be interesting to contrast heroic and historical Greece, 
and which exhibit the latter as an improvement on the former, 
not less in the affections than in the intellect. 

The law of Athens was peculiarly watchful and provident with 
respect both to the persons and the property of orphan minors ; 
but the description given in the Iliad of the utter and hopeless 
destitution of the orphan boy, despoiled of his paternal inherit- 
ance, and abandoned by all the friends of his father, whom he 
urgently supplicates, and who all harshly cast him off, is one of 
the most pathetic morsels in the whole poem. In reference 


-_ —— ———— — 


1 Odyss. iy. 165, among many other passages. Telemachus laments the 
t that himself, Odysseus, and Laértés were all 


misfortune of his race, in respec 
only sons of their fathers : there were no brothers to serve as mutual auxil- 


varies (Odyss. xvi. 118). 


2 Opp. Di. 182-199 : — 
Οὐδὲ πατὴρ παίδεσσιν ὁμοιΐος, οὐδέ τι παῖδες, 


Οὐδὲ ξεῖνος ξεινοδόκῳ, καὶ ἑταῖρος ἑταίρῳ, 
Οὐδὲ κασίγνητος φίλος ἔσσεται, ὡς τὸ πάρος περ, 
Αἶψα δὲ γηράσκοντας ἀτιμήσουσι τοκῆας, etc. 
3 Tliad, xxii. 487-500. Hesiod dwells upon injury to orphan children, 
however, a3 8 heinous offence (Opp. Di. 330). 


92 HISTORY OF GREECE 


again to the treatment of the dead body of an enemy we find all 
the Greek chiefs who come near (not to mention the conduct of 
Achilles himself) piercing with their spears the corpse of the 
slain Hectoér, while some of them even pass disgusting taunts 
upon it. We may add, from the lost epics, the mutilation of the 
dead bodies of Paris and Deiphobus by the hand of Menelaus.! 
But at the time of the Persian invasion, it was regarded as 
unworthy of a righ+minded Greek to maltreat in any way the 
dead body of an enemy, even where such a deed might seem te 
be justified on the plea of retaliation. After the battle of Pla 
tza, a proposition was made to the Spartan king Pausanias, 
to retaliate upon the dead body of Mardonius the indignities 
which Xerxés had heaped upon that of Leonidas at Thermopy- 
le. He indignantly spurned the suggestion, not without a severe 
rebuke, or rather a half-suppressed menace, towards the pro- 
poser: and the feeling of Herodotus himself goes heartily along 
with him.? | 

The different manner of dealing with homicide presents a third 
test, perhaps more striking yet, of the change in Grecian feelings 
and manners during the three centuries preceding the Persian 
invasion. That which the murderer in the Homeric times had 
to dread, was, not public prosecution and punishment, but the 
personal vengeance of the kinsmen and friends of the deceased, 
who were stimulated by the keenest impulses of honor and obli- 
gation to avenge the deed, and were considered by the public as 
specially privileged to do so.3 To escape from this danger, he 


........»---..---...-.........--΄-΄-΄-΄-..--... 


¥ 


' Tliad, xxii. 371. ofd’ dpa οἵ τις ἀνοῦτητί ye παρέστη. Argument of 
Iliad. Minor. ap. Déntzer, Epp. Fragm. p. 17; Virgil, A®neid, vi. 520. 

Both Agamemnon and the Oiliad Ajax cut off the heads of slain warriors, 
and send them rolling like a ball or like a mortar among the crowd of war 
riors (Iliad, xi. 147; xiii. 102) 

The ethical maxim preached by Odysseus in the Odyssey, not to utter 
boastful shouts over a slain enemy (Οὐκ doin, κταμένοισιν ἐ x ἀν Spaow evye- 
τάασϑαι͵ xxii. 412), is abundantly violated in the Lliad. 

ψ Herodot. ix. 78-79. Contrast this strong expression from Pausanias, 
with the conduct of the Carthaginians towards the end of the Peloponnesian 
war, after their capture of Selinus in Sicily, where, after having put to death 
16,000 persons, they mutilated the dead bodies,—«ard τὸ πάτριον ἔϑος 
(Diodér. xiii. 57-86). ) 

* The Mosaic law recognizes this habit and duty on the part of the rola- 


COMPOSITION FOR CRIMES. 98 


is obliged to flee the country, unless he can prevail upon the 
invensed kinsmen to accept of a valuable payment (we must not 
speak of coined money, in the days of Homer) as satisfaction for 
their slain comrade. They may, if they please, decline the offer, 
and persist in their right of revenge ; but if they accept, they are 
bound ty leave the offender unmolested, and he accordingly 
remains at home without farther consequences. The chiefs in 
agora do not seem to interfere, except to insure payment of the 
stipulated sum. 

Here we recognize once more the characteristic attribute of 
the Grecian heroic age, — the omnipotence of private force, tem- 
pered and guided by family sympathies, and the practical nullity 
of that collective sovereign afterwards called The City,-— who in 
historical Greece becomes the central and paramount source of 
obligation, but who appears yet only in the background, as a 
germ of promise for the future. And the manner in which, in the 
case of homicide, that germ was developed into a powerful reality, 
presents an interesting field of comparison with other nations. 

For the practice, here designated, of leaving the party guilty 
of homicide to compromise by valuable payment with the rela- 
tives of the deceased, and also of allowing to the latter a free 
choice whether they would accept such compromise or enforce 
their right of personal revenge,— has been remarked in many 
rude communities, but is particularly memorable among the early 
German tribes.! Among the many separate Teutonic establish- 


tives of the murdered man, and provides cities of refuge for the purpose of 
sheltering the offender in certain cases (Deuteron. xxxv. 13-14; Bauer, 
Handbuch der Hebratschen Alterthiimer, sect. 51-52). 

The relative who inherited the property of a murdered man was specially 
obliged to avenge his death (H. Leo, Vorlesungen ber die Geschichte des 
Jiidischen Staats. — Vorl. iii. p. 35). 

'“ Suscipere tam inimicitias, seu patris, seu propinqui, quam amicitias, 
necesse est. Nec implacabiles durant: luitur enim etiam homicidium certo 
pecorum armentorumque numero, recipitque satisfactionem universa domus.” 
(Tacit. German. 21.) Niebuhr, Beschreibung von Arabien, p. 32. 

« An Indian feast (says Loskiel, Mission of the United Brethren in North 
America,) is seldom concluded without bloodshed. For the murder of a man 
one hundred yards of wampum, and for that of a woman two hundred 
yards, must he paid by the murderer. If he is too poor, which is commonly 
the case. and his friends cannot or will not assist him, he must fly from the 


resentment of the relations.” 


94 His tURY OF GREECE 


ments which rose upon the ruins of the Western Empire o Roma, 
the right as well as duty of private -evenge, for personal injury 
or insult offered to any member of a family, — and the endeavor 
to avert its effects by means of a pecuniary composition levied 
upon the offender, chiefly as satisfaction to the party injured, but 
partly also as perquisite to the king, — was adopted as the basis 
of their legislation. ‘This fundamental idea was worked out in 
elaborate detail as to the valuation of the injury inflicted, where- 


in one main circumstance was the rank, condition, and power of 
the sufferer. The object of the legislator was to preserve the 
society from standing feuds, but at the same time to accord such 
full satisfaction as would induce the injured person to waive his 
acknowledged right of personal revenge,—the full luxury of 
which, as it presented itself to the mind of an Homeric Greek, 
may be read in more than one passage of the Iliad.' The Ger- 


Rogge (Gerichtswesen der Germanen, capp. 1, 2,3), Grimm (Deutsche 
Rechtsalterthtmer, book v. cap. 1-2), and Eichhorn (Deutsches Privat-Recht. 
sect. 48) have expounded this idea, and the consequences deduced from it 
among the ancient Germans. 

Aristotle alludes, as an illustration of the extreme silliness of ancient 
Greek practices (εὐήϑη πάμπαν), to a custom which he states to have still 
continued at the AZolic Kymé, in cases of murder. If the accuser produced 
in support of his charge a certain number of witnesses from his own kin- 
dred, the person was held peremptorily guilty, — οἷον ἐν Κύμῃ περὶ τὰ φονικὴὼ 
νόμος ἔστιν, dv πλῆϑος τι παράσχηται μαρτύρων ὁ διώκων τὸν φύνον τῶν 
αὐτοῦ συγγενῶν, ἔνοχον εἶναι τῷ φόνῳ τὸν φεύγοντα (Polit. ii. 5,13). This 
presents a curious parallel with the old German institution of the Eides- 
helfern, or conjurators, who, though most frequently required and produced in 
support of the party accused, were yet also brought by the party accusing. 
See Rogge, sect. 36, p. 186; Grimm, p. 862. 

‘The word ποινὴ indicates this satisfaction by valuable payment for wrong 
done, especially for homicide: that the Latin word pena originally meant 
the same thing, may be inferred from the old phrases dare penus, pendere 
penas. The most illustrative passage in the Iliad is that in which Ajax, in 
the embassy undertaken to conciliate Achilles, censures by comparison the 
inexorable obstinacy of the latter in setting at naught the proffered presente 
of Agamemn6n (Il. ix. 627): — 

Νηλήῆς᾽ καὶ μὲν τίς Te κασιγνήτοιο φόνοιο 
Ποινὴν, ἢ οὗ παιδὸς ἐδέξατο τεϑνειῶτος ᾿ 

Καί ῥ᾽ ὁ μὲν ἐν δήμῳ μένει αὐτοῦ, πολλ' ἀποτίσας " 
Τοῦ dé τ᾽ ἐρητύεται κραδίη καὶ ϑύμος ἀγήνωρ, 
ποινὴν δεξαμένον. ............ 


COMPOSITION FOR CRIMES. 99 


man codes begin by trying to bring about the acceptance of ἃ 
fixel pecuniary composition as a constant voluntary custom, and 
proceed ultimately to enforce it as a peremptory necessity: the 
idea of society is at first altogether subordinate, and its influence 
passes only by slow degrees from amicable arbitration into im- 
perative control. 

The Homeric society, in regard to this capital point in human 
progression, is on a level with that of the German tribes as 
described by Tacitus. But the subsequent course of Grecian 
legislation takes a direction completely different from that of the 
German codes: the primitive and acknowledged right of private 
revenge (unless where bought off by pecuniary payment), instead 
of being developed into practical working, is superseded by more 
comprehensive views of a public wrong requiring public inter 
vention, or by religious fears respecting the posthumous wrath of 
the murdered person. In historical Athens, this right of private 
revenge was discountenanced and put out of sight, even so early 
as the Drakonian legislation,! and at last restricted to a few ex- 


The ποινὴ is, in its primitive sense, a genuine payment in valuable eon- 
modities serving as compensation (liad, iii. 290; v. 266; xiii. 659): but it 
comes by a natural metaphor to signify the death of one or more Trojans, as 
a satisfaction for that of a Greek warrior who had just fallen (or vice versd, 
lliad, xiv. 483; xvi. 398); sometimes even the notion of compensation 
generally (xvii. 207). In the representation on the shield of Achilles, the 
genuine proceeding about ποινὴ clearly appears: the question there tried is, 
whether the payment stipulated as satisfaction for a person slain, has really 
been made or not, — δύο δ᾽ ἄνδρες éveixeov εἵνεκα ποινῆς ᾿Ανδρὸς ἀποφϑιμέ- 
vov, ete. (xvill. 498.) 

The danger of an act of homicide is proportioned to the number and 
power of the surviving relatives of the slain; but even a small number is 
sufficient to necessitate flight (Odyss. xxiii. 120): on the other hand, a large 
body of relatives was the grand source of encouragement to an insolent 
criminal (Odyss. xviii. 141). 

An old law of Tralles in Lydia, enjoining a nominal ποινὴ of a medimnus 
of beans to the relatives of a murdered person belonging to a contemptible 
class of citizens, is noticed by Plutarch, Quest. Gree. c. 46, p. 302. Even 
in the century preceding Herodotus, too, the Delphians gave a ποινὴ as 
satisfaction for the murder of the fabulist sop ; which ποινὴ was claimed 
and received by the grandson of Asop’s master (Herodot. ii.134. Plutarch 
Ser. Num. Vind. p. 556). 

' See Lysias, De Cede Eratosthen. Orat. i. p. 94; Plutarch, Solom s 

8; Demosthen. cont. Aristokrat. pp. 632-637. 


96 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


treme and special cases; while the murderer came to be consid- 
ered, first as having sinned against the gods, next as having 
deeply injured the society, and thus at once as requiring absolu- 
tion and deserving punishment. On the first of these two 
grounds, he is interdicted from the agora and from all holy places, 
as well as from public functions, even while ye. untried and sime 
ply a suspected person ; for if this were not done, the wrath of 
the gods would manifest itself in bad crops and other national 
calamities. On the second ground, he is tried before the council 
of Areiopagus, and if found guilty, is condemned to death, or 
perhaps to disfranchisement and banishment.' The idea of a 
propitiatory payment to the relatives of the deceased has ceased 


Plato (De Legg. ix. pp. 871-874), in his copious penal suggestions to deal 


with homicide, both intentional and accidental, concurs in general with the 
old Attic law (see Matthia, Miscellanea Philologica, vol. i. p. 151): and as 
he states with sufficient distinctness the grounds of his propositions, we see 
how completely the idea of a right to private or family revenge is absent 
from his mind. In one particular case, he confers upon kinsmen the priv- 
ilege of avenging their murdered relative (p. 871); but generally, he rather 
seeks to enforce upon them strictly the duty of bringing the suspected mur- 
Ἄργου to trial before the court. By the Attic law, it was only the kinsmen 
of the deceased who had the right of prosecuting for murder, — or the master, 
if the deceased was an οἰκέτης (Demosthen. cont. Euerg. et Muesibul. c. 18); 
they might by forgiveness shorten the term of banishment for the uninten- 
tional murderer (Demosth. cont. Makart. p. 1069). They seem to have been 
regarded, generally speaking, as religiously obliged, but not legally com. 
pellable, to undertake this duty; compare Plato, Euthyphro, capp. 4 and 5. 

1 Lysias, cont. Agorat. Or. xiii. p. 137. Antiphon. Tetralog. i. 1, p. 629. 
᾿Ασύμφορον δ᾽ ὑμῖν ἐστὶ τόνδε, μιαρὸν καὶ ἄναγνον ὄντα, εἰς τὰ τεμένη τῶν 
ϑεῶν εἰσιόντα μιαίνειν τὴν ἄγνειαν αὐτῶν, ἐπὶ δὲ τὸς αὐτὰς τραπέζας ἰόντα 
συγκαταπιμπλάναι τοὺς ἀναιτίους" ἐκ yap τούτων αἱ τε ἀφύριαι γίνονται, 
δυστυχεῖς ϑ᾽ αἱ πράξεις καϑίστανται. 

The three Tetralogies of Antipho are all very instructive respecting the 
legal procedure in cases of alleced homicide: as also the Oration De Cede 
Herodis (see capp. 1 and 2)— Tov νόμου κειμένου, τὸν ἀποκτείναντα ἀντα- 
revavery, ete. 

The case of the Spartan Drakontius, one of the Ten Thousand Greeks 
whe served with Cyrus the younger, and permanently exiled from his country 
in consequence of an involuntary murder committed during his boyhood, 
presents a pretty exact parallel to the fatal quarrel of Patroklus at dice, 
when a boy, with the son of Ampbidamas, in consequence of which he was 
forced to seek shelter under the roof of Péleus (compare Iliad, xxiii. 85, 
with Xenoph. Anabuas. iv. 8, 25) 


SOCILYY OF LEGENDARY GREECE. o7 


altczcther to be admitted: it is the protection of society which 
dictates, and the force of society which inflicts, a measure of 
punishment calculated to deter for the future. 

3. The society of legendary Greece ineludes, besides the 
chiefs, tne general mass of freemen (λαοὶ), among whom stand 
out by special names certain professional men, such as the car- 
penter, the smith, the leather-dresser, the leech, the prophet, the 
bard, and the fisherman.!' We have no means of appreciating 
their condition. ‘Though lots of arable land were assigned in 
special property to individuals, with boundaries both carefully 
marked and jealously watched,? yet the larger proportion of sur- 
face was devoted to pasture. Cattle formed both the chief item 
in the substance of a wealthy man, the chief means of making 
payments, and the common ground of quarrels,— bread and meat, 
in large quantities, being the constant food of every one.’ The 
estates of the owners were tilled, and their cattle tended, mostly 
by bought slaves, but to a certain degree also by poor freemen 
called Thétes, working for hire and for stated periods. The prin- 
cipal slaves, who were intrusted with the care of large herds of 
oxen, swine, or goats, were of necessity men worthy of confidence, 
their duties placing them away from their master’s immediate 


' Odyss. xvii. 384; xix. 135. Iliad, iv. 187; vii. 221. I know nothing 
which better illustrates the idea of the Homeric δημιοεργοΐ, ---- the herald, the 
prophet, the carpenter, the leech, the bard, etc., — than the following descrip- 
tion of the structure of an East Indian village (Mill’s History of British 
India, Ὁ. ii. c. 5, p. 266): “ A village, politically considered, resembles a cor- 
poration or township. Its proper establishment of officers and servants cc2- 
sists of the following descriptions: the potail, or head inhabitant, who 
settles disputes and collects the revenue, etc.; the curnum, who keeps the 
accounts of cultivation, ete.; the tallier; the boundary-man ; the superinten- 
dent of tanks and water-courses; the Brahman, who performs the village 
worship ; the schoolmaster; the calendar Brahman, or astrologer, who pro- 
claims the lucky or unpropitious periods for sowing or thrashing; the smith 
and carpenter; the potter; the washerman; the barber; the cowkeeper ; the 
doctor; the dancing-girl who attends at rejoicings; the musician, and the 
poet.” 

Each of these officers and servants (δημιοεργοί" is remunerated by a defi- 
Bite perquisite—so much landed ;roduce — out of the general crop of the 
village (p. 264). 

3 Iliad, xii. 421; xxi. 405. 

8 Vliad, i. 155; ix. 154; xiv. 125 

VOL. τι. 5 700 


98 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


eye! They had other slaves subordinate to them, and appear to 
have been well-treated: the deep and unshaken attachmem of 
Eumzeus the swineherd and Philcetius the neatherd to the family 
and affairs of the absent Odysseus, is among the most interesting 
points in the ancient epic. Slavery was a calamity, which in 
that period of insecurity might befall any one: the chief who 
conducted a freebooting expedition, if he succeeded, brought back 


with him a numerous troop of slaves, as many as he ceuld seize,? 
—if he failed, became very likely a slave himself: so that the 
slave was often by birth of equal dignity with his master: Eu- 
meus was himself the son of a chief, conveyed away when a 
child by his nurse, and sold by Phoenician kidnappers to Laértes. 
A slave of this character, if he conducted himself well, might 
often expect to be enfranchised by his master and placed in an 
independent holding.’ 

On the whole, the slavery of legendary Greece does not pre- 
sent itself as existing under a peculiarly harsh form, especially 
if we consider that all the classes of society were then very much 
upon a level in point of taste, sentiment, and instruction.4 In the 
absence of legal security or an effective social sanction, it is 
probable that the condition of a slave under an average master, 
may have been as good as that of the free Théte. The class of 
slaves whose lot appears to have been the most pitiable were the 


! Odysseus and other chiefs of Ithaka had oxen, sheep, mules, etc., on the 
continent and in Peloponnésus, under the care of herdsmen (Odyss. iv. 636 ; 
xiv. 100). 

Leukanor, king of Bosporus, asks the Scythian Arsakomas— Iloca dé 
βοσκήματα, ἢ πόσας ἁμάξας ἔχεις, ταῦτα γὰρ ὑμεῖς wAovTeite ; (Lucian, Tox- 
aris, c. 45.) The enumeration of the property of Odysseus would have 
placed the βοσκήματα in the front line. 

2 Auwal δ᾽ ἃς ᾿Αχιλεὺς ληΐσσατο (Iliad, xviii. 28: compare also Odyss. 
i; 397; xxiii. 357 ; particularly xvii. 441). 

8 Odyss. xiv. 64; xv. 412; see also xix. 78: Eurykleia was also of dig 
nified birth (i. 429). The questions put by Olysseus to Eumzeus, to which 
the speech above referred to is an answer, indicate the proximate causes of 
slavery: “ Was the city of your father sacked? or were you seized by pirates 
when alone with your sheep and oxen?” (Odyss. xv. 385.) 

Eumens had purchased a slave for himself (Odyss. xiv. 448). 

4 Tacitus, Mor. Germ. 21. “Dominum ac servum nullis educationis 
deliciis dignoscas : inter eadem pecora, in eddem humo, degunt,’ etc. (Juve 
nal, Sat. xiv. 167.) 


1 JDILAVNODUV 


r. 
C 
. 


NOTLIGUdX 


SLAVERY IN LEGENDARY GREECE. 99 


femaics.— more numerous than the males, and performing the 
principal work in the interior of the house. Not only do they 
seem to have been more harshly treated than the males, but they 
were cherged with the hardest and most exhausting labor which 
the establishment of a Greek chief required: they brought in 
water from the spring, and turned by hand the house-mills, which 
ground the large-quantity of flour consumed in his family.! This 
oppressive task was performed generally by female slaves, in his- 
torical as well as legendary Greece.2 Spinning and weaving was 
the constant occupation of women, whether free or slave, of every 
rank and station: all the garments worn both by men and women 
were fashioned at home, and Helen as well as Penelopé is expert 
and assiduous at the occupation.3 The daughters of Keleos at 
Eleusis go to the well with their basins for water, and Nausikaa, 
daughter of Alkinous,‘ joins her female slaves in the business of 
washing her garments in the river. If we obliged to point 
out the fierceness and insecurity of an early society, we may at 
the same time note with pleasure its characteristic simplicity of 


| Odyss. vii. 104; xx. 116; Iliad vi. 457; compare the Book of Genesis, 


ch. xi. 5. The expression of Telemachus, when he is yroceeding to hang 
> ~ 


up che female slaves who had misbehaved, is bitterly contemptuous : — 
Μὴ μὲν δὴ καϑαρῷ VavaTy ἀπὸ ϑυμὸν ἑλοίμην 
Taw, ete. (Odyss. xxi. 464.) 

The humble establishment of Hesiod’s farmer does not possess a mill; he 
has nothing better than a wooden pestle and mortar for grinding or bruising 
the corn; both are constructed, and the wood cut from the trees, by his 
own hand (Opp. Di. 423), though it seems that a professional carpenter 
(“the servant of Athéné,”) is required to put together the plough (v. 430). 
The Virgilian poem Moretum, (v. 24,) assigns a hand-mill even to the 
humblest rural establishment. The instructive article “ Corn Mills,” in 
Beckmann’s Hist. of Inventions (vol. i. p. 227, Eng. transl.), collects all the 
information available, about this subject. 

2 See Lysias, Or. 1, p. 93 (De Cade Eratosthenis). Plutarch (Non posse 
suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum, ο. 21, p. 1101), -.-Παχυσκελὴς ἀλετρὶς 
πρὸς μύλην κινουμένη, --- and Kallimachus, (Hymn. ad Delum, 242,) — μηδ' 
ὅϑι δειλαὶ Δυστοκέες μογέουσιν ἀλετρίδες, ---- notice the overworked condition 
of these women. 

‘The “grinding slaves” (ἀλετρίδες) are expressly named in one of the 
Laws of Ethelbert, king of Kent, and constitute the second class in point of 
value among the female slaves (Law xi. Thorpe’s Ancient Laws and Insti 


tates of England, vol. i. p. 7). 
5 Odyss. iv. 131 xix. 235. 4 Odyss. vi. 96; Hymn. ad Démétr. 105 


100 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


manners: Rebecca, Rachel, and the daughters of Jethro, n the 
early Mosaic narrative, as well as the wife of the native Macedo- 
nian chief (with whom the Temenid Perdiccas, ancestor of Philip 
and Alexander, first took service on retiring from Argos’, baking 
ner own cakes on the hearth,' exhibit a parallel in this respect to 
the Homeric pictures. 

We obtain no particulars respecting either the common freemen 
generally, or the particular class of them called Thétes. These 
latter, engaged for special jobs, or at the harvest and other busy 
seasons of field labor, seem to have given their labor in exchange 
for board and clothing: they are mentioned in the same line with 


the slaves,2 and were (as has been just observed) probably on the 
whole little better off. ‘The condition of a poor freeman in those 
days, without a lot of land of his own, going about from one tem- 
porary job to another, and having no powerful family and no 


social authority to look up to for protection, must have been suf- 
ficiently miserable. When Eumzus indulged his expectation of 
being manumitted by his masters, he thought at the same time 
that they would give him a wife, a house, and a lot of land near 
to themselves ;3 without which collateral advantages, simple 
manumission might perhaps have been no improvement in his 
condition. ‘To be Théte in the service of a very poor farmer is 
selected by Achilles as the maximum of human hardship: such a 
person could not give to his Théte the same ample food, and good 
shoes and clothing, as the wealthy chief Eurymachus, while he 
would exact more severe labor.t It was probably among such 
smaller occupants, who could not advance the price necessary to 
purchase slaves, and were glad to save the cost of keep when 
they did not need service, that the Thétes found employment: 
though we may conclude that the brave and strong amongst these 
poor freemen found it preferable to accompany some freebooting 
chief and to live by the plunder acquired.5 The exact Hesiod 


' Herodot. viii. 137. * Odyss. iv. 643 3 Odyss. xiv. 64. 

4 Compare Odyss. xi. 490, with xviii. 358, Klytwmnéstra, in the Aga- 
memnén of JEschylus, preaches a something similar doctrine to Kassandra, — 
how much kinder the dpyasorAovro: δεσποταὶ were towards their slaves, 
than masters who had risen by unexpected prosperity (Agamemn. 1042). 

* Thueydid. i. 5, ἐτράποντο πρὸς λήστειαν. ἡγουμένων ἀνδρῶν ob τῶν 
ἐδυνατωτάτων, κέφδους τοῦ σφετέρου αὐτῶν ἕνεκα, καὶ τοῖς ἀσϑενέσι τροφῆς͵ 


COMMERCE AND NAVIGATION. 10] 


advises his farmer, whose work is chiefly performed by slaves, ta 
employ and maintain the Théte during summer-time, but to dis- 
miss him as soon as the harvest is completely got in, and then to 
take into his house for the winter a woman “ without any child ;” 
who would of course be more useful than the Théte for the indoor 
occupations of that season.! 

In a state of soci ty such as that which we have been describ- 
ing, Grecian commerce was necessarily trifling and restricted. 
The Homeric poems mark either total ignorance or great vague- 
ness of apprehension respecting all that lies beyond the coasts of 
Greece and Asia Minor, and the islands between or adjoining 
them. Libya and Egypt are supposed so distant as to be known 
only by name and hearsay: indeed, when the city of Kyrene 
was founded, a century and a half after the first Olympiad, it 
was difficult to find anywhere a Greek navigator who had ever 
visited the coast of Libya, or was fit to serve as guide to the 
colonists.2. The mention of the Sikels in the Odyssey, leads us to 


' Hesiod, Opp. Di. 459 — ἐφορμηϑῆναι, ὁμῶς ὅμῶές te καὶ aitog — and 

603 :— 
wesee.e-Adtap ἐπὴν δὴ 

Πάντα [βίον κατάϑηαι ἐπήρμενον ἔνδοϑι οἴκου, 

Ojta 7 ἀοικὸν ποιεῖσϑαι, καὶ ἅτεκνον ἔριϑον 

Δίζεσϑαι κέλομαι" χαλεπὴ δ᾽ ὑπόπορτις ἔριϑος. 
The two words Gocxkov ποιεῖσϑαι seem hear to be taken together in 
the sense of “dismiss the Théte,” or “make him houseless;” for when put 
out of his employer’s house, he had no residence of his own. Gédttling (ad 
loc.), Nitzsch (ad Odyss. iv. 643), and Lehrs (Quest. Epic. p. 205) all construe 
ἄοικον with ϑῆτα, and represent Hesiod as advising that the houseless Théte 
should be at that moment taken on, just at the time when the summer’s work 
was finished. Lehrs (and seemingly G6ttling also), sensible that this can 
never have been the real meaning of the poet, would throw out the two lines 
as spurious. I may remark farther that the translation of ϑὴς given by 
Gottling — villicus — is inappropriate: it includes the idea of superintendence 
over other laborers, which does not seem to have belonged to the Théte in 
any case. 

There were a class of poor free women who made their living by taking 
in wool to spin and perhaps to weave: the exactness cf their dealing, as well 
as the poor profit which they made, are attested by a touching Homeric 
simile (Iliad, xiii. 434). See Iliad, vi. 289; xxiii. 742. Odyss. xv. 414. 

3 Herodot. iv. 151. Compare Ukert, Geographie der Griechen und Romer, 


part i, pp. 16-19. 
Odyss. xx.383; xxiv. 210. The identity of the Homeric Scheria with 


102 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


conclude that Korkyra, Italy, and Sicily were not wholly urkuown 
to the poet: among seafaring Greeks, the knowledge of the 
latter implied the knowledge of the two former, — since the habi- 
tual track, even of a well-equipped Athenian trireme during the 
Peloponnesian war, from Peloponnésus to Sicily, was by Korkyra 
and the Gulf of Tarentum. The Phokzans, long afterwards, 
were the first Greeks who explored either the Adriatic or Tyr- 
rhenian sea.! Of the Euxine sea no knowledge is manifested in 
Homer, who, as a general rule, presents to us the names of dis- 
tant regions only in connection with romantic or monstrous ac- 
companiments. The Kretans, and still more the Taphians (who 
are supposed to have occupied the western islands off the coast of 
Acarnania), are mentioned as skilful mariners, and the Taphian 
Mentés professes to be conveying iron to Temesa to be there ex- 
changed for copper ;? but both Taphians and Kretans are more 
corsairs than traders. The strong sense of the dangers of the 


sea, expressed by the poet Hesiod, and the imperfect structure of 


the early Grecian ship, attested by Thucydidés (who points out 
the more recent date of that improved ship-building which pre 
vailed in his time), concur to demonstrate the then narrew TANS 
of nautical enterprise.‘ 

Such was the state of the Greeks, as traders, at a time wher 
Babylon combined a crowded and industrious population with 
extensive commerce, and when the Pheenician merchant-ships 
visited in one direction the southern coast of Arabia, perhaps 
even the island of Ceylon,—#in another direction, the British 


islands. 
The Pheenician, the kinsman of the ancient Jew, exhibits the 


type of character belonging to the latter, — with greater enterprise 


Korkyra, and that of the Homeric Thrinakia with Sicily, appear to me not 
at all made out. Both Weicker and Klausen treat the Phxakians as purely 
mythical persons (see W. ©. Miiller, De Corcyrxorum Republica, Gotting. 
1835, p. 9). 

' Herodot. i. 163. 

2 Nitzsch. ad Odyss. i. 181; Strabo, i. p. 6. The situation of Temesa, 
whether it is to be placed in Italy or in Cyprus, has been a disputed point 
amony critics, both ancient and modern. 

* Odyss. xv. 426. Τάφιοι, ληΐστορες ἄνδρες; and xvi. 426. Hymn ὦ 
Démeétér. ν. 123. 

* Hesiod. Opp. Di. 615-684; Thucyd. i. 13. 


THE PHC NICIANS. — INTERCHANGE. 103 


and ingenuity, and less of religious exclusiveness, yet still differ. 
ent from, and even antipathetic to, the character of the Greeks. 
In the Homeric poems, he appears somewhat like the Jew of the 
Middle Ages, a crafty trader, turning to profit the violence and 
rapacity of others, — bringing them ornaments, decorations, the 
finest and brightest products of the loom, gold, silver, electrum, 
ivory, tin, etc., in exchange for which he received landed produce, 
skins, wool, and slaves, the only commodities which even a 
wealthy Greek chief of those early times had to offer, — prepared 
at the same time for dishonest gain, in any manner which chance 
might throw in his way.! He is, however, really a trader, not 
undertaking expeditions with the deliberate purpose of surprise 
and plunder, and standing distinguished in this respect from the 
Tyrrhenian, Kretan, or Taphian pirate. ‘Tin, ivory, and electrum, 
all of which are acknowledged in the Homeric poems, were the 
fruit of Phcenician trade with the West as well as with the East.2 


' Odyss. xiv. 290; xv. 416. — 
Φοίνιξ ἧλϑεν ἀνὴρ, ἀπατήλια εἰδώς, 
'Τρώκτης, ὃς δὴ πολλὰ Kak’ ἀνϑρώποισιν ἐώργει. 

The interesting narrative given by Eumzus, of the manner in which he 
fell into slavery, is a vivid picture of Phoenician dealing (compare Herodot. 
i. 2-4. Iliad, vi. 290; xxiii. 743). Paris is reported to have visited Sidon, 
and brought from thence women eminent for skill at the loom. The Cyprian 
Verses (see the Ar®ment. ap. Duntzer, p. 17) affirmed that Paris had landed 
at Sidon. and attacked and captured the city. Taphian corsairs kidnapped 
slaves at Sidon (Odyss. xv. 424). 

The ornaments or trinkets (ἀϑύρματα) which the Pheenician merchant 
carries with him, seem to be the same as the δαίδαλα πολλὰ, Πόρπας τε 
γναμπτάς 8 ἕλικας, ete. which Héphestus was employed in fabricating 
(Iliad, xviii. 400) under the protection of Thetis. 

“ Fallacissimum esse genus Pheenicum omnia monumenta vetustatis atque 
omnes historiw nobis prodiderunt.” (Cicero, Orat. Trium. partes inedite, 
ed. Maii, 1815, p. 13.) 

? Ivory is frequently mentioned in Homer, who uses the word ἐλέφας ex- 
clusively to mean that substance, not to signify the animal. 

The art of dyeing, especially with the various shades of purple, was in 
after-ages one of the special excellences of the Phoenicians: yet Homer, 
where he alludes in a simile to dyeing or staining, introduces a Mzonian ot 
Karian woman as the performer of the process, not a Phoenician (Iliad, iv 
*41). 

What the e/ectrum named in the Homeric poems really is cannot be posi- 
tively determine. The word in antiquity meant two different things: 1 


104 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Thucydidés tells us that the Phoenicians and Karians, in very 
early periods, occupied many of the islands of the /Zgean, and 
we know, from the striking remnant of their mining works which 
Herodotus himself saw in Thasus, off the coast of Thrace, that 
they had once extracted gold from the mountains of that island, 
— at a period indeed very far back, since their occupation must 
have been abandoned prior to the settlement of the poet Archilo- 
chus.! Yet few of the islands in the A®gean were rich in such 
valuable products, nor was it in the usual course of Phoenician 
proceeding to occupy islands, except where there was an adjoining 
mainland with which trade could be carried on. The traffic of 
these active mariners required no permanent settlement, but as 
occasional visitors they were convenient, in enabling a Greek 
chief to turn his captives to account,—to get rid of slaves or 
friendless Thétes who were troublesome, — and to supply himself 
with the metals, precious as well as useful.2 ‘The halls of Alki- 


amber; 2, an impure gold, containing as much as one-fifth or more of silver 
(Pliny, H. N. xxxiii.4). The passages in which we read the word in the 
Odyssey do not positively exclude either of these meanings; but they present 
to us electrum so much in juxtaposition with gold and silver each separately, 
that perhaps the second meaning is more probable than the first. Herodotus 
anderstands it to mean amber (iii. 115): Sophoklés, on the contrary, employs 
it to designate a metal akin to gold (Antigone, 1033). 

See the dissertation of Buttmann, appended to hi collection of essays 
casted Mythologus, vol. ii. p. 337; also, Beckmann, History of Inventions, vol. 
iv. p. 12, Engl. Transl. “ ‘The ancients (observes the latter) used as a pecu- 
liar metal a mixture of gold and silver, because they were not acquainted 
with the art of separating them, and gave it the name of electrum.” Dr 
Thirlwall (Hist. of Greece, vol. i. p. 241) thinks that the Homeric electrum is 
amber ; on the contrary, Hiillmann thinks that it was a metallic substance 
(Handels, Geschichte der Griechen, pp. 63-81). 

Beckmann doubts whether the oldest κασσίτερος of the Greeks was really 
tin: he rather thinks that it was “the stannum of the Romans, the werk of 
eur smelting-houses, —- that is, a mixture of lead, silver, and other accidental 
metals.” (Ibid. p. 20). The Greeks of Massalia procured tin from Britain, 
through Gaul, by the Seine, the Saone, and the Rhone (Diodér. v. 22). 

1 Herodot. ii. 44; vi. 47. Archiloch. Fragm. 21-22, ed. Gaisf. G2nomaus 
ap. Euseb. Prep. Ev. vi. 7. Thucyd.i. 12 

The Greeks connected this Phcenician settlement in Thasus with the 
legend of Kadmus and his sister Eurépa: Thasas, the eponymus of the 
island, was brother of Kadmus. (Herod. #.) 

* The angry Laomedén threatens. when Poseidéa and Apollo ask from 


NATURE OF PHENICIAN TRADE. 105 


pous and Menelaus glitter with gold, copper, and electrum ; while 
large stocks of yet unemployed metal — gold, copper, and iron — 
are stored up in the treasure-chamber of Odysseus and other 
chiefs.!. Coined money is unknown to the Homeric age, — the 
trade carried on being one of barter. In reference also to the 
metals, it deserves fo be remarked that the Homeric descriptions 
aniversally suppose copper, and not iron, to be employed for 
aims, both offensive and defensive. By what process the copper 
was tempered and hardened, so as to serve the purposes of the 
warrior, we do not know; but the use of iron for these objects 
belongs to a later age, though the Works and Days of Hesiod 
suppose this change to have been already introduced. 


hi:n (at the expiration of their term of servitude) the stipulated wages of 
their labor, to cut off their ears and send them off to some distant islands 
(Iliad, xxi. 454). Compare xxiv. 752. Odyss. xx. 383; xviii. 83. 

1 Odyss. iv. 73; vii. 85; xxi. 61. Iliad, ii. 226, vi. 47. 

2 See Millin, Minéralogie Homerique, p. 74. That there are, however, 
modes of tempering copper, so as to impart to it the hardness of steel, has 
been proved by the experiments of the Comte de Caylus. 

The Massagete employed only copper —no iron—for their weapons 
(Herodot. i. 215). 

3 Hesiod, Opp. Di. 150-420. The examination of the various matters of 
antiquity discoverable throughout the north of Europe, as published by the 
Antiquarian Society of Copenhagen, recognizes a distinction of three sue- 
cessive ages: 1. Implements and arms of stone, bone, wood, ete. : little or 
no use of metals at all; clothing made of skins. 2. Implements and arms 
of copper and gold, or rather bronze and gold; little or no silver or iron. 
Articles of gold and electrum are found belonging to this age, but none of 
silver, nor any evidences of writing. 3. The age which follows this has be- 
longing to it arms of iron, articles of silver, and some Runic inscriptions : 
it is the last age of northern paganism, immediately preceding the introduc- 
tion of Christianity (Leitfaden zur Nordischen Alterthumskunde, pp. 31, 57, 
63, Copenhagen, 1837). 

The Homeric age coincides with the second of these two periods. Silver 
is comparatively little mentioned in Homer, while both bronze and gold are 
familiar metals. Iron also is rare, and seems employed only for agricultural 
purposes —Xpvodv re, χαλκόν te Gi > ἐσθῆτα 8 ὑφαντήν (Mliad, vi. 48; 
Odyss. ii. 338; xiii. 136). The χρῦσοχυσς and the χαλκεὺς are both men- 
tioned in Homer, but workers in silver and iron are not known by any special 
aame (Odyss. iii. 425-436). 

“The hatchet, wimble, plane, and level, are the tools mentioned by Homer, 
who appears to have been unacquainted with the saw, the square, and the 
compass.” (Gillies, Hist. of Greece, chap. ii. p. 61.) 


5* 


106 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The mode of fighting among the Homeric heroes is not lesa 
different from .he historical times, than the material of which 
their arms were composed. The Hoplites, or heavy-armed in- 
fantry of historical Greece, maintained a close order and well- 


d line, charging the enemy with their spears protended at 


dresse 
se conflict without breaking 


even distance, and coming thus to cl 
their rank: there were special troops, bowmen, 
armed with missiles, but the hoplite had no weapon t 
The heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey, on the 


this manner. 
contrary, habitually employ the spear as a missile, which they 


launch with tremendous force: each of them is mounted in his 
war-chariot, drawn by two horses, and caleulated to contain the 
and his charioteer; in which latter capacity a friend or 
Advancing in his 
he hurls his 


slingers, etc, 


0 employ in 


warrior 
comrade will sometimes consent to serve. 
chariot at ‘ull speed, in front of his own soldiers, 
against the enemy : sometimes, indeed, he will tight on toot, 


Spec 
war to receive him 


and hand to hand, but the chariot is usually 1 
a he chooses, or to insure his retreat. The Mass ot the Greeks 
and ‘Trojans, coming forward to the charge, without any regula 
evenly-mail tained line, make their attack in the same way 


δίο or 
Each chief wears habitually a long 


by hurling their spears. 


sword and a short dagger, besides his two spears to be launched 


forward, —the spear being also used, if occasion serves, as ὃ 
Every man is protected by shield, helmet, 
but the armor of the chiefs is greatly 
lves are 


weapon for thrust, 
breastplate, and greaves : 
superior to that of the common men, while they themse 
both stronger and more expert in the use of their weapons. 
There are a few bowmen, as rare exceptions, but the general 
equipment and proceeding is as here described. 

Such loose array, immortalized as it is in the Iliad, is familiar 
and the contrast which it presents, with those 


to every one, 
is charge which 


inflexible ranks, and that irresistible simultaneot 


bore down the Persian throne at Platewa and Kunaxa,' is such 
Lo) 3 


The Gauls, known to Polybius, seemingly the Cisalpine Gauls only, pos- 
sessed all their property in cattle and gold, — ϑρέμματα καὶ χρυσὸς, --- on 
rtability of both (Polyb. ii. 17). 
seems to conceive the Homeric mode 


of hurling the spear as still prevalent, — δόρυ 0” εὐτόλμως βάλλοντεςΓ 


account ot the easy transpo 
» ‘Tyrteus, in his military expressions, 


(Fragm. ix. Gaisford). Either he had his mind prepossessed with the Ho 


MILITARY AND CIVIL RETROSPEC1. 107 


as to illustrate forcibly the general difference between heroic 
and historical Greece. While in the former, a few splendid 
figures stand forward, in prominent relief, the remainder being a 
mere unorganized and ineffective mass, — in the latter, these ἔκ Ἢ 
have been combined into a system, in which every man ἌΡΑ 
and soldier, has his assigned place and duty, and the vicar 
when gained, is the joint work of all. Preéminent individual 
prowess is indeed materially abridged, if not wholly excluded vi 
no man can do more than maintain his station in the line ι but 
on the other hand, the grand purposes, aggressive or tients 
for which alone arms are taken up, become more οὐευτοῦ and 
easy, and long-sighted combinations of the general are γϑνδονοὶ 
for the first time practicable, when he has a disciplined body of 
men to obey him. In tracing the picture of civil society, we 
have to remark a similar transition —we pass from Heraklés 
Theseus, Jason, Achilles, to Solon, Pythagoras, and Pcie 
from “the shepherd of his people,” (to use the phrase in which 
Homer depicts the good side of the heroic king,) to the legislator 
who introduces, and the statesman who maintains, a miecoucerted 
system by which willing citizens consent to bind themselves. If 
commanding individual talent is not always to be found, the whole 
community is so trained as to be able to maintain its antes under 
inferior leaders 5 the rights as well as the duties of each citizen 
being predetermined in the social order, according to principles 
more or less wisely laid down. ‘The contrast is similar, and the 
transition equally remarkable, in the civil as in the military 
picture. In fact, the military organization of the Grecian repub- 
lies is an element of the greatest importance in respect to the 
conspicuous part which they have played in human affairs, —~ 


meric array, or else the close order and conjunct spears of the hoplites had 
not yet been introduced during the second Messenian war. 

Thiersch and Schneidewin would substitute πάλλοντες in place of βάλ 
λοντες. Euripidés (Androm, 695) has a similar expression, yet it does n 
apply well to hoplites ; for one of the virtues of the hoplite consisted in bow 
rying his spear steadily: δοράτων κίνησις betokens a disorderly march a 
en want of Loe courage and self- possession. See the remarks of ‘Bre: 
" ΗΝ upon the ranks of the Athenians under Kleon at Amphipolis (Thucyd 

1 Euripid. Andromach. 696, 


108 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


their superiority over other contemporary natiens in this respeci 
being hardly less striking than it is in many others, as we shall 
have occasion to see in a subsequent stage of this history. 

Even at the most advanced point of their tactics, the Greeks 
could effect little against a walled city, whilst the heroic weapons 
and array were still less available for such an undertaking as a 
Fortifications are a feature of the age deserving conside- 


siege. 
There was a time, we are told, in which the prim- 


rable notice. 
itive Greek towns or villages derived a precarious security, not 
from their walls, but merely from sites lofty and difficult of ac- 
sess. They were not built immediately upon the shore, or close 
upon any convenient landing-place, but at some distance inland, 


on a rock or elevation which could not be approached without 


notice or scaled without difficulty. It was thought suflicient at 


that time to guard against piratical or marauding surprise : but as 
the state of society became assured,— as the chance of sudden 
assault comparatively diminished and industry increased,— these 
uninviting abodes were exchanged for more convenient sites on 
the plain or declivity beneath ; or a portion of the latter was in- 
closed within larger boundaries and joined on to the original 
foundation, which thus became the Acropolis of the new town. 
Thébes, Athens, Argos, etc., belonged to the latter class of cities ; 
but there were in many parts of Greece deserted sites on hill- 
tops, still retaining, even in historical times, the traces of former 
habitation, and some of them still bearing the name of the old 
towns. Among the mountainous parts of Kréte, in Agina and 
Rhodes, in portions of Mount Ida and Parnassus, similar rem- 


nants might be perceived.! 


1H παλαιὰ πόλις in gina (Herodot. vi. 88), ᾿Αστυπώλαια in Samus 
(Polyzen. i. 23. 2, Etymol. Magn. v. ᾿Αστυπώλαια): it became seemingly the 


acropolis of the subsequent city. 
About the deserted sites in the lofty regions of Kréte, see Theophrastus, 


De Ventis, v 13, ed. Schneider, p 762 

The site of Παλαίσκηψις in Mount Ida, — ἐπάνω Κέβρηνος κατὰ τὸ μετεω- 
ρότατον τῆς Ἴδης (Strabo, xiii. p. 607), ὕστερον δὲ κατωτέρω σταδίοις ἐξῆ- 
κοντα εἰς τὴν νῦν Σκῆψιν μετωκίσϑησαν. Paphos in Cyprus was the same 
distance below the ancient Pale-Paphos (Strabo, xiv. p. 683). 

Near Mantineia in Arcadia was situated ὄρος ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ, τὰ ἐρείπια Ere 
Μαντινείας ἔχον τῆς ἀρχαίας - καλεῖται δὲ τὸ χώριον ἐφ᾽ ἡμῶν Πτόλις (Pausan. 
viii. 12,4) See a similar statement about the lofty sites of the anciect 


SITES OF TOWNS. 100 


Probably, in such primitive hill villages, a continuous circle of 
wall would hardly be required as an additional means of defence, 
and would often be rendered very difficult by the rugged nature 
of the ground. But Thucydidés represents the earliest Greeks 
— those whom he conceives anterior to the Trojan war —as liv- 
ing thus universally in unfortified villages, chiefly on account of 
their poverty, rudeness, and thorough carelessness for the mor- 
row. Oppressed, and held apart from each other by perpetual 
fear, they had not yet contracted the sentiment of fixed abodes: 
they were unwilling even to plant fruit-trees because of the un- 
certainty of gathering the produce,— and were always ready to 
dislodge, because there was nothing to gain by staying, and a bare 
subsistence might be had any where. He compares them to the 
mountaineers of A®tolia and of the Ozolian Lokris in his own 
time, who dwelt in their unfortified hill villages with little or no 
intercommunication, always armed and fighting, and subsisting 
on the produce of their cattle and their woods,!' — clothed in un- 
dressed hides, and eating raw meat. 

The picture given by Thucydidés, of these very early and un- 


town of Orchomenus (in Arcadia) (Paus. viii. 13, 2), of Nonakris (viii. 17, 
5,) of Lusi (viii. 18, 3), Lykoreia on Parnassus (Paus. x. 6,2; Strabo, ix. 
1. 418). 

Compare also Plate, Legg. iii. 2, pp. 678-679, who traces these lofty and 
craggy dwellings, general among the earliest Grecian townships, to the com- 
mencement of human society after an extensive deluge, which had covered 
all the lower grounds and left only a few survivors. 

'Toucyd. i. 2. Φαίνεται γὰρ ἡ νῦν "Ελλὰς καλουμένη, ob πάλαι βεβαίως 
οἰκουμένη, ἀλλὰ μεταναστάσεις τε οὖσαι τὰ πρότερα, καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἕκαστοι τὴν 
ἑαυτῶν ἀπολείποντες, βιαζύμενοι ὑπὸ τινῶν ἀεὶ πλειόνων" τῆς γὰρ ἐμπορίας 
οὐκ οὔσης, οὐδ᾽ ἐπιμιγνύντες ἀδεῶς ἀλλήλοις, οὔτε κατὰ γῆν οὔτε διὰ ϑαλάσσης, 
νεμόμενοι δὲ τὰ αὐτῶν ἕκαστοι ὅσον ἀποζῇν, καὶ περιουσίαν χρημάτων οὐκ 
ἔχοντες οὐδὲ γῆν φυτεύίοντες, ἄδηλον ὃν ὅποτέ τις ἐπελϑὼν, καὶ ἀτειχίστων 
ἅμα ὄντων, ἄλλος ἀφαιρήσεται, τῆς τε Ka’ ἡμέραν ἀναγκαίου τροφῆς παντα»- 
χοῦ ἂν ἡγούμενοι ἐπικρατεῖν, οὐ χαλεπῶς ἀπανίσταντο, καὶ δι αὐτὸ οὔτε 
μεγέϑει πόλεων ἴσχυον, οὔτε τῇ ἄλλῃ παρασκευῇ. 

About the distant and unfortified villages and rude habits of the ΑΑὐτο] απ 
and Lokrians, see Thucyd. iii. 94; Pausan. x. 38,3. also of the Cisalpine 
Gauls, Polyb. ii. 17. 

Both Thucydidés and Aristotle seem to have conceived the Homeric period 
as mainly analogous to the βάρβαροι of their own day —Avee ῥ᾽ ᾿Αριστοτέ- 
λης λέγων, ὅτι τοιαῦτα ἀεὶ ποιεῖ Ὅμηρος οἷα ἣν tore’ ἣν δὲ τοιαυτα τὸ 
παλαιὰ οἱάπερ καὶ νῦν ἐν τοῖς βαοβάροις (Sckol. Iliad. x. 151). 


110 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


recorded times, can only be taken as conjectural,— the conjectures, 
indeed, of a statesman and a philosopher,— generalized too, in 
part, from the many particular instances of contention and expul- 
sion of chiefs which he found in the old legendary poems. The 
Homeric poems, however, present to us a different picture. They 
recognize walled towns, fixed abodes, strong local attachments, 
hereditary individual property in land, vineyards planted and 
carefully cultivated, established temples of the gods, and splendid 
palaces of the chiefs.!| The description of ‘Thucydides belongs 
to a lower form of society, and bears more analogy to that which 
the poet himself conceives as antiquated and barbarous,— to the 
savage Cyclopes, who dwell on the tops of mountains, in hollow 
caves, without the plough, without vine or fruit culture, without 
arts or instruments,— or to the primitive settlement of Dardanus 
son of Zeus, on the higher ground of Ida, while it was reserved 
for his descendants and successors to found the holy Ilium on the 
plain.2 Ilium or Troy represents the periection of Homeric soci- 
ety. It is a consecrated spot, containing temples of the gods as 
well as the palace of Priam, and surrounded by walls which are 
the fabric of the gods ; while the antecedent form of ruder society, 
which the poet briefly glances at, is the parallel of that which the 
theory of Thucydidés ascribes to his own early semi-barbarous 
ancestors. 

Walled towns serve thus as one of the evidences, that a large 


part of the population of Greece had, even in the Homeric 
times, reached a level higher than that of the A®tolians and Lok- 
The remains of Mykénz and 


rians of the days of Thucydides. 
Tiryns demonstrate the massy and Cyclopian style of architecture 
employed in those early days: but we may remark that, while 
modern observers seem inclined to treat the remains of the former 
as very imposing, and significant of a great princely family, Thu- 
tydidés, on the contrary, speaks of it as a small place, and labors 


1 Odyss. vi. 10; respecting Nausithous, y ast king of the Pheakians: 


"Audi δὲ τεῖχος ἔλασσε πόλει, κεὶ ἐδείματο οἴκους, 
Καὶ νηοὺς ποίησε ϑεῶν, καὶ ἐδώσσατ᾽ ἀρούρας. 

The vineyard, olive-ground, and garden cf Laértes, is a model of careful 
cultivation (Odyss. xxiv. 245); see also the shield of Achi/lrs ( liad, xvid. 
641-580), and the Kalydonian plain (Iliad, ix. 575). 

" Odvss. x. 106-115; Iliad, xx. 216. 


DEFENCE AGAINST AGGRESSION 111 


to elude the inference, which might be deduced from its insignifi- 
cant size, in disproof of the grandeur of Agamemnon.! Such 
fortifications supplied a means of defence incomparably superior 
to those of attuck. Indeed, even in historical Greece, and after 
the invention of battering engines, no city could be taken except 
by surprise or blockade, or by ruining the country around, and 
thus depriving the inhabitants of their means of subsistence. 
And in the two great sieges of the legendary time, Troy and 
Thébes, the former is captured by the stratagem of the wooden 
horse, while the latter is evacuated by its citizens, under the 
warning of the gods, after their defeat in the field. 

This decided superiority of the means of defence over those of 
attack, in rude ages, has been one of the grand promotive causes 
both of the growth of civic life and of the general march of hu- 
man improvement. It has enabled the progressive portions of 
mankind not only to maintain their acquisitions against the pre- 
datory instincts of the ruder and poorer, and to surmount the 
difficulties of incipient organization,— but ultimately, when their 
organization has been matured, both to acquire predominance, and 
to uphold it until their own disciplined habits have in part passed 
to their enemies. ‘The important truth here stated is illustrated 
not less by the history of ancient Greece, than by that of modern 
Europe during the Middle Ages. The Homeric chief, combining 
superior rank with superior force, and ready to rob at every con- 
venient opportunity, greatly resembles the feudal baron of the 
Middle Ages, but circumstances absorb him more easily intoa city 
lite, and convert the independent potentate into the member of a 
governing aristocracy.2 Traflic by sea continued to be beset with 


1 Thucyd.i. 10. Kai ὅτι μὲν Μυκῆναι μικρὸν ἣν, ἢ εἴ τι τῶν τότε πόλισμα 
μὴ ἀξιοχρέων δοκεῖ εἶναι, ete. 

* Nagelsbach, Homerische Theologie, Abschn. ν. sect. 54. Hesiod strongly 
sondemns robbery, — Acc ἀγαϑη, ἅρπαξ δὲ κακὴ, ϑανάτοιο δότειρα (Opp. Di. 
356, comp. 320); but the sentiment of the Grecian heroic poetry seems not 
to go against it,— it is looked upon as a natural employment of superior 
force, — Αὐτόματοι δ᾽ ἀγαϑοὶ δειλῶν ἐπὶ δαῖτας ἴασιν (Athene. v. p. 178; 
comp. Pindar, Fragm. 48, ed. Dissen.): the long spear, sword, an! breast- 
plate, of the Kretan Hybreas, constitute his wealth (Skolion 27, p. 877 ; Poet. 
Lyric. ed. Bergk), wherewith he ploughs and reaps, — while the u swarlike, 
who dare not or cannot wield these weapons, fall at his feet, and call him 
Ihe Great King. The feeling is different in the later age of Demétring 


112 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


danger from pirates, long after it had become tolerably assured 
by land: the “wet ways” have always been the last resort of 
lawlessness and violence, and the A®gean, in particular, has in all 
times suffered more than other waters under this calamity. 
Aggressions of the sort here described were of course most 
numerous in those earliest times when the A®gean was not yet 
an Hellenic sea, and when many of the Cyclades were occupied, 
not by Greeks, but by Karians,— perhaps by Phoenicians: the 
number of Karian sepulchres discovered in the sacred island of 


Poliorkétés (about 310 B. 0.): in the Ithyphallic Ode, addressed to him at his 
entrance into Athens, robbery is treated as worthy only of tolians : — 


Αἰτωλικὸν γὰρ ἁρπάσαι τὰ τῶν πέλας, 
Νυνὶ δὲ, καὶ τὰ πόῤῥω. ---- 
(Poet. Lyr. xxv. p. 453, ed. Schneid.) 


The robberies of powerful men, and even highway robbery generally 
found considerable approving sentiment in the Middle Ages. “All Europe 
(observes Mr. Hallam, Hist. Mid. Ag. ch. viii. part 3, p. 247) was a scene of 
intestine anarchy during the Middle Ages: and though England was far less 
exposed to the scourge of private war than most nations on the continent, 
we should find, could we recover the local annals of every country, such an 
accumulation of petty rapine and tumult, as would almost alienate us from 
the liberty which served to engender it Highway robbery was from 
the earliest times a sort of national crime..... .We know how long the out 
laws of Sherwood lived in tradition; men who, like some of their betters, 
have been permitted to redeem, by a few acts of generosity, the just ignominy 
of extensive crimes. These, indeed, were the heroes of vulgar applause ; but 
when such a judge as Sir John Fortescue could exult, that more Englishmen 
were hanged for robbery in one year than French in seven, — and that, if an 
Englishman be poor, and see another having riches, which may be taken from him 
by might, he will not spare to do so,— it may be perceived how thoroughly 
these sentiments had pervaded the public mind.” 

The robberies habitually committed by the noblesse of France and Ger- 
many during the Middle Ages, so much worse than anything in England, — 
and those of the highland chiefs even in later times, — are too well known to 
need any references: as to France, an ample eatalogue is set forth in 
Dulaure’s Histoire de la Noblesse (Paris, 1792). The confederations of the 
German cities chiefly originated in the necessity of keeping the roads and 
“vers open for the transit of men and goods against the nobles who infested 
tue fn roads. Scaliger might have found a parallel to the λῃσταὶ of the 
herox uges in the noblesse of la Rouergue, as it stood even in the 16th 
conttry, which he thus describes: “In Comitatu Rodez pessimi sunt 

, } litvocinatur: nee p¢ssunt reprimi.” (ap. Dulaure, c. 9.) 


PIRACY 118 


Delus seems to attest such occupation as an historical fact.) Ac 
cording to the legendary account, espoused both by Herodotus 
and by Thucydides, it was the Kretan Minds who subdued these 
islands and established his sons as rulers in them; either expel- 
ling the Karians, or reducing them to servitude and tribute? 
Thucydidés presumes that he must of course have put down 
piracy, in order to enable his tribute to be remitted in safety, 
like the Athenians during the time of their hegemony.3 Upon 


the legendary thalassocraty of Minds, I have already remarked 
in another place:4 it is sufficient here to repeat, that, in the 
Ifomeric poems (long subsequent to Minds in the current chro- 
nology), we find piracy both frequent and held in honorable esti- 
mation, as Thucydidés himself emphatically tells us, — remarking, 

᾽ 


moreover, that the vessels of those early days were only half 
decked, built and equipped after the piratical fashion, in a man- 
ner upon which the nautical men of his time looked back with 
disdain. Improved and enlarged shipbuilding, and the trireme, 
or ship with three banks of oars, common for warlike purposes 

- τὸ > = ei, . νὰ 5 . . . 
during the Persian invasion, began only with the growing skill, 
activity, and importance of the Corinthians, three quarters of a 
century after the first Olympiad.6 Corinth, even in the Homeric 
poems, is distinguished by the epithet of wealthy, which it ac- 
quired principally from its remarkable situation on the Isthmus, 
and 8 om its two harbors of Lechzeum and Kenchrex, the one on 
the Corinthian, the other on the Sardnic gulf. It thus supplied 
@ convenient connection between Epirus and Italy on the one 
side, and the /®gean sea on the other, without imposing upon 
the unskilful and timid navigator of those days the necessity of 
circumnavigating Peloponnésus. 

The extension of Grecian traffic and shipping is manifested 


* Thucyd. i. 4-8. τῆς viv "Ελληνικῆς ϑαλάσεης. 

" Herodot. i. 171; Thucyd. i. 4-8. Isokratés (Panathenaic. p. 241) takes 
credit to Athens for having finally expelled the Karians out of these islands 
at the time of the Ionic emigration. 

* Thucyd. i. 4. τό τε λῃστικὸν ὡς εἰκὸς, καϑήρει ἐκ τῆς ϑαλάσσης ἐφ 
ὅσον ἠδύνατο, τοῦ τὰς προσόδους μᾶλλον ἰέναι αὐτῷ. 

4 See the preceding volume of this History, Chap. xii. p. 227. 

δ Thucyd. i. 10. τῷ παλαιῷ τρόπῳ λῃστρικώτερον παρεσκευασμένα. 

5. Thucyd. i. 13. 

VOL. I. Soc. 


114 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


by a comparison of the Homeric with the Hesiodic poems; 1 
respect to knowledge of places and countries, — the latter being 
probably referable to dates between B. c. 740 and B. c. 640. In 
Homer, acquaintance is shown (the accuracy of such acquaint- 
ance, however, being exaggerated by Strabo and other friendly 
critics) with continental Greece and its neighboring islands, with 
Kréte and the principal islands of the A°gean, and with Thrace, 
the Troad, the Hellespont, and Asia Minor between Paphlagonia 
northward and Lykia southward. The Sikels are mentioned in 
the Odyssey, and Sikania in the last book of that poem, but no- 
thing is said to evince a knowlege of Italy or the realities of the 
western world. Libya, Egypt, and Phenike, are known by 
name and by vague hearsay, but the Nile is only mentioned as 
“the river Egypt :” while the Euxine sea is not mentioned at 
all.! In the Hesiodie poems, on the other hand, the Nile, the 
Ister, the Phasis, and the Eridanus, are all specified by name ;? 
Mount £tna, and the island of Ortygia near to Syracuse, the 
Tyrrhenians and Ligurians in the west, and the Seythians in the 
north, were also noticed.? Indeed, within forty years after the 
first Olympiad, the cities of Korkyra and Syracuse were founded 
from Corinth, — the first of a numerous and powerful series of 
colonies, destined to impart a new character both to the south of 
Italy and to Sicily. 

In reference to the astronomy and physics of the Homeric 
Greek, it has already been remarked that he connected together 
the sensible phenomena which form the subject matter of these 
sciences by threads of religious and personifying fiacy, to which 
the real analogies among them were made subordinate; and that 
these analogies did not begin to be studied by themselves, apart 


1 See Voelcker, Homerische Geographic, ch. iii. sect. 55-63. He has 
brought to bear much learning and ingenuity to identify the places visited 
by Odysseus with real lands, but the attempt is not successful. Compare 
also Ukert, Hom. Geog. vol. i. p. 14, and the valuable treatises of J. H 
Voss, Alte Weltkunde, annexed to the second volume of his Kritische Blat- 
ter (Stuttgart, 1828), pp. 245-413. Voss is the father of just views respect 
ing Homeric geography. 

* Hesiod. Theog. 338-340. : 

3 Hesiod. Theogon. 1016; Hesiod. Fragm. 190-194, ed. Gottling ; Strabo, 
1. p. 16; vii. p. 300 Compare Ukert, Geographie der Griechen und Romer, 
bn. 37. 

VoL. 2 4 


HOMERIC ASTRONOMY. 115 


from the religious element by which they had been at first over- 
laid, until the age of Thales, — coinciding as that period did 
with the increased opportunities for visiting Egypt and the inte- 
rior of Asia. ‘The Greeks obtained access in both of these coun- 
tries to an enlarged stock of astronomical observations, to the use 
of the gnomon, or sundial,! and to a more exact determination 
of the length of the solar year,? than that which served as the 


1 The Greeks learned from the Babylonians, πόλον καὶ γνώμονα καὶ τὰ 
δυωκαίδεκα μέρεα τῆς ἡμέρης (THerodot. ii. 109). In my first edition, I had 
interpreted the word πόλον in Herodotus erroneously. I now believe it to 
mean the same as horologium, the circular plate upon which the vertical 
enomon projected its shadow, marked so as to indicate the hour of the day, 
—+welve hours between sunrise and sunset: see Ideler, Handbuch de: Chro- 
nologie, vol. i. p. 233. Respecting the opinions of Thales, see the same 
work, part ii. pp. 18-57; Plutarch. de Placit. Philosophor. ii. c. 12, Arstot. 
de Colo, ii. 13. Costard, Rise and Progress of Astronomy among the 
Ancients, p. 99. 

2 We have very little information respecting the early Grecian mode of 
computing time, and we know that though all the different states computed 
by lunar periods, yet most, if not all, of them had ditferent names of months 
as well as different days of beginning and ending theie months. All their 
immediate computations, however, were made by months: the lunar period 
was their immediate standard of reference for determining their festivals 
and for other purposes, the solar period being resorted to only as a correc: 
tive, to bring the same months constantly into the same seasons of the year 
Their original month had thirty days, and was divided into three decades, as 
it continued to be during the times of historical Athens (Hesiod. Opp. Di. 
766). In order to bring this lunar period more nearly into harmony with 
the sun, they intercalated every year an additional month: so that their 
years included alternately twelve months and thirteen months, each month 
of thirty days. This period was called a Dieteris, — sometimes a Trieteris 
Solon is said to have first introduced the fashion of months differing in 
length, varying alternately from thirty to twenty-nine days. It appears, how- 
ever, that Herodotus had present to his mind the Dieteric cycle, or years 
alternating between thirteen months and twelve months (each month of 
thirty days), and no other (Herodot. i. 32; compare ii. 104). As astrono- 
mical knowledge improved, longer and more elaborate periods were calcu- 
lated, exhibiting a nearer correspondence between an integral namber of 
lunations and an integral number of solar years. First, we find a period of 
four years; next, the Octaéteris, or period of eight years, or seventy-nine 
lunar months; lastly, the Metonic period of nineteen years, or 235 lunar 
months. How far any of these larger periods were ever legally authorized, 
or brought into civil usage, even at Athens, is matter of much doubt. Ses 
Ideler, Uber die Astronomischen Beobachtungen der Alten, pp, 175-195: 


Macrobius, Saturnal. i. 18. 


116 HISTORY OF GREECR. 


basis of their various lunar periods. It is pretended that Thales 
was the first who predicted an eclipse of the sun, — not, indeed, 
accurately, but with large limits of error as to the time of its 
occurrence, — and that he also possessed so profound an acquaint- 
ance with meteorological phenomena and probabilities, as to be 
able to foretell an abundant crop of olives for the coming year 
and to realize a large sum of money by an olive speculation.' 
From Thales downward we trace a succession of astronomical 
and physical theories, more or less successful, into which I do 
not intend here to enter: it is sufficient at present to contrast 
the father of the Ionic philosophy with the times preceding him 
and to mark the first commencement of scientific prediction ance 
the Greeks, however imperfect at the outset, as distinguished 
from the inspired dicta of prophets or oracles, and trom those 
special signs of the purposes of the gods, which formed the habit- 
ual reliance of the Homeric man.2 We shall see these two modes 
of anticipating the future, —one based upon the philosophical 
the other upon the religious appreciation of μδόσνοι <= iano 
simultaneously on throughout Grecian history, and sharing be- 
tween them in unequal portions the empire of the Greek mind ; 
the former acquiring both greater predominance and wider anil. 
cation among the intellectual men, and partially restricting, but 
never abolishing, the spontaneous employment of the latter pe 
the vulgar. Υ͂ 
Neither coined money, nor the art of Writing,’ nor painting 
nor sculpture, nor imaginative architecture, belong to the Ho. 
meric and Hesiodic times. Such rudiments of arts, destined 
ultimately to acquire so great a development in Greece, as may 
have existed in these early days, served only as a sort of nucleus 
to the fancy of the poet, to shape out for himself the fabulous 


 Herodot. i. 74; Arist >t. Polit. i. 4, 5. 
* Odyss. iii. 173. — 
Ἢ τέομεν δὲ ϑεὸν φαίνειν τέρας: αὐτὰρ by’ ἡμῖν 
Δεῖξε, καὶ ἠνώγει πέλαγος μέσον εἰς Εὔβοιαν 
Τέμνειν, ete. 
Compare Odyss. xx. 100; Iliad, i. 62; Earip. Suppl. 216-230. 
' The σήματα λυγρὰ mentioned in the Iliad,-vi. 168, if they prove any: 
thing, are rather an evidenve against, than for, the existence of al phabetica/ 
writing at the times when the Iliad was composed 


EPIC POETRY. 117 


creations ascribed to Hephestus or Dedalus. No statues of the 
gods, not even of wood, are mentioned in the Homeric poems. 
All the many varieties, in Grecian music, poetry, and dancing, — 
the former chiefly borrowed from Lydia and Phrygia, — date 
from a period considerably later than the first Olympiad: Ter- 
pander, the earliest musician whose date is assigned, and the in- 
ventor of the harp with seven strings instead of that with four 
strings, does not come until the 26th Olympiad, or 676 B.c.: the 
poet Archilochus is nearly of the same date. The iambic and 
elegiac metres — the first deviations from the primitive epic strain 
and subject — do not reach up tothe year 700 B.C. 

It is this epic poetry which forms at once both the undoubted 
prerogative and the solitary jewel of the earliest era of Greece. 
Of the many epic poems which existed in Greece during the 
eight century before the Christian era, none have been preserved 
except the Iliad and Odyssey: the Acthiopis of Arktinus, the 
Ilias Minor of Lesches, the Cyprian Verses, the Capture of 
(Echalia, the Returns of the Heroes from Troy, the Thébais and 
the Epigoni,— several of them passing in antiquity under the 
name of Homer, — have all been lost. But the two which re- 
main are quite sufficient to demonstrate in the primitive Greeks, 
a mental organization unparalleled in any other people, and pow- 
ers of invention and expression which prepared, as well as fore- 
boded, the future eminence of the nation in all the various de- 
partments to which thought and language can be applied. Great 
as the power of thought afterwards became among the Greeks, 
their power of expression was still greater: in the former, other 
nations have built upon their foundations and surpassed them, — 
in the latter, they still remained unrivalled. It is not too much 
to say that this flexible, emphatic, and transparent character of 
the language as an instrument of communication, — its perfect 
aptitude for narrative and discussion, as well as for stirring all 
the veins of human emotion without ever forfeiting that character 
of simplicity which adapts it to all men and all times, — may be 
traced mainly to the existence and the wide-spread influence of 
the Iliad and Odyssey. To us, these compositions are interesting 
as beautiful poems, depicting life and manners, and unfolding cer- 
tain types of character with the utmost vivacity and artlessness: 
to their original hearer, they possesse¢ all these sources of attrac 


118 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


tion, together with others more powerful still, to which we are 
now strangers. Upon him, they bore with the full weight and 
solemnity of history and religion combined, while the charm of 
the poetry was only secor dary and instrumental. The poet was 
tlien the teacher and preacher of the community, not simply the 
amuser of their leisure hours: they looked to him for revelations 
ef the unknown past and for expositions of the attributes and 
dispensations of the gods, just as they consulted the prophet for 
his privileged insight into the future. The ancient epic com- 
prised many different poets and poetical compositions, which ful- 
filled this purpose with more or less completeness: but it is the 
exclusive prerogative of the Iliad and Odyssey, that, after the 
minds of men had ceased to be in full harmony with their original 
design, they yet retained their empire by the mere force of secon- 
dary excellences: while the remaining epics — though serving 
as food for the curious, and as storehouses for logographers, 
tragedians, and artists — never seem to have acquired very wide 
popularity even among intellectual Greeks. 

I shall, in the succeeding chapter, give some account of the 


epic cycle, of its relation to the Homeric poems, and of the 
genera’ evidences respecting the Istter, both as to antiquity and 
authorship. 


CHAPTER XX. 
GRECLAN EPIC.— HOMERIC POEMS. 


At the head of the once abundant epical cempositions of 
Greece, most of them unfortunately lost, stand the Iliad and 
Odyssey, with the iramortal name of Homer attached to each 
of them, embracing separate portions of the comprehensive 
legend of Troy. They form the type of what may be called 
the heroic epic of the Greeks, as distinguished from the gene- 
alogical, in which latter species some of the Hesiodic poems - 
the Catalogue of Women, the Eoiai, and the Naupaktia—~ 


DIDACTIC HEXAMETER POETRY. 119 


stood conspicuous. Poems of the Homeric charact:r (if so it 
may be called, though the expresssion is very indefinite,)— being 
confined to one of the great events, or great personages of Gre 
cian legendary antiquity, and comprising a limited number of 
characters, all contemporaneous, made some approach, more or less 
successful, to acertain poetical unity ; while the Hesiodic poems, 
tamer in their spirit, and unconfined both as to time and as to 
persons, strung together distinct events without any obvious view 
to concentration of interest,— without legitimate beginning or 
end.! Between these two extremes there were many gradations : 
biographical poems, such as the Herakleia, or Theseis, recounting 
all the principal exploits performed by one single hero, present a 
character intermediate between the two, but bordering more 
closely on the Hesiodic. Even the hymns to the gods, which 
pass under the name of Homer, are epical fragments, narrating 
particular exploits or adventures of the god commemorated. 

Both the didactic and the mystico-religious poetry of Greece 
began in Hexameter verse,—the characteristic and consecrated 
measure of the epic:? but they belong to a different species, and 
burst out from a different vein in the Grecian mind. It seems to 
have been the more common belief among the historical Greeks, 
that such mystic effusions were more ancient than their narrative 
poems, and that Orpheus, Muszus, Linus, Olén, Pamphus, ind 
even Hesiod, ete., etc., the reputed composers of the former, were 
of earlier date than Homer. But there is no evidence to sustain 
this opinion, and the presumptions are all against it. ‘Those com- 
positions, which in the sixth century before the Christian era 
passed under the name of Orpheus and Muszus, seem to have 
been unquestionably post-Homeric, nor can we even admit the 
modified conclusion of Hermann, Ulrici, and others, that the 
mystic poetry as a genus (putting aside the particular composi- 
tions falsely ascribed to Orpheus and others) preceded in order 
of time the narrative.% 


' Aristot. Poet. c. 17-37. He points out and explains the superior struc 
ture of the Iliad and Odyssey, as compared with the semi Homeric and bio 
graphical poems : but he takes no notice of the Hesiodic, or genealogical. 

3 Aristot. Poetic. c. 41. He considers the Hexameter to be the natural 
meusure of narrative poetry: any other would be unseemly. 

3 Ulrici, Geschichte des Griechischen Epos, 5te Vorlesung, pp. 96-106 
G. Hermann, Ueber Homer und Sappho. in his Opuscula, tom. vi 3. 87. 


120 AIS TUKY OF GREECE. 


Besides the Ilicd and Odyssey, we make out the titles of 
about thirty lost epic poems, sometimes with a brief hint of their 
contents. 

Concerning the legenl of Troy there were five: the Cyprian 
Verses, the /Ethiopis, and the Capture of Troy, both ascribed to 
Arktinus ; the lesser Iliad, ascribed to Leschéz; the Returns (of 
the Heroes from Troy), to which the name of Hagias of Troezén 
is attached ; and the Telegonia, by Eugammon, a continuation of 
the Odyssey. ‘T'wo poems,— the Thebais and the Epigoni (per- 
haps two parts of one and the same poem) were devoted to the 
legend of Thebés,— the two sieges of that city by the Argeians. 
Another poem, called Cidipodia, had for its subject the tragical 
destiny of Cédipus and his family; and perhaps that which is 
cited as EKurdépia, or verses on Eurdpa, may have comprehended 
the tale of her brother Kadmus, the mythical founder of Thebés.! 

The exploits of Héraklés were celebrated in two compositions, 
each called Hérakleia, by Kinzthén and Pisander,— probably 
also in many others, of which the memory has not been preserved. 
The capture of Céchalia, by Héraklés, formed the subject of a 
separate epic. ‘Two other poems, the Agimius and the Minyas, 
are supposed to have been founded on other achievements of this 
hero,— the effective aid which he lent to the Dorian king Agi- 
mius against the Lapithie, his descent to the under-world for the 
purpose of rescuing the imprisoned Théseus, and his conquest of 
the city of the Minyz, the powerful Orchomenus.? 

Other epic poems — the Phordénis, the Danais, the Alkmzxdnis, 
the Atthis, the Amazonia — we know only by name, and can just 
guess obscurely at their contents so far as the name indicates.3 


The superior antiquity of Orpheus as compared with Ifomer passed as a 
received position to the classical Romans (Horat. Art. Poet. 392). 

1 Respecting these lost epics, see®Diintzer, Collection of the Fragmenta 
Epicor. Greecoruam ; Wiillner, De Cyclo Epico, pp. 43-66; and Mr. Fynes 
Clinton’s Chronology. vol. iii. pp. 349-359. 

* Welcker, Der Epische Kyklus, pp. 256-266; Apollodo6r. ii. 7, 7; Diodér 
iv. 37; O. Maller, Dorians, i. 28. 

3 Welcker (Der Epische Kyklus, p. 209) considers the Alkmaénis as the 
same with the Epigoni, and the Atthis of Hegesinous the same with the 
Amazonia: in Suidas (v. Ὅμηρος) the latter is among the poems ascribed to 
Homer. 

Leutsch (Thebaidos Cyclic Reliquis, pp. 12-14) views the Thebats and 
the Epigoni as different parts of the same poem. 


GRECIAN EPIC. 121 


The Titanomachia, the Gigantomachia, and the Corinthiaca, 
three compositions all ascribed to Eumélus, afford by means of 
their titles an idea somewhat clearer of the matter which they 
comprised. ‘The Theogony ascribed to Hesiod still exists, though 
partially corrupt and mutilated: but there seem to have been 
other poems, now lost, of the like import and title. 

Of the poems composed in the Hesiodic style, diffusive and 
full of genealogical detail, the principal were, the Catalogue of 
Women and the Great Eoiai; the latter of which, indeed, seems 
to bave been a continuation of the former. A large number of 
the celebrated women of heroic Greece were commemorated in 
these poems, one after the other, without any other than an arbi- 
trary bond of connection. The Marriage of Kéyx,—the Me- 
lampodia, — and a string of fables called Astronomia, are farther 
ascribed to Hesiod: and the poem above mentioned, called gi- 
mius, is also sometimes connected with his name, sometimes with 
that of Kerkops. The Naupaktian Verses (so called, probably, 
from the birthplace of their author), and the genealogies of 
Kinethoén and Asius, were compositions of the same rambling 
character, as far as we can judge from the scanty fragments re- 
maining.' The Orchomenian epic poet Chersias, of whom two 
lines only are preserved to us by Pausanias, may reasonably be 
referred to the same category. 

The oldest of the epic poets, to whom any date, varrying with 
it the semblance of authority, is assigned, is Arktinus of Milétus, 
who is placed by Eusebius in the first Olympiad, and by Suidas 
in the ninth. Eugammédn, the author of the Telegonia, and the 
latest of the catalogue, is placed in the fifty-third Olympiad, B. c. 
566. Between these two we find Asius and Leschés, about the 
thirtieth Olympiad,— a time when the vein of the ancient epic 
was drying up, and when other forms of poetry — elegiac, iambic, 
lyric, and choric — had either already arisen, or were on the 
point of arising, to compete with it.3 


--— 


2 See the Fragments of Hesiod, Eumélus, Kingthén, and Asius, in the 
collections of Marktscheffel, Diintzer, Gottling, and Gaisford 

I have already, in going over the ground of Grecian legend, referred to all 
these lost poems, in their proper places. 

5 Pansan. ix. 38, 6; Plutarch, Sept. Sap. Conv. p. 156. 

3 See Mr. Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici, about the date of Arktinus, vol i p 9650 


VO. II. 6 


122 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


It has already been stated in a former chapter, that in the early 
commencements of prose-writing, Hekatzus, Pherekydés, and 
cther logographers, made it their business to extract from the 
ancient fables something like a continuous narrative, chronolog- 
ically arranged. It was upon a principle somewhat analogous 
that the Alexandrine literati, about the second century before the 
Christian era,! arranged the multitude of old epic poets into a 
series founded on the supposed order of time in the events nar. 
rated,— beginning with the intermarriage of Uranus and Gea, 
and the Theogony,— and concluding with the death of Odysseus 
by the hands of his son Telegonus. ‘This collection passed by 
the name of the Epic Cycle, and the poets, whose compositions 
were embodied in it, were termed Cyclic poets. Doubtless, the 
epical treasures of the Alexandrine library were larger than had 
ever before been brought together and submitted to men both of 
learning and leisure: so that multiplication of such compositions 
in the same museum rendered it advisable to establish some fixed 
order of perusal, and to copy them in one corrected and uniform 
edition.2 It pleased the critics to determine precedence, neither 


— 


! Perhaps Zenodotus, the superintendent of the Alexandrine library under 
Ptolemy Philadelphus, in the third century B.c.: there is a Scholion on 
Plautus, published not many years ago by Osann, and since more fully by 
Ritschl,—“ Cecius in commento Comeediarum Aristophanis in Pluto, — 
Alexander tolus, et Lycophron Chalcidensis, et Zenodotus Ephesius, im- 
pulsu regis Ptolemzi, Philadelphi cognomento, artis poetices libros in unum 
collegerunt et in ordinem redegerunt. Alexander trageedias, Lycophron 
comeedias, Zenodotus vero Homeri poemata et reliquorum illustrium poet- 
arum.” See Lange, Ueber die Kyklischen Dichter, p. 56 (Mainz. 1837); 
Welcker, Der Epische Kyklus, p. 8; Ritschl, Die Alexandrinischen Biblio- 
theken, p. 3 (Breslau, 1838). 

Lange disputes the sufficiency of this passage us proof that Zenodotus 
was the framer of the Epic Cycle: his grounds are, however, unsatisfactory 
to me. 

? That there existed a cyclic copy or edition of the Odyssey (ἡ κυκλικὴ) is 
proved by two passages in the Scholia (xvi. 195; xvii. 25), with Boeckh’s 
remark in Buttmann’s edition: this was the Odyssey copied or edited along 
with the other poems of the cycle. 

Our word to edit—or edition— suggests ideas not exactly suited to the 
proceedings of the Alexandrine library, in which we cannot expect to find 
anything like what is now called publication. That magnificent establish- 
ment, possessing a large collection of epical manuscripts, and ample means 
of every kind at command, would naturally desire to have these composi 


EPIC CYCLE. 128 


by antiquity nor by excellence of the compositions themselves, 
but by the supposed sequence of narrative, so that the whole 
taken together constituted a readable aggregate of epical an- 
tiquity. 

Much obscurity! exists, and many diiferent opinions have been 
expressed, respecting this Epic Cycle: I view it, not as an ex- 
clusive canon, but simply as an all-comprehensive classification, 
with a new edition founded thereupon. It would include all the 
epic poems in the library older than the Telegonia, and apt for 
continuous narrative; it would exclude only two classes,— first, 
the recent epic poets, such as Panyasis and Antimachus; next, 
the genealogical and desultory poems, such as the Catalogue of 
Women, the Eoiai, and others, which could not be made to fit 
in to any chronological sequence of events.? Both the Iliad and 


tions put in order and corrected by skilful hands, and then carefully copied 
for the use of the library. Such copy constitutes the cyclic edition: they 
might perhaps cause or permit duplicates to be made, but the ἔκδοσις or 
edition was complete without them. 

' Respecting the great confusion in which the Epic Cycle is involved, see 
the striking declaration of Buttmann, Addenda ad Scholia in Odysseum, p 
575: compare the opinions of the different critics, as enumerated at the end 
of Welcker’s treatise, Episch. Kyk. pp. 420-453. 

2 Our information respecting the Epic Cycle is derived from Eutychius 
Proclus, a literary man of Sicca during the second century of the Christian 
era, and tutor of Marcus Antoninus (Jul. Capitolin. Vit. Marc. c. 2),— not 
from Proclus, called Diadochus, the new-Platonic philosopher of the fifth 
century, as Heyne, Mr. Clinton, and others have imagined. The fragments 
from his work called Chrestomathia, give arguments of several of the lost 
cyclic poems connected with the Siege of Troy, communicating the import 
ant fact that the Iliad and Odyssey were included in the cycle, and giving 
the following description of the principle upon which it was arranged : 
Διαλαμβάνει δὲ περὶ τοῦ λεγομένου ἐπικοῦ κύκλου, ὃς ἄρχεται μὲν ἐκ τῆς 
Οὐράνου καὶ Τῆς ὁμολογουμένης pifewe....++-. καὶ περατοῦται ὃ ἐπικὸς 
κύκλος, ἐκ διαφόρων ποιητῶν συμπληρούμενος, μέχρι τῆς ἀποβάσεως ᾽Οδυσσέως 

eves. Λέγει δὲ ὡς τοῦ ἐπικοῦ κύκλου τὰ ποιήματα διασώζεται καὶ σπουδά- 
ζεται τοῖς πολλοῖς οὐχ οὕτω διὰ τὴν ἀρετὴν, ὡς διὰ τὴν ἀκολουϑίαν τῶν 
ἐν αὐτῇ πραγμάτων (ap. Photium, cod. 239). 

This much-commented passage, while it clearly marks out the cardinal 
principle of the Epic Cycle (ἀκολουϑία πραγμάτων), neither affirms nor de- 
nies anything respecting the excellence of the constituent poems. Proclus 
speaks of the taste common in his own time (σπουδάζεται τοῖς πολλοῖς): 
there was not much relish in his time for these poems as such, bat people 


124 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the Odyssey were comprised in the Cycle, so that the denomina- 
tion of cyclic poet did not cviginally or designedly carry with it 
any association of contempt But as the great and capital poems 
were chiefly spoken of by themselves, or by the title of their 
own separate authors, so the general name of poets of the Cycle 
came gradually to be applied only to the worst, and thus to imply 
vulgarity or common-place ; the more so, as many of the inferior 
compositions included in the collection seem to have been anony- 
mous, and their authors in consequence describable only under 
some such common designation as that of the cyclic poets. It is 
in this manner that we are to explain the disparaging sentiment 
connected by Horace and others with the idea of a cyclic writer, 
though no such sentiment was implied in the original meaning of 
the Epic Cycle. 

The poems of the Cycle were thus mentioned in contrast and 
antithesis with Homer,’ though originally the Iliad and Odyssey 


— 


were much interested in the sequence of epical events. The abstracts which 
he himself drew up in the form of arguments of several poems, show that 
he adapted himself to this taste. We cannot collect from his words that he 
intended to express any opinion of his own respecting the goodness or bad- 
ness of the cyclic poems. 

1 The gradual growth of a contemptuous feeling towards the seriptor 
eyclicus (Horat. Ars. Poetic. 136), which was not originally implied in the 
name, is well set forth by Lange (Ueber die Kyklisch. Dicht. pp. 53-56). 

Both Lange (pp. 36-41), however, and Ulrici (Geschichte des Griech. Epos, 
Ste Vorles. p. 418) adopt another opinion with respect to the cycle, which I 
think unsupported and inadmissible,— that the several constituent poems 
were not received into it entire (i. ὁ. with only such changes as were requi- 
site for a corrected text), but cut down and abridged in such manner as to 
produce an eract continuity of narrative. Lange even imagines that the 
cyclic Odyssey was thus dealt with. But there seems no evidence to coun- 
tenance this theory, which would convert the Alexandrine literati from critics 
into logographers. That the cyclic Iliad and Odyssey were the same in the 
main (allowing for corrections of text) as the common Iliad and Odyssey, ie 
shown by the fact, that Proclus merely names them in the series without 
giving any abstract of their contents: they were too well known to render 
such a process necessary. Nor does either the language of Proclus, or that 
of Cecius as applied to Zenodotus, indicate any transformation applied to 
the poets whose works are described to have been brought together and put 
into a certain order. 

The hypothesis of Lange is founded upon the idea that the (ἀτολουϑία 
πραγμίέτων) continuity of narrated events must necessarily have been exact 


WHAT THE EPIC CYCLE. 125 


had both been included among them: and this alteration of the 
meaning of the word has given birth to 8. mistake as to the pri- 
mary purpose of the classification, as if it had been designed espe- 
cially to part off the inferior epic productions from Homer. But 
while some crities are disposed to distinguish the cyclic poets too 
pointedly from Homer, I conceive that Welcker goes too much 
into the other extreme, and identifies the Cycle too closely with 
that poet. He construes it as a classification deliberately framed 
to comprise all the various productions of the Homeric epic, 
with its unity of action and comparative paucity, both of persons 
and adventures, — as opposed to che Hesiodic epic, crowded with 
separate persons and pedigrees, aud destitute of central action as 
well as of closing catastrophe. This opinion does, indeed, coincide 
to a great degree with the fact, inasmuch as few of the Hesiodic 
epics appear to have been included in the Cycle: to say that 
none were included, would be too much, for we cannot venture to 
set aside either the Theogony or the A®gimius; but we may 
account for their absence perfectly well without supposing any 
design to exclude them, for it is obvious that their rambling 
character (like that of the Metamorphoses of Ovid) forbade the 
possibility of interweaving them in any continuous series. Con- 
tinuity in the series of narrated events, coupled with a certain 
degree of antiquity in the poems, being the principle on which 
the arrangement called the Epic Cycle was based, the Hesiodic 
poems generally were excluded, not from any preconceived in- 
tention, but because they could not be brought into harmony with 
such orderly reading. 

What were the particular poems which it comprised, we can- 
not now determine with exactness. Welcker arranges them as 


and without break, as if the whole vonstituted one work. But this woull 
not be possible, let the framers do what they might: moreover, in the attempt, 
the individuality of all the constituent poets must have been sacrificed, in 
euch manner that it would be absurd to discuss their separate merits. 

The continuity of narrative in the Epic Cycle could not have been more 
than approximate, — as complete as the poems composing it would admit: 
nevertheless, it would be correct to say that the poems were arranged in 
series upon this principle and upon no other. The librarians might have 
arranged in like manner the vast mass of tragedies in their possession (if 
they had chosen to do so) upon the principle of sequence in the subjects 
had they done so, the series would have formed a Tragic Cycle. 


126 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


follows: Titanomuchia, Danais, Amazonia (or Atthis), Cidipo- 
dia, Thebais (or Expedition of Amphiarius), Epigoni (or Alk- 
mzonis) Minyas (or Phokais), Capture of C®chalia, Cyprian 
Verses, Iliad, AZthiopis, Lesser Iliad, Iliupersis or the Taking 
of Troy, Returns of the Heroes, Odyssey, and Telegonia. Wuell- 
ner, Lange, and Mr. Fynes Clinton enlarge the list of cyclic 
poems still farther.! But all such reconstructions of the Cycle 
are conjectural and destitute of authority: the only poems which 
we can affirm on positive grounds to have been comprehended in 
it, are, first, the series respecting the heroes of Troy, from the 
Cypria to the Telegonia, of which Proclus has preserved the 
arguments, and which includes the Iliad and Odyssey, — next, 
the old Thebais, which is expressly termed cyclic,” in order to dis- 
tinguish it from the poem of the same name composed by Anti- 
machus. In regard to other particular compositions, we have no 
evidence to guide us, either for admission or exclusion, except 
our general views as to the scheme upon which the Cycle was 
framed. If my idea of that scheme be correct, the Alexandrine 
critics arranged therein all their old epical treasures, down to 
the Telegonia,— the good as well as the bad; gold, silver, and 
iron, — provided only they could be pieced in with the narrative 
series. But I cannot venture to include, as Mr. Clinton does, 
the Eurépia, the Phorénis, and other poems of which we know 
only the names, because it is uncertain whether their contents 
were such as to fulfil their primary condition: nor can I concur 
with him in thinking that, where there were two or more poems 
of the same title and subject, one of them must necessarily have 
been adopted into the Cycle to the exclusion of the others. There 
may have been two Theogonies, or two Herakleias, both compre- 
hended in the Cycle; the purpose being (as I before remarked), 
not to sift the better from the worse, but to determine some fixed 
order, convenient for reading and reference, amidst a multiplicity 
of scattered compositions, as the basis of a new, entire, and cor- 


rected edition. 


! Welcker, Der Epische Kyklus, pp. 37-41; Wuellner, De Cyclo Epico, 
p. 48, seq.; Lange, Ueber die Kyklischen Dichter, p. 47; Clinton, Fasti Hel- 


lenici, vol. i. p. 349. : 
*8chol Pindar Olymp. vi. 26; Athene. xi. p. 465. 


HOMER. 127 


Whatever may have been the principle on which the cyelie 
poems were originally strung together, they are all now lost. 
except those two unrivalled diamonds, whose brightness, dim- 
ming all the rest, has alone sufficed to confer imperishable glory 
even upon the earliest phase of Grecian life. It has been the 
natural privilege of the Iliad and Odyssey, from the rise of 
Grecian philology down to the present day, to provoke an in- 
tense curiosity, which, even in the historical and literary days of 
Greece, there were no assured facts to satisfy. ‘These composi- 
ticns are the monuments of an age essentially religious and poet- 
ical, but essentially also unphilosophical, unreflecting, and unre- 
cording: the nature of the case forbids our having any authentic 
transmitted knowledge respecting such a period; and the lesson 
must be learned, hard and painful though it be, that no imaginable 
reach of critical acumen will of itself enable us to discriminate 
fancy from reality, in the absence of a tolerable stock of evidence. 
After the numberless comments and acrimonious controversies ! 
to which the Homeric poems have given rise, it can hardly be 
said that any of the points originally doubtful have obtained a 
solution such as to command universal acquiescence. ΤῸ glance 
at all these controversies, however briefly, would far transcend 
the limits of the present work ; but the most abridged Grecian 
history would be incomplete without some inquiry respecting the 
Poet (so the Greek critics in their veneration denominated Homer), 
and the productions which pass now, or have heretofore passed, 
under his name. 

Who or what was Homer? What date is to be assigned to 
him? What were his compositions ? 

A person, putting these questions to Greeks of different towns 
and ages, would have obtained answers widely discrepant and 
contradictory. Since the invaluable labors of Aristarchus and 


' Tt is a memorable illustration of that bitterness which has so much dis- 
graced the controversies of literary men in all ages (I fear, we can make no 
exception), when we find Pausanias saying that he had examined into the 
ages of Hesiod and Homer with the most laborious scrutiny, but that he 
knew too well the calumnious dispositions of contemporary critics and poets, 
to declare what conclusion he had come to ( Paus. ix. 30,2): Περὶ δὲ Ἡσιόδον 
τε ἡλικίας καὶ Ὁμήρου, πολυπραγμονήσαντι ἐς τὸ ἀκριβέστατον οὔ μοι γράφειν 
ἡδὺ ἣν, ἐπισταμένῳ τὸ φιλαέίτιον ἄλλων τε καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα ὅσοι κατ᾽ ἐμὲ ἐπὶ 
τοιήῆσει τῶν ἔἕπων καϑειστήῆκεσαν. 


128 HISTORY OF “REECE. 


the other Alexandrine critics on the text of the Iliad and Oays- 
sey, it has, indeed, been customary to regard those two (putting 
aside the Hymns, and a few other minor poems) as being the 
only genuine Homeric compositions: and the literary men called 
Chorizontes, or the Separators, at the head of whom were Xenon 
-and Hellanikus, endeavored still farther to reduce the number 
by disconnecting the Iliad and Odyssey, and pointing out that 
both could not be the work of the same author. ‘Throughout 
the whole course of Grecian antiquity, the Iliad and the Ody: 
sey, and the Hymns, have been received as Homeric: but if we 
go back to the time of Herodotus, or still earlier, we find that 
several other epics also were ascribed to Homer,—and there 
were not wanting! critics, earlier than the Alexandrine age, who 
regarded the whole Epic Cycle, together with the satirical poem 
called Margités, the Batrachomyomachia, and other smaller pieces, 
as Homeric works. ‘The cyclic Thebais and the Epigoni (whether 
they be two separate poems, or the latter a second part of the 
former) were in early days currently ascribed to Homer: the 
same was the case with the Cyprian Verses: some even attri- 
buted to him several other poems,? the Capture of C&chalia, the 
Lesser Iliad, the Phokais, and the Amazonia. The title of the 


poem called Thebais to be styled Homeric, depends upon evi- 
dence more ancient than any which can be produced to authenti- 
eate the Iliad and Odyssey: for Kallinus, the ancient elegiac 
poet (B. c. 640), mentioned Homer as the author of it, — and his 
opinion was shared by many other competent judges. From the 


1 See the extract of Proclus, in Photius Cod. 239. 

2 Suidas, v. Ὅμηρος; Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. p. 330. 

3 Pausan. ix. 9,3. The name of Kallinus in that passage seems certainly 
correct: Ta δὲ ἔπη ταῦτα (the Thebais) Καλλῖνος, ἀφικόμενος αὐτῶν ἐς 
τνήμην͵ ἔφησεν Ὅμηρον τὸν ποιήσαντα εἶναι - Καλλίνῳ dé πολλοί τε 
ἀξιοι λόγου κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἔγνωσαν. ᾿Εγὼ δὲ τὴν ποίησιν ταύτην μετά ye “IA 
δα καὶ ᾿᾽Οδύσσειαν ἐπαινῶ μώλιστα. 

To the same purpose the author of the Certamen of Hesiod and Hom , 
and the pseudo-Herodotus (Vit. Homer. c. 9). The ᾿Αμφιαρέω ἐξελασία, 
alluded to in Suidas as the production of Homer, may be reasonably identi- 
fied with the Thebais (Suidas, v. Ὅμηρος). 

The cyelographer Dionysius, who affirmed that Homer had lived both im 
the Theban and the Trojan wars, must have recognized that poet as authos 
ef the Thebais as well as of the Iliad (ap. Procl. ad Hesiod. p. 3). 


ROMER. 129 


remarka. le description given by Herodotus, of the expulsion of the 
thapsodes from Sikyén, by the despot Kleisthenés, in the time 
of Solén (about B. c. 580), we may form a probable judgment 
thet the Thebais and the Epigoni were then rhapsodized at Sik- 
yon as Homeric productions.!. And it is clear from the language 


Herodot. v. 67. Κλεισϑένης γὰρ ᾿Αργείοισι πολεμήσας --- τοῦτο μὲν, ῥα- 
ψῳδοὺς ἔπαυσε ἐν Σικυῶνι ἀγωνίζεσϑαι, τῶν ‘Ounpeiwy ἐπέων εἵνεκα, ὅτι 
᾿Αργεῖοίΐ τε καὶ Ἄργος τὰ πολλὰ πάντα ὑμνέαται --- τοῦτο δὲ, ἡρῷον γὰρ ἣν 
καί ἐστι ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ ἀγόρᾳ τῶν Σικυωνίων ᾿Αδρήστου τοῦ Tadaod, τοῦτον 
ἐπεϑύμησε ὁ Κλεισϑένης, ἐόντα ᾿Αργεῖον, ἐκβαλεῖν ἐκ τῆς χώρης. Herodotus 
then goes on to relate how Kleisthenés carried into effect his purpose of 
banishing the hero Adrastus: first, he applied to the Delphian Apollo, for 
permission to do so directly, and avowedly ; next, on that permission being 
refused, he made application to the Thebans, to allow him to introduce into 
Siky6n their hero Melanippus, the bitter enemy of Adrastus in the old 
Theban legend ; by their consent, he consecrated a chapel to Melanippus in 
jhe most commanding part of the Sikyonian agora, and then transferred to 
the newly-imported hero the rites and festivals which had before been given 
to Adrastus. 

Taking in conjunction all the points of this very curious tale, I venture to 
think that the rhapsodes incurred the displeasure of Kleisthenés by reciting, 
not the Homeric Iliad, but the Homeric Thebats and Epigoni. The former does 
not answer the conditions of the narrative: the latter fulfils them accurately. 

1. It cannot be said, even by the utmost latitude of speech, that, in the 
lliad, “ Little else is sung except Argos and the Argeians,” — (“‘in illis ubique 
fere nonnisi Argos et Argivi celebrantur,”) — is the translation of Schweigh- 
hauser): Argos is rarely mentioned in it, and never exalted into any primary 
importance: the Argeians, as inhabitants of Argos separately, are never nd 
ticed at all: that name is applied in the Iliad, in common with the Acheans 
and Danaans, only to the general body of Greeks, — and even applied to 
them much less frequently than the name of Acha@ans. 

2. Adrastus is twice, and only twice, mentioned in the Iliad, as master of 
the wonderful horse Areion, and as father-in-law of Tydeus; but he makes 
no figure in the poem, and attracts no interest. 

Wherefore, though Kleisthenés might have been ever so much incensed 
against Argos and Adrastus, thereseems no reason why he should have 
interdicted the rhapsodes from reciting the Iliad. On the other hand, the 
Thebats and Epigoni could not fail to provoke him especially. For, 

1. Argos and its inhabitants were the grand subject of the poem, and the 
proclaimed assailants in the expedition against Thébes. Though the poem 
itself is lost, the first line of it has been preserved (Leutsch, Theb. Cycl 
Relig. p. 5; compare Sophoclés, (ΕΔ. Col. 380 with Scholia), — 


"Apyor ἄειδε, Ded, πολυδίψιον, ἔνϑεν ἄνακτες, etc. 
VOL. I 8» 906. 


130 HIStORY OF GREECE. 


of Herodotus, that in his time the general opimon ascribed te 
Homer both the Cyprian Verses and the Epigoni, though he 
himself dissents.! In spite of such dissent, however, that his- 
torian must have conceived the names of Homer and Hesiod to 
be nearly coextensive with the whole of the ancient epic ; other- 
wise, he would hardly have delivered his memorable judgment, 
that they two were the framers of Grecian theogony. 

The many different cities which laid claim to the birth of 
Homer (seven is rather below the truth, and Smyrna and Chios 
are the most prominent among them,) is well known, acd most of 
them had legends to tell respecting his romantic parentage, his 
alleged blindness, and his life of an itinerant bard, acquainted 
with poverty and sorrow.2. The discrepancies of statement re- 


2. Adrastus was king of Argos, and the chief of the expedition. 

It is therefore literally true, that Argos and the Argeians were “ the burden 
of the song” in these two poems. 

To this we may add — 

1. The rhapsodes would have the strongest motive to recite the Thebais 
and Epigoni at Siky6n, where Adrastus was worshipped and enjoyed so vast 
a popularity, and where he even attracted to himself the choric solemnities 
which in other towns were given to Dionysus. 

2. The means which Kleisthenés took to get rid of Adrastus indicates a 
special reference to the Thebais : he invited from Thébes the hero Melanip 
pus, the Ποῖον of Thébes, in that very poem. 

For these reasons, I think we may conclude that the Ὁμήρεια ἔπη, alluded 
to in this very illustrative story of Herodotus, are the Thebais and the Epi- 
goni, not the Iliad. 

! Herodot. ii. 117; iv 32. The words in which Herodotus. intimates his 
own dissent from the reigning opinion, are treated as spurious by F. A. 
Wolf, and vindicated by Schweighhauser: whether they be admitted or not, 
the general currency of the opinion adverted to is equally evident. 

2 The Life of Homer, which passes falsely under the name of Herodotus, 
contains a collection of these different stories: it is supposed to have beep 
written about the second century after the Christian era, but the statements 
which it furnishes are probably several of them as old as Ephorus (compare 
also Proclus ap. Photium, c. 239). 

The belief in the blindness of Homer is doubtless of far more ancient 
date, since the circumstance appears mentioned in the Homeric Hymn to 
the Delian Apollc where the bard of Chios, in some very touching lines, 
recummends himself and his strains to the favor of the Delian maidens 
exzployed in the worship of Apollo. This hymn is cited by Thucydidés as 
anquestionably authentic, and he doubtless accépted the lines as a descrip- 
tion of the personal condition and relations of the author of the Iliad and 


TALES ABOUT HOMER. 131 


spseung the date of his reputed existence are no less worthy of 
remark ; for out of the eight different epochs assigned to him, the 
oldest differs from the most recent by a period of four hundred 
and sixty years. 

Thus conflicting would have been the answers returned in dif- 
ferent portions of the Grecian world to any questions respecting 
the person of Homer. But there were a poetical gens (fraternity 
or guild) in the Tonic island of Chios, who, if the question had 
been put to them, would have answered in another manner. To 
them, Homer was not a mere antecedent man, of kindred nature 
with themselves, but a divine or semi-divine eponymus and pro- 
genitor, whom they worshipped in their gentile sacrifices, and in 
whose ascendent name and glory the individuality of every mem- 
ber of the gens was merged. ‘The compositions of each separate 
Homérid, or the combined efforts of many of them in conjunc- 
tion, were the works of Homer: the name of the individual bard 
perishes and his authorship is forgotten, but the common gentile 


Odyssey (Thucyd. iii. 104): Simonidés of Keés also calls Homer a Chian 
{Frag. 69, Schneidewin). 

There were also tales which represented Homer as the contemporary, the 
eousin, and the rival in recited composition, of Hesiod, who (it was pretend- 
ed) had vanquished him. See the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, annexed 
to the works of the latter (p. 314, ed. Géttling ; and Plutarch, Conviv. Sept. 
Sapient. c. 10), in which also various stories respecting the Life of Homer 
are scattered. The emperor Hadrian consulted the Delphian oracle to know 
who Homer was: the answer of the priestess reported him to be a native of 
Ithaca, the son of Telemachus and Epikasté, daughter of Nestor (Certamen 
Hom. et Hes. p.314). The author of this Certamen tells us that the author- 
ity of the Delphian oracle deserves implicit confidence. 

Hellanikus, Damastes, and Pherekydés traced both Homer and Hesiod 
up to Orpheus, through a pedigree of ten generations (see Sturz, Fragment. 
Hellanic. fr. 75-144; compare also Lobeck’s remarks — Aglaophamus, p. 322 
—on the subject of these genealogies). The computations of these authors 
earlier than Herodotus are of value, because they illustrate the habits of 
mind in which Grecian chronology began: the genealogy might be easily 
continued backward to any length in the past. To trace Homer up to 
Orpheus, however, would not have been consonatt to the belief of the 
Homérids. 

The contentions of the different cities which disputed for the birth of 
Homer, and, indeed, all the legendary anecdotes circulated in antiquity re 
specting the poet, are copiously discussed in Welcker, Der Epische Kyklos 
(pp. 194-199). 


130 HIStORY OF GREECL. 


of Herodotus, that in his time the general opimon ascribed te 
Homer both the Cyprian Verses and the Epigoni, though he 
himself dissents.! In spite of such dissent, however, that hi- 
torian must have conceived the names of Homer and Hesiod to 
be nearly coextensive with the whole of the ancient epic; other 
wise, he would hardly have delivered his memorable judgment, 
that they two were the framers of Grecian theogony. 

The many different cities which laid claim to the birth of 
Homer (seven is rather below the truth, and Smyrua and Chios 
are the most prominent among them,) is well known, acd most of 
them had legends to tell respecting his romantic parentage, his 
alleged blindness, and his life of an itinerant bard, acquainted 
with poverty and sorrow.2. The discrepancies of statement re- 


9. Adrastus was king of Argos, and the chief of the expedition. 

It is therefore literally true, that Argos and the Argeians were “ the burden 
of the song” in these two poems. 

To this we may add — 

1. The rhapsodes would have the strongest motive to recite the Thebais 
and Epigoni at Sikyén, where Adrastus was worshipped and enjoyed so vast 
a popularity, and where he even attracted to himself the choric solemnities 
which in other towns were given to Dionysus. 

2. The means which Kleisthenés took to get rid of Adrastus indicates a 
special reference to the Thebais : he invited from Thébes the hero Melanip 
pus, the Hector of Thébes, in that very poem. 

For these reasons, I think we may conclude that the 'Oujpeca ἔπη, alluded 
to in this very illustrative story of Herodotus, are the Thebais and the Epi- 
goni, not the Iliad. 

! Herodot. ii. 117; iv 32. The words in which Herodotus. intimates his 
own dissent from the reigning opinion, are treated as spurious by F. A 
Wolf, and vindicated by Schweighhauser: whether they be admitted or not, 
the general currency of the opinion adverted to is equally evident. 

2 The Life of Homer, which passes falsely under the name of Herodotus, 
contains ἃ collection of these different stories: it is supposed to have beep 
written about the second century after the Christian era, but the statements 
which it furnishes are probably several of them as old as Ephorus (compare 
also Proclus ap. Photium, c. 239). 

The belief in the blindness of Homer is doubtless of far more ancient 
date, since the circumstatice appears mentioned in the Homeric Hymn to 
the Delian Apolle where the bard of Chios, in some very touching lines, 
recummends himself and his strains to the favor of the Delian maidens 
exzployed in the worship of Apollo. This hymn is cited by Thucydidés as 
anquestionably authentic, and he doubtless accepted the lines as a descrip- 
tion of the personal condition and relations of the author of the Iliad and 


TALES ABOUT HOMER. 131 


spseing the date of his reputed existence are no less worthy of 
remark ; for out of the eight different epochs assigned to him, the 
oldest differs from the most recent by a period of four hundred 
and sixty years. 

Thus conflicting would have been the answers returned in dif- 
ferent portions of the Grecian world to any questions respecting 
the person of Homer. But there were a poetical gens (fraternity 
or guild) in the Tonic island of Chios, who, if the question had 
been put to them, would have answered in another manner. To 
them, Homer was not a mere antecedent man, of kindred nature 
with themselves, but a divine or semi-divine eponymus and pro- 
genitor, whom they worshipped in their gentile sacrifices, and in 
whose ascendent name and glory the individuality of every mem- 
ber of the gens was merged. ‘The compositions of each separate 
Homérid, or the combined efforts of many of them in conjunc- 
tion, were the works of Homer: the name of the individual bard 


Odyssey (Thucyd. iii. 104): Simonidés of Keds also calls Homer a Chian 
{Frag. 69, Schneidewin). 

There were also tales which represented Homer as the contemporary, the 
eousin, and the rival in recited composition, of Hesiod, who (it was pretend- 
ed) had vanquished him. See the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, annexed 
to the works of the latter (p. 314, ed. Géttling ; and Plutarch, Conviv. Sept. 
Sapient. c. 10), in which also various stories respecting the Life of Homer 
are scattered. ‘The emperor Hadrian consulted the Delphian oracle to know 
who Homer was: the answer of the priestess reported him to be a native of 
Ithaca, the son of Telemachus and Epikasté, daughter of Nestor (Certamen 
Hom. et Hes. p. 314). The author of this Certamen tells us that the author- 
ity of the Delphian oracle deserves implicit confidence. 

Hellanikus, Damastes, and Pherekydés traced both Homer and Hesiod 
up to Orpheus, through a pedigree of ten generations (see Sturz, Fragment. 
Hellanic. fr. 75-144; compare also Lobeck’s remarks — Aglaophamus, p. 322 
—on the subject of these genealogies). The computations of these authors 
earlier than Herodotus are of value, because they illustrate the habits of 
mind in which Grecian chronology began: the genealogy might be easily 
continued backward to any length in the past. To trace Homer up to 
Orpheus, however, would not have been consonart to the belief of the 
Homérids. 

The contentions of the different cities which disputed for the birth of 
Homer, and, indeed, all the legendary anecdotes circulated in antiquity re 
specting the poet, are copiously discussed in Welcker, Der Epische Kyklos 
(pp. 194-199). 


13. HISTORY OF GREECE. 


father lives and grows in renown, from generation to genera 
tion, by the genius of his self-renewing sons. 

Such was the conception entertained of Homer by the poetical 
gens called Homéride, or Homérids; and in the general ob- 
scurity of the whole case, 1 lean towards it as the most plausible 
conception. Homer is not only the reputed author of the various 
compositions emanating from the gentile members, but also the 
recipient of the many different legends and of the divine gene- 
alogy, which it pleases their imagination to confer upon him. 
Such manufacture of fictitious personality, and such perfect 
incorporation of the entities of religion and fancy with the real 
world, is a process familiar, and even habitual, in the retrospec- 
tive vision of the Greeks.! 

It is to be remarked, that the poetical gens here brought to 
view, the Homérids, are of indisputable authenticity. Their ex- 
istence and their considerations were maintained down to the 
historical times in the island of Chios.2 If the Homérids were 
still conspicuous, even in the days of Akusilaus, Pindar, Hellani- 
kus, and Plato, when their productive invention had ceased, and 
when they had become only guardians and distributors, in com- 
mon with others, of the treasures bequeathed by their predeces- 
sors,—far more exalted must their position have been three 
centuries before, while they were still the inspired creators of 
epic novelty, and when the absence of writing assured to them 
the undisputed monopoly of their own compositions.3 


' Even Aristotle aseribed to Homer a divine parentage: a damsel of the 
isle of Ios, pregnant by some god, was carried off by pirates to Smyrna, at 
the time of the Ionic emigration, and there gave birth to the poet (Aristotel. 
ap. Plutarch. Vit. Homer, p. 1059). 

Plato seems to have considered Homer as having been an itinerant rhap- 
sode, poor and almost friendless (Republ. p. 600). 

* Pindar, Nem. ii. 1, and Scholia; Akusilaus, Fragm. 31, Didot; Harpo- 
kration, νυ. “Ομήριδαι ; Hellanic. Fr. 55, Didot; Strabo, xiv. p. 645. 

It seems by a passage of Plato (Phedrus, p. 252), that the Homéridws 
professed to possess unpublished verses of their ancestral poet — ἔπη ἀποϑέτα 
Compare Plato, Republic. p. 599, and Isocrat. Helen. p. 218. 

* Nitzsch (De Historia Homeri, Fascic. 1, p. 128, Fascic. 2, p. 71), and 
Ulrici (Geschichte der Episch. Poesie, vol. i. pp. 240-381) question the anti 
quity of the Homérid gens, and limit their functions to simple reciters, deny- 
ing that they ever composed songs or poems of their own. Yet these gente, 


PERSONALITY OF HOMER. 138 


Homer, then, is no individual man, but the divine or heroic 
father (the ideas of worship and ancestry coalescing, as they 
constantly did in the Grecian mind) of the gentile Homérids, 
and he is the author of the Thebais, the Epigoni, the Cyprian 
Verses, the rocms, or Hymns, and other poems, in the same 
sense in which he is the author of the Iliad and Odyssey, — as- 
suming that these various compositions emanate, as perhaps they 
may, from different individuals numbered among the Homérids. 
But this disallowance of the historical personality of Homer is 
quite distinct from the question, with which it has been often 
confounded, whether the Iliad and Odyssey are originally entire 
poems, and whether by one author or otherwise. To us, the 
name of Homer means these two poems, and little else: we desire 
to know as much as can be learned respecting their date, their 
original composition, their preservation, and their mode of com- 
munication to the public. All these questions are more or less 
complicated one with the other. 

Concerning the date of the poems, we have no other informar 
tion except the various affirmations respecting the age of Homer, 


such as the Euneide, the Lykomidx, the Butade, the Talthybiada, the 
descendants of Cheirén at Pelion, etc., the Hesychidx (Schol. Sophocl. CEdip 
Col. 489), (the acknowledged parallels of the Homéridx), may be surely all 
considered as belonging to the earliest known elements of Grecian history: 
rarely, at least, if ever, can such gens, with its tripartite character of civil, 
religious, and professional, be shown to have commenced at any recent period. 
And in the early times, composer and singer were one person: often at 
least, though probably not always, the hard combined both functions. The 
Homerie ἀοιδὸς sings his own compositions ; and it is reasonable to imagine 
that many of the early Homérids did the same. 

See Niebuhr, Rémisch. Gesch. vol. i. p. 324; and the treatise, Ueber die 
Sikeler in der Odyssee,—in the Rheinisches Museum, 1828, p. 257; and 
Boeckh, in the Index of Contents to his Lectures of 1834. 

“The sage Vyasa (observes Professor Wilson, System of Hindu Mythology, 
Int. p. lxii.) is represented, not as the author, but as the arranger and com- 
piler of the Vedas and the Puranas. His name denotes his character, mean- 
ing the arranger or distributor (Welcker gives the same meaning to the vame 
Homer) ; and the recurrence of many Vyasas, — many individuals who new- 
modelled the Hindu scriptures, — has nothing in it that is improbable, exczpt 
the fabulous intervals by which their labors are separated.” Individual 
authorship and the thirst of personal distinction, are in this case also buried 
wader one great and common name, as in the case of Homer 


134 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


which differ among themselves (as I have before observed) by 
an interval of four hundred and sixty years, and which for the 
most part determine the date of Homer by reference to some 
other event, itself fabulous and unauthenticated, — such as the 
Trojan war, the Return of the Hérakleids, or the Ionic migra- 
tion. Kratés placed Homer earlier than the Return of the 
Hérakleids, and less than eighty years after the ‘Trojan war: 
Eratosthenés put him one hundred years after the Trojan war: 
Aristotle, Aristarchus, and Castor made his birth contemporary 
with the Ionic migration, while Apollodérus brings him down to 
one hundred years after that cvent, or two hundred and forty 
years after the taking of Troy. Thucydidés assigns to him a 
date much subsequent to the Trojan war.! On the other hand, 
Theopompus and Euphori6n refer his age to the far more recent 
period of the Lydian king, Gyges, (Ol. 18-23, B. c. 708—688,) 
and put him five hundred years after the Trojan epoch.2 What 
were the grounds of these various conjectures, we do not know ; 
though in the statements of Kratés and Eratosthenés, we may 
pretty well divine. But the oldest dictum preserved to us re- 
specting the date of Homer, — meaning thereby the date of the 
Iliad and Odyssey,— appears to me at the same time the most 
credible, and the most consistent with the general history of the 
ancient epic. Herodotus places Homer four hundred years be- 
fore himself; taking his departure, not from any fabulous event, 
but from a point of real and authentic time.3 Four centuries 


’ Thucyd. i. 3. 

* See the statements and citations respecting the age of Homer, collected 
in Mr. Clinton’s Chronology, vol. i. p. 146. He prefers the view of Aristotle, 
and places the Iliad and Odyssey a century earlier than I am inclined to do, 
— 940-927 B. c. 

Kratés, probably placed the poet antericr to the Return of the Hérakleids, 
because the Iliad makes no mention of Dorians in Peloponnésus: Erastos- 
therés may be supposed to have grounded his date on the passage of the 
Tliad, which mentions the three generations descended from Aineas. We 
should have been glad to know the grounds of the very low date assigned 
by Theopompus and Euphorién. 

The pseudo-Herodotus, in his life of Homer, puts the birth of the poet 
one hundred and sixty-eight years after the Trojan war. 

* Herodot. ii. 53. Hérakleides Ponticus affirmed that Lykurgus had 
brought into Peloponnésus the Homeric poems, which had before been 


HOMERIC POEMS INTENDED FOR HEARERS. 185 


anterior to Herodotus would be a period commencing with 886 
3.0. so that the composition of the Homeric poems would thus 
fall in a space between 850 and 800 B.c. We may gather from 
the language of Herodotus that this was his own judgment, 
opposed to a current opinion, which assigned the poet to an 
earlier epoch. 

To place the Iliad and Odyssey at some periods between 850 
B. C. and 776 8B. C., appears to me more probable than any other 
date, anterior or posterior, — more probable than the latter, be- 
cause we are justified in believing these two poems to be older 
than Arktinus, who comes shortly after the first Olympiad ; — 
more probable than the former, because, the farther we push the 
poems back, the more do we enhance the wonder of their pre- 
servation, already sufficiently great, down from such an age and 
society to the historical times. 

The mode in which these poems, and indeed all poems, epic as 
well as lyric, down to the age (probably) of Peisistratus, were 
circulated and brought to bear upon the public, deserves particu- 
lar attention. ‘They were not read by individuals alone and 
apart, but sung or recited at festivals or to assembled companies. 
This seems to be one of the few undisputed facts with regard to 
the great poet: for even those who maintain that the Iliad and 
Odyssey were preserved by means of writing, seldom contend 
that they were read. 

In appreciating the effect of the poems, we must always take 
account of this great difference between early Greece and our 
own times, — between the congregation mustered at a solemn 
festival, stimulated by community of sympathy, listening to a 
measured and musical recital from the lips of trained bards or 
rhapsodes, whose matter was supposed to have been inspired by 
the Muse,-—and the solitary reader, with a manuscript before 
him ; such manuscript being, down to a very late period in Greek 
literature, indifferently written, without division into parts, and 
without marks of punctuation. As in the case of dramatic per- 


unknown out of Ionia. The supposed epoch of Lykurgus aas sometimes 
been employed to sustain the date here resigned to the Homeric poems ; but 
everything respecung Lykurgus is too ¢ pubtful to serve as evidence in oiber 


135 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


formas 668, in all ages, so in that of the early Grecian epic, —a 
very large proportion of its impressive effect was derived from 
the talent of the reciter and the force of the general accompani 

ments, and would have disappeared altogether in solitary reading. 
Originally, the bard sung his own epical narrative, commencing 
with a proemium or hymn to one of the gods:' his profession 
was separate and special, like that of the carpenter, the leech, or 
the prophet: his manner and enunciation must have 1equired par- 
ticular training no less than his imaginative faculty. His charac- 
ter presents itself’ in the Odyssey as one highly esteemed; and 
in the Iliad, even Achilles does not disdain to touch the lyre 
with his own hands, and to sing heroic deeds.2_ Not only did 
the Iliad and Odyssey, and the poems embodied in the Epic 
Cycle, produce all their impression and gain all their renown by 
this process of oral delivery, but even the lyric and choric poets 
who succeeded them were known and felt in the same way by 
the general public, even after the full establishment of habits of 
reading among lettered men. While in the case of the epic, 
the recitation or singing had been extremely simple, and the 
measure comparatively little diversified, with no other accompan- 
iment than that of the four-stringed harp,— all the variations 
superinduced upon the original hexameter, beginning with the 
pentameter and iambus, and proceeding step by step to the com- 


1 The Homeric hymns are procems of this sort, some very short, consisting 
only of a few lines, -- others of considerable length. The Hymn (or, rather, 
one of the two hymns) to Apollo is cited by Thucydidés as the Proceem of 
Apollo. 

The Hymns to Aphrodité, Apollo, Hermés, Démétér, and Dionysus, are 
genuine epical narratives. Hermann (Pref. ad Hymn. p. Ixxxix-) pro- 
nounces the Hymn to Aphrodité to be the oldest and most genuine: portions 
of the Hymn to Apollo (Herm. p. xx.) are also very old, but both that hymn 
and the others are largely interpolated. His opinion respecting these inter- 
polations, however, is disputed by Franke (Prefat. ad Hymn. Homeric. p. 
ix—xix.); and the distinction between what is genuine and what is spurious, 
depends upon criteria not very distinctly assignable. Compare Ulrici, Gesch. 
der Ep. Poes. pp. 385-391. 

* Phemius, Demodokus, and the nameless bard who guarded the fidelity 
of Klytzemnéstra, bear out this position (Odyss. i. 155; iii. 267; viii. 490; 
xxi. 330; Achilles in Iliad, ix. 190). 

A degree of inviolability seems attached to the person of the berd as well 
as to that of the herald (Odyss. xxii. 355-357). 


SINGERS AND RHAPSODES. 187 


plicated strophés of Pindar and the tragic writers, still left the 
general effect of the poetry greatly dependent upon voice and 
accompaniments, and pointedly distinguished from mere solitary 
reading of the words. And in the dramatic poetry, the last in 
order of time, the declamation and gesture of the speaking actor 
alternated with the song and dance of the chorus, and with the 
instruments of musicians, the whole being set off by imposing 
visible decorations. Now both dramatic effect and song are 
familiar in modern times, so that every man knows the difference 
between reading the words and hearing them under the appro- 
priate circumstances: but poetry, as such, is, and has now long 
been, so exclusively enjoyed by reading, that it requires an espe- 
cial memento to bring us back to the time when the Iliad and 
Odyssey were addressed only to the ear and feelings of a pro- 
miscuous and sympathizing multitude. Readers there were none, 
at least until the century preceding Solén and Peisistratus : from 
that time forward, they gradually increased both in number and 
influence; though doubtless small, even in the most literary 
period of Greece, as compared with modern European society. 
So far as the production of beautiful epic poetry was concerned, 
however, the select body of instructed readers, furnished a less 
potent stimulus than the unlettered and listening crowd of the 
earlier periods. The poems of Cheerilus and Antimachus, 
towards the close of the Peloponnesian war, though admired by 
erudite men, never acquired popularity ; and the emperor Ha- 
drian failed in his attempt to bring the latter poet into fashion 
at the expense of Homer.! 


* Spartian. Vit. Hadrian. p. 8; Dio Cass. lxix. 4: Plut. Tim. c. 36. 

There are some good observations on this point in Nake’s comments on 
Cheerilus, ch. viii. p. 59 : — 

“Habet hoc epica poesis, vera illa, cujus perfectissimam normam agnosci- 
mus Homericam—habet hoc proprium, ut non in possessione virorum 
eruditorum, sed quasi viva sit et coram populo recitanda: ut cum populo 
crescat, et si populus Deorum et antiquorum heroum facinora, quod pra- 
cipium est epics poeseos argumentum, audire et secum repetere dedidicerit, 
obmutescat. Id vero tum factum est in Grecia, quum populus eA state, 
quam pueritiam dicere possis, peracta, partim ad res serias tristesque, politi- 
cas Maxime —easque multo, quam artea, impeditiores — abstrahebatur : 
partim epicz poeseos pertesus, ex aliis poeseos generibus, que tum nasce- 
bantur, novum et diversum oblectamenti genus primo presagire, sibi, deinde 
haurire, coepit.” 


-- - 


ane! Hem Ee κα. 


138 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


It will be seen by what has been here stated, that that class of 
men, who formed the medium of communication _detween the 
verse and the ear, were of the highest importance in the ancient 
world, and especially in the earlier periods of its career,— the 
bards and rhapsodes for the epic, the singers for the lyric, the 
actors and singers jointly with the dancers for the chorus and 
drama. ‘The lyric and dramatic poets taught with their own lips 
the delivery of their compositions, and so prominently did this 
business of teaching present itself to the view of the public, that 
the name Didaskalia, by which the dramatic exhibition was com 
monly designated, derived from thence its origin. mn 

Among the number of rhapsodes who frequented the festivals 
at a time when Grecian cities were multiplied and easy of access, 
for the recitation of the ancient epic, there must have been of 
course great differences of excellence; but that the more consid- 
erable individuals of the class were claborately trained and 
highly accomplished in the exercise of their profession, we may 
assume as certain. But it happens that Socrates, with his two 
pupils Plato and Xenophon, speak contemptuously of their merits ; 
aid many persons have been disposed, somewhat too readily, to 
admit this sentence of condemnation as conclusive, without taking 
account of the point of view from which it was delivered.'! These 


Nike remarks, too, that the “splendidissima et propria Homericx pesoccs 
getas, ea qu sponte quasi sud inter populum et quasi cum populo viveret, 
did not reach below Peisistratus. It did not, I think, reach even so low as 

i riod. 
ge eed Memorab. iv. 2, 10; and Sympos. iii. 6. Οἶσϑά τι οὖν ἔϑνος 
ἠλιϑιώτερον ῥαψῴδων ; Δῆλον yap ὅτι τὰς ὑπονοίας οὖν ἐπίστανται 
Σὺ δὲ Στησιμβρότῳ τε καὶ ᾿Αναξιμάνδρῳ καὶ ἀλλοις πολλοῖς πολὺ δέδωκας 
ἀργύριον, ote οὐδέν ce τῶν πολλοῦ ἀξίων λέληϑε. . aN 

These ὑπονοῖαι are the hidden meanings, or allegories, which + certain set 
of philosophers undertook to discover in Homer, and which the rhapsodes 
were no way called upon to study. 

The Platonic dialogue, called én, ascribes to Ion the double function of a 
rhapsode, or impressive reciter, and a critical expositor of the poet (Isokratés 
also indicates the same double character, in the rhapsodes of his time, — 
Panathenaic, p. 240); but it conveys no solid grounds for a mean estimate of 
the class of rhapsodes, while it attests remarkably the striking effect produced 
by their recitation (c. ¢, p. 535). That this. class of men came to combine 
the habit of expository comment on the poet with their original profession 
of reciting, proves the tendencies of the age; probably, it also brought thepa 


ato rivalry with the philosophers. 


UNDESERVED CONDEMNATION OF RHAPSODKS. 139 


philosophers considered Homer and other poets with a view to 
instruction, ethical doctrine, and virtuous practice : tney analyzed 
the characters whom the poet described, sifted the value of the 
lessons conveyed, and often struggled to discover a hidden mean- 
ing, where they disapproved that which was apparent. When they 
found a man like the rhapsode, who professed to impress the 
Homeric narrative upon an audience, and yet either never med- 
dled at all, or meddled unsuccessfully, with the business of €Xpo- 
sition, they treated him with contempt; indeed, Socrates depre- 
ciates the poets themselves, much upon the same principle, as 
dealing with matters of which they could render no rational 
account.! It was also the habit of Plato and Xenophén to dis- 
parage generally professional exertion of talent for the purpose 
of gaining a livelihood, contrasting it often in an indelicate man- 
ner with the gratuitous teaching and ostentatious poverty of their 
master. But we are not warranted in judging the rhapsodes by 
such a standard. Though they were not philosophers or moral- 
ists, it was their province —and it had been so, long before the 
philosophical point of view was opened — to bring their poet 
home to the bosoms and emotions of an assembled crowd, and to 
penetrate themselves with his meaning so far as was suitable for 
that purpose, adapting to it the appropriate graces of action and 
intonation. In this their genuine task they were valuable mem- 
bers of the Grecian community, and seem to have possessed all 
the qualities necessary for success. 

‘These rhapsodes, the successors of the primitive acedi, or 
bards, seem to have been distinguished from them by the discon- 
tinuance of all musical accompaniment. Originally, the bard 
sung, enlivening the song with occasional touches of the simple 
®ur-stringed harp: his successor, the rhapsode, recited, holding 


The grounds taken by Aristotle (Problem. xxx. 10; compare Aul. Gellius, 
xx. 14) against the actors, singers, musicians, etc. of his time, are more 
serious, and have more the air of truth. 

If it be correct in Lehrs (de Studiis Aristarchi, Diss. ii. p. 46) to identify 
those early glossographers of Homer, whose explanations the Alexandrine 
critics so severely condemned, with the rhapsodes, this only proves that the 
rhapsodes had come to undertake a double duty, of which their predexesors 
before Solén would never have dreamed. 

Plato, Apolog. Socrat. p. 22. Ἂς. 7. 


140 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


in his hand nothing but a branch of laurel and depending for 
effect upon voice and manner,—a spevies of musical and 
rhythmical declamation,' which gradually increased in vehement 


' Aristotel. Poetic. c. 47; Welcker, Der Episch. Kyklos ; Ueber den Vor- 
trag der Homerischen Gedichte, pp. 340-406, which collects all the facts 
respecting the adi amd the rhapsodes. Unfortunately, the ascertained 
points are very few. 

The laurel branch in the hand of the singer or reciter (for the two expres- 
sions are often confounded) seems to have been peculiar to the recitation 
of Homer and Hesiod (Hesiod, ‘Theog. 30; Schol. ad Aristophan. Nub. 1367. 
Pausan. x. 7,2). “Poemata omne genus (says Apuleius, Florid. p. 122, 
Bipont.) apta virge, lyr, socco, cothurno.” 

Not only Homer and Hesiod, but also Archilochus, were recited by rhap 
sodes (Athenx. xii. 620; also Plato, Legg. ii. p. 658). -Consult, besides, 
Nitzsch, De Historid Homeri, Fascic. 2, p. 114, seq, respecting the rhapsodes ; 
and O. Miller, History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. iv. s. 3. 

The ideas of singing and speech are, however, often confounded, in refer 
ence to any verse solemnly and emphatically delivered (Thucydid. ii. 53) 
-- φάσκοντες οἱ πρεσθύτεροι πάλαι ἄδεσϑαι, Ἥξει Δωριακὸς πόλεμος καὶ 
λοιμὸς ἅμ᾽ αὐτῷ. And the rhapsodes are said to sing Homer (Plato, Eryxias, 
ε. 13; Hesych. v. Βραυρωνίοις) ; Strabo (i. p. 18) has a good passage upon 
song and speech. 

William Grimm (Deutsche Heldensage, p. 373) supposes the ancient Ger- 
man heroic romances to have been recited or declaimed in a similar manner 
with a simple accompaniment of the harp, as the Servian heroic lays are 
even at this time delivered. 

Fauriel also tells as, respecting the French Carlovingian Epic (Romans 
de Chevalerie, Revue des Deux Mondes, xiii. p. 559): “The romances of 
the 12th and 13th centuries were really sung: the jongleur invited his audi 
ence to hear a belle chanson d'histoire, —‘le mot chanter ne manque jamais 
dans la formule initiale, — and it is to be understood literally: the music 
was simple and intermittent, more like a recitative ; the jongleur carried a 
rebek, or violin with three strings,an Arabic instrument; when he wished to 
rest his voice, he played an air or ritournelle upon this; he went thus about 
from place to place, and the romances had no existence among the people, 
except through the aid and recitation of these jongleurs.” 

It appears that there had once been rhapsodic exhibitions at the festivals of 
Dionysus, bat they were discontinued (Klearchus ap. Athen. vii. p. 275) 
— probabiy superseded by the dithyramb and the tragedy. 

The etymology of ῥαψῳδὸς is a disputed point : Welcker traces it to ῥώβδος, 
most critics derive it from ῥώπτειν ἀοιδὴν, which O. Miiller explains “to 
denote the coupling together of verses without any considerable divisions or 
pauses,— the even, unbroken, continuous flow of the epic poem,” as com 
tasted with the strophic or choric periods (/ c.). 


VARIATIONS IN RECITATION. 14} 


emphasis and gesticulation until it approached to that of the 
dramatic actor. At what time this change took place, or whether 
the two different modes of enunciating the ancient epic may for a 
certain period have gone on simultaneously, we have no means 
of determining. Hesiod receives from the Muse a branch of 
laurel, as a token of his ordination into their service, which 
marks him for a rhapsode ; while the ancient bard with his harp 
is still recognized in the Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo, 
as efficient and popular at the Panionic festivals in the island of 
Delos.! Perhaps the improvements made in the harp, to which 
three strings, in addition to the original four, were attached by 
Terpander (Β. c. 660), and the growing complication of instru- 
mental music generally, may have contributed to discredit the 
primitive accompaniment, and thus to promote the practice of 
recital: the story, that Terpander himself composed music, not 
only for hexameter poems of his own, but also for those of 
Ilomer, seems to indicate that the music which preceded him was 
ceasing to find favor.2 By whatever steps the change from the 
bard to the rhapsode took place, certain it is that before the time 
of Solon, the latter was the recognized and exclusive organ of 


' Homer, Hymn to Apoll. 170. The κίϑαρις, ἀοιδὴ, ὀρχηϑμὸς, are con- 
stantly put together in that hymn: evidently, the instrumental accompani- 
ment was essential to the hymns at the Ionic festival. Compare also the 
Hymn to Hermés (430), where the function ascribed to the Muses can hardly 
be understood to include non-musical recitation. The Hymn to Hermés is 
more recent than Terpander, inasmuch as it mentions the seven strings of 
the lyre, v. 50. 

* Terpander, — see Plutarch. de Musica, c. 3-4; the facts respecting him 
are collected in Plehn’s Lesbiaca, pp. 140-160; but very little can be authen 
ticated. 

Stesander at the Pythian festivals sang the Homeric battles, with a harp 
accompaniment of his own composition (Athenz. xiv. p. 638). 

The principal testimonies respecting the raphsodizing of the Homeric 
poems at Athens, chiefly at the Panathenaic festival, are Isokratés, Pane- 
gyric. p. 74; Lycurgus contra Leocrat. p. 161; Plato, Hipparch. p. 228; 
Diogen. Laért. Vit. Solon. i. 57. 

Inscriptions attest that rhapsodizing continued in great esteem, down te 
4 late period of the historical age, both at Chios and Teés, especially the 
former: it was the subject of competition by trained youth, and of prizes for 
he victor, at periodical religious sclemnitis: see Corp. Inscript. Boeckh, No 
9014-3088. 


. 
ie, + -ἘΠῸῚ- νοὶ 


nn 
——— 


agg A 


( 
; 
Ι 
| 
; 
‘ 
5 
" 
᾿ 


142 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the old Epic; sometimes in short fragments before private 
companies, by single rhapsodes,— sometimes several rhapsodes 
in continuous succession at a public festival. 

Respecting the mode in which the Homeric poems were pre- 
served, during the two centuries (or as some think, longer 
interval) between their original composition and the period shortly 
preceding Sol6n,— and respecting their original composition and 
subsequent changes,—there are wide differences of opinion 
among able critics. Were they preserved with or without being 
written? Was the Iliad originally composed as one poem, and 
the Odyssey in like manner, or is each of them an aggregation 
of parts originally self-existent and unconnected? Was the 
authorship of each poem single-headed or many-headed ? 

Either tacitly or explicitly, these questions have been generally 
coupled together and discussed with reference to each other, by 
inquiries into the Homeric poems ; though Mr. Payne Knight’s 
Prolegomena have the merit of keeping them distinct. Half a 
century ago, the acute and valuable Prolegomena of F. A. Wolf, 
turning to account the Venetian Scholia which had then been 
recently published, first opened philosophical discussion as to the 
history of the Homeric text. A considerable part of that disser- 
tation (though by no means the whole) is employed in vindi- 
cating the position, previously announced by Bentley, among 
others, that the separate constituent portions of the Iliad and 
Odyssey had not been cemented together into any compact body 
and unchangeable order until the days of Peisistratus, in the 
sixth century before Christ. As a step towards that conclusion, 
Wolf maintained that no written copies of either poem could be 
shown to have existed during the earlier times to which their 
composition is referred,— and that without writing, neither the 
perfect symmetry of so complicated a work could have been 
originally conceived by any poet, nor, if realized by him, trans- 
mitted with assurance to posterity. The absence of easy and 
convenient writing, such as must be indispensably supposed for 
long manuscripts, among the early Greeks, was thus one of the 

points in Wolf’s case against the primitive integrity of the Iliad 
and Odyssey. By Nitzsch and other leading opponents of Wolf, 
the connection of the one with the other seems to have been 
accepted as he originally put it; and it has been considered 


HOMERIC POEMS.— WRITTEN OR UNWRITTEN. 143 


incumbent on those, who defended the ancient aggregate char- 
acter of the Iliad and Odyssey, to maintain that they were 
written poems from the beginning. 

To me it appears that the architectonic functions ascribed 
by Wolf to Peisistratus and his associates, in reference to 
the Homeric poems, are nowise admissible. But much would 
undoubtedly be gained towards that view of the question, if it 
could be shown that, in order to controvert it, we were Saas to 
the necessity of admitting long written poems in the ninth century 
before the Christian era. Few things, in my opinion, can be 
‘uore improbable: and Mr. Payne Knight, opposed as he is to the 
Wolfian hypothesis, admits this no less than Wolf himself! The 
traces of writing in Greece, even in the seventh century before 
the Christian era, are exceedingly trifling. We have no remain- 
ing inscription earlier than the 40th Olympiad, and the early 
inscriptions are rude and unskilfully executed: nor can we even 
assure ourselves whether Archilochus, Simonidés of Amorgus, 
Kallinus, Tyrteus, Xanthus, and the other early elegiac and lyric 


' Knight, Prolegom. Hom. c. xxxviii-xl. “Haud tamen ullum Homeri- 
corum carminum exemplar Pisistrati seculo antiquius extitisse, aut sexcen- 
tesimo prius anno ante C. N. scriptum fuisse, facile credam: rara enim et 
perdifficilis erat iis temporibus scriptura ob penuriam materi scribendo 
idonee, quum literas aut lapidibus exarare, aut tabulis ligneis aut laminis 
metalli alicujus insculpere oporteret -Atque ideo memoriter retenta 
sunt, et hee et alia veterum poetarum carmina, et per urbes et vicos et in 
principum virorum sdibus, decantata a rhapsodis. Neque mirandum est, 
ea per tot scula sic integra conservata esse, quoniam —per eos tradita 
erant, qui ab omnibus Gracie et coloniarum regibus et civitatibus mercede 
satis ampl4 conducti, omnia sua studia in iis ediscendis, retinendis, et rite 
recitandis, conferebant.”. Compare Wolf, Prolegom. xxiv-xxyv. 

The evidences of early writing among the Greeks, and of written poems 
even anterior to Homer, may be seen collected in Kreuser (Vorfragen ueber 
Homeros, pp. 127-159, Frankfort, 1828). His proofs appear to me altogether 
incoaclusive. Nitzsch maintains the same opinion (Histor. Homeri, Fase. i 
sect. xi. xvii. xviii.),— in my opinion, not more successfully: nor does Frans 
(Epigraphicé Grac. Introd. s. iv.) produce any new arguments. 

I do not quite subscribe to Mr. Knight’s language, when he says th 
there is nothing wonderful in the long preservation of thy Homeric poems 
unwritten. It is enough to maintain that the existence, and practical use of 
long manuscripts, by all the rhapsodes, under the condition and circum- 
— of the 8th and 9th centuries among the Greeks, would be a greates 
wonder 


144 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


poets, committed their compesitions to writing, or at what —_ 
the practice of doing so became familiar. The first poaitive 
ground, which authorizes us to presume the existence of ἃ manus 
script of Homer, is in tht: famous ordinance of Solon with regard 
to the rhapsodes at the Panathenxa; but for what length of time, 
previously, manuscripts had existed, we are unable to say. 
Those who maintain the Homeric poems to have been written 
from the beginning, rest their case, not upon positive abiconedl nor 
yet upon the existing habits of society with regard to poetry; for 
they admit generally that the Iliad and Odyssey W a ΜΒ 
read, but recited and heard,— but upon the supposed nece ΜΕ 
that there must have been mannuscripts,' to insure the preserva- 
tion of the poems.— the unassisted memory of reciters being 
neither sufficient nor trustworthy. But here we only escape a 
smaller difficulty by running into a greater; for the existence of 
trained bards, gifted with extraordinary memory, is far less 
astonishing than that of long manuscripts In an age essentially 
non-reading and nen-writing, and when even suitable instruments 
and materials for the process are not bvious. Moreover, there 
is a strong positive reason for believing that the mane was under 
no necessity for refreshing his memory by consulting dh: so 
script. For if such had been the fact, blindness would ure βαρ 
a disqualification for the profession, which we know ΜΕΝ : as 
not: as well from the example of Demodokus in the Od) ssey, as 
from that of the blind bard of Chios, in the hymn to the anger 
Apollo, whom Thucydidés, as well as the ΨΥ. se . 
Grecian legend, identifies with Homer himself The aut - ο 
that Hymn, be he who he may, could never have described a 


1 See this argument strongly put by Nitzsch, in the are ὁ esi at 
ginning of his second volume of ( ommentaries on the dyssey pp. 
. He takes great pains to discard all idea that the poems were 
To the same purpose, Franz (Epigraphicé 


the ἃ 
X-xxix). 

: > liven read. 
written in order to |x : 0 ᾿᾿ ᾿ . ἘΝ 
Greee. Introd. p. 32), who adopts Nitzsch’s positions, —“ Audituris enim, non 
800, . . 2}, 


we ce Ὗ M 4 hant.” 
lecturis, carmina para ᾿ 
11. 68 ly Apoll. 172: Pseudo-Herodot. Vit. Homer. 6. 
 Odvss. viii. 65; Hymn. ad Apoll. 172; Pseudo 
pies a aa 
3: Thucyd. iii. 104. ᾿ 
Various commentators on Homer imagin 2d that, under the misfortune of 


Demodokus, the poet in reality desc-‘bed his own (Schol ad Odyss 1 2; 


Maxim. Tyr. xxxviii. 1). 


MEMORY OF PROFESSIONAL RECITERS. 140 


blind man as attaining the utmost perfection in his art, if he had 
been conscious that the memory of the bard was only maintained 
by censtant reference to the manuscript in his chest. 

Nor will it be found, after all, that the effort of memory 
required, either from bards or rhapsodes, even for the longest of 
these old Epic poems, — though doubtless great, was at all super- 
human. Taking the case with reference to the entire Iliad and 
Odyssey, we know that there were educated gentlemen at Athens 
who could repeat both poems by heart:! but in the professional 


* Xenoph. Sympos. iii. 5. Compare, respecting the laborious discipline of 
the Gallic Druids, and the number of unwritten verses which they retained 
in their memories, Cxsar, B. G. vi. 14; Mela. iii. 2; also Wolf, Prolegg. 5. 
xxiy. and Herod. ii. 77, about the prodigious memory of the Egyptian priests 
at Heliopolis. 

I transcribe, from the interesting Discours of M. Fauriel (prefixed to his 
Chants Populaires de la Gréce Moderne, Paris 1824), a few particulars re- 
specting the number, the mnemonic power, and the popularity of those 

‘ erant singers or rhapsodes who frequent the festivals or paneghyris of 
modern Greece: it is curious to learn that this profession is habitually exer 
cised by blind men (p. xe. seq.). 

“ Les aveugles exercent en Gréce une profession qui les rend non seule- 
ment agréables, mais nécessaires ; le caract?re, imagination, et la condition 
du peuple, étant ce qu'ils sont: c'est la profession de chanteurs ambulans. 

.- «Ils sont dans l’usage, tant sur le continent que dans les fles, de la 

Gréce, d’apprendre par ceur le plus grand nombre qu’ils peuvent de chan- 
sons populaires de tout genre et de toute €poque. Quelyues uns finissent 
par en savoir une quantité prodigieuse, et tous en savent beaucoup. Avee 
ce trésor dans leur mémvire, ils sont toujours en marche, traversent la Gréce 
en tout sens; ils s’en vont de ville en ville de village en village, chantant a 
l'auditoire qui se forme aussitét autour d’eux, partout ot ils se montrent, 
celles de leurs chansons qu’ils jugent convenir le mieux, soit a la localité, 
soit a la circonstance, et regoivent une petite rétribution qui fait tout leur 
revenu. Ils ont l’air de chercher de préférence, en tout lieu, la partie la plus 
inculte de la population, qui en est toujours la plus curieuse, la plus avide 
d'impressions, et la moins difficile dans le choix de ceux qui leur sont offertes. 
Les Turcs seuls ne les écoutent pas. C’est aux réunions nombreuses, aux 
fetes de village connues sous le nom de Paneghyris, que ces chanteurs am- 
bulans accourent le plus volontiers. Ils chantent en s’accompagnant d’un 
instrument ἃ cordes que |’on touche avec un archet, et qui est exactement 
Cancienne lyre des Grecs, dont il a conservé le nom comme la forme. 

“ Cette lyre, pour étre entitre, doit avoir cing cordes: mais souvent elle 
n'en a que deux ou trcis, dont les sons, comme il est aisé de présumer, n’ont 
rien de bien harmonieux. Les chanteurs aveugles vont ordinairement isolég 


VOL. II. 7 lOve 


146 HIStOKRY OF GREECE. 


recitations, we are not to imagine that the same person did go 
through the whole: the recitation was essentially a joint under- 
taking, and the rbapsodes who visited a festival would naturally 
understand among themselves which part of the poem should 
devolve upon each particular individual. Under such circum- 
stances, and with such means of preparation beforehand, the 
quantity of verse which a rhapsode could deliver would be 
measured, not so much by the exhaustion of his memory, as by 
the physical sufliciency of his voice, having reference to the 
sonorous, emphatic, and rhythmical pronunciation required 
from him.! 

But what guarantee have we for the exact transmission of 
the text for a space of two centuries by simply oral means? It 


et chacun d’eux chante ἃ part de# autres: mais quelquefois aussi ils 


50 
réunissent par groupes de deux ou de trois, pour dire ensemble les mémes 
chansons......Ces modernes rhapsedss doivent étre divisés en deux classes. 
Les uns (et ce sont, selon toute apparerce, les plus nombreux) se bornent ἃ 
la fonction de recueillir, d'apprendre par cveur, et de mettre en circulation, 
des piéces quils n'ont point composeées Les autres (et ce sont ceux qui 
forment Yordre le plus distingué de leur cerps), a cette fonction de reép¢cti 

teurs et de colporteurs des po¢sies d’autrvi, joigtent celle de poétes, et ajout- 
ent A la masse des chansons apprises d'autres chants de leur fagon 

Ces rhapsodes aveugles sont les nouvellistes et les historiens, en méme temps 
que les poétes du peuple, en cela parfaitement semlables aux rhapsodes 
anciens de la Grece.” 

To pass to another country — Persia, once the great rival of Greece. 
“The Kurroglian rhapsodes are called Kurroglou-Khans, fom khaunden, to 
sing. Their duty is, to know by heart all the mejjlisses (mcet*ngs) of Kurro- 
glou, narrate them, or sing them with the accompaniment of the favorite 
instrument of Kurroglou, the chungur, or sitar, a three-stringed gsitar. Fer- 
dausi has also his Shah-nama-Ahans, and the prophet Mohammed his Korun 
Khans. ‘The memory of those singers is truly astonishing. At every request, 
they recite in one breath for some hours, without stammering, begianing the 
tale at the passage or verse pointed out by the hearers.” (Specimens «f the 
Popular Poetry of Persia, as found in the Adventures and Improvisations 
of Kurroglou, the Bandit Minstrel of Northern Persia, by Alexander Ch~dz- 
ko: London 1842, Introd. p. 13.) 

“ One of the song's of the Calmuck national bards sometimes lasts a whele 
day.” (Ibid. p. 372. 

‘ There are just remarks of Mr, Mitford on the possibility that the Homerie 
poems might have been preserved without writing (History pf Greece, vol 
i pp 135-137). 

Vol. 2 5 


THE LETTER DIGAMMA. 147 


may be replied, that oral transmission would hand down the text 
as exactly as in point of fact it was handed down. ‘The great 
lines of each poem, — the order of parts, — the vein of Homeric 
feeling, and the general style of locution, and, for the most part, 
the true words,— would be maintained: for the professional 
training of the rhapsode, over and above the precision of his 
actual memory, would tend to Homerize his mind (if the ex- 
pression may be permitted), and to restrain him within this magic 
circle. On the other hand, in respect to the details of the text, 
we should expect that there would be wide differences and 
numerous inaccuracies: and so there really were, as the records 
contained in the Scholia, together with the passages cited in 
ancient authors, but not found in our Homeric text, abundantly 
testify.’ 

Moreover, the state of the Iliad and Odyssey, in respect to the 
ietter called the Digamma, affords a proof that they were recited 
for a considerable period before they were committed to writing, 
insomuch that the oral pronunciation underwent during the in- 
terval a sensible change.? At the time when these poems were 
composed, the Digamma was an effective consonant, and figured 
as such in the structure of the verse: at the time when they were 


' Villoison, Prolegomen. pp. xxxiv-lvi; Wolf, Prolegomen. p.37. Diint 


zer, in the Epicor. Gree. Fragm. pp. 27-29, gives a considerable list of the 
Iiomeric passages cited by ancient authors, but not found either in the Iliad 
or Odyssey. It is hardly to be doubted, however, that many of these pas- 
sages belonge 1 to other epic poems which passed under the name of Homer. 
Welcker (Der Episch. Kyklus, pp. 20-133) enforces this opinion very justly, 
and it harmonizes with his view of the name of Homer as coextensive wi'h 
the whole Epic cycle. 

* See this argument strongly maintained in Giese (Ueber den Kolischen 
Dialekt, sect. 14. p. 160, segqg.). He notices several other particulars in the 
Homeric language, — the plenitude and variety of interchangeable grammat- 
ical forms,—the numerous metrical licenses, set right by appropriate oral 
intonations, — which indicate a language as yet not constrained by the fixity 
of written authority. 

The same line of argument is taken by O. Miiller (History of the Litera- 
ture of Ancient Greece, ch. iv. s. 5). 

Giese has shown also, in the same chapter, that all the manuscripts of 
Homer mentioned in the Scholia, were written in the Ionic alphabet (with 
H and @ as marks for the long vowels, and no special mark for the rough 
breathing), in so far as the special citations out of them enable us to verify 


148 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


committed to writing, it had ceased to be pronounced, and there- 
fore never found a place in any of the manuscripts, — insomuch 
that the Alexandrine critics, though they knew of its existence 
in the much later poems of Alkaus and Sappho, never recognized 
it in Homer. The hiatus, and the various perplexities of metre, 
asioned by the loss of the Digamma, were corrected by differ- 


occ 
But the whole histery of this lost 


ent grammatical stratagems. 
letter is very curious, and is rendered intelligible only by the 
supposition that the Iliad and Odyssey belonged for a wide space 
of time to the memory, the voice, and the ear, exclusively. 

At what period these pvems, OF, indeed, any other Greek 
poems, first began to be written, must be matter of conjecture, 
thouch there is ground for assurance that it was before the 


time of Solén. If, in the absence of evidence, we may venture 


upon naming any 
suecests itself, what were the purposes which, in that stage of 
seciuty, a manuseript at its first commencement must have been 
] For whom was ἃ writen Iliad necessary ? 


more determinate period, the question at once 


intended to answer ? 
Not for the rhapsodes ; for with them it was not only planted in 
the memory, but also interwoven with the feelings, and conceived 
in conjunction with all those flexions and intonations of voice, 
pauses, and other oral artifices, which were required for emphatic 
delivery, and which the naked manuscript could never reproduce. 
Not for the general public, — they were accustomed to receive it 
psodiic delivery, and with its accompaniments of a 


with its rhapsoc 
The only persons for whom the 


solemn and crowded festival. 
written [liad would be suitable, would be a select few ; studious 
and curious men, —a class of readers, capable of analyzing the 
complicated emotions which they had experienced as hearers in 
the crowd, and who would, on perusing the written words, realize 
in their imaginations a sensible portion of the impression com 


municated by the reciter.! 


----- 


1 Nitzsch and Welcker argue, that because the Homeric poems were heare 
with great delight and interest, therefore the first rudiments of the art of 
writing, even while beset by a thousand mechanical difficulties, would be 
employed to record them. I cannot adopt this opinion, which appears te 
me to derive all its plausibility from our present familiarity with reading 


The first step from the recited to the written poem is really 


and writing. 


one of great violence, as well as useless for any want then actually felt. 


COMMENCEMENT OF WRITING. 149 


Incredible as the statement may seem in an age like the pres 
ent, there is in all early societies, and there was in early Greece, 
a time when no such reading class existed. If we could discover 
at what time such a class first began to be formed, we should be 
able to make a guess at the time when the old Epic poems were 
first committed to writing. Now the period which may with the 
ereatest probability be fixed upon as having first witnessed the 
formation even of the narrowest reading class in Greece, is the 
middle of the seventh century before the Christian era (B. c. 660 
to B. c. 630),— the age of Terpander, Kallinus, Archilochus, 
Simonidés of Amorgus, ete. I ground this supposition on the 
change then operated in the character and tendencies of Grecian 
poetry and music,— the elegiac and iambic measures having 
been introduced as rivals to the primitive hexameter, and poetical 
compositions having been transferred from the epical past to 
the affairs of present and real life. Such a change was impor- 
tant at a time when poetry was the only known mode of publica- 
tion (to use a modern phrase not altogether suitable, yet the 
nearest approaching to the sense). It argued a new way of 
looking at the old epical treasures of the people, as well as a 


much more agree with Wolf when he says: “ Diu enim illorum hominum 
vita et simplicitas nihil admodum habuit, quod scriptura dignum videretur: 
in aliis omnibus occupati agunt illi, que posteri seribunt, vel (ut de quibus- 
dam populis accepimus) etiam monstratam operam hanc spernunt tanquam 
indecori otii: carmina autem quz pangunt, longo usu sic ore fundere et 
excipere consueverunt, ut canta et recitatione cum maxime vigentia deducere 
ad mutas notas, ex illius ztatis sensu nihil aliud esset, quam perimere ea δὲ 
vitali vi ac spiritu privare.” (Prolegom. s. xv. p. 59.) 

Some good remarks on this subject are to be found in William Humboldt’s 
Introduction to his elaborate treatise Ueber die Kawi-Sprache, in reference to 
the oral tales current among the Basques. He, too, observes how great and 
repulsive a proceeding it is, to pass at first from verse sung, or recited, to 
verse written; implying that the words are conceived detached from the 
Vortrag, the accompanying music, and the surrounding and sympathizing 
assembly. The Basque tales have no charm for the people themselves, when 
put in Spanish words and read (Introduction, sect. xx. p. 258-259). 

Unwritten prose tales, preserved in the memory, and said to be repeated 
nearly in the seme words from age to age, are mentioned by Mariner, in the 
Tonga Islands (Mariner’s Acconnt, vol. ii. p. 377). 

The Druidical poems were kept unwritten by design, after writing was ἐφ 
established uss for other purpcses (Cesar, B. G. vi. 13). 


lou HISTORY GF GREECE 


thirst for new poetical effect ; and the men who stood f:rward τῇ 
it may well be considered as desirous to study, and competent to 
criticize, from their own individual point of view, the written 
words of the Homeric rhapsodes, just as we are told that Kallinus 
both noticed and eulogized the Thebais as the production of Ho- 
mer. There seems, therefore, ground for conjecturing, that (for 
the use of this newly-formed and important, but very narrow 
class) manuscripts of the Homeric poems and other old epies — 
the Thebais and the Cypria as well as the iliad and the Odyssey 
— began to be compiled towards the middle of the seventh cen- 
tury B. c.:! and the opening of Egypt to Grecian commerce, 
which took place about the same period, would furnish increased 
facilities for obtaining the requisite papyrus to write upon. A 
reading class, when once formed, would doubtless slowly increase, 
and the number of manuscripts along with it; so that before the 
time of Solén, fifty years afterwards, both readers and manu- 
scripts, though still comparatively few, might have attained a 
certain recognized authority, and formed a tribunal of reference, 
avainst the carelessness of individual rhapsodes. 

We may, I think. consider the Iliad and Odyssey to have been 
preserved without the aid of writing, for a period near upon two 
centuries2 But is it true, as Wolf imagined, and as other able 


1 Mr. Fynes 


The evidences 
regarded as proving anything to the point. 

Giese (Ueber den olischen Dialekt, p. 172) places the first writing of 
the separate rhapsodies composing the Iliad in the seventh century B. C. 

2 The songs of the Icelandic Skalds were preserved orally for a period 
longer than two centuries,— P. A Maller thinks very much longer,— 
before they were collected, or embodied in written story by Snorro and 
Semund (Lange, Untersuchungen Aber die Gesch. der Nérdischen Helden- 
sage, p. 98; also, Introduct. pp. xx-xxviiil). He confounds, however, often, 
the preservation of the songs from old time,— with the question, whether 
they have or have not an historical basis. 

And there were, doubtless, many old- bards and rhapsodes in ancient 
Greece, ef whom the same might be said which Saxo Grammaticus affirms 
of an Englishman named Lucas, thet he was “ literis quidem tenuiter in 


HUMERIC POEMS PRESERVED UNWRITTEN. 15] 


entics have imagined, also, that the separate portions of which 
these two poems are composed were originally distinct epica 
ballads, each constituting a separate whole and intended for 
separate recitation? Is it true, that they had not only no com- 
mon author, but originally, neither common purpose nor fixed 
order, and that their first permanent arrangement and integration 
was delayed for three centuries, and accomplished at last only 
by the taste of Peisistratus conjoined with various lettered 
friends ?! 

This hypothesis —to which the genius of Wolf first gave 
celebrity, but which has been since enforced more in detail by 
others, especially by William Muller and Lachmann — appears 
to me not only unsupported by any sufficient testimony, but also 
opposed to other testimony as well as to a strong force of inter- 
nal probability. ‘The authorities quoted by Wolf are Josephus, 
Cicero, and Pausanias :2 Josephus mentions nothing about Pei- 


structus, sed historiarum scientid apprime eruditus.” (Dahlmann, Historische 
Forschungen, vol. ii. p. 176.) 

1 « Homer wrote a sequel of songs and rhapsodies, to be sung by himself 
for small earnings and good cheer, at festivals and other days of merriment; 
the Iliad he made for the men, the Odysseus for the other sex. These loose 
songs were not collected together into the form of an epic poem until 500 
rears after.” 

Such is the naked language in which Wolf’s main hypothesis had been 
previously set forth by Bentley, in his “ Remarks on a late Discourse of 
Freethinking, by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,” published in 1713: the passage 
remained unaltered in the seventh edition of that treatise published in 1737 
See Wolf’s Proleg. xxvii. p. 115. 

The same hypothesis may be seen more amply developed, partly in the 
work of Wolfs pupil and admirer, William Maller, Homerische Vorschule 
(the second edition of which was published at Leipsic, 1836, with an excel- 
lent introduction and notes by Baumgarten-Crusius, adding greatly to the 
value of the original work by its dispassionate review of the whole contro- 
versy), partly in two valuable Dissertations of Lachmann, published in the 
Philological Transactions of the Berlin Academy for 1837 and 1841. 

2 Joseph. cont. Apion. i. 2; Cicero de Orator. iii. 34; Pausan. vii. 26, 6+ 
compare the Scholion on Plautus in Ritschl, Die Alexandrin. Bibliothek, p. 
4. Hlian (V. H. xiii. 14), who mentions both the introduction of the 
Homeric poems into Peloponnesus by Lykurgus, and the compilation by 
Peisistratus, can hardly be considered as adding to the value of the testi- 
mony: still less, Libanius and Suidas. What we learn is, that some literary 
und critica! men of the Alexandrine age (more or fewer, as the case maj 


152 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


sistratus, but merely states (what we may accept as the probable 
fact) that the Homeric poems were originally unwritten, and 
preserved only in songs or recitations, from which they were at ἃ 
subsequent period put into writing: hence many of the discrepan- 
cies in the text. On the other hand, Cicero and Pausanias zo 
farther, and affirm that Peisistratus both collected, and arranged 
in the existing order, the rhapsodies of the Iliad and Odyssey, 
(implied as poems originally entire, and subsequently broken int 
pieces,) which he found partly contused and partly isolated from 
each other, — each part being then remembered only in its own 


portion of the Grecian world. Respecting Hipparchus the son 


of Peisistratus, too, we are told in the Pseudo-Platonic dialocue 
which bears his name, that he was the first to introduce into 
Attica, the poetry of Homer, and that he prescribed to the rhap- 
sodes to recite the parts of the Panathenaic festival in regular 
sequence.! 

Wolf and William Miller occasionally speak as if they admit- 
ted something like an Iliad and Odyssey as established aggregates 
prior to Peisistratus ; but for the most part they represent him or 
his associates as having been the first to put together Homeric 
poems which were before distinct and self-existent compositions. 
And Lachmann, the recent expositor of the same theory, ascribes 
to Peisistratus still more unequivocally this original integration 
of parts in reference to the Iliad, — distributing the first twenty- 
two books of the poem into sixteen separate songs, and treating it 
as ridiculous to imagine that the fusion of these songs, into an 
order such as we now read, belongs to any date earlier than 


Peisistratus.2 


be; but Wolf exaggerates when he talks of an unanimous conviction) spoke 
of Peisistratus as having first put together the fractional parts of the Iliad 


and Odyssey into entire poemis. 

' Plato, Hipparch. p. 228. 

2“ Doch ich komme mir bald laicherlich vor, wenn ich noch immer die 
Moclichkeit gelten lasse, dass unsere Ilias in dem gegenwirtigen Zusam- 
memhange der bedeutenden Theile, und nicht blos der wenigen bedeutend- 
sten, jemals vor der Arbeit des Pisistratus gedacht worden sey.” (Lachmann, 
Fernere Betrachtungen ober die Ilias, sect. xxviii. p. 32; Abhandlungen Ber 
lin. Academ. 1841.) How far this admission — that for the few most impor 
tant portions of the Iliad, there did exist an established order of succession 
prior to Peisistratus —is intended to reach, I do not know; but the language 


REGULATIONS OF SOLON. 158 


Upon this theory we may remark, first, that it stands opposed 
to the testimony existing respecting the regulations of Solon; 
who, before the time of Peisistratus, had enforced a fixed order 
of recitation on the rhapsodes of the Iliad at the Panathenaie 
festival; not only directing that they should go through the 
rhapsodies serzatém, and without omission or corruption, but. also 
establishing a prompter or censorial authority to insure obedience,! 


of Lachmann goes farther than either Wolf or William Miiller. (See Wolf, 
Prolegomen. pp. cxli-cxlii, and W. Miiller, Homerische Vorschule, Absch 
nitt. vil, pp. 96, 98, 100, 102.) The latter admits that neither Petsistratus 
nor the Diaskeuasts could have made any considerable changes in the Iliao 
and Odyssey, either in the way of addition or of transposition; the poems 
as aggregates being too well known, and the Ilomeric vein of invention too 
completely extinct, to admit of such novelties. 

I confess, I do not see how these last-mentioned admissions can be recon- 
eiled with the main doctrine of Wolf, in so far as regards Peisistragus. 

’ Diogen. Laért. i 57.— Ta δὲ ‘Oujpov ἐξ ὑποβολῆς γέγραφε (Σόλων) 
ῥαψῳδεῖσϑαι, οἷον ὅπου 6 πρῶτος ἔληξεν, ἔκειϑεν ἄρχεσϑαι τὸν ἀρχύμενον, 
Oc φησι Διευχίδας ἐν τοῖς Μεγαρικοῖς. 

Respecting Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus, the Pscudo-Plato tells us (in 
the dialogue so called, p. 228), — καὶ τὰ "'Ομήρου ἔπη πρῶτος ἐκύμισεν εἰς τὴν 
γῆν ταυτηνὶ, καὶ ἠνάγκασε τοὺς ῥαψῳδοὺς Παναϑηναίοις ἐξ ὑπολήψεως 
ἐφεξῆς αὐτὰ διϊέναι, ὥσπερ νῦν ἔτι οἷδε ποιοῦσι. 

These words have provoked muitiplied criticisms from all the learned 
men who have touched upon the theory of the Homeric poems, —to deter- 
mine what was the practice which Solon found existing, and whit was the 
change which he introduced. Our information is too scanty to pretend *o 
certainty, but I think the explanation of Hermann the most satisfactory 
(* Quid sit ὑποβολὴ εἰ broPpandn rv.” — Opuscula, tom. v. p. 300, tom. 
vii. p. 162). 

«Υ̓ποβολεὺς is the technical term for the prompter at a theatrical represen- 
tation (Plutarch, Precept. gerend. Reip. p. 813) ; ὑποβολὴ and ὑποβώλλειν 
have corresponding meanings, of aiding the memory of a speaker and keep- 
ing him in accordance with a certain standard, in possession of the prompter: 
see the words ἐξ ὑποβολῆς, Xenophon. Cyroped. iii. 3,37. “Ὑποβολὴ, there- 
fore, has no necessary connection with a series of rhapsodes, but would apply 
just as much to one alone; although it happens in this case to be broughy 
to bear upon several in succession. “Ὑπόληψις, again, means “ the taking 
up in succession of one rhapsode by another :” though the two words, there- 
fore, have not the same meaning, yet the proceeding described in the two 
passages, in reference both to Solén and Hipparchus, appears to be in 
substance the same,—%, ἐν to imsvre by compulsory supervision, ἃ correct 

ἢ 


54 HISTORY OF GREECE. 

— which implies the existence (at the same time that it proclaims 
the occasional infringement) of an orderly aggregate, as well as 
of manuscripts professedly complete. Next, the theory ascribes 
ὦ Peisistratus a character not only materially different from 
what is indicated by Cicero and Pausanias, — who represent 
him, not as having put together atoms originally distinet, but as 
the renovator of an ancient order subsequently lost, — but also 
in itself unintelligible, and inconsistent with Grecian habit and 
feeling. That Peisistratus should take pains to repress the 
license, or make up for the unfaithful memory, of individual 
rhapsodes, and to ennoble the Panathenaic festival by the most 
correct recital of a great and venerable poem, according to the 
and orderly recitation by the successive rhapsodes who went through the 
different parts of the poem. 

There is good reason to conclude from this passage that the rhapsodes 
before Solén were guilty both of negligence and of omission in their recital! 
of Homer, but no reason to imagine either that they transposed the books 
or that the legitimate order was not previously recognized. 

The appointment of a systematic ὑπορολεὺς, or prompter, plainly indicates 
the existence of complete manuscripts. 

The direction of Selén, that Homer should be rhapsodized under tue 
security of a prompter with his manuscript, appears just the same as that of 
the orator Lykurgus in reference to #schylus, Sophoklés, and Euripides 


(Pseudo-Plutarch. Vit. x. Rhetor. Lycurgi Vit.) — εἰσηνεγκε 0& καὶ vomorg 
-- ὡς χαλκᾶς εἰκόνας ἀναϑεῖναι τῶν ποιητῶν Αἰσχύλου, Σοφοκλέους, Evy 


ἧς 


πίδου, Kat Tac Tpa) ῳδίας QUTWUY ὃν KOLVY@ γραψαμένους OUAUTTEN . Kat Tor 
yao ἐξ } αἱ 


«λεὼς γραμματξα Tapava γ εὴ VWOKELY Τοῖς ὑποκριὶ Of vOUC’ οἱ ἴ 
(ἀλλως) ὑποκρίνε σϑαι. The word ἄλλως, which occurs last but one, is intro- 
duced by the conjecture of Grysar, who has cited and explained the above 
passage of the Pseudo-Plutarch in a valuable dissertation — De Gracorum 
Tragedia, qualis fuit cirea tempora Demosthenis (Cologne, 1830). All the 
critics admit the text as it now stands to be unintelligible, and various cor- 
rections have been proposed, among which that of Grysar seems the best. 
From his Dissertation, I transcribe the following passage, which illustrates 
the rhapsodizing of Homer ἐξ ὑπὸ toe : 

“ Quum histriones fabulis interpolandis «gre abstinerent, Lycurgus legem 
supra indicatam eo tulit consilio, ut recitationes histrionum cum publico illo 


}). «--- 


exemplo oinino congruas redderet. Quod ut assequeretur, constituit, ut 
dum fabule in scend recitarentur, scriba put licus simul exemplum civitatis 
inapiceret, juxta sive in theatro sive in postscenio sedens. Hc enim verbi 
παραναγινώσκειν est significatio, posita praecipue in preepositione παρὼ, ut 
idem sit, quod contra sive jurta legere ; id quod faciunt ii, gui lecta ab altere 


eel reritata cum suis conferre cupiunt.” (Grysar, Ρ. 7.) 


REGULATIONS OF PEISISTRATUS. 155 


standard received among the best judges in Greece, — this is 8 
task both suitable to his position, and requiring nothing more 
than an improved recension, together with exact adherence to it 
on the part of the rhapsodes. ut what motive had he to string 
together several poems, previously known only as separate, into 
one new whole? What feeling could he gratify by introducing 
the extensive changes and transpositions surmised by Lachmann, 
for the purpose of binding together sixteen songs, which the 
to have been accustomed to recite, and 


rhapsodes are assumed 
the people to hear, each by itself apart? Peisistratus was not 8 


poet, seeking to interest the public mind by new creations and 


combinations, but a ruler, desirous to impart solemnity to a greal 
religious festival in his native city. Now such a purpose would 
be answered by selecting, amidst the divergences of rhapsodes 
in different parts of Greece, that order of text which intelligent 
men could approve as a return to the pure and pristine lliad ; 
but it would be defeated if he attempted large innovations of his 
out for the first time a new Iliad by blending 


own, and brought 
old and well-known 


together, altering, and transposing, many 
songs. A novelty so hold would have been more likely to otlend 
than to please both the critics and the multitude. And if it 
enforced, by authority, at Athens, no probable reason 


were even 
why all the other towns, and all the rhapsodes 


can be given 
throughout Greece, should abnegate their previous habits in 
Athens at that time enjoyed no political ascen- 
acquired during the following century. On 
that the character and position of 


favor of it, since 
dency such as she 
the whole, it will appear 
Peisistratus himself go far to negative the function which Wolf 
and Lachmann put 
a certain foreknown 
ἢ were familiar to the Grecian public, although many of 
thys rhapsodes in their practice may have deviated from it both 
by omission and interpolation. In correcting the Athenian 
recitations conformably with such understood general type, he 
might hope both to procure respect for Athens, and to constitute 
a fashion for the rest of Greece. But this step of “ collecting 
che torn body of sacred Homer,” is something generically ditfer- 
aut from the composition of a new Iliad out of preéxisting songs 


upon him. His interference presupposes 
and ancient aggregate, the main lineaments 


of whic 


156 HISTORY OF isREECE. 


the former is as easy, suitable, and promising, as the latter is 
violent and gratuitous.! 

To sustain the inference, that Peisistratus was the first arch- 
‘tect of the Iliad and Odyssey, it ought at least to be shown that 
no other long and continuous poems existed during the earlier 
centuries. But the contrary of this is known to be the fact. 
The Ethiopis of Arktinus, which contained nine thousand one 
hundred verses, dates from a period more than two centuries 
earlier than Peisistratus: several other of the lost cyclic epics, 


some among them of considerable length, appear during the 
century succeeding Arktinus ; and it is important to notice that 


three or four at least of these poems passed currently under the 
name of Homer2 ‘There is no greater intrinsic difficulty in 


! That the Iliad or Odyssey were ever recited with all the parts entire, at 
any time anterior to Sol6n, is a point which Ritschl denies (Die Alexandrin. 
3ibliothek. pp. 67-70). He thinks that before Sol6én, they were always recited 
in parts, and without any fixed order among the parts. Nor did Solon 
determine (as he thinks) the order of the parts: he only checked the license 
of the rhapsodes as to the recitation of the separate books: it was Pesistra- 
tus, who, with the help of Onomakritus and others, first settled the order of 
the parts and bound each poem into a whole, with some corrections and 
interpolations. Nevertheless, he admits that the parts were originally com- 
posed by the same poet, and adapted to form a whole amongst each other: 
but this primitive entireness (he asserts) was only maintained as a sort of 
traditional belief, never realized in recitation, and never reduced to an obvi- 
ous, unequivocal, and permanent fact, — until the time of Peisistratus. 

There is no sufficient ground, I think, for denying all entire recitation 
previous to Solon, and we only interpose a new difficulty, both grave ant 
gratuitous, by doing so. 

3 The ZEthiopis of Arktinus contained nine thousand one hundred verses 
as we learn from the Tabula Iliaca: yet Proklus assigns to it only four 
books. The Ilias Minor had four books, the Cyprian Verses eleven, thaug? 
we do not know the number of lines in either. 

Nitzsch states it as a certain matter of fact, that Arktinus recited his own 
poem one, though it was too long to admit of his doing so without interrup- 
tion. (See his Vorrede to the second vol. of the Odyssey, p. xxiv.) There 
is no evidence for this assertion, and it appears to me highly improbable. 

In reference to the Romances of the Middle Ages, belonging to the Cyele 
of the Round Table, M. Fauriel tells us that the German Perceval has nearlj 
iwenty-five thousand verses (more than half as long again as the Iliad) ; the 
Perceval of Christian of Troyes, probably more; the German Tristan, of 
Godfrey of Strasburr. has more than twenty-three thousand ; sometimes, the 


AGGREGATE ILIAD AND ODYSSEY. 157 


supposir:g long epics to have begun with the Iliad and Odyssey 
than with the /Ethiopis: the ascendency of the name of Homer 
and the subordinate position of Arktinus, in the history of early 
Grecian poetry, tend to prove the former in preference to the 
latter. 

Moreover, we find particular portions of the LDliad, which 
expressly pronounce themselves, by the’r own internal evidence, 
as belonging to a large whole, and not as separate integers. We 
can hardly conceive the Catalogue in the second book, except as 
a fractional composition, and with reference to a series of ap- 
proaching exploits; for, taken apart by itself, such a barren enu- 
meration of names could have stimulated neither the fancy of the 
poet, nor the attention of the listeners. But the Homeric Cata- 
logue had acquired a sort of canonical authority even in the time 
of Solén, insomuch that he interpolated a line into it, or was 
accused of doing so, for the purpose of gaining a disputed point 
against the Megarians, who, on their side, set forth another 
version.! No such established reverence could have been felt for 
this document, unless there had existed for a long time prior to 
Peisistratus, the habit of regarding and listening to the Iliad as 
a continuous poem. And when the philosopher Xenophanés, 
contemporary with Peisistratus, noticed Homer as the universal 
teacher, and denounced him as an unworthy describer of the gods, 
he must have connected this great mental sway, not with a number 
of unconnected rhapsodies, but with an aggregate Iliad and 
Odyssey ; probably with vther poems, also, ascribed to the same 
author, such as the Cypria, Epigoni, and Thebais. 

We find, it is true, references in various authors to portions ot 
the Iliad, each by its own separate name, such as the Teichom- 
achy, the Aristeia (preéminent exploits) of Diomedés, or Aga- 
memnén, the Doloneia, or Night-expedition (of Dolon as well 


poem is begun by one author, and continued by another. (Fauriel, Rcmans 
de Chevalerie, Revue des Deux Mondes, t. xiii. pp. 695-697.) 

The ancient unwritten poems of the Icelandic Skalds are as much lyric 
as epic: the longest of them does not exceed eight hundred lines, and they 
ars for the most part much shorter, (Untersuchungen iiber die Geschichte deg 
Nérdischen Heldensage, aus P. A. Miiller’s Sagabibliothek von G. Lange, 
Frankf. 1832, Introduet.: xlii.) 

δ Platarch, Solon, 10. 


158 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


as of Odysseus and Diomedés), etc., and hence, it has been 
concluded, that these portions originally existed as separate 
poems, beftre they were cemented together into an Iliad. But 
such references prove nothing to the point; for until the Lliad 
was divided by Aristarchus and his colleagues into a given 
number of books, or rhapsodies, designated by the series of letters 
in the alphabet, there was no method of calling attention to any 
particular portion of the poem except by special indication of 
its subject-matter.| Authors subsequent to Peisistratus, such as 
Herodotus and Plato, who unquestionably conceived the Iliad as 
a whole, cite the separate fractions of it by designations of this 
sort. 

The foregoing remarks on the Wolfian hypothesis respecting 
the text of the Iliad, tend to separate two points which are by no 
means necessarily connected, though that hypothesis, as set forth 
by Wolf himself, by W. Muller, and by Lachmann, presents the 
two in conjunction. First, was the Iliad originally projected and 
composed by one author, and as one poem, or were the different 
parts composed separately and by unconnected authors, and 
subsequently strung together into an aggregate? Secondly, 
assuming that the internal evidences of the poem negative the 
former supposition, and drive us upon the latter, was the con- 
struction of the whole poem deferred, and did the parts exist only 
in their separate state, until a period so late as the reign of 
Peisistratus? It is obvious that these two questions are essen- 
tially separate, and that a man may believe the Iliad to have 
been put together out of preéxisting songs, without recognizing 
the age of Peisistratus as the period of its first compilation. 
Now, whatever may be the steps through which the poem passed 
to its ultimate integrity, there is sufficient reason for believing 
that they had been accomplished long before that period: the 
friends of Peisistratus found an Iliad already existing and already 
ancient in their time, even granting that the poem had not been 
omginally born ina state of unity. Moreover, the Alexandrine 
critics, whose remarks are preserved in the Scholia, do not even 
notice the Peisistratic recension among the many manuscripts 


‘The Homeric Scholiast refers to Quintus Calaber ἐν τῇ ᾿Αμαζονομαχίᾳ, 
which was unly one portion 2f his long poem (Schol. ad Iliad. ii. 220). 


AGGREGATE ILIAD AND ODYSSEY. 159 


whicli they had before them: and Mr. Payne Knight justly 
infers from their silence that either they did not possess it, or it 
ras in their eyes of no great authority ;! which could never have 
been the case if it had been the prime originator of Homevic 
unity. 

The line of argument, by which the advocates of Wolf’s 
hypothesis negative the primitive unity of the poem, consists in 
exposing gaps, incongruities, contradictions, ete, between the 
separate parts. Now, if in spite of all these incoherences, 
standing mementos of an antecedent state of separation, the 
component poems were made to coalesce so intimately as to 
appear as if they had been one from the beginning, we can better 
understand the complete success of the proceeding and the uni- 
versal prevalence of the illusion, by supposing such coalescence 
to have taken place at a very early period, during the productive 
days of epical genius, and before the growth of reading and criti- 
cism. The longer the aggregation of the separate poems was 
deferred, the harder it would be to obliterate in men’s minds the 
previous state of separation, and to make them accept the new 
aggregate as an original unity. The bards or rhapsodes might 
have found comparatively little difficulty in thus piecing together 
distinct songs, during the ninth or eighth century before Christ; 


© 


' Knight, Prolegg. Homer. xxxii. xxxvi. xxxvii. That Peisistratus 
caused a corrected MS. of the Iliad to be prepared, there seems good reason 
to believe, and the Scholion on Plautus edited by Ritschl (see Die Alexan- 
drinische Bibliothek, p. 4) specifies the four persons (Onomakritus was one) 
employed on the task. MRitschl fancies that it served as a sort of Vulgate 
for the text of the Alexandrine critics, who named specially other MSS. 
(of Chids, Sindpé, Massalia, etc.) only when they diverged from this Vul- 
gate: he thinks, also, that it formed the original from whence those other 
MSS. were first drawn, which are called in the Homeric Scholia ai κοιναὶ, 
κοινότεραι (pp. 59-60). 

Welcker supposes the Peisistratic MS. to have been either lost or carried 
away when Xerxés took Athens (Der Epische Kyklus, pp. 382-388). 

Compare Nitzsch, Histor. Homer. Fasc. i. pp. 165-167; also his commen. 
tary on Odyss. xi. 604, the alleged interpolation of Onomakritus; and Ulrici, 
Geschichte der Hellen. Poes. Part i. s. vii. pp. 252-255. 

The main facts respecting the Peisistratic recension are collected and 
discussed by Grafenhan, Geschichte der Philologie, sect. 54-64, vol i 
pp- 266-311. Unfortunately, we cannot get beyond mere conjecture and 


possibility. 


160 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


but it we suppose the process to be deferred until the latter half 
f the sixth century, —if we imagine that Solon, with all his 
contemporaries and predecessors, knew nothing about any aggre- 


gate Lliad, but was accustomed to read and hear only those six- 


teen distinct epical pieces into which Lachmann would dissect 
the Iliad, each of the sixteen bearing a separate name of its 
own, —no compilation then for the first time made by the friends 
ef Peisistratus could have effaced the established habit, and 
planted itself in the general convictions of Greece as the primi- 
tive Homeric production. Had the sixteen pieces remained dis- 
united and individualized down to the time of Peisistratus, 
they would in all probability have continued so ever afterwards ; 
nor could the extensive changes and transpositions which (ac- 
cording to Lachmann’s theory) were required to melt them down 
into our present Iliad, have obtained at that late period universal 
acceptance. Assuming it to be true that such changes and trans- 
positions did really take place, they must at least be referred to 
a period greatly earlier than Peisistratus or Sol6n. 

The whole tenor of the poems themselves confirms what is 
here remarked. There is nothing either in the Iliad or Odyssey 
which savors of modernism, applying that term to the age of 
Peisistratus ; nothing which brings to our view the alterations, 
brought about by two centuries, in the Greek language, the 
coined money, the habits of writing and reading, the despotisms 
and republican governments, the close military array, the im- 
proved construction of ships, the Amphiktyonic convocations, the 
mutual frequentation of religious festivals, the Oriental and 
Egyptian veins of religion, etc., familiar to the latter epoch. 
These alterations Onomakritus and the other literary friends of 
Peisistratus, could hardly have failed to notice even without 
design, had they then for the first time undertaken the task of 
piecing together many self-existent epics into one large aggre- 
gate.' Everything in the two great Homeric poems, both in 


* Wal allows both the uniformity of coloring, and the antiquity of color 
ing, which pervade the Homeric poems; also, the strong line by which they 
stand distinguished from the other Greek poets: “Immo congruunt in iis 
omnia ferme in idem ingenium, in eosdem mores, in eandem formam sentiendi 
et loquendi.” (Prolegom. p. celxv; compare p. ¢xxxviii.) 

He thinks, indeed, that this harmony was restored by the ability and care 


LATER INTEGRATION IMPOSSIBLE. 16] 


substance and in language, belongs to au age two or three cen 
turics earlier than Peisistratus. Indeed, even the interpolations 
(or those passages which on the best grounds are pronounced to 
be such) betray no trace of the sixth century before Christ, and 
may well have been heard by Archilochus and Kallinus, — in 
some cases even by Arktinus and Hesiod, — as genuine Homeric 
matter. As far as the evidences on the case, as well internal as 
external, enable us to judge, we seem warranted in believing that 
the Iliad and Odyssey were recited substantially as they now 
stand, (always allowing for partial divergences of text, and inter- 
polations,) in 776 B.C., our first trustworthy mark of Gre- 
cian time. And this ancient date, — let it be added, — as it is 
the best-authenticated fact, so it is also the most important attri- 
bute of the Homeric poems, considered in reference to Grecian 
history. For they thus afford us an insight into the ante-histor- 
ical character of the Greeks,— enabling us to trace the sub- 
sequent forward march of the nation, and to seize instructive 
contrasts between their former and their later condition. 
Rejecting, therefore, the idea of compilation by Peisistratus, 
and referring the present state of the Iliad and Odyssey to a 
period more than two centuries earlier, the question still remains, 
by what process, or through whose agency, they reached that 
state? Is each poem the work of one author, or of several? If 
the latter, do all the parts belong to the same age? What ground 
is there for believing, that any or all of these parts existed before, 
as separate poems, and have been accommodated to the place in 
which they now appear, by more or less systematic alteration ? 
The acute and valuable Prolegomena of Wolf, half a century 
ago, powerfully turned the attention of scholars to the necessity 
of considering the Iliad and Odyssey with reference to the age 
and society in which they arose, and to the material differences 
in this respect between Homer and more recent epic poets.! 


of Aristarchus, (“ mirificum illum concentum revocatum Aristarcho impri- 
mis debemus.”) This is a very exaggerated estimate of the interference 
of Aristarchus: but at any rate the concentus itself was ancient and original, 
and Aristarchus only restored it, when it had been spoiled by intervening 
accidents ; at least, if we are to construe revocutum strictly, which, perhaps, 
is hardly consistent with Wolf’s main theory. 

‘See Wolf, Prolegg. c. xii. p. xliii. “Nondum enim prorsus ejecta δ 


VOL. I. llec 


162 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Since that time, an elaborate study has been bestowed upon the 
early manifestations of poetry (Sagen-poesie) among other na- 
tions: -and the German critics especially, among whom this 
description of literature has been most cultivated, have selected 
it as the only appropriate analogy for the Homeric poems. Such 
poetry, consisting for the most part of short, artless effusions, 
with little of deliberate or far-sighted combination, has been 
assumed by many critics as a fit standard to apply for measuring 
the capacities of the Homeric age; an age exclusively of speak- 
ers, singers, and hearers, not of readers or writers. In place of 
the unbounded admiration which was felt for Homer, not merely 
as a poet of detail, but as constructor of a long epic, at the time 
when Wolf wrote his Prolegomena, the tone of criticism passed 
to the opposite extreme, and attention was fixed entirely upon 
the defects in the arrangement of the Iliad and Odyssey. What- 
ever was to be found in them of symmetry or pervading system, 
was pronounced to be decidedly post-Homeric. Under such pre- 
conceived anticipations, Homer seems to have been generally 
studied in Germany, during the generation succeeding Wolf, the 
negative portion of whose theory was usually admitted, though 
as to the positive substitute, —what explanation was to be given 
of the history and present constitution of the Homeric poems, — 
there was by no means the like agreement. During the last 
ten years, however, a contrary tendency has manifested itself ; 
the Wolfian theory has been reéxamined and shaken by Nitzsch, 
who, as well as O. Miller, Welcker, and other scholars, have 
revived the idea of original Homeric unity, under certain modifi- 
cations. The change in Géthe’s opinion, coincident with this 
new direction, is recorded in one of his latest works.!. On the 


explosa est ecorum ratio, qui Homerum et Callimachum et Virgilium ct 
Nonnum et Miltonum eodem animo legunt, nec quid uniuscujusque estas 
ferat, expendere legendo et computare laborant,” ete. 

A similar and earlier attempt to construe the Homeric poems with refer- 
ence to their age, is to be seen in the treatise called 1/ Vero Omero of Vico, 
— marked with a good deal of original thought, but not strong in erudition 
(Opere di Vico, ed. Milan, vol. v. pp. 437-497). 

'In the forty-sixth yolume of his collected works, in the little treatise 
« Homer, noch einmal:” compare G. Lange, Ueber die Kyklischen Dichter 
{Mainz 1837), Preface, p. vi. 


*dubitationem positam puto, ut qui se 


DIFFIC JLTIES INVOLVING THE SUBJECT. 163 


other hand, the original opinion of Wolf has also been repro- 
duced within the last five years, and fortified with several new 
observations on the text o the Iliad, by Lachmann. 

The point is thus still under controversy among able scholars, 


and is probably destined to remain so. For, in truth, our means 
of knowledge are so limited, that no man can produce arguments 
sufficiently cogent to contend against opposing preconceptions ; 
and it creates a painful sentiment of diffidence when we read the 
ssions of equal and absolute persuasion with which the two 


expre r 
conclusions have both been advanced.! We have noth- 


opposite 
ing to teach us the th : 
themselves. Not only do we possess no collateral information 


history of these poems except the poems 


1“ Non esse totam Iliadem aut Odysseam unius poets opus, ita extra 
cus sentiat, eum non satis lectitasse illa 
Γ᾿ 4 - r ‘ reaps ; 95 

carmina contendam.” (Godf. Hermann, Prefat. ad Odysseam, Lips. 1829, p. 

Ι . * ᾿ " * “4 m ie T 

iv.) See the language of the same eminent critic im his treatise “ Ueber 

Homer und Sappho,” Opuscula, vol. v. p. 14. ae 
Lachmann, after having dissected the two thousand two hundred lines in the 
At a 5 « a - 


Πιαᾶ, between the beginning of the eleventh book, and line five hundred and 
of the fifteenth, into four songs, “ in the highest degree different in 
(“ihrem Geiste nach héchst verschiedene Lieder,”) tells us that 
whosoever thinks this difference of spirit inconsiderable, = whosoever dees 
not feel it at once when pointed out, — whosoever can believe that the parts 
as they stand now belong to one artistically constructed Epos, — “ will do 
well not to trouble himself any more either with my criticisms or with epic 
‘s too weak to understand anything about it,” (“ weil er 
5) Fernere Betrachtungen Ueber 


ninety 
their spirit,” 


poetry, because he 
χὰ schwach ist etwas darin zu verstehen : re 
die Ilias: Abhandl. Berlin. Acad. 1841, p. 18, § xxi. 

On the contrary, Ulrici, after having shown (or tried to show) that the 
composition of Homer satisfies perfectly, in the main, all the exigencies of 
that this will make itself at once evident to all those 


an artistic epic, — adds, 
symmetry; but that, for those to whom that 


who have any sense of artistical 
sense is wanting, no conclusive demonstration can be given. He warns the 
latter, however, that they are not to deny the existence of that which their 
shortsighted vision cannot distinguish, for everything cannot be made clear to 
children, which the mature man sees through at a glance ( Ulrici, Geschichte 
des Griechischen Epos, Part i. ch. vii. pp. 260-261). Read also Payne Knight, 
Proleg. c. xxvii, about the insanity of the Wolfian school, obvious even to 

» “homunculus e trivio. 
* Hee the misfortune to dissent from both Lachmann and Ulrici; for it 
appears to me a mistake to put the Tliad and Odyssey on the same footing 


as Ulrici does, and as is too frequently done by others 


184 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


respecting them or their authors, but we have no one to describe 
to us the people or the age in which they originated; our knowl- 
edge respecting contemporary Homeric society, is collected exclu- 
sively from the Homeric compositions themselves. We are 
ignorant whether any other, or what other, poems preceded them, 
or divided with them the public favor; nor have we anything 
better than conjecture to determine either the circumstances 
under which they were brought before the hearers, or the condi- 
tions which a bard of that day was required to satisfy. On all 
these points, moreover, the age of Thucydidés! and Plato seems 
to have been no better informed than we are, except in so far as 
they could profit by the analogies of the cyclic and other epic 
poems, which would doubtless in many cases have afforded valu- 
able aid. 

Nevertheless, no classical scholar can be easy without some 
opinion respecting the authorship of these immortal poems. And 
the more detective the evidence we possess, the more essential is 
it that all that evidence should be marshalled in the clearest 
order, and its bearing upon the points in controversy distinctly 
understood beforehand. Both these conditions seem to have 
been often neglected, throughout the long-continued Homerie 
discussion. 

To illustrate the first point: Since two poems are compre- 
hended in the problem to be solved, the natural process would be, 
first, to study the easier of the two, and then to apply the conclu- 
sions thence deduced as a means of explaining the other. Now, 
the Odyssey, looking at its aggregate character, is incomparably 
more easy to comprehend than the Iliad. Yet most Homeric 
critics apply the microscope at once, and in the first instance, to 
the Iliad. 

To illustrate the second point: What evidence is sufficient to 
negative the supposition that the Iliad or the Odyssey is a poem 
originally and intentionally one? Not simply particular gaps and 


' Plato, Aristotle, and their contemporaries generally, read the most sus 
picious portions of the Homeric poems as genuine (Nitzsch, Plan und Gang 
der Odyssee, in the Preface to his second vol. of Comments on the Odyssey, 
pp. Ix-Ixiv). 

Thucydidés accepts the Hymn to Apollo as a compositien by tte author 
of the Iliad. 


HOMEKIC UNITY. 165 


contradictions, though they be even gross and numerous; but the 
preponderance of these proofs of mere unp! epared coalescence 
over the other proofs of designed adaptation scattered throughout 
the whole poem. For the poet (or the cooperating poets, if more 
than one) may have intended to compose an harmonious whole, 
but may have realized their intention incompletely, and left 
partial faults ; or, perhaps, the contradictory lines may have crept 
in through a corrupt text. A survey of the whole poem is 
necessary to determine the question; and this necessity, too, has 
not always been attended to. 

If it had happened that the Odyssey had been preserved to us 
alone, without the Iliad, I think the dispute respecting Homeric 
unity would never have been raised. For the former is, in my 
judement, pervaded almost from beginning to end by marks of 
designed adaptation; and the special faults which Wolf, W 
Miller, and B. Thierseh,' have singled out for the purpose of 
disproving such unity of intention, are so few, and of so little 
importance, that they would have been universally regarded as 
mere instances of haste or unskilfulness on the part of the poet, 
had they not been seconded by the far more powerful battery 
opened against the Iliad. These critics, having laid down their 
veneral presumptions against the antiquity of the long epopee, 
illustrate their principles by exposing the many flaws and fissures 
in the Iliad, and then think it sufficient if they can show a few 
similar defects in the Odyssey,—as if the breaking up of Homeric 
unity in the former naturally entailed a similar necessity with 
regard to the latter; and their method of proceeding, contrary to 
the rule above laid down, puts the more difficult problem in the 
foreground, as a means of solution for the easier. We can 
hardly wonder, however, that they have applied their observa 
tions in the first instance to the Iliad, because it is in every man's 
esteem the more marked, striking, and impressive poem of the 
two.—and the character of Homer is more intimately identified 
with it than with the Odyssey. This may serve as an explana- 
tion of the course pursued; but be the case as it may in respect 
to comparative poetical merit, it is not the less true, that, as an 


ι Bernhard Thiersch, Ueber das Zeiteleer und Vaterland des Homer 
(Halberstadt, 1832), Ninleitung, pp. 4-18. 


166 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


aggregate, the Odyssey is more simple and easily understood, and, 
therefore, ought to come first in the order of analysis. 

Now, looking at the Odyssey by itself, the proofs of an unity 
of design seem unequivocal and everywhere to be found. A 
premeditated structure, and a concentration of interest upon one 
prime hero, under well-defined circumstances, may be traced from 
the first book to the twenty-third. Odysseus is always either 
directly or indirectly kept before the reader, as a warrior return- 
ing from the fulness of glory at Troy, exposed to manifold and 
protracted calamities during his return home, on which his whole 
soul is so bent that he refuses even the immortality offered by 
Caly ps6 ; — ἃ victim, moreover, even after his return, to mingled 
injury and insult from the suitors, who have long been plundering 
his property, and dishonoring his house ; but at length obtaining, 
by valor and cunning united, a signal revenge, which restores him 
to all that he had lost. All the persons and all the events in 
the poem are subsidiary to this main plot: and the divine agency, 
necessary to satisfy the feeling of the Homeric man, is put forth 
by Poseidon and Athéné, in beth cases from dispositions directly 
bearing upon Odysseus. To appreciate the unity of the Odyssey, 
we have only to read the objections taken against that of the 
Lliad,— especially in regard to the long withdrawal of Achilles, 
not only from the scene, but from the memory,—together with 
the independent prominence of Ajax, Diomedeés, and other heroes. 


How far we are entitled from hence to infer the want of premed- 


itated unity in the Iliad, will be presently considered ; but it is 
the Odyssey, in this respect, 


certain that the constitution of 
everywhere demonstrates the presence of such unity. Whatever 
may be the interest attached to Penelope, Telemachus, or 
Eumzeus, we never disconnect them from their association with 
Odysseus. The present is not the place for collecting the many 
marks of artistical structure dispersed throughout this poem ; but it 
may be worth while to remark, that the final catastrophe realized 
in the twenty-second book,— the slaughter of the suitors in the 
very house which they were profaning,— is distinctly and promi- 
nently marked out in the first and second books, promised by 
Teiresias in the eleventh, by Athéné in the thirteenth, and by 


Helen in the fifteenth, and gradually matured by a series of 


ERRONEOUS INFI RENCE. 107 


suitable preliminaries, throughout the eight Looks preceding its 
oceurrence.! Indeed, what is principally evident, and what has been 
often noticed, in the Odyssey, is, the equable flow both of the nar- 
rative and the events; the absence of that rise and fall of interest 
which is sufficiently conspicuous in the Iliad. 

To set against these evidences of unity, there ought, at least, 
to be some strong cases produced of occasional incoherence or 
contradiction. But it is remarkable how little of such counter- 
evidence is to be found, although the argu:nents of Wolf, W. 
Miller, and B. Thiersch stand so much in need of it. They 
have discovered only one instance of undeniable inconsistency in 
the parts,— the number of days occupied by the absence of ‘Tele- 
machus at Pylus and Sparta. That young prince, though repre- 
sented as in great haste to depart, and refusing pressing invita- 
tions to prolong his stay, must, nevertheless, be supposed to have 
continued for thirty days the guest of Menelaus, in order to bring 
his proceedings into chronological harmony with those of Odysseus, 
and to explain the first meeting of father and son in the swine- 
fold of Eumzeus. Here is undoubtedly an inaccuracy, (so Nitzsch? 
treats it, and I think justly) on the part of the poet, who did not 
anticipate, and did not experience in ancient times, so strict a 
scrutiny; an inaccuracy certainly not at all wonderful; the 
matter of real wonder is, that it stands almost alone, and that 
there are no others in the poem. 


Now, this is one of the main points on which W. Muller and 


' Compare i, 295; ii. 145 (vyzowoi κεν ἔπειτα δόμων Evrooter δλοισϑε); 
xi. 118; xiii. 395; xv. 178; also xiv. 162. 
2 Nitzsch, Plan und Gang der Odyssee, p. xliii, prefixed to the second vol 


of his Commentary on the 


Ud yssels. 

“ At carminum primi auditores non adeo curiosi erant (observes Mr. 
Payne Knight, Proleg. c. xxiii.), ut ejusmodi rerum rationes aut exquirerens 
aut expenderent; neque eorum fides 6 subtilioribus congruentiis omniso 
pendebat. Monendi enim sunt etiam atque etiam Homericorum studiosi, 
veteres illos ἀοιδοὺς non lingua professoria inter viros criticos et grammati- 
cos, aut alios quoscunque argutiarum captatores, carmina cantitasse, sed 
inter eos qui sensibus animorum libere, incaute, et effuse indulgerent,” ete 
Chap. xxii-xxvii of Mr. Knight’s Prolegomena, are valuable to the same 
purpose, showing the “ homines rudes et agrestes,” of that day, as excellens 
judges of what fell under their senses and observation, but careless, credu 
lous, and unobservant of contradiction, in matters which came only unde 
the mind’s eye. 


166 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


aggregate, the Odyssey is more simple and easily understood, and 
therefore, ought to come first in the order of analysis. 

Now, looking at the Odyssey by itself, the proofs of an unity 
of design seem unequivocal and everywhere to be found. A 
premeditated structure, and a concent ‘ation of interest upon one 
prime hero, under well-defined circumstances, may be traced from 
the first book to the twenty-third. Odysseus is always either 
directly or indirectly kept before the reader, as a warrior return- 
ing from the fulness of glory at Troy, exposed to manifold and 
protracted calamities during his return home, on which his whole 
soul is so bent that he refuses even the immortality offered by 
Caly ps6 ; — a victim, moreover, even after his return, to mingled 
injury and insult from the suitors, who have long been plundering 
his property, and dishonoring his house ; but at length obtaining, 
by valor and cunning united, a signal revenge, which restores him 
to all that he had lost. All the persons and all the events in 
the poem are subsidiary to this main plot: and the divine agency, 
necessary to satisfy the feeling of the Homeric man, is put forth 
by Poseidon and Athéné, in both cases from dispositions directly 
bearing upon Odysseus. To appreciate the unity of the Odyssey, 
we have only to read the objections taken against that of the 
Hiad,— especially in regard to the long withdrawal of Achilles, 
not only from the scene, but from the memory,— together with 
the independent prominence of Ajax, Diomedés, and other heroes. 
How far we are entitled from hence to inter the want of premed- 
itated unity in the Iliad, will be presently considered ; but it is 
certain that the constitution of the Odyssey, in this respect, 
everywhere demonstrates the presence of such unity. Whatever 
may be the interest attached to Penelope, Telemachus, or 
EKumeus. we never disconnect them from their association with 
Odysseus. The present is not the place for collecting the many 
marks of artistical structure dispersed throughout this poem ; but it 
may be worth while to remark, that the final catastrophe realized 
in the twenty-second book,— the slaughter of the suitors in the 
very house which they were profaning,— is distinctly and promi- 
nently marked out in the first and second books, promised by 
Teiresias in the eleventh, by Athéné in the thirteenth, and by 
Helen in the fifteenth, and gradually matured by a series of 


ERRONEOUS INFI RENCE. 107 


suitable preliminaries, throughout the eight Looks preceding its 
occurrence.! Indeed, what is principally evident, and what has been 
often noticed, in the Odyssey, is, the equable flow both of the nar- 
rative and the events; the absence of that rise and fall of interest 
which is sufficiently conspicuous in the Iliad. 

To set against these evidences of unity, there ought, at least, 
to be some strong cases produced of occasional incoherence or 
contradiction. But it is remarkable how little of such counter- 
evidence is to be found, although the arguments of Wolf, W. 
Muller, and B. Thiersch stand so much in need of it. They 
have discovered only one instance of undeniable inconsistency in 
the parts,— the number of days occupied by the absence of Tele- 
machus at Pylus and Sparta. That young prince, though repre- 
sented as in great haste to depart, and refusing pressing invita- 
tions to prolong his stay, must, nevertheless, be supposed to have 
continued for thirty days the guest of Menelaus, in order to bring 
his proceedings into chronological harmony with those of Odysseus, 
and to explain the first meeting of father and son in the swine- 
fold of Eumzeus. Here is undoubtedly an inaccuracy, (so Nitzsch? 
treats ii, and I think justly) on the part of the poet, who did not 
anticipate, and did not experience in ancient times, so strict a 
scrutiny ; an inaccuracy certainly not at all wonderful; the 
matter of real wonder is, that it stands almost alone, and that 
there are no others in the poem. 

Now, this is one of the main points on which W. Miller and 


1 Compare i, 295; ii. 145 (νηποινοί κεν ἔπειτα δόμων ἔντοσϑεν ὄλοισϑε); 
xi. 118; xiii. 395; xv. 178; also xiv. 162. 

* Nitzsch, Plan und Gang der Odyssee, p. xliii, prefixed to the second vol. 
of his Commentary on the Odysseis. 

“ At carminum primi auditores non adeo curiosi erant (observes Mr. 
Payne Knight, Proleg. c. xxiii.), ut ejusmodi rerum rationes aut exquirerent 
aut expenderent; neque eorum fides e subtilioribus congruentiis omnino 
pendebat. Monendi enim sunt etiam atque etiam Homericorum studiosi, 
veteres illos ἀοιδοὺς non lingua professorid inter viros criticos et grammati- 
cos, aut alios quoscunque argutiarum captatores, carmina cantitasse, sed 
inter eos qui sensibus animorum libere, incaute, et effuse indulgerent,” ete 
Chap. xxii-xxvii. of Mr. Knight’s Prolegomena, are valuable to the same 
purpose, showing the “ homines rudes et agrestes,” of that day, as excellent 
judges of what fell under their senses and observation, but careless, credu 
lous, and unobservant of contradiction, in matters which came only unde 
the mind’s eye. 


168 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


R. Thiersech rest their theory, — explaining the a 
confusion by supposing that the journey of spear κηᾷ οὶ ἊΨ 
and Sparta, constituted the subject of an epic ἫΝ fsgnies 
(comprising the first four books and a portion ὁ ᾧ e τα ae 
and incorporated at second-hand with the oe "» Pee 
they conceive this view to be farther confirmes : y : Ε πὸ 
assembly of the gods, (at the beginning of the μη ve as ben 
as of the fifth,) which they treat as an awkward ere Ἀὶ " 
as could not have formed part of the primary scheme οἱ any 7 
poet. But here they only escape a small difficulty by —— 
‘nto another and a greater. For it is impossible ιο compre — 
how the first four books and part of the fifteenth san δὲ er = 
constituted a distinct epic; since the adventures of he “ας 
have no satisfactory termination, except at the point of “ — 
with those of his father, when the unexpected —- - δ = 
nition takes plave under the roof of Eumzus,— ber can pi beat 
poem ever have described that meeting and ita th ᾿ ; Ἴ 
giving some account how Odysseus" ame thither. ) epic ype 
first two books of the Odyssey distinctly lay the Pa oo 
carry expectation forward, to the final meres. eu = 
si treating Telemachus as a subordinate μεθα, μα ge 7 pee 
tion as merely provisional towards an ulterior result. μηδ : an 
acree with W. Miller, that the real Odyssey eet - ge 
posed to begin with the fifth book. On the vgiuchnsecs τὰ ex ον 
tion of the suitors and the Ithakesian agora, presente ἿΝ Ὅν] 
the second book, is absolutely essential to the full ne — 
of the books subsequent to the thirteenth. Phe naan 
too important personages in the poem to allow of bajo ἐρυσεδε 
introduced in so informal a manner as we read in t “> 
book: indeed, the passing allusions of Athéne aie , pais 
and Eumeus (xiv. 41, 81) to the suitors, presuppose cogniza 
- them on the part of the hearer. Ai 

of τ the twofold discussion of the gods, at wi eS 
the first and fifth books, and the double interference ὁ é we 
far from being a needless repetition, may be vita . aa a 
fectly both the genuine epical conditions and the unity 


organiza 
poem.' For although the final consummation, and the org 


| W. Miller is not correct in saying that, in the first a of ρα: gods, 
Zeus promises something ¥ hich he does not perform: Zeus docs prommes 


UNITY OF THE ODYSSEY. 169 


tion of measures against the suitors, was to be accomplished by 
Odysseus and Telemachus jointly, yet the march and adventures 
of the two, until the moment of their meeting in the dwelling of 
Eumeus, were essentially distinct. But, according to the reli- 
gious ideas of the old epic, the presiding direction of Athéné 
was necessary fcr the safety and success of both of them. Her 
first interference arouses and inspires the son, her second produces 
the liberation of the father,— constituting a point of union and 
common origination for two lines of adventures, in both of which 
she takes earnest interest, but which are necessarily for a time 
kept apart in order to coincide at the proper moment. 

It will thus appear that the twice-repeated agora of the gods in 
the Odyssey, bringing home, as it does to one and the same divine 
agent, that double start which is essential to the scheme of the 
poem, consists better with the supposition of premeditated unity 
than with that of distinct self-existent parts. And, assuredly, the 
manner in which Telemachus and Odysseus, both by different 
roads, are brought into meeting and conjunction at the dwelling 
of Eumzus, is something not only contrived, but very skilfully 
contrived. It is needless to advert to the highly interesting 
character of Eumzus, rendered available as a rallying-point, 
though in different ways, both to the father and the son, over 
and above the sympathy which he himself inspires. 

If the Odyssey be not an original unity, of what self-existent 
parts can we imagine it to have consisted? To this question it is 
difficult to imagine a satisfactory reply: for the supposition that 
Telemachus and his adventures may once have formed the subject 
of a separate epos, apart from Odysseus, appears inconsistent 
with the whole character of that youth as it stands in the poem, 
and with the events in which he is made to take part. We could 
better imagine the distribution of the adventures of Odysseus 
himself into two parts,—one containing his wanderings and 

return, the other handling his ill-treatment by the suitors, and his 


to send Hermés as messenger to Kalypsd, in the first book, though Athéné 
urges him todo so. Zeus, indeed, requires to be urged twice before he dic 
tates to Kalyps6 the release of Odysseus, but he had already intimated, in 
the first book, that he felt great difficulty in protecting the hero, because of 
the wrath manifested against him by Poseidéa. 

VOL. 1. 8 


1170 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


final triumph. But though either of these two subjects might 
have been adequate to furnish out a separate poem, it is never 
theless certain that, as they are presented in the Odyssey, the 
former cannot be divorced from the latter. ‘The simple return 
of Odysseus, as it now stands in the poem, could satisfy no one 
as a final close, so long as the suitors remain in possession of his 
house, and forbid his reunion with his wife. Any poem which 
treated his wanderings and return separately, must have repre- 
sented his reunion with Penelopé and restoration to his house, as 
following naturally upon his arrival in Ithaka,— thus taking little 
or no notice of the suitors. But this would bea capital mutilation 


of the actual epical narrative, which considers the suitors at home 
as an essential portion of the destiny of the much-suffering hero, 
not less than his shipwrecks and trials at sea. His return (sepa- 
rately taken) is foredoomed, according to the curse of Polyphe- 
mus, executed by Poseidon, to be long deferred, miserable, solitary, 
and ending with destruction in his house to greet him ;! and the 


ground is thus laid, in the very recital of his wanderings, for a 
new series of events which are to happen to him after his arrival 
‘n Ithaka. ‘There is no tenable halting-place between the depar- 
ture of Odysseus from ‘Troy, and the final restoration to his house 
and his wife. ‘The distance between these two events may, 
indeed, be widened, by accumulating new distresses and impedi- 
ments, but any separate portion of it cannot be otherwise treated 
than as a fraction of the whole. The beginning and the end are 
here the data in respect to epical genesis, though the intermediate 
events admit of being conceived as variables, more or less 
numerous: so that the conception of the whole may be said 
without impropriety both to precede and to govern that of the 
constituent parts. 

The general result of a study of the Odyssey may be set 
down as follows: 1. The poem, as it now stands, exhibits 
unequivocally adaptation of parts and continuity of structure, 
whether by one or by several consentient hands: it may, perhaps, 


1 Odyss, ix. 534. — 

"Ow? κακῶς ἔλϑοι, ὀλέσας ἀπὸ πώντας ἑταίρους, 

Νηὺς ἐπ᾽ ἀλλοτρίης, εὕροι δ᾽ ἐν πήματα οἴκῳ — 

Ὡς ἔφατ᾽ εὐχόμενος" (the Cyclops to Poseid6én) τοῦ δ᾽ ἔκλυε Κυανοχαίτης 


STRUCTURE OF THE ODYSSEY. 17] 


be a secondary formation, out of a preéxisting Odyss 

dimensions ; ‘te if 80, the parts of rep Hane mee 
smé ust have 

been so far recast as to make them suitable members of the 

larger, and are noway recognizable by us. 2. The subject: 

matter of the poem not only does not favor, but goes far ἐᾶν δα 

clude, the possibility of the Wolfian hypothesis, Its events 

a be so ar ranged as to have composed several anteosdent 

Leg he βηδειοαβοόντο wi eanagd into the present ag- 
isk 8 Ce he been mere compilers of pre- 
existing materials, such as Peisistratus and his friends: the 
must have been poets, competent to work such matter as ia 
found, into a new and enlarged design of their own. Nor τὰν 
the age in which this long poem, of so many thousand lines, was 
turned out as a continuous aggregate, be separated from the 
ancient, productive, inspired age of Grecian epic. 

Arriving at such conclusions from the internal evidence of the 
Odyssey,! we can apply them by analogy to the Iliad. We learn 
something respecting the character and capacities of that earl 
age which has ieft no other mementos except these two fats 
Long continuous epics (it is observed by those who support the 
views of Wolf), with an artistical structure, are inconsistent with 
ν capacities of a rude and non-writing age. Such epics (we may 
reply) are not inconsistent with the early age of the Greeks, and 
the Odyssey is a proof of it; for in that poem the iatenraiiin of 
the whole, and the composition of the parts, must have been 
simultaneous. The analogy of the Odyssey enables us to rebut 
that preconception under which many ingenious critics sit down 
to the study of the Iliad, and which induces them to explain all 
the incoherences of the latter by breaking it up into smaller 
unities, as if short epics were the only manifestation of poetical 


ων won 
Whe ee pier wenger’ language, the compact and artful 
yssey. Agains positive internal evidence, he sets 
the general presumption, that no such constructive art can possibly have 
belonged to a poet of the age of Homer: “ De Odyssed maxime, cujus 
admirabilis summa et compages pro prxclarissimo monumento Greci ingenii 
habenda est......Unde fit ut Odysseam nemo, cui omnino priscus vates 
placeat, nisi perlectam 6 manu deponere queat. At illa ars id ipsum est, 
quod vix ac ne vix quidem cadere videtur in vatem, singulas tantum rhapsodias 
decantantem,” etc. (Prolegomen. pp. cxviii-exx ; compare cxii.) 


172 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


power which the age admitted. There ought to be no reluctance 
in admitting a presiding scheme and premeditated unity of parts, 
in so far as the parts themselves point to such a conclusion. 

That the Iliad is not so essentially one piece as the Odyssey, 
every man agrees. It includes a much greater multiplicity of 
events, and what is yet more important, a greater multiplicity of 
prominent personages: the very indefinite title which it bears, 
as contrasted with the speciality of the name, Odyssey, marks 
the difference at once. ‘The parts stand out more conspicuously 
from the whole, and admit more readily of being felt and appre- 
ciated in detached recitation. We may also add, that itis ὦ 
more unequal execution than the Odyssey, — often rising to a far 
higher pitch of grandeur, but also, occasionally, tamer : the story 
does not move on continuously ; incidents occur without plausible 
motive, nor can we shut our eyes to evidences of incoherence 


and contradiction. 

To a certain extent, the Iliad is open to all these remarks, 
though Wolf and William Miller, and above all Lachmann, ex- 
aggerate the case in degree. And from hence has been deduced 

- } * ° * " am " Ὥ 
the hypothesis which treats the parts in their ΟἹ iginal state as 
separate integers, independent of, and unconnected with, each 


other, and forced into unity only by the afterthought of a subse- 
quent age; or sometimes, not even themselves as integers, but as 
aggregates grouped together out of fragments still smaller, — 
short epics formed by the coalescence of still shorter songs. 
Now there is some plausibility in these reasonings, so long as the 
discrepancies are looked upon as the whole of the case. But in 
point of fact they are nut the whole of the case : for it is not less 
true, that there are large portions of the Iliad which present 
positive and undeniable evidences of coherence as antecedent 
and consequent, though we are occasionally perplexed by incon- 
sistencies of detail. Τὸ deal with these latter, is a portion of 
the duties of the critic. But he is not to treat the Iliad as if 
inconsistency prevailed everywhere throughout its parts’; for 
coherence of parts —symmetrical antecedence and consequence 
—is discernible throughout the larger half of the poem. ἫΡ 
Now the Wolfian theory explains the gaps and contradictions 
throughout the narrative, but it explains nothing else. If (as 
Lachmann thinks) the Iliad originally consisted of sixteen songs 


STRUCTURE OF THE ILIAD. 173 


or little substantive epics, (Lachmann’s sixteen songs cover the 
space only as far as the 22d book, or the death of Hector, and 
two more songs would have to be admitted for the 23d and 24th 
books),— not only composed by different authors, but by each! 
without any view to conjunction with the rest, — we have then 
no right to expect any intrinsic continuity between them ; and all 
that continuity which we now find must be οἵ extraneous origin. 
Where are we to look for the origin? Lachmann follows Wolf, 
in ascribing the whole constructive process to Peisistratus and 
his associates, at a period when the creative epical faculty is 
admitted to have died out. But upon this supposition, Peisistra- 
tus (or his associates) must have done much more than omit, 
transpose, and interpolate, here and there; he must have gone 
far to rewrite the whole poem. A great poet might have recast 
preéxisting separate songs into one comprehensive whole, but no 
mere arrangers or compilers would be competent to doso: and we 
are thus left without any means of accounting for that degree of 
continuity and consistence which runs through so large a portion 
of the Iliad, though not through the whole. The idea that the 
poem, as we read it, grew out of atoms not originally designed for 
the places which they now occupy, involves us in new and inex- 
tricable difficulties, when we seek to elucidate either the mode of 
coalescence or the degree of existing unity.2 


Ἃ 


Ὡ 


' Lachmann seems to admit one case in which the composer of one song 
manifests cognizance of another song, and a disposition to give what will 
form a sequel to it. His fifteenth song (the Patrokleia) lasts from xv. 592 
down to the end of the 17th book: the sixteenth song (including the four 
next books, from eighteen to twenty-two inclusive) is a continuation of the 
fifteenth, but by a different poet. (Fernere Betrachtungen iiber die Ilias, 
Abhandl. Berlin. Acad. 1841, sect. xxvi. xxviii. xxix. pp. 24, 34, 42.) 

This admission of premeditated adaptation to a certain extent breaks up 
the integrity of the Wolfian hypothesis. 

* The advocates of the Wolfian theory, appear to feel the difficulties which 
beset it; for their language is wavering in respect to these supposed primary 
constituent atoms. Sometimes Lachmann tells us, that Le original pieces 
were much finer poetry than the Iliad as we now read it; at another time, 
that it cannot be now discovered what they originally were: nay, he farther 
admits, (as remarked in the preceding note,) that the poet of the sixteenth 
song had cognizance of the fifteenth. 

But if it be granted that the original constituent songs were so composed 
though by different poets. as that the more recent were adapted to the earlier 


174 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Admitting then premeditated adaptation of parts to a certain 
extent as essential to the Iliad, we may yet iaquire, whether it 
was produced all at once, or gradually enlarged, — whether by 
one author, or by several; and, if the parts be of different age, 
which is the primitive kernel, and which are the additions. 

Welcker, Lange, and Nitzsch! treat the Homeric poems as 
representing a second step in advance, in the progress of popular 
poetry. First, comes the age of short narrative songs; next, 
wl_en these have become numerous, there arise constructive minds 
who recast and blend together many of them into a larger aggr*. 
gate, conceived upon some scheme of theirown. The age of the 
epos is followed by that of the epopee, — short, spontaneous effu- 
sions preparing the way, and furnishing materials, for the archi- 
tectonic genius of the poet. It is farther presumed by the above- 
mentioned authors, that the pre-Homeric epic included a great 
abundance of such smaller songs, —a fact which admits of no 
proof, but which seems countenanced by some passages in Homer, 
and is in itself no way improbable. But the transition from such 
songs, assuming them to be ever so numerous, to a combined and 
continuous poem, forms an epoch in the intellectual history of the 
nation, implying mental qualities of a higher order than those 
upon which the songs themselves depend. Nor is it to be imag- 
ined that the materials pass unaltered from their first state of 
isolation into their second state of combination. They must of 
necessity be recast, and undergo an adapting process, in which 


with more or less dexterity and success, this brings us into totally different 
conditions of the problem. It is a virtual surrender of the Wolfian hypoth- 
esis, which, however, Lachmann both means to defend, and does defend 
with ability; though his vindication of it has, to my mind, only the effect of 
exposing its inherent weakness by carrying it out into something detailed 
and positive. I will add, in respect to his Dissertations, so instructive as a 
microscopic examination of the poem,—1. That I find myself constantly 
dissenting from /’.at critical feeling, on the strength of which he cuts out 
parts as interpolations, and discovers traces of the hand of distinct poets ; 2 
That his objections against the continuity of the narrative are often founded 
upon lines which the ancient scholiasts and Mr. Payne Knight had already 
pronounced to be interpolations; 3. That such of his objections as are 
founded upon lines undisputed, admit in many cases of a complete and, 
satisfactory reply. 
1 Lange, in his Letter to Goethe, Ueber die Einheit der Iliade, p. 33 (1826) 

Mitzsch, Historia Homeri, Fasciculus 2, Prefat. p. x. 


STRUCTURE OF THE ILIAD. 178 


the genius of the organizing poet consists; nor can we hope, by 
sunply knowing them as they exist in the second stage, ever te 
divine how they stood in the first. Such, in my judg is { 
right conception of the ITomeric aprile an Si phe 
mind, still preserving that freshness of observation and vivacity 
of details which constitutes the charm of the ballad. | 
Nothing is gained by studying the Iliad as a congeries of frag- 
ments once independent of each other: no portion of the poem 
can be shown to have ever been so, and the supposition introduces 
difficulties greater than those which it removes. But it is not 
necessary to affirm that the whole poem as we now read it, 
belonged to the original and preconceived pla...1 In this respect, 
the Iliad produces, upon my mind, an impression totally different 
from the Odyssey. In the latter poem, the characters and inci- 
dents are fewer, and the whole plot appears of one projection, 
from the beginning down to the death of the suitors: none of the 
parts look as if they had been composed separately, and inserted 
by way of addition into a preéxisting smaller poem. But the Iliad, 
on the contrary, presents the appearance of a house built upon a 
plan comparatively narrow, and subsequently enlarged by succes- 
sive additions. The first book, together with the eighth, and the 
books from the eleventh to the twenty-second, inclusive, seem to 
form the primary organization of the poem, then properly an 
Achilléis: the twenty-third and twenty-fourth books are, perhaps 
additions at the tail of this primitive poem, which still leave it 
nothing more than an enlarged Achilléis. But the books from the 
eecond to the seventh, inclusive, together with the tenth, are of a 
wider and more comprehensive character, and convert the poem 


‘Even Aristotle, the great builder-up of the celebrity of Homer as to 
epical aggregation, found some occasions (it appears) on which he was obliged 
to be content with simply excusing, without admiring, the poet (Poet. 44 
τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀγαϑοῖς ὁ ποιητὴς ἡδύνων ἀφανίζει τὸ ἄτοπον.) 

And Hermann observes justly, in his acute treatise De Interpolationibus 
Homeri (Opuscula, tom. v. p. 53), —“ Nisi admirabilis illa Homericorum 
carminum suavitas lectorum animos quasi incantationibus quibusdam captos 
teneret, non tam facile delitescerent, que accuratius considerata, et multe 
minus apte quam quis jure postulet composita esse apparere necesse est.” 

This treatise contains many criticisms on the structure of the Iliad, some 
of them very well founded, though there are many from which I dissent. 


176 HISTORY OF GREECF 


from an Achilléis into an Iliad.!. The primitive frontispiece 
inscribed with the anger of Achilles, and its direct consequences, 
yet remains, after it has ceased to be coextensive with the poem. 
The parts added, however, are not necessarily inferior in merit to 
the original poem: so far is this from being the case, that amongst 
them are comprehended some of the noblest efforts of the Grecian 


epic. Nor are they more recent in date than the original ; strictly 


speaking, they must be a little more recent, but they belong to 
the same generation and state of society as the primitive Achilléis. 
These qualifications are necessary to keep apart different ques- 
tions. which, in discussions of Homeric criticism, are but too often 
confounded. 

If we take those portions of the poem which I imagine to have 
constituted the original Achilléis, it will be found that the sequence 
of events contained in them is more rapid, more unbroken, and 
more intimately knit together in the way of cause and effect, than 
in the other books. Heyne and Lachmann, indeed, with other 
objecting critics, complains of the action in them as being too 
much crowded and hurried, since one day lasts from the beginning 
of the eleventh book to the middle of the eighteenth, without any 
sensible halt in the march throughout so large a portion of the 
journey. Lachmann, likewise, admits that those separate songs, 
into which he imagines that the whole Iliad may be dissected, 
cannot be severed with the same sharpness, in the books subse- 
quent to the eleventh, as in those before it. There is only one 


! In reference to the books from the second to the seventh, inclusive, I 
agree with the observations of William Miiller, Homerische Vorschule, Ab 


schnit. viii. pp. 116-118. 

2 Lachmann, Fernere Betrachtungen ἅδον die Ilias, Abhandlungen Berlin. 
Acad. 1841, p. 4. 

After having pointed out certain discrepancies which he maintains to prove 
different composing hands, he adds: “ Nevertheless, we must be careful 
not te regard the single constituent songs in this part of the poem as being 
distinct and separable in a degree equal to those in the first half; for they 
all with one accord ‘narmonize in one particular circumstance, which, with 
reference to the story of the Iliad, is not less important even than the anger 
of Achilles, viz. that the three most distinguished heroes, Agamemnon, Odys- 
seus. and Diomédés, all becc ne disabled throughout the whole duration of 


the battles.” 
Lnportant for the story of the A-hilléis, I should say, not for that of the 


SUBJECT OF THE !LiAp. 177 


real halting-place from the eleventh book to the twenty-second 
the death of Patroclus; and this can never be eaneeiued as the 
end of a separate poem,} though it is a capital step in the devel- 
opment of the Achilléis, and brings about that entire revoluti 
in the temper of Achilles which was essential for the purpose of 
the poet. It would be a mistake to imagine that there fi could 
have existed a separate poem called Patrocleia, though a part of 
the liad was designated by that name.’ For Patroclus has no 
substantive position: he is the attached friend and second of 
Achilles, but nothing else,— standing to the latter in a relation of 
dependence resembling that of Telemachus to Odysseus. And 
the way in which Patroclus is dealt with in the Iliad is, (in m 
judgment,) the most dexterous and artistical Nanaia in ied 
poem,— that which approaches nearest to the neat tissue of th 
OQdyssey.? i ; 


Iiad. This remark of Lachmann is highly illustrative for the distincti 
between the original and the enlarged poem. esti 
' I confess ny astonishment that a man of so much genius and pow f 
thought as M. Benjamin Constant, should have imagined the ori inal Tl A 
to have concluded with the death of Patroclus, on the ground κι Achille 
then becomes reconciled with Agamemnon. See the review of B. Con ee ᾿ 
work, De la Religion, etc., by O. Miiller, in the Kleine Schriften of ee μρ ‘ 
vol. il. p. 74. a 
< He appears as the mediator between the insulted Achilles and the Greeks 
manifesting kindly sympathies for the latter without renouncing his fidelit 
to the former. The wounded Machaon, an object of interest to the td 
camp, being carried off the field by Nestor, — Achilles, looking on from his 
distant ship, sends Patroclus to inquire whether it be really Machaon; which 
enables Nestor to lay before Patroclus the deplorable state of the Greetin 
host, as a motive to induce him and Achilles again to take arms. The 
compassionate feelings of Patroclus being powerfully touched, he is hasten- 
ing to enforce upon Achilles the urgent necessity of giving help, when he 
meets Eurypylus crawling out of the field, helpless with a severe wound 
and imploring his succor. He supports the wounded warrior to his tent, 
and ministers te his suffering; but before this operation is fully completed 
the Grecian host has been totally driven back, and the Trojans are on the 
point of setting fire to the ships: Patroclus then hurries to Achilles to pro- 
claim the desperate peril which hangs over them all, and succeeds in obtain- 
ing his permission to take the field at the head of the Myrmidons. The 
way in which Patroclus is kept present to the hearer, as a prelude to his 
brilliant but short-lived display, when he comes forth in arms,— the con. 
trast between his characteristic gentleness and the ferocity of Achilles, — 


VOL. Il. ge 1950. 


178 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The great and capital misfortune which prostrates the strengtn 
of the Greeks, and renders them incapable of defending them- 
selves without Achilles, is the disablement, by wounds, of Aga- 
memnon, Diomédés, and Odysseus; so that the defence of the 
wall and of the ships is left only to heroes of the second magni- 
(Ajax alone excepted), such as Idomeneus, Leonteus, Poly- 


tude τὴν 
Now, it is remarkable that all 


poetés, Merionés, Menelaus, ete. e th 
these three first-rate chiefs are in full force at the beginning of 
the eleventh book: all three are wounded in the battle which that 
book describes, and at the commencement of which Agamemnon 
is full of spirits and courage. 

Nothing can be more striking than the manner in which Homer 
concentratss our attention in the first book upon Achilles as the 
hero, his quarrel with Agamemnon, and the calamities to the 
Greeks which are held out as about to ensue from it, through the 
‘ntercession of Thetis with Zeus. But the incidents dwelt upon 
from the beginning of the second book down to the combat 
between Hector and Ajax.in the seventh, animated and interesting 
as they are, do nothing to realize this promise. They are a 
splendid picture of the Trojan war generally, and eminently 
suitable to that larger title under which the poem has been 
‘mmortalized,— but the consequences of the anger of Achilles do 
not appear until the eighth book. The tenth book, or Doloneia, 
is also a portion of the liad, but not of the Achilléis : while the 
ninth book appears to me a subsequent addition, nowise harmo- 
nizing with that main stream of the Achilléis which flows from 
the eleventh book to the twenty-second. The eighth book ought 
to be read in immediate connection with the eleventh, in order to 
sce the structure of what seems the primitive Achilléis ; for there 
are several passages in the eleventh and the following books, 
which prove that the poet who composed them could not have 
had present to his mind the main event of the ninth book,— the 
outpouring of profound humiliation by the Greeks, and from 
Agamemnon, especially, before Achilles, coupled with formal 


and the natural train of circumstances whereby he is made the vehicle of 
reconciliation on the part of his offended friend, and rescue to his imperiled 
countrymen, — all these exhibit a degree of epical skill, in the author of the 
primitive Achilléis, tc which nothing is found parallel in the added books of 
the Iliad 

Vol. 2 6 


EATENT OF THE ACHILLEIS. 179 


offers to restore Briséis, and pay the amplest compensation for 
past wrong.! The words of Achilles (not less than those of 


—EE - 


1 Observe, for example, the following passages : — 

1. Achilles, standing on the prow of his ship, sees the general army of 
Greeks undergoing defeat by the Trojans, and also sees Nestor conveying in 
his chariot a wounded warrior from the field. He sends Patroclus to find 
out who the wounded man is: in calling forth Patroclus, he says (xi. 607), --- 


Aie Μενοιτιάδη, τῷ ᾿μῷ κεχαρισμένε ϑυμῷ, 
Νῦν οἴω περὶ γούνατ᾽ ἐμὰ στήσεσϑαι ’Ayatov¢ 
Αἰσσομένους " χρείω yap ἱκάνεται οὔκετ᾽ ἀνεκτός. 


Heyne, in his comment, asks the question, not unnaturally, “ Poenituerat 
igitur asperitatis erga priorem legationem, an homo arrogans expectaverat 
alteram ad se missam ivi?” I answer, neither one nor the other: the words 
imply that he had received no embassy at all. He is still the same Achilles who 
in the first book paced alone by the seashore, devouring his own soul under 
a sense of bitter affront, and praying to Thetis to aid his revenge: this 
revenge is now about to be realized, and he hails its approach with delight. 
But if we admit the embassy of the ninth book to intervene, the passage 
becomes a glaring inconsistency for that which Achilles anticipates as 
future, and even yet as contingent, had actually occurred on the previous even- 
ing; the Greeks hud supplicated at his feet, — they had proclaimed their intol- 
erable need, — and he had spurned them. The Scholiast, in his explanation 
of these lines, after giving the plain meaning, that “ Achilles shows what he 
has long been desiring, to see the Greeks in a state of supplication to him,” 
—seems to recollect that this is in contradiction to the ninth book, and tries 
to remove the contradiction, by saying “ that he had been previously molli- 
fied by conversation with Phoenix,” — ἤδη δὲ προμαλαχϑεὶς ἣν ἐκ τῶν Poivi- 
κος Adywv,—a supposition neither countenanced by anything in the poet, 
nor sufficient to remove the difficulty. 

2, The speech of Poseidén (xiii. 115) to encourage the dispirited Grecian 
heroes, in which, after having admitted the injury done to Achilles by Aga- 
memnon, he recommends an effort to heal the sore, and intimates “ that the 
minds of good men admit of this healing process,” (’AAA’ ἀκεώμεϑα ϑᾶσσον" 
ἀκεσταΐ Te φρένες ἐσϑ'λῶν,) is certainly not very consistent with the supposi- 
tion that this attempt to heal had been made in the best possible way, and 
that Achilles had manifested a mind implacable in the extreme on the 
evening before,— while the mind of Agamemnon was already brought to 
proclaimed humiliation, and needed no farther healing. 

8. And what shall we say to the language of Achilles and Patroclus, at 
the beginning of the sixteenth book, just at the moment when the danger 
has reached its maximum, and when Achilles is about to send forth hs 
friend ? 

Neither Nestor, when he invokes and instructs Patroclus as intercessor 
with Achilles (xi. 654-790), nor Patroclus himself, though in the extreme 


180 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Patroclus and Nestor) in the eleventh and in the following books, 
plainly imply that the humiliation of the Greeks before him, for 


of anxiety to work upon the mind of Achilles, and reproaching him with 
hardness of heart, — ever bring to remembrance the ample atonement which 
had been tendered to him ; while Achilles himself repeats the original ground 
of quarrel, the wrong offered to him in taking away Briséis, continuing the 
language of the first book; then, without the least allusion to the atonement 
and restitution since tendered, he yields to his friend’s proposition, just like 
a man whose wrong remained unredressed, but who was, neverthcless, forced 
to take arms by necessity (xvi. 60-63) : — 

᾿Αλλὰ τὰ μὲν προτετύχϑαι ἐάσομεν, oid’ ἄρα πως ἣν 

᾽Ασ τερχὲς κεχολῶσϑαι ἐνι φρεσίν " ἧτοι ἔφην γε 

Οὐ πρὲν μηνιϑμὸν καταπάυσεμεν, ἀλλ᾽ ὁπόταν δὴ 

Νῆας ἐμὰς ὀφίκηται ἀῦτη τε πτόλεμός τε. 
I agree with the Scholiast and Heyne in interpreting ἔφην ye as equivalent 
to διενοῆϑην, --- not as referring to any express antecedent declaration. 

Again, farther on in the same speech, “ The Trojans (Achilles says) now 

press boldly forward upon the ships, for they no longer see the blaze of my 
helmet: but if Agamemnon were fivorably disposed towards me, they would 
presently run away and (ill the ditches with their dead bodies” (71): — 


Πλήσειαν νεκύων, εἴ μοι κρείων ᾽Αγαμέμνων 

Ἤπια εἰδείη" νῦν δὲ στράτον ἀμφιμάχονται. 
Now here again. if we take our start from the first book, omitting the ninth, 
the sentiment is perfectly just. But assume the ninth book, and it becomes 
false and misplaced; for Agamemnon is then a prostrate and repentant 
man, not merely “ favorably disposed” towards Achilles, but offering to pay 
any price for the purpose of appeasing him. 

4. Again, a few lines farther, in the same speech, Achilles permits Patro- 
clus to go forth, in consideration of the extreme peril of the fleet, but restricts 
lim simply to avert this peril and do nothing more: “ Obey my words, so 
that you may procure for me honor and glory from the body of Greeks, and 
that they may send back to me the damsel, giving me ample presents besides 
when you have driven the Trojans from the ships, come back again” 


‘Qe ἄν μοι τιμὴν μεγαλην καὶ κῦδος ἄροιο 

Πρὸς πάντων Δαναῶν " ἀτὰρ of περικαλλέα κούρην 
"Aw ἀπονάσσωσι, προτὶ δ᾽ ἀγλαὰ δῶρα πόρωσιν * 
"Ex νηῶν ἐλάσας, ἰέναι πάλιν (84-87). 


How are we to reconcile this with the ninth book, where Achilles declares 
sat he does not care for being honored by the Greeks, ix. 604? In the 
youth of the affronted Achilles, of the first book, such words are apt enough: 
- will grant suecor, but only to the extent necessary for the emergency, 
i, aneh 9 wav as to insure redress for his own wrong, — which redress 


NINTH BOOK OF THE ILIAD. 181 


which he thirsts, is as yet future and contingent; that no plenary 
apology has yet been tendered, nor any offer made of restoring 


he has no reason as yet to conclude that Agamemnén is willing to grant 
But the ninth book has actually tendered to him everything which he here 
demands, and even more (the daughter of Agamemné6n in marriage, without 
the price usually paid for a bride, ete.): Br.iséis, whom now he is so anxious 
to repossess, was then offered in restitution, and he disdained the offer. Mr. 
Knight, in fact, strikes out these lines as spurious; partly, because they con- 
tradict the ninth book, where Achilles has actually rejected what he here 
thirsts for (“ Dona cum puella jam antea oblata aspernatus erat,”) — partly 
beeause he thinks that they express a sentiment unworthy of Achilles ; in 
which latter criticism 1 do not concur. 

5. We proceed a little farther to the address of Patroclus to the Myrmi- 
dons, as he is conducting them forth to the battle: “ Fight bravely, Myrmi- 
dons, that we may bring honor to Achilles; and that the wide-ruling Aga- 
memn6n may know the mad folly which he committed, when he dishonored 
the bravest cf the Greeks.” 

To impress this knowledge upon Agamemnon was no longer necessary. 
The ninth book records his humiliating confession of it, accompanied by 
atonement and reparation. To teach him the lesson a second time, is to 
break the bruised reed, —to slay the slain. But leave out the ninth book, 
and the motive is the natural one, — both for Patroclus to offer, and for the 
Myrmidons to obey: Achilles still remains a dishonored man, and to hum- 
ble the rival who has dishonored him is the first of all objects, as well with 
his friends as with himself. 

6. Lastly, the time comes when Achilles, in deep anguish for the death of 
Patroclus, looks back with aversion and repentance to the past. To what 
point should we expect that his repentance would naturally turn? Not te 
his primary quarrel with Agamemnén, in which he had been undeniably 
wronged,— but to the scene in the ninth book, where the maximum of atone- 
ment for the previous wrong is tendered to him and scornfully rejected. Yet 
when we turn to xviii. 108, and xix. 55, 68, 270, we find him reverting to the 
primitive quarrel in the first book, just as if it had been the last incident in 
his relations with Agamemnén: moreover, Agamemnoén (xix. 86), in his 
specch of reconeiliation, treats the past just in the same way,— deplores his 
original insanity in wrongmg Achilles. 

7. When we look to the prayers of Achilles and Thetis, addressed to Zeus 
in the first book, we find that the consummation prayed for is,— honor to 
Achilles,— redress for the wrong offered to him,— victory to the Trojans 
until Agamemnén and the Greeks shall be made bitterly sensible of the 
wrong which they have done to their bravest wavrior (i. 409-509). Now this 
consummatien is brought about in the ninth bovk. Achilles can get no more, 
nor does he ultimately get more, either in the way of redress to himself or 
remorseful humiliation of Agamernén, than what is here tendered. ‘The 
defeat which the Greeks suffer in the dattle of the eighth book (Κόλος Mex) 


182 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Briseis; while both Nestor and Patroclus, with all their wish te 
induce him to take arms, never take notice of the offered atone- 
ment ard restitution, but view him as one whose ground for 


has brought about the consummation. The subsequent and much more 
destructive defeats which they undergo are thus causeless: yet Zeus is repre- 
sented as inflicting them reluctantly, and only because they are necessary to 
honor Achilles (xiii. 350; xv. 75, 235, 598; compare also viii. 372 and 475). 

If we reflect upon the constitution of the poem, we shall see that the fun- 
damental sequence of ideas in it is, a series of misfortunes to the Greeks, 
brought on by Zeus for the special purpose of procuring atonement to 
Achilles and bringing humiliation on Agamemnon: the introduction of Pa- 
troclus superadds new motives of the utmost interest, but it is most harmo- 
niously worked into the fundamental sequence. Now the intrusion of the 
ninth book breaks up the scheme of the poem by disuniting the sequence: 
Agamemnon is on his knees before Achilles, entreating pardon and proffering 
reparation, yet the calamities of the Greeks become more and more dreadful. 
The atonement of the ninth book comes at the wrong time and in the wrong 
manner. 

There are four passages (and only four, so far as Iam aware) in which 
the embassy of the ninth book is alluded to in the subsequent books: one in 
xviii. 444-456, which was expunged as spurious by Aristarchus (see the 
Scholia and Knight’s commentary, ad /oc.); and three others in the following 
book, wherein the gifts previously tendered by Odysseus as the envoy of 
Agamemnon are noticed as identical with the gifts actually given in the 
nineteenth book. I feel persuaded that these passages (vv. 140-141, 192- 
195, and 243) are specially inserted for the purpose of establishing a connec- 
tion between the ninth book and the nineteenth. The four lines (192-195) 
are decidedly better away: the first two lines (140-141) are noway neces- 
sary; while the word χϑιζὸς (which occurs in both passages) is only rendered 
admissible by being stretched to mean nudius tertius (Heyne, ad loc.). 

I will only farther remark with respect to the ninth book, that the speech 
of Agamemnon (17-28), the theme for the rebuke of Diomédés and the ob- 
scure commonplace of Nestor, is taken verbatim from his speech in the 
second book, in which place the proposition, of leaving the place and flying, 
is made, not seriously, but as a stratagem (ii. 110, 118, 140). 

The length of this note can only be excused by its direct bearing upon 
the structure of the Iliad. To show that the books from the eleventh 
downwards are composed by a poet who has no knowledge of the ninth 
book, is, in my judgment, a very important point of evidence in aiding us to 
understand what the original Achilléis was. The books from the second to 
the seventh inclusive are insertions into the Achiliéis, and lie apart from its 
plot, but do not violently contradict it, except in regard to the agora of the 
gods at the beginning of the fourth book, and the almost mortal wouna of 
Sarpédon in his battle with Tlepolemus. But the ninth book overthrows the 
fandamental scheme of the poem. 


NINTH BOOK OF THE ILIAD. 188 


quarrel stands still the same as it did at the beginning. More. 
over, if we look at the first book,— the opening of the Achilléis, 
— we shall see that this prostration of Agamemnon and the chief 
Grecian heroes before Achilles, would really be the termination 
of the whole poem; for Achilles asks nothing more from Thetis, 
nor Thetis anything more from Zeus, than that Agamemnon and 
the Greeks may be brought to know the wrong they have done to 
their capital warrior, and humbled in the dust in expiation of it. 
We may add, that the abject terror in which Agamemnén appears 
in the ninth book, when he sends the supplicatory message to 
Achilles, as it is not adequately accounted for by the degree of 
calamity which the Greeks have experienced in the preceding 
(eighth) book, so it is inconsistent with the gallantry and high 
spirit with which he shines at the beginning of the eleventh.! 
The situation of the Greeks only becomes desperate when the 
three great chiefs, Agamemnén, Odysseus, and Diomédés, are 
disabled by wounds ;? this is the irreparable calamity which 
works upon Patroclus, and through him upon Achilles. The 
ninth book, as it now stands, seems to me an addition, by a 
different hand, to the original Achilléis, framed so as both to 
forestall and to spoil the nineteenth book, which is the real recon- 
ciliation of the two inimical heroes: I will venture to add, that it 
carries the pride and egotism of Achilles beyond even the largest 
exigences of insulted honor, and is shocking to that sentiment of 
Nemesis which was so deeply seated in the Grecian mind. We 
forgive any excess of fury against the Trojans and Hector, after 
the death cf Putroclus; but that he should remain unmoved by 
restitution, by abject supplications, and by the richest atoning 


' Helbig (Sittl. Zustande des Heldenalters, p. 30) says, “ The conscious- 
ness in the bosom of Agamemnon that he has offered atonement to Achilles 
strengthens his confidence and valor,” &c. This is the idea of the critic, not 
of the poet. It does not occur in the Iliad, though the critic not unnaturally 
imagines that it must occur. Agamemnon never says, “I was wrong in 
provoking Achilles, but you see I have done everything which man could de 
to beg his pardon.” Assuming the ninth book to be a part of the original 
conception, this feeling is so natural, that we could hardly fail to find it, at 
the beginning of the eleventh book, numbered among the motives of Aga 


memnon. 
3 Tliad, xi. 659; xiv. 128: xvi. 25. 


184 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


presents, tendered from the Greeks, indicates an implacability 
such as neither the first book, nor the books between the eleventh 
and seventeenth, convey. 

It is with the Grecian agora, in the beginning of the second 
book, that the Iliad (as distinguished from the Achilléis) com- 
mences,— continued throug the Catalogue, the muster of the two 


armies, the single combat between Menelaus and Paris, the ᾿ 


renewed promiscuous battle caused by the arrow of Pandarus, 
the (Epipélésis, or) personal circuit of Agamemnén round the 
army, the Aristeia, or brilliant exploits of Diomédés, the visit of 
Hector to Troy for the purposes of sacrifice, his interview with 
Andromaehé, and his combat with Ajax,— down to the seventh 
book. All these are beautiful poetry, presenting to us the general 
Trojan war, and its conspicuous individuals under different. peints 
of view, but leaving no room in the reader’s mind for the though 
of Achilles. Now, the difficulty for an enlarging poet, was, to 
pass from the Achilléis in the first book, to the Iliad in the 
second, and it will accordingly be found that here is an awkward- 
ness in the structure of the poem, which counsel on the poet’s 
behalf (ancient or modern) do not satisfactorily explain. 

In the first book, Zeus has promised Thetis, that he will pun- 
ish the Greeks for the wrong done to Achilles: in the beginning 
of the second book, he deliberates how he shall fulfil the promise, 
and sends down for that purpose “ mischievous QOneirus ” (the 
Dream-god) to visit Agamemnon in his sleep, to assure him that 
the gods have now with one accord consented to put Troy into 
his hands, and to exhort him forthwith to the assembling of his 
army for the attack. The ancient commentators were here per- 
plexed by the circumstance that Zeus puts a falsehood into the 
mouth of Oneirus. But there seems no more difficulty in explain- 
ing this, than in the narrative of the book of 1 Kings (chap. xxii. 
20), where Jehovah is mentioned to have put a lying spirit inte 
the mouth of Ahab’s prophets,— the real awkwardness is, that 
Oneirus and his falsehood produce no effect. For in the first 
place, Agamemnén takes a step very different from that which 
his dream recommends, — and in the next place, when the Gre- 
cian army is at length armed and goes forth to battle, it does not 
experience defeat, (which would be the case if the exhortation of 
On::irus really p1 ved mischievous,) but carries on a successful 


ENLARGEMENT OF ACHILLEIS INTO ILIAD. 185 


day's battle, chiefly through the heroism of Diomédés. Instead 
of arming the Greeks forthwith, Agamemnén convokes first ὦ 
council of chiefs, and next an agora of the host. And though 
himself in a temper of mind highly elate with the deceitful as. 
surances of Oneirus, he deliberately assumes the language of 
despair in addressing the troops, having previously prepared Nes- 
tor and Odysseus for his doing so,— merely in order to try the 
courage of the men, and with formal instructions, given to these 
two other chiefs, that they are to speak in opposition to him. 
Now this intervention of Zeus and Oneirus, eminently unsatisfac- 
tory when coupled with the incidents which now follow it, and 
making Zeus appear, but only appear, to realize his promise of 
honoring Achilles as well as of hurting the Greeks, — forms ex: 
actly the point of junction between the Achilléis and the Iliad.! 
The freak which Agamemnon plays off upon the temper of 
his army, though in itself childish, serves a sufficient purpose, not 
only because it provides a special matter of interest to be sub- 
mitted to the Greeks, but also because it calls forth the splendid 
description, so teeming with vivacious detail, of the sudden 
breaking up of the assembly after Agamemnon’s harangue, and 
of the decisive interference of Odysseus to bring the men back, 
as well as to put down Thersités. This picture of the Greeks 
in agora, bringing out the two chief speaking and counselling 
heroes, was so important a part of the general Trojan war, that 
the poet has permitted himself to introduce it by assuming an 
inexplicable folly on the part of Agamemnén; just as he has 
ushered in another fine scene in the third book, — the Teicho- 
skopy, or conversation, between Priam and Helen on the walls 
of Troy, — by admitting the supposition that the old king, in 
the tenth year of the war, did not know the persons of Aga- 
memnoén and the other Grecian chiefs. This may serve as an 
explanation of the delusion practised by Agamemnén towards 
his assembled host; but it does not at all explain the tame and 


empty intervention of Oneirus.? 


| The intervention of Oneirus ought rather to come as an immediate pre- 
liminary to book viii. than to book ii The first forty-seven lines of book ii 
would fit on and read consistently at the beginning of book viii, the events 
ef which book form a proper sequel to the mission of Oneirus. 
2 (. Miller, (History of Greek Literature, ch. v.§ 8,) doubts whether the 


186 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


If the initial incident of the second book, whereby we pass οἱ 
of the Achilléis into the Iliad, is awkward, so also the al j 2 
dent of the seventh book, immediately before we pase τς ee i- 
the Achilléis, is not less unsatisfactory, — I mean the eaters 
tion of the wall and ditch round the Greek amp. As the nasil 
now stands, no plausible reason is assigned why ἜΝ ἜΣ 
done. Nestor proposes it without any constraining ἡδρμν Si 
for the Greeks are in a career of victory, and the “Trojans εὐ 
making offers of compromise which imply conscious ees oe wh 
while Diomédés is so confident of the ciakionsBilies μὴ ἡ Tow. 
that he dissuades his comrades from saaiieine iio Hele = 
celf. if the surrender should be tendered. «Man ' Greeks 1 oo 
been slain,” it is true,! as Nestor observes; ke ἐς Ἰὼ a 
greater number of Trojans have been slain, and all the i 
heroes are yet in full force: the absence of Achilles “ti not <a 
adverted to. even 

Now this account of the building of the fortification seems to 


begining of the second book was written “by the ancient Homer, or by c 
of the later Homerids:” he thinks the speech of Acamemnéi (alge: eo 
plays off the deceit upon his army, is “a copious parody (of i ὸ i ei 
used in the ninth book) composed by a later Homerid, and nanan hi ΔΝ 
room of an originally shorter account of the arming ‘of the ae “7 = 
lange the scene in the Grecian agora as “an entire maythioal densi: of Mr 
fine irony and with an amusing plot. in which the dncuteine ¢ Bide ie ag! 
Agamemnon is the chief character.” g and deceived 
The comic or ironical character which is here ascribed to the second book 
appears to me fanciful and incorrect ; but Maller evidently felt the a δῆ sa 
ness of the opening incident, though his way of accounting fi τ᾿ sah 
successful. ‘The second book seems to my iain sha Soil _ it Ἢ hot 
part of the poem. ἡ ΠΤ ee ee 
I think also that the words alluded to by O. Miiller ir the ninth book 
a transcript of those in the second, instead of the γονάμ ae he ohm τὴν 
because it seems probable that the ninth book is an addition les peta 
poem after the books hetween the first and the eighth had been al he = 
serted,— it is certainly introduced after the accounts of the fo pi οὔρῳ 
contained in the seventh book, had become a part of the poem: s rtl riage 
The author of the Embassy to Achilles fancied that that hero Auta es 
long out of sight, and out of mind,—a supposition rat which rt one fo8 
room in the original Achilléis, when the eighth and eleventh lor de vi 
in immediate succession to the first, but which offers itself nat ; ee 
one on reading our present Iliad. atereny to one 
' liad, vii. 327 


FORTIFICATION OF THE GRECIAN CAMP. 187 


be an after-thought, arising out of the enlargement of the poem 
beyond its original scheme. The original Achilléis, passing at 
once from the first to the eighth,! and from thence to the eleventh 
book, might well assume the fortification, — and talk of it as a 
thing existing, without adducing any special reason why it was 
erected. The hearer would naturally comprehend and follow the 
existence of a ditch and wall round the ships, as a matter of 
course, provided there was nothing in the previous narrative to 
make him believe that the Greeks had originally been without 
these bulwarks. And since the Achilléis, immediately after the 
promise of Zeus to Thetis, at the close of the first book, went on 
to describe the fulfilment of that promise and the ensuing dis- 
asters of the Greeks, there was nothing to surprise any one in 
hearing that their camp was fortified. But the case was altered 
when the first and the eighth books were parted asunder, in order 
to make room for descriptions of temporary success and glory on 


the part of the besieging army. The brilliant scenes sketched 


‘n the books, from the second to the seventh, mention no fortifica- 


tion, and even imply its nonexistence ; yet, since notice of it 
amidst the first description of Grecian disasters in the 
earer, who had the earlier books present to his 
surprised to find a fortification mentioned im- 
mediately afterwards, unless the construction of it were specially 
announced to have intervened. But it will at once appear, that 
in finding a good reason why the 


occurs 
eighth book, the h 
memory, might be 


there was some difficulty 


decidedly a separate song, Or epic; ὃ 
eus and the agora of the gods at the 
in my judgment (Excursus I, ad lib. 


1 Heyne treats the eighth book as 
supposition which the language of Z 
beginning are alone sufficient to refute, 
xi. vol. vi. p. 269). This Excursus, in describing the sequence of events in 
the Iliad, passes at once and naturally from book eighth to book eleventh. 

And Mr. Payne Knight, when he defends book eleventh against Heyne, 
says, “ Que in undecima rhapsodia Iliadis narrata sunt, haud minus ex ante 
narratis pendent: neque rationem pugne commiss®, neque rerum in ea ges- 
tarum nexum atque ordinem, quisquam intelligere posset, nisi tram δ 
secessum Achillis, et victoriam quam Trojani inde consecuti erant, antea Cog- 
nosset.” (Prolegom. c. xxix.) 

Perfectly true: to understand the eleventh book, we must have before us 
the first and the eighth (which are those that describe the anger ani with- 
drawal of Achilles, and the defeat which the Greeks experience 1° 30086 


quence of it); we may dispense with the rest 


188 HISTOR\ OF GREECE. 


Greeks should begin to fortify at this juncture, and that the pos 
who discovered the gap might not be enabled to fill it up with 
success. As the Greeks have got on, up to this moment, without 
the wall, and as we have heard nothing but tales of their success, 
why should they now think farther laborious precautions for 
security necessary? We will not ask, why the Trojans should 
stand quietly by and permit a wall to be built, since the truce 
was concluded expressly for burying the dead.! 


+O. Miiller (Hist. Greek Literat. ch. v. § 6) says, about this wall: “Nor 
is it until the Greeks are taught by the experience of the first day’s fighting, that 
the Trojans can resist them in open battle, that the Greeks build the wall 
round their ships...... This appeared to Thucydidés so little conformable to 
historical probability, that, without regard to the authority of Homer, he 
placed the building of these walls immediately after the landing.” 

It is to be lamented, I think, that Thucydidés took upon him to determine 
the point at all as a matter of history ; but when he once undertook this. the 
account in the Iliad was not of a nature to give him much satisfaction. nor 
does the reason assigned by Miiller make it better. It is implied in Miiller’s 
reason that, before the first day’s battle, the Greeks did not believe that the 
Trojans could resist them in open battle: the Trojans (according to him) 
never had maintained the field, so long as Achilles was up and fighting on the 
Grecian side, and therefore the Greeks were quite astonished to find now, for 
the first time, that they could do so. 

Now nothing can be more at variance with the tenor of the second and 
following books than this supposition. The Trojans come forth readily and 
fight gallantly ; neither Agamemnon, nor Nestor, nor Odysseus consider 
them as enemies who cannot hold front; and the circuit of exhortation by 
Agamemnon (Epipélésis), so strikingly described in the fourth book, proves 
that Ae does not anticipate a very easy v.ctory. Nor does Nestor, in pro- 
posing the construction of the wall, give the smallest hint that the power of 
the Trojans to resist in the open field was to the Greeks an unexpected 
discovery. 

The reason assigned by Maller, then, is a fancy of his own, proceeding 
from the same source of mistake as others among his remarks; because he 
tries to find, in the books between the first and eighth, a governing reference 
to Achilles (the point of view of the Achilléis), which those books distinctly 
refuse. The Achilléis was a poem of Grecian disasters up to the time when 
Achilles sent forth Patroclus; and during those disasters, it might suit the 
poet to refer by contrast to the past time when Achilles was active, and to 
say that then the Trojans did not dare even to present themselves in battle- 

array in the field, whereas now they were assailing the ships. But the author 
of books ii. to vii. has no wish to glorify Achilles: he gives us a picture of 
the Trojan war generally, and describes the Trojans, not only as brave and 
equal enemies, but well known by the Greeks themselves to b2 so. 


THE DOLONEIA. 189 


The tenth book, or Doloneia, was considered by some of the 
ancient scholiasts,! and has been confidently set forth by the 
modern Wolfian critics, as originally a separate poem, inserted by 
Peisistratus into the Iliad. How it can ever have been a Ηρ ἀρ 
poem, I do not understand. It is framed with great epomalty ᾿ 
the antecedent circumstances under which it occurs, and wou 
suit for no other place; though capable of being separately 
recited, inasmuch as it has a definite beginning and end, like = 
story of Nisus and Euryalus in the 4Eneid. But seater: ν᾽ 
presupposing and resting upon the incidents in the eight : ws ss 
and in line 88 of the ninth, (probably, the appointment of senti- 


nels on the part of the Greeks, as well of the Trojans, formed the 


close of the battle described in the eighth book,) it has = ou 
slightest bearing upon the events of the eleventh or the . ow- 
ing books: it goes to make up the general picture οἵ the — 
war, but lies quite apart from the Achilléis. And i ee 
mark of a portion subsequently inserted, — that, thoug t — 
to the parts which precede, it has no influence on those which 


follow. 
If the proceedings of the combatants on the plain of Troy, 


between the first and the eighth book, have no reference — 
to Achilles, or to an Achilléis, we find Zeus in Olympus = 
more completely putting that hero out of the question, on i 
beginning of the fourth book. He 15 in this ee We 
save the Zeus of the Iliad, not of the Achilléis. I orget oO Ἧι 
promise to Thetis, in the first book, he discusses nothing enclonan 
question of continuance or termination of the war, and manent 
anxiety only for the salvation of Troy, in es iene με era a 
Trojan goddesses, who prevent him from giving effec lig: 
victory of Menelaus over Paris, and the stipulated denen eon ἡ 
Helen, — in which case, of course, the wrong offered wre c = 
would remain unexpiated. An attentive comparison wi ren " 
it evident that the poet who composed the discussion poe 
gods, at the beginning of the fourth book, has not been car μὰ 
put himself in harmony either with the Zeus of the first book, 


with the Zeus of the eighth. 


The building of the Grecian wall, as it now stands described, is an unex 
plained proceeding, which Miiller’s ingenuity does not render consistent. 
! Schol. ad [liad. x. 1. 


190 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


So soon as we enter upon the eleventh book, the march of the 
poem becomes quite different. We are then in a series of events, 
each paving the way for that which follows, and ali conducing to 
the result promised in the first book,—-the reappearance of 
Achilles, as the only means of saving the Greeks from ruin, — 
preceded by ample atonement,! and followed by the maximum 
both of glory and revenge. The intermediate career of Patro- 
clus introduces new elements, which, however, are admirably 
woven into the scheme of the poem, as disclosed in the first book. 
I shall not deny that there are perplexities in the detail of 
events, as described in the battles at the Grecian wall, and before 
the ships, from the eleventh to the sixteenth books, but they 
appear only cases of partial confusion, such as may be reasonably 
ascribed to imperfections of text: the main sequence remains 
coherent and intelligible. We find no considerable events which 
could be left out without breaking the thread, nor any incon- 
gruity between one considerable event and another. There is 
nothing between the eleventh and twenty-second books, which 
is at all comparable to the incongruity between the Zeus of 
whe fourth book and the Zeus of the first and eighth. It 
may, perhaps, be true, that the shield of Achilles is a super- 
added amplification of that which was originally announced in 
general terms,— because the poet, from the eleventh to the 
twenty-second books, has observed such good economy of his 
materials, that he is hardly likely to have introduced one par- 
ticular description of such disproportionate length, and having se 
little connection with the series of events. But I see no reason 
for believing that it is an addition materially later than the rest 
of the poem. 

It must be confessed, that the supposition here advanced, in 
reference to the structure of the Iliad, is not altogether free from 
difficulties, because the parts constituting the original Achilléis? 


1 Agamemnon, after deploring the misguiding influence of Até, whieh 
induced him to do the original wrong to Achilles, says (xix. 88-137), — 
"AAW ἐπεὶ ἀασάμην Kai μευ φρένας ἐξέλετο Zede, 
*Aw ἐϑέλω ἀρέσαι, δόμενοϊ τ᾽ ἀπερείσι᾽ ἄποινα, ete. 
3 The supposition of a smaller original Iliad, enlarged by successive addi 
tions to the present dimensions, and more or less interpolated (we must 


BOOKS XI—XXII OF THE ILIAD. 191 


have been more or less altered or interpolated, to suit the addi- 
tions made to it, particularly in the eighth book. But it presents 
fewer difficulties than any other supposition, and it is the only 
means, so far as I know, of explaining the difference between 
one part of the Iliad and another; both the continuity of struc- 
ture, and the conformity to the opening promise, which are 
manifest when we read the books in the order i. viii. xi. to xxii, 
as contrasted with the absence of these two qualities in books ii. 
to vii. ix. and x. An entire organization, preconceived from 
the beginning, would not be likely to produce any such disparity, 
nor is any such visible in the Odyssey ;! still less would the result 


distinguish enlargement from interpolation, — the insertion of a new rhapsody 
from that of a new line), seems to be a sort of intermediate compromise, 
towards which the opposing views of Wolf, J. H. Voss, Nitzsch, Hermann, 
and Boeckh, all converge. Baumgarten-Crusius calls this smaller poem an 
Achilléis. 

Wolf, Preface to the Géschen edit. of the Iliad, pp. xii-xxiii; Voss, Anti 
Symbolik, part ii. p. 234; Nitzsch, Histor. Homeri, Fasciculus i. p. 112; and 
Vorrede to the second volume of his Comments on the Odyssey, p. xxvi: 
“In the Iliad (he there says) many single portions may very easily be 
imagined as parts of another whole, or as having been once separately sung.” 
(See Baumgarten-Crusius, Preface to his edition of W. Miiller’s Homer 
ische Vorschule, pp. xlv—xlix.) 

Nitzsch distinguishes the Odyssey from the Iliad, and I think justly, in 
respect to this supposed enlargement. The reasons which warrant us in 
applying this theory to the Iliad have no bearing upon the Odyssey. If there 
ever was an Ur-Odyssee, we have no means of determining what it cop- 
tained. 

1 The remarks of O. Miiller on the Iliad (in his History of Greek Litera- 
ture) are highly deserving of perusal: with much of them I agree, but there 
is also much which seems to me unfounded. The range of combination, and 
the far-fetched narrative stratagem which he ascribes to the primitive author, 
are in my view inadmissible (chap. v. ὁ 5-11:— 

“ The internal connection of the Iliad (he observes, § 6) rests upon the 
union of certain parts, and neither the interesting introduction, describing 
the defeat of the Greeks up to the burning of the ship of Protesilaus, nor the 
turn of affairs brought about by the death of Patroclus, nor the final pacifi- 
cation of the anger of Achilles, could be spared from the Iliad, when the 
fruitful seed of such a poem had once been sown in the soul of Homer, and 
had begun to develop its growth. But the plan of the Iliad is certainly very 
much extended beyond what was actually necessary ; and in particular, the 
preparatory part, consisting of the attempts on the part of the other herocs ta 
compensite for the absence of Achilles, has, it must be owned, been drawn oat 


192 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


be explained by supposing integers originally separate, sud 
brought together without any designed organization. And it is 


to a disproportionate length, so that the suspicion that there were later inser- 
tions of importance applies with greater probability to the first than to we 
last books A design manifested itself at an early period to make this 
poem complete in itself, so that all the subjects, descriptions, and actions, 
which could alone give interest to a poem on the entire war, might find a 
place within the limits of its composition. For this purpose, it is not im- 
probable that many lays of earlier bards, who had sung single adventures of 
the Trojan war, were laid under contribution, and the finest parts of them 
incorporated in the new poem.” 

These remarks of ©. Maller intimate what is (in my judgment) the right 
view, inasmuch as they recognize an extension of the plan of the poem 
beyond its original limit, manifested by insertions in the first half; and it is 
to be observed that, in his enumeration of those parts, the union of which is 
necessary to the internal connection of the Iliad, nothing is mentioned ex- 
cept what is comprised in books i. viii. xi. to xxii. or xxiv. But his descrip 
tion of “ the preparatory part,” as “ the attempts of the other heroes to compensate 
for the absence of Achilles.” is noway borne out by the poet himself. From 
the second to the seventh book, Achilles is scarcely alluded to; moreovey the 
Greeks do perfectly well without him. This portion of the poem displays, 
not “ the insufficiency of all the other heroes without Achilles,” as Miiller 
had observed in the preceding section, but the perfect sufficiency of the Greeks 
under Diomédés, Agamemnon, etc. to make head against Troy; it is only 
in the eighth book that their insufficiency begins to be manifested, and only 
in the eleventh book that it is consummated by the wounds of the three 
great heroes. Diomédés is, in fact, exalted to a pitch of glory in regard 
to contests with the gods, which even Achilles himself never obtains after- 
wards. and Helenus the Trojan puts him above Achilles (vi. 99) in terrific 
prowess. Achilles is mentioned two or three times as absent, and Agamem- 
nén, in his speech to the Grecian agora, regrets the quarrel (ii. 377), but we 
never hear any such exhortation as, “ Let us do our best to make up for the 
absence of Achilles,” —not even in the Epipélésis of Agamemnon, where it 
would most naturally be found. “ Attempts to compensate for the absence 
of Achilles ” must, therefore, be treated as the idea of the critic, not of the 
poet. 

Though O. Miiller has glanced at the distinction between the two parts 
of the poem (an original part, having chief reference to Achilles and the 
Greeks ; and a superinduced part, having reference to the entire war), he has 
not conceived it clearly, nor carried it out consistently. If we are to distin- 
guish these two points of view at all, we ought to draw the lines at the end 
of the first book and at the beginning of the eighth, thus regarding the inter- 
mediate six books as belonging to the picture of the entire war (or the Tliad 
as distinguished from the Achilléis): the point of view of the Achilléis, 
dropped at the end of the first book, is resumed at the beginning of the eighth 


VARIOUS POSSIBLE HYF )THEsEs. 1938 


between these three suppositions that our choice has to be made. 
A scheme, and a large scheme too, must unquestionably be 
admitted as the basis of any sufficient hypothesis. But the 


The natural fitting together of these two parts is noticed in the comment of 
Heyne, ad viii. 1: “ Caeterum nunc Jupiter aperte solvit Thetidi promissa, 
dum reddit causam Trojanorum bello superiorem, ut Achillis desidertum 
Achivos, et peenitentia injurie ei illate Agamemnonem incessat (cf. i. 5) 
Nam que adhuc narrata sunt, partim continebantur in fortuna belli utrinque 
tentata......partim valebant ad narrationem variarndam,” ete. The first 
and the eighth books belong to one and the same point of view, while all 
the intermediate books belong to the other. But O. Miiller seeks to prove 
that a portion of these intermediate books belongs to one common point of 
view with the first and eighth, though he admits that they have been en- 
larged by insertions. Here I think he is mistaken. Strike out anything 
which can be reasonably allowed for enlargement in the books between the 
first and eighth, aud the same difficulty will still remain in respect to the 
remainder: for all the incidents between those two points are brought out in 
a spirit altogether indifferent to Achilles or his anger. The Zeus of the 
fourth book, as contrasted with Zeus in the first or eighth, marks the differ- 
ence; and this description of Zeus is absolutely indispensable as the con- 
necting link between book iii. on the one side and books iv. and v. on the 
other. Moreover, the attempt of O. Miller, to force upon the larger portion 
of what is between the first and eighth books the point of view of the 
Achilléis, is never successful: the poet does not exhibit in those books 
« insufficient efforts of other heroes to compensate for the absence of Achilles,” 
but a general and highly interesting picture of the Trojan war, with promi- 
nent reference to the original ground of quarrel. In this picture, the duel 
between Paris and Menelaus forms naturally the foremost item, — but how 
far-fetched is the reasoning whereby O. Maller brings that striking recital 
within the scheme of the Achilléis! “ The Greeks and Trojans are for the 
first time struck by an idea, which might have occurred in the previous nine 
years, if the Greeks, when assisted by Achilles, had not, from confidence in their 
superior strength, considered every compromise as unworthy of them, —namely, 
to decide the war by a single combat between the authors of it.” Here the 
causality of Achilles is dragged in by main force, and unsupported either by 
any actual statement in the poem or by any reasonable presumption ; for it 
is the Trojans who propose the single combat, and we are not told that they 
had ever proposedeit before, though they would have had stronger reasons 
for proposing it during the presence of Achilles than during his absence. 

0. Miiller himself remarks (§ 7), “ that from the second to the seventh 
book Zeus appears as it were to have forgotten his resolution and his prom- 
ise to Thetis.” In other words, the poet, during this part of the poem, drops 
the point of view of the Achilléis to take up that of the more comprehensive 
[liad: the Achilléis reappears in book viii,— again disappears in book x, 
~and 1s resumed from book xi. to the end of the poem. 

VOL. Il. - 18ου.- 


194 HISTORY OF GRZECE. 


Achilléis would have been a long poem, half the length of the 
present Iliad, and probably not less compact in its structure than 
the Odyssey. Moreover, being parted off only by an imaginary 
iine from the boundless range of the Trojan war, it would admit 
of enlargement more easily, and with greater relish to hearers, 
than the adventures of one single hero; while the expansion 
would naturally take place by adding new Grecian victory, — 
since the original poem arrived at the exaltation of Achilles only 
through a painful series of Grecian disasters. That the poem 
under these cireurastances should have received additions, is no 
very violent hypothesis: in fact, when we recollect that the 
integrity both of the Achilléis and of the Odyssey was neither 
guarded by printing nor writing, we shall perhaps think it less 
wonderful that the former was enlarged,! than that the latter was 
not. Any relaxation of the laws of epical unity is a small price 
to pay for that splendid poetry, of which we find so much 
between the first and the «ighth books of our Iliad. 

The question respectix unity of authorship is different, and 
more difficult to determine, than that respecting consistency of 
parts, and sequence in the narrative. A poem conceived on a 
comparatively narrow scale may be enlarged afterwards by its 


original author, with greater or less colierence and success: the 


1'This tendency to insert new homogeneous matter by new poets into 
poems already existing, is noticed by M. Fauriel, in reference to the Homans 
of the Middle Ages : -— 

“ C’est un phénomeéne remarquable dans l'histoire de la poésie épique 
que cette disposition, cette tendance constante du gout populaire ἃ amalgamer, 
4 lier en une seule et méme composition le plus possible des compositions 
diverses, — cette disposition persiste chez un peuple, tant que la poésie con- 
serve un reste de vie; tant qu'elle s’y transmet par la tradition et qu’elle y 
circule ἃ Paide du chant ou des récitations publiques. Elle cesse partout ou 
la poésie est une fois fixée dans les livres, et n’agit plus que par la lecture, 
— cette derniére époque est pour ainsi dire, celle de la propriété poétique — 
celle nt chaque poéte prétend ἃ une existence, ἡ une gloire, personnelles; et 
ou la peésie cesse d’étre une espece de trésor commun dont le peuple jouit 
et dispose ἃ sa manivre, sans s’inquiéter des individus qui le lui ont fait.” 
(Fauriel, Sur les Romans Chevaleresques, legon 5me, Revue des Deux 
Mondes, vol. xiii. p. 707.) 

M. Fauriel thinks that the Shah Nameh of Ferdusi was an amalgamation 
of epic poems originally separate, and that probably the Mahabharat was se 


slso (ib. 708). 


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UNITY OF AUTHORSHIP. 195 


Faust of Goethe affords an example even in our own generation, 

On the other hand, a systematic poem may well have been con- 

ceived and executed by prearranged concert between several 

poets; among whom probably one will be the governing mind, 

though the rest may be effective, and perhaps equally effective, 

in respect to exccution of the parts. And the age of the early 

Grecian epic was favorable to such fraternization of poets, of 

which the Gens called Homerids probably exhibited many speci- 
mens. In the recital or singing of a long unwritten poem, many 
bards must have conspired together, and in the earliest times the 

composer and the singer were one and the same person.! Now 

the individuals comprised in the Homerid Gens, though doubtless 

very different among themselves in respect of mental capacity, 

were yet homogeneous in respect of training, means of observa- 
tion and instruction, social experience, religious feelings and 
theories, ete. to a degree much greater than individuals in 
modern times. TF allible as our inferences are on this point, 
where we have only internal evidence to guide us, without any 
contemporary points of comparison, or any species of collateral 
information respecting the age, the society, the poets, the hearers, 
er the language,—we must nevertheless, in the present case, 
take coherence of structure, together with consistency in the tone 
of thought, feeling, language, customs, ete., as presumptions of 
one author; and the contrary as presumptions of severalty ; 
allowing, as well as we can, for that inequality of excellence 
which the same author may at different times present. 

The remarks of Boeckh, upon the possibility of such coOperation of pocta 
towards one and the same scheme are perfectly just : — 

“ Atqui quomodo componi a variis auctoribus successu temporum rhapso- 
dix potucrint, qu post prima initia direct jam ad idem consilium et quam 
yocant unitatem: carminis sint......missis istorum declamationibus qui 
populi universi opus Homerum esse jactant......tum potissimum intellige- 
tur, ubi gentis civilis Ilomeridarum propriam et peculiarem Homericam 
poesin fuisse, veteribus ipsis si non testibus, at certe ducibus, concedetur. 
....+.Quse quum ita sint, non erit adeo difficile ad intelligendum, quomodo, 
post prima initis ab cgregio vate facta, in gente sacrorum et artis comma- 
pione sociati, multe rhapsodiz ad unum potuerint consilium dirigi ” (Index 
Lection. 1834, p. 12.) 

Y transcribe this passage from Giese (Ueber den EZolischen Dialekt, pr 
157), not having been able to see the essay of which it forms a part 


ee ger pe eee eee te y= 


eee yr 


re 


τ φεαδ we 


Ces ote ee τῶ AI eee ney ee 
moe ere - ἜΝ 


τῆφοσν pres 


190 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Now, the case made out against single-headed authorship of 
the Odyssey, uppears to me very weak; and those who dispute 
7 + 
it, are guided more by their @ priori rejection of ancient epical 
unity, than by any positive evidence which the poem itself affords. 
Jt is otherwise with regard to the Iliad. Whatever presumptions 
a disjointed structure, several apparent inconsistencies of parts, 
and large excrescence of actual matter beyond the opening 
promise, can sanction, — may reasonably be indulged against tl. 
supposition that this poem all proceeds from a single author. 
There is a difference of opinion on the subject among the best 
critics, which is, probably, not destined to be adjusted, since so 
much depends partly upon critical feeling, partly upon the general 
reasonings, in respect to ancient epical unity, with which a man 
sits down to the study. Tor the champions of unity, such as Mr 
Payne Knight, are very ready to strike out numerous and often 
considerable passages as interpolations, thus mecting the oblec- 
tions raised against unity of authorship, on the ground of special 
Hermann and Boeckh, though not going the 


inconsistencies. 

᾿ ν : ie etins Bo  αὐ ML ae 

leneth of Lachmann in maintaining the original theory of Wolf, 
ς - 


acree with the latter in recugnizing diversity of authors in the 
poem, to an extent overpagsing the linit of what can fairly be 
called interpolation. Payne Knight and Nitzsch are equally per- 
suaded of the contrary. Here, then, is a decided contradiction 
among critics, all of whom have minutely studied the poems 
since the Wolfian question was raised. And it is such crities 
alone who can be said to constitute authority; for the cursory 
reader, who dwells upon the parts simply long enough to relish 
their poetical beauty, is struck only by that ceneral sameness of 
coloring which Wolf himself admits to pervade the poem.! 
Having already intimated that, in my judgment, no theory of 
the structure of the poem is admissible which does not admit an 
original and preconcerted Achilléis,;—a stream which begins at 
the first book and ends with the death of Hector, in the twenty- 
second, although the higher parts of it now remain only in the 
condition of two detached lakes, the first book and the eighth, — 
I reason upon the same basis with respect to the authorship. 


' Wolf, Prolecom. p. cxxxviii. “Quippe in universum idem sonus est 
emnibus libris; idem habitus sententiarum, orationis, numerorum,” etc. 


ey) eee ns 


UNITY OF AUTHORSHIP. 19) 


Assuming continuity of structure as a presumptive proof, the 
whole of this Achilléis must be treated as composed by one 
author. Wolf, indeed, aflirmed, that he never read the poem 
continuously through without being painfully impressed with the 
inferiority! and altered style of the last six books,— and Lach- 
mann carries this feeling farther back, so as to commence with 
the seventeenth book. If I could enter fully into this sentiment, 
I should then be compelled, not to deny the existence of a precon 
ceived scheme, but to imagine that the books from the eighteenth 
to the twenty-second, though forming part of that scheme, or 
Achilléis, had yet been executed by another and an inferior poet. 
But it is to be remarked, first, that inferiority of poetical merit, to 
a certain extent, is quite reconcilable with unity of authorship ; 
and, secondly, that the very circumstances upon which Wolf’s 
unfavorable judgment is built, seem to arise out of increased 
difficulty in the poet’s task, when he came to the crowning cantos 
of his designed Achilléis. For that which chiefly distinguishes 
these books, is, the direct, incessant, and manual intervention of 
the gods and goddesses, formerly permitted by Zeus, — and the 
repetition of vast and fantastic conceptions to which such super- 
human agency gives occasion; not omitting the battle of Achilles 
against Skamander and Simois, and the burning up of these rivers 
by UWéphstus. Now, looking at this vein of ideas with the eyes 
of a modern reader, or even with those of a Grecian critic of the 
literary ages, it is certain that the effect is unpleasing: the gods, 
sublime elements of poetry when kept in due proportion, are here 
somewhat vulgarized. But though the poet here has not suc- 
ceeded, and probably success was impossible, in the task which 
he has prescribed to himself,— yet the mere fact of his under- 
taking it, and the manifest distinction between his employment 
of divine agency in these latter cantos as compared with the 


' Wolf, Prolegomen. p. exxxvii. “ Equidem certe quoties in continenti 
lectione ad istas partes (1.e¢. the last six books) deveni, nunquam non in 
iis talia queda sensi, que nisi ille tam mature cum ceteris coaluissent, 
quovis pignore contendam, dudum ab eruditis detecta et animadversa fuisse, 
immo multa ejus generis, ut cum nunc ‘Ounptxorara habeantur, si tantum- 
modo in Hymnis legerentur, ipsa sola eos suspicionibus νοϑείας adspersura 
essent.” Compare the sequel, p. exxxviii, “ubi nervi deficiant et spirits 
Homericus, — jejunum et frigidum in locis mattis,” ete. 


198 HISTORY OF GREECE 


preceding, sce:ns explicable only on the supposition that they are 
the latter cantos, and come in designed sequence, as the contin- 
nance of a previous plan. The poet wishes to surround the 
coming forth of Achilles with the maximum of glorious and 
terrific circumstance; no Trojan enemy can for a moment hold 
out against him:! the gods must descend to the plain of ‘Troy and 
ν . - r 5 . ν . 

fight in person, while Zeus, who at the beginning of the eighth 
book, had forbidden them to take part, expressly encourages them 
to do so at the beginning of the twentieth. If, then, the nine- 
teenth book (which contains the reconciliation between Achilles 
and Agamemnén, a subject naturally somewhat tame) and the 
three following books (where we have before us only the gods, 
Achilles, and the ‘Trojans, without hope or courage) are inferior 
in execution and interest to the seven preceding books (which 
describe the long-disputed and often doubtful death-struggle 
between the Greeks and Trojans without Achilles), as Wolf and 


other critics affirm,— we may explain the difference without sup- 


posing ἃ new poct as composer ; for the conditions of the poem 


had become essentially more difficult, and the subject more 
unpromising. ‘The necessity of keeping Achilles above the level, 
even of heroic prowess, restricted the poet’s means of acting upon 


the sympathy of his hearers. 


1 Tliad, xx. 25. Zeus addresses the agora of the gods,— 


᾿Αμφοτέροισι δ᾽ ἀρήγετ᾽, ὅπη νόος ἐστὶν ἑκάστου " 

Ei γὰρ ᾿Αχιλλεὺς οἷος ἐπὶ Τρώεσσι μαχεῖται, 

Οὐδὲ μένυνϑ᾽ ἔξουσι ποδώκεα ΤΙηλείωνα. 

Καὶ δέ μιν καὶ πρόσϑεν ὑποτρομέεσκον Opavres " 

Νῦν & ὅτε δὴ καὶ ϑυμὸν ἑταίρου χώεται αἰνῶς, 

Δείδω μὴ καὶ τεῖχος ὑπὲρ μόρον ἐξαλαπάξῃ. 

beginning of the 


The forma! restriction put upon the rods by Zeus at the 
| I ξ i 
of the 


eighth book, and the removal of that restriction at the beginning 


twentieth, are evidently parts of one preconceived scheme. 
᾽ 5 


It is difficult to determine whether the battle of the gods and goddesses in 
book xxi. (385-520) is to be expunged as spurious, or only to be blamed as 
of inferior merit (“improbanda tantum, non resecanda — hoc enim est illud, 
a οὐδοῦ Homeric redit,” as Heyne observes in 
). The objections on the score of non- 


another place, Obss. Iliad. xviii. 444 
Homeric locution are not forcible (see P. Knight, ad loc.), and the scene 
ctes the poet in the closing act 


belongs to that vein of conception which animct 
of his Achilléis. 
* While admitting that these las 


quo pleramque summ 


t books of the Iliad are not equal in 


BOOKS JI—VII OF THE ILIAD. 199 


The last two books of the Iliad may have formed pavt of the 
original Achillcis. But the probability rather is, that they are 
additions ; for the death of Ilector satisfies the ne a 
coherent scheme, and we are not entitled to extend the oldies 
poem beyond the limit which such necessity prescribes. It fo 
been argued on one side by Nitzsch and O. Miller, that the mind 
could not leave off with satisfaction at the moment in which 
Achilles sates his revenge, and while the bodies of Patroclus 
and Hector are lying unburied,— also, that the more merciful 
temper which he exhibits in the twenty-fourth book, must alwa 8 
have been an indispensable sequel, in order to create proper s ea 
with his triumph. Other critics, on the contrary, “i 
taken special grounds of exception against the last be 
endeavored to set it aside as different from PE EEN si 


interest with those between the eleventh and eighteenth, we may add that 
they exhibit many striking beauties, both of plan and execution and one in 
particular may be noticed as an example of happy epical adaptation ‘The 
‘Trojans are on the point of ravishing from the Greeks the dead bade te 
Patroclus, when Achilles (by the inspiration of Héré and Iris) shows himself 
unirmed on the Grecian mound, and by his mere figure and voice strikes 
such terror into the Trojans that they relinquish the dead body. <As ee 
night arrives, Polydamas proposes, in the Trojan agora, that the Trojans 
shall retire without farther delay from the ships to the town, and chelt 
themselves within the walls, without awaiting the assault of Achilles ncaa 
on the next morning. IJlector repels this counsel of Polydamas with ex- 
pressions,— not merely of overweening confidence in his own force, even 
against Achilles,— but also of extreme contempt and harshness towards the 
giver ; whose wisdoin, however, is proved by the utter discomfiture of the 
Frojans the next day. Now this angry deportment and mistake on the part 
of Hector is made to tell strikingly in the twenty-second book, just before 
his death. ‘here yet remains a moment for him ‘to retire within the walls 
and thus obtain shelter against the near approach of his irresistible enem 
but he is struck with the recollection of that fatal moment when he re selled 
the counsel which would have saved his countrymen: “Jf I enter the at 
Polydamas will be the first to reproach me, as having brought destruction 
upon pe ia that fatal night when Achilles came forth, and when I 
resisted his better counsel.” (Compare xviii. 250-315; xxii : 
i θυ ον αμνεξ ( pare xvill. 250-315; xxii. 100-110; and 

In a discussion respecting the structure of the Iliad, and in reference to 
arguments which deny all designed concatenation of parts, it is not out of 
place to notice this affecting touch of poetry belonging to those books whiok 
aco reproached as the fecblesi 


' 
᾿ 


i 


= ————————— 


{ne + 


ΠΕ: 


-“- ὑ--πῊτὸ 


eee 


— 


200 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


in tone and language. Toa certain extent, the peculiarities of 
the last book appear to me undeniable, though it ts plainly ¢ 
designed continuance, and not a substantive poem. Some weight 
also is due to the remark about the twenty-third book, that 
Odysseus and Diomédés, who have been wounded and disabled 
3 ἸΟῪ reappear 1 rfect force, and contend in 
during the fight, now reappear in perfec ce, 7 
the games: here is no case of miraculous healing, and the incon- 


sistency is more likely to have been admitted by a separate 
enlarging poet, than by the schemer of the Achilléis. 

The splendid books from the second to v. 3522 of the seventh,! 
are equal, in most parts, to any portion of the Achilles, and are 
pointedly distinguished from the latter by the broad view which 
they exhibit of the general Trojan war, with all its principal 
personages, localities, and causes,— yet without advancing the 
result promised in the first book, or, indeed, any final f.urpose 
whatever. Ever the desperate wound inflicted by Tlepolemus 
on Sarpédon, is forgotten, when the latter hero is ealled forth in 
the subsequent Achilléis.2 ‘The arguments of Lachmann, who 
dissects these six books into three or four separate songs,® carry 
no conviction te my mind; and I see no reason why we should 
not consider all of them to be by the same author, bound together 
by the common purpose of giving a great collective picture which 
may properly be termed an Ihiad. ‘The tenth book, or Doloneia, 
though adapted specially to the place in which it stands, agrees 
with the books between the first and eighth in belonging only to 
the general picture of the war, withont helping forward the 
march of the Acihilléis ; yet it seems conceived in a lower vein, 
in so far as we can trust our modern ethical sentiment. One 13 


' The latter portion of the seventh book is spoiled by the very unsatisfac- 
tory addition introduced to explain the construction of the wall and ditch: 
all the other incideits (the agora and embassy of the ‘Trojans, the truce for 
burial, the arrival of wine-ships from Lemnos, ete.) suit perfectly with the 
scheme of the poet of these books, to depict the Trojan war generally 

* Unless, indeed, we are to. imagine the combat between Tlepolemus and 
Sarpédon, and that between Glaukus and Diomédeés, to be separate songs ; 
and they are among the very few passages in the Iliad which are complctely 
separable, implying no special untecedents. in 

3 Compare also Heyne, Excursus ii. sect. ii, ad Iliad. xxiv. vol viis 
Ῥ. 783. 


UNITY OF AUTHORSHIP 201 


unwilling to believe that the author of the fifth book, or Aristeia 
of Diomédés, would condescend to employ the lero whom he 
there so brightly glorifies,— the victor even over Arés himself,—~ 
in slaughtering newly-arrived Thracian sleepers, without any 
large purpose or necessity.!. ‘The ninth book, of which 1 have 
already spoken at length, belongs to a different vein of conception, 
aud seems to me more likely to have emanated from a separate 
com poser. 

While intimating these views respecting the authorship of the 
Iliad, as being in my judgment the most probable, I must repeat 
that, though the study of the poem carries to my mind a suflicient 
conviction respecting its structure, the question between unity and 
plurelity of authors is essentially less determinable. The poem 
consists of a part original, and other parts superadded; yet it is 
certainly not impossible that the author of the former may 


' Subsequent poets, seemingly thinking that the naked story, (of Diomédés 
slaughtering Rhésus and his companions in their sleep,) as it now stands in 
the Iliad, was too displeasing, adopted different ways of dressing it up. 
Thus, according to Pindar (ap. Schol. lliad. x. 435), Rhésus fought one day 
as the ally of Troy, and did such terrific damage, that the Greeks had no 
other means of averting tetal destruction from his hand on the next day, 
except by killing him during the night. And the Euripidean drama, called 
Rh? sus, though. representing the latter as a new-comer, yet puts into the 
mouth of Athéné the like overwhelming predictions of what.he would do on 
the coming day, if suffered to live; so that to kill him in the night is the 
only way of saving the Greeks (Eurip. Rhés. 602): moreover, Rhésus him- 
self is there brought forward as talking with such overweening insolenee, 
that the sympathics of man, and the envy of the gods, are turned against 
him (7b. 458). 

Brt the story is best known in the form and with the addition (eanally 
unknown to the Iliad) which Virgil has adopted. It was decreed by fate that, 
if the splendid horses of Rhésns were permitted once either to taste the 
Trojan provender, or to drink of the river Xanthus, nothing could preserve 
the Greeks from ruin (/Eneid, i. 468, with Servius, ad loc.) : — 


“Nee procul hine Rhesi niveis tentoria vclis 
Agnoscit lacrymans: primo que prodita somno 
Tydides multa vastabat cede cruentus: 
Ardentesque avertit equos in castra, priusquam 
Pabula gustassent Trojz, Xanthumque bibissent.” 


All these versions are certainly improvements upon the story as {t stands ip 
the Lliad. 


av tte 2% 


— - - ἃ. — σἂ 
2 ee Ὁ 
ay aoc om = 


202 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


himseif have composed the latter; and such would be my belief. 
if I regarded plurality of composers as an inadmissible idea. On 
this supposition, we must conclude that the poet, while anxious 
for the addition of new, and for the most part, highly interesting 
matter, has not thought fit to recast the parts and events in such 
manner as to impart to the whole a pervading thread of consensus 
and organization, such as we see in the Odyssey. 

That the Odyssey is of later date than the Iliad, and by a 
different author, seems to be now the opinion of most critics, 
especially of Payne Knight! and Nitzsch ; though O. Miller leans 
to a contrary conclusion, at the same time adding that he thinks 
the arguments either way not very decisive. There are consid- 
erable differences of statement in the two poems in regard to 
some of the gods: Iris is messenger of the gods in the Iliad, and 
Hermés in the Odyssey : /Holus, the dispenser of the winds iu 
the Odyssey, is not noticed in the twenty-third book of the Iliad, 
but, on the contrary, Iris invites the winds, as independent gods, 
to come and kindle the funeral pile of Patroclus ; and, unless we 
are to expunge the song of Demodokus in the eighth book of the 
Odyssey, as spurious, Aphrodité there appears as the wife of 
Héphzstus,— a relationship not known to the Iliad. ‘There are 
also some other points of difference enumerated by Mr. Knight 
and others, which tend to justify the presumption that the author 
of the Odyssey is not identical either with the author of the 
Achilléis or his enlargers, which G. Hermann considers to be a 
point unquestionable. Indeed, the difficulty of supposing a long 
coherent poem to have been conceived, composed, and retained, 
without any aid of writing, appears to many critics even now, 
insurmountable, though the evidences on the other side, are, in 
my view, sufficient to outweigh any negative presumption thus 
suggested. But it is improbable that the same person should 
have powers of memorial combination sufficient for composing two 
such poems, nor is there any proof to force upon us such a suppo- 
sition. 

Presuming a difference of authorship between the two poems, 


‘Mr. Knight places tne Iliad about two centuries, and the Odyssey ono 
century, anterior to Hesiod: a century between the two poems /Prolegg. ὁ 
kxi.) 


3 Hermann, Prefat. ad Odyss p. vii. 


AGE OF ILIAD AND ODYSSEf®. 208 


Ι feel less convinced about the supposed juniority of the Odyssey. 
The discrepancies in manners and language in the one and the 
other, are so little important, that two different persons, in the 
same age and society, might well be imagined to exhibit as great 
or even greater. It is to be recollected that the subjects of the 
two are heterogeneous, so as to conduct the poet, even were he 
the same man, into totally different veins of imagination and 
illustration. The pictures of the Odyssey seem to delineate the 
same heroic life as the Iliad, though looked at from a distinct 
point of view: and the circumstances surrounding the residence 
of Odysseus, in Ithaka, are just such as we may suppose him to 
have left in order to attack Troy. If the scenes presented to us 
are for the most part pacific, as contrasted with the incessant 
fizhting of the Iliad, this is not to be ascribed to any greater 
sociality or civilization in the r al hearers of the Odyssey, but to 
the circumstances of the hero whom the poet undertakes to 
adorn: nor can we doubt that the poems of Arktinus and 
Leschés, cf a later date than the Odyssey, would have given us 
as much combat and bloodshed as the Iliad. I am not struck by 
those proofs of improved civilization which some critics affirm the 
Odyssey to present: Mr. Knight, who is of this opinion, never- 
theless admits that the mutilation of Melanthius, and the hanging 
up of the female slaves by Odysseus, in that poem, indicate 
greater barbarity than any incidents in the fights before Troy.! 
The more skilful and compact structure of the Odyssey, has been 
often considered as a proof of Xs juniority in age: and in the case 
of two poems by the same author, we might plausibly contend 
that practice would bring with it improvement in the combining 
aculty. But in reference to the poems before us, we must rec- 
ollect, first, that in all probability the Iliad (with which the 
comparison is taken) is not a primitive but an enlarged poem, 
and that the primitive Achilléis might well have been quite as 
coherent as the Odyssey; secondly, that between different 
authors, superiority in structure is not a proof of subsequent 
composition, inasmuch as, on that hypothesis, we should be com 
pelled to admit that the later poem of Arktinus would be an 
improvement upon the Odyssey ; thirdly, that, even if it were sq 


! Knight, Prolegg. 1, c. Odyss. xxii. 465-478. 


204 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


we could only infer that the author of the Odyssey hed heard the 
Achiliéis or the Iliad; we could not infer that he lived one or 
two generations afterwards.! 

On the whole, the balance of probabilities ceexms in favor of 
distinct authorship for the two poems, but the same age,— and 
that age a very early one, anterior to the first Olympiad. And 
they may thus be used as evidences, and contemporary evidences, 
for the phenomena of primitive Greek civilization ; while they 
also show that the power of constructing long premeditated epics, 
without the aid of writing, is to be taken as a characteristic of 
the earliest known Greek mind. This was the point controverted 
by Wolf, which a full review of the case (in my judgment) 
decides against him: it is, moreover, a valuable result for the 
historian of the Greeks, inasmuch as it marks out to him the 
ground from which he is to start in appreciating their ulterior 


progress.” 


! The arguments, upon the faith of which Payne Knight and other critics 
have maintained the Odyssey to be younger than the Iliad, are well stated 
and examined in Bernard Thiersch, — Quxstio de Diversa Iliadis et Odys 
sex JEtate,—in the Anhang (p. 306) to his work Ueber das Zeitalter und 
Vaterland des Homer. 

He shows all such arguments to ve very inconclusive; though the grounds 
upon which he himself maintains identity of age between the two appear to 
me not at all more satisfactory (p. 327): we can infer nothing to the point 
from the mention of Telemachus in the Iliad. 

Welcker thinks that there is a great difference of age, and an evident 
difference of authorship, between the two poems (Der Episch. Kykivs, 
p- 295). 

0. Miiller admits the more recent date of the Odyssey, but considers it 
« difficult and hazardous to raise upon this foundation any definite conclu- 
sions as to the person and age of the poet.” (History of the Literature of 
Ancient Greece, ch. v. s. 13.) 

3 Dr. Thirlwall has added to the second edition of his History of Greece 
a valuable Appendix, on the early history of the Homeric poems (vol. i. pp. 
500-516); which contains copious information respecting the discrepant 
opiniens of German critics, with a brief comparative examination of their 
reasons. I could have wished that so excellent a judge had superadded, to 
his enumeration of the views of others, an ampler exposition of his own. 
Dr. Thirlwall seems decidedly convinced upon that which appears to me the 
most important point in the Homeric controversy: “That before the appear- 
ance of the earliest of the poems of the Epic Cycle, the Iliad and Odyssey, 
even if they did not exist precisely in their present form, had at least reached 


POPULAR CHARACTER OF THE POEMS. 905 
| 


Whatever there may be of truth in the different conjectures of 
critics respecting the authorship and structure of these unrivalled 
poems, we are not to imagine that it is the perfection of theit 
epical symmetry which has given them their indissoluble hold 
upon the human mind, as well modern as ancient. There is some 
tendency in critics, from Aristotle downwards,! to invert the 
order of attributes in respect to the Homeric poems, so as to dwell 
most on recondite excellences which escape the unaided reader, 
and which are even to a great degree disputable. But it is given 
to few minds (as Goethe has remarked?) to appreciate fully the 
mechanism of a long poem ; and many feel the beauty of the sep- 
arate parts, who have no sentiment for the aggregate perfection 
of the whole. 

Nor were the Homeric poems originally addressed: to minds of 
the rarer stamp. ‘They are intended for those feelings which 
the critic has in common with the unlettered mass, not for that 
enlarged range of vision and peculiar standard which he has 
acquired to himself. They are of all poems the most absolut ly 
and unreservedly popular: had they been otherwise, they could 


their present compass, and were regarded each as a complete and well-defined 
whole, not as a fluctuating aggregate of fugitive pieces.” (p. 509.) 

This marks out the Homeric poems as ancient both in the items and in 
the total, and includes negation of the theory of Wolf and Lachmann, who 
contend that, as a total, they only date from the age of Peisistratus. It is 
then safe to treat the poems as unquestionable evidences of Grecian antiquity 
(meaning thereby 776 B. c.), which we could not do if we regarded all con- 
gruity of parts in the poems as brought about through alterations of 
Peisistratus and his friends. 

There is also a very just admonition of Dr. Thirlwall (p. 516) as to the 
difficulty of measuring what degree of discrepancy or inaccuracy might or 
might not have escaped the poet’s attention, in an age so inperfectly known 
to us. 

1 There are just remarks on this point in Heyne’s Excursus, ii. sect. 2 and 
4, ad Il. xxiv. vol. viii. pp. 771-800. 

2“ Wenig Deutsche, und vielleicht nur wenige Menschen aller neuern 
Nationen, haben Gefihl fiir ein zxsthetisches Ganzes: sie loben und tadeln 
mur stellenweise, sie entziicken sich nur stellenweise.” (Goethe, Wilhelm 
Meister: I transcribe thie from Welcker’s Aischyl. Trilogie, p. 506.) 

What ground there is for restricting this proposition to moda-n a.com 
trasted with ancient nations, I am urable to conceive. 


206 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


not have lived so ) ag in the mouth of the rhapsodes, and the 
ear and memory of ihe people: and it was then that their influ- 
ence was first acquired, never afterwards to be shaken. Their 
beauties belong to the parts taken separately, which revealed 
aneously to the listening crowd at the festival,— 
whole poem taken together, which could 
hardly be appreciated unless the parts were dwelt upon and suf- | 
fered to expand in the mind. The most unlettered hearer of 
those times could readily seize, while the most instructed reader 
ean still recognize, the characteristic excellence of Homeric nar- 
rative, — its straightforward, unconscious, unstudied simplicity, 
its concrete forms of speech! and happy alternation of action 


themselves spont 
far more than to the 


‘a of Homer were extolled by Aristotle; see Schol. 
Dionys. Halicarn. De Compos. Verbor. c. 20. 
ράγματα ἢ λεγόμενα ὁρᾶν. Respect- 
es, the Scholiast ad Iliad. i 


i The κινούμενα ovouat 
ad Iliad. i. 481; compare 
ὥστε μηδὲν ἡμῖν διαφέρει: γινόμενα τὰ π 
ing the undisguised bursts of feeling by the hero 


ixov πρὸς daxpva, — compare Euripid. Helen 


349 tells us, — ἕτοιμον τὸ Npw 
959, and the severe censures of Plato, Republ. ii. p. 388. 

The Homeric poems were the best understood, and the most widely 
popular of all Grecian composition, even among the least instructed per- 
sons, such (for example) as the semibarbarians who had acquired the Greek 
language in addition to their own mother tongue. (Dio Chrysost. Or. xviii. 
vol. i. p. 4783; Or. liii. vol. ii. p. 277, Reisk.) Respecting the simplicity and 
ve style, implied in this extensive popularity, Por- 
said, that the sentences of Homer really 
but that ordinary readers fancied 
hich appeared to 


perspicuity of the narrati 
phyry made a singular remark: he 
presented much difficulty and obscurity, 
they understood him, “ because of the general clearness w 
run through the poems.” (See the Prolegomena of Villoison’s edition of 
the Iliad, p. xli.) This remark affords the key to a good deal of the Homeric 
There doubtless were real obscurities in the poems, arising from 


criticism. 
as well as from cor- 


altered associations, customs, religion, language, etc., 
rupt text; but while the critics did good service in elucidating these diffi- 
culties, they also introduced artificially many others, altogether of their own 
creating. Refusing to be satisfied with the plain and obvious meaning, they 
sought in Homer hidden purposes, elaborate innuendo, recondite motives 
even with regard to petty details, deep-laid rhetorical artifices (see a speci- 
men in Dionys. Hal. Ars Rhetor. c. 15, p. 316, Reiske ; nor is even Aristotle 
exempt from similar tendencies, Schol. ad Iliad. iii. 441, x. 198), or a sub- 
stratum of philosophy allegorized. No wonder that passages, quite perspic- 
uous to the vulgar reader, seemed difficult to them. 
There could not be so sure a way of missing the rea 
ing for him in these devious recesses. He is essertia 


1 Homer as by search- 
lly the poet of te 


SIMPLICITY OF HOMERIC POETRY. 207 


with dialogue,—its vivid pictures of living agents, al 
clearly and sharply individualized, whether i ihe RO 
proportions of Achilles and Odysseus, in the graceful pres i 
of Helen and Penelope, or in the more humble PRE of ‘Eu. 
δ and germ and always, moreover, animated . by in 
ankness with which his S giv ane 
transient emotions and tgs ie aa. Η poles 
reference to those coarser veins of feeling and ete ce 
which belong to all men in common SA i age nisl 
—— ng ,— its fulness of graphic 
details, freshly drawn from the visible and audible world, and 
though often homely, never tame, ror trenching upon that iimit 
of satiety to which the Greek mind was so keenly alive, — lastly 
κῃ Dip junction of gods and men in the same sintuce: pi 
amiliar appeal to ever-present divine ag aft 
the interpretation of ΩΝ at that seks ρου ῤὰν; ὙΠ Ω 
It is undoubtedly easier to feel than to describe the impressive 
influence of Homeric narrative: but the time and Paint 
under which that influence was first, and most powerfull felt, 
preclude the possibility of explaining it by pee ἀὐρτμρτιρειρὶ = 
elaborate comparisons, such as are implied in Aristotle’s remark 
upon the structure of the poems. The critic who seeks ‘hs 
explanation in the right place will not depart widely from the 
point of view of those rude auditors to whom the poems were 
originally addressed, or from the susceptibilities and capacities 
common to the human bosom in every stage of progressive cul- 
ture. And though the refinements and delicacies of the poem 
as well as their general structure, are a subject of highly ‘ince 
ing criticism, — yet it is not to these that Homer owes his wide- 
spread and imperishable popularity. Still less is it true, as the 
well-known observations of Horace would lead us to νον 


broad highway and the market-place, touching the common sympathies and 
satisfying the mental appetencies of his countrymen with unrivalled iets 
but exempt from ulterior views, either selfish or didactic, and immersed in 
the same medium of practical life and experience, religiously construed, ag 
his auditors. No nation has ever yet had so perfect and touching an oxi 
sition of its early social mind as the Iliad and Odyssey exhibit. ‘i 
In the verbal criticism of Homer, the Alexandrine liéerati seem to have 
made a very great advance, as compared with the glossographers who pre- 
ceded them. (See Lehrs, De Studiis Aristarchi, Dissert. ii. p. 42.) i 


208 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


that Homer is a teacher of ethical wisdom akin and — ta 
Chrysippus or Crantor.! No didactic purpose 18 to ἣν — μὴ 
the Iliad and Odyssey; ἃ philosopher may doubtless extract, 
from the incidents and strongly marked characters which it - 
tains, much illustrative matcer for his exhortations, — but 


ethical doctrine which he applies must emanate from his own — 


reflection. The homeric herc manifests virtues or infirmities, 

$3] ri aichtforward and 
fierceness or compassion, with the same straig oti 
simple-minded vivacity, unconscious of any ideal standard by 


‘ Horat. Epist. i. 2, v. 1-26: — 
“ Sirenum voces, et Circes pocula nosti : πὰ 
Que si cum sociis stultus cupidusque nataneet, 
Vixisset canis immundus, vel amica luto sus. 


Horace contrasts the folly and greediness of the er μμ baie ite 
accepting the refreshments tendered to them by me . " a 
mand of Ulysses himself in refusing them. But in the an νὰ bs shen i 
in the original poem, neither the praise nor the blame, rere ΜΗ ᾿ ἄγρα 
any countenance. The companions of Ulysses follow the ionic ν 
in accepting hospitality tendered to strangers, the sn posi — 
which, in their particular case, they could have no g! ane : 9p μὰ τα τ 
while Ulysses is preserved from 8 similar fate, not by any ἐν age a 
his own, but by a previous divine warning and a eee μεν: πρὸ eh 
not been vouchsafed to the rest (see Odyss. x. 285). perches ae asia 
the Sirens, if it is to be taken as evidence of anything, : a rathe 
absence, than the presence, of self-command on the part ὁ hi sagt mn 

Of the violent mutations of text, whereby the Grammatici μη ee ics , 
to efface from Homer bad ethical tendencies (we must remem per " sand 
of these men were lecturers to youth), a remarkable specimen a ve é, 
Venet. Schol. ad Iliad. ix. 453; compare Plutarch, de Audien ᾿ - “ ¥ 
95. Phoenix describes the calamitous family tragedy in ere e sep tl 
had been partly the agent, partly the victim. Now that - wre eii " 
should confess guilty proceedings, and still more guilty apap aloe ἦρεν οὐχὶ 
expression of shame or contrition, was insupportable to ὃ» a bloc 
critics. One of them, Aristodemus, thrust two — eee τὸς Se 
of the lines; and though he thereby ruined not only the sense - : : ce a 
his emendation procured for him universal applause, because aw “wi 
tained the innocence of the hero (καὶ οὐ ΩΝ ηὐδοκίμησεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ee 
ὡς εὐσεβῆ τηρῆσας τὸν ἧρωα). And Aristarchus —. the re ci τῇ 
ing, that he struck out from the text four lines, which we - 7 »" ' 
served to us by Plutarch (‘O μὲν ᾿Αρίσταρχος ἔξειλε τὰ ΠΡ γόϑω: α, ie μ ' 
ϑείς). See the Fragment of Dioscorides (wept τῶν _ μηρῳ νομῶν ῇ 
in Didot’s Fragmenta Historicor. Greecor. τοὶ. ii. p. 193. 


HOMERIC HEROES 209 


which his conduct is to be tried;! nor can we trace in the poet 
any ulterior function beyond that of the inspired organ of the 
Muse, and the nameless, but eloquent, herald of lost adventures 
out of the darkness of the past. 


'“ C’est un tableau idéal, ἃ coup sir, que celui de la société Grecque 
dans les chants qui portent le nom d’Homeére: et pourtant cette société y 
est toute entiére reproduite, avec la rusticité, la férocité de ses meceurs, ses 
bonnes et ses mauvaises passions, sans dessein de faire particuli¢rement 
ressortir, de célébrer tel ou tel de ses mérites, de ses avantages, ou de laisser 
dans l’ombre ses vices et ses maux. Ce mélange du bien et du mal, du fort 
et du faible, — cette simultanéité d’idées et de sentimens en apparence con- 
traires,—cette variété, cette incohérence, ce développement inégal de la 
nature et de la destinée humaine, — c’est précisément 14 ce qu’il y a de plus 
poétique, car c’est le fond méme des choses, c’est la vérité sur homme et le 
monde: et dans les peintures idéales qu’en veulent faire la poésie, le roman 
et méme l’histoire, cet ensemble, si divers et pourtant si harmonieux, doit se 
retrouver: sans quoi l’idéal véritable y manque aussi bien que la réalité.” 
(Guizot, Cours d’Histoire Moderne. Logon 7™¢, vol. i. p. 285.) 


HISTORY OF GREECE. 


PART IL 


HISTORICAL GREECE, 


CHAPTER I. 
GENERAL GEOGRAPHY AND LIMITS OF GREECE. 


GrReEEcE Proper lies between the 36th and 40th parallels of 
north latitude, and between the 2180 and 26th degrees of east 
longitude. Its greatest length, from Mount Olympus to Cape 
Tenarus, may be stated at 280 English miles; its greatest 
breadth, from the western coast of Akarnania to Marathon in 
Attica, at 180 miles; and the distance eastward from Ambrakia 
across Pindus to the Magnesian mountain Homolé and the 
mouth of the Peneius is about 120 miles. Altogether, its area 
‘3 somewhat less than that of Portugal.! In regard, however, 
to all attempts at determining the exact limits of Greece proper, 
we may remark, first, that these limits seem not to have been 
very precisely defined even among the Greeks themselves ; and 
uext, that so large a proportion of the Hellens were distributed 
among islands and colonies, and so much of their influence upon 
‘he world in general produced through their colonies, as to 

1 Compare Strong, Statistics of the Kingdom of Greece, p. 2; and Krasq 
Hellas, vol. i. ch. 3, p. 196. 


212 HISTORY OF GREECE 


render the extent of their original domicile a matter of com- 
paratively little moment to verify. 

The chain called Olympus and the Cambunian mountains, 
ranging from east and west, and commencing with the AKgean 
sea or the gulf of Therma, near the 40th degree of north 
latitude, is prolonged under the name of Mount Lingon, until it 


touches the Adriatic at the Akrokeraunian promontory. The: 


country south of this chair comprehended all that in ancient 
times was regarded as Greece, or Hellas proper, but it also com. 
prehended something more. Hellas proper,! (or continuous 
Hellas, to use the language of Skylax and Dikzarchus) was 
understood to begin with the town and gulf of Ambrakia: from 
thence, northward to the Akrokeraunian promontory, lay the 
land called by the Greeks Epirus, — occupied by the Chaonians, 
Molossians, and Thesprotians, who were termed Epirots, and 
were not esteemed to belong to the Hellenic aggregate. This at 
least was the general understanding, though Etolians and Akar- 
nanians, in their more distant sections, seem to have been not less 
widely removed from the full type of Hellenism than the Epirots 
were ; while Herodotus is inclined to treat even Molossians and 
‘Thesprotians as Hellens.2 

At a point about midway between the 4Egean and Ionian seas, 
Olympus and Lingon are traversed nearly at right angles by the 
still longer and vaster chain called Pindus, which stretches in a 
line rather west of north from the northern side of the range of 
Olympus: the system to which these mountains belong seems to 
begin with the lofty masses of greenstone com prised under the name 
of Mount Scardus, or Scordus, (Schardagh,)3 which is divided only 


* Dikewareh, 31, p. 460, ed. Fuhr: — 
Ἡ δ' 'EAAdg ἀπὸ τῆς ᾿Αμβρακίας εἶναι δοκεῖ 
Μάλιστα συνεχὴς τὸ πέρας " αὐτὴ δ' ἔρχεται 
'Exi τὸν πόταμον Πηνειὸν, ὡς Φιλέας γράφει, 
Ὄρος τε Μαγνήτων Ὁμόλην κεκλημένον. 
Skylax, c. 35.— ᾿Αμβρακία --- ἐντεῦϑεν ἄρχεται ἡ Ἑλλὰς "συνεχὴς εἶναι 
μέχρι Πηνείου ποτάμου, καὶ Ὁμολίου Μαγνητικῆς πόλεως, ἧ ἔστι παρὰ τὸν 
πόταμον». 


* Herod. i. 146: ii. 56. The Molossian Alkén passes for a Hellen (Herod 
vi. 127). 


* The mountain systems in the ancient Macedonia and Ilyricum, north 


GENERAL GEOGRAPHY OF GREECE. 213 


py the narrow cleft, containing the river Drin, from the limestone 
of the Albanian Alps. From the southern face of Olympus, 
Pindus strikes off nearly southward, forming the boundary be- 
tween Thessaly and Epirus, and sending forth about the 39th 
degree of latitude the lateral chain of Othrys,— which latter takes 
an easterly course, forming the southern boundary of Thessaly, 
and reaching the sea between Thessaly and the northern coast 
of Kubeea. Southward of Othrys, the chain of Pindus, under the 
name of ‘l'ymphréstus, still continues, until another lateral chain, 
called Cita, projects from it again towards the east, — forming 
the lofty coast immediately south of the Maliac gulf, with the 
narrow road of Thermopylz between the two, — and terminating 
at the Eubcean strait. At the point of junction with C&ta, the 
chain of Pindus forks into two branches; one striking to the 
westward of south, and reaching across ΖΈΟΝ ἃ, under the names 
of Arakynthus, Kurius, Korax, and Taphiassus, to the promon- 
tory called Antirrhion, situated on the northern side of the 
narrow entrance of the Corinthian gulf, over against the cor- 
responding promontory of Rhion in Peloponnesus; the other 
tending south-east, and forming Parnassus, Helicon, and Kithe- 
ron; indeed, Aigaleus and Hymettus, even down to the south- 
ernmost cape of Attica, Sunium, may be treated as a continuance 
of this chain. From the eastern extremity of Cita, also, a range 
of hills, inferior in height to the preceding, takes its departure in 
a south-easterly direction, under the various names of Knémis, 
Ptéon, and Teuméssus. It is joined with Kithzrén by the lateral 
communication, ranging from west to east, called Parnés; while 


of Olympus, have been yet but imperfectly examined: see Dr. Griesebach, 
Reise durch Rumelien und nach Brussa im Jahre 1839, vol. ii. ch. 13, p. 112, 
seqq. (GOtting. 1841), which contains much instruction respecting the real 
relations of these mountains as compared with the different ideas and repre- 
sentations of them. The words of Strabo (lib. vii. Excerpt. 3, ed. Tzschucke), 
that Scardus, Orbélus, Rhodopé, and Hemus extend in a straight line from 
the Adriatic to the Euxine, are incorrect. 

See Leake’s Travels in Northern Greece, vol. i. p. 335: the pass of 
Tschangon, near Castoria (through which the river Devol passes from 
the eastward to fall into the Adriatic on the westward), is the only cleft 


in this long chain from the -‘ver Drin “1 the north down to the centre of 
Greene. 


214 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the celebrated Pentelikus, abundant in marble quarries, ccnsti- 
tutes its connecting link, to the south of Parnés with the chain 
from Kithzron to Sunium. 

From the promontory of <Antirrhion, the line of mountains 
crosses into Peloponnesus, and stretches in a southerly direction 
down to the extremity of the peninsula called ‘Tenarus, now 


Cape Matapan. Forming the boundary between Elis with Mes- 


senia on one side, and Arcadia with Laconia on the other, it 
bears the successive names of Olenus, Panachaikus, Pholoé, 
Erymanthus, Lykzeus, Parrhasius, and Taygetus. Another series 
of mountains strikes off from Kithzrén towards the south-west, 
constituting, under the names of Geraneia and Oneia, the rugged 
and lofty Isthmus of Corinth, and then spreading itself into 
Peloponnesus. On entering that peninsula, one of its branches 
tends westward along the north of Arkadia, comprising the 
Akrokorinthus, or citadel of Corinth, the high peak of Kylléné, 
the mountains of Aroanii and Lampeia, and ultimately joining 
Erymanthus and Pholoé, — while the other branch strikes south- 
ward towards the south-eastern cape of Peloponnesus, the for 
midable Cape Malea, or St. Angelo, — and exhibits itself under 
the successive names of Apesas, Artemisium, Parthenium, 
Parnén, Thornax, and Zaréx. 

From the eastern extremity οἵ Olympus, in a direction rather 
to the eastward of south, stretches the range of mountains first 
called Ossa, and afterwards Pelion, down to the south-eastern 
corner of Thessaly. The long, lofty, and naked back-bone of the 
island of Eubcea, may be viewed as a continuance both of this 
chain and of the chain of Othrys: the line is farther prolonged 
by a series of islands in the Archipelago, Andros, Ténos, Myk- 
onos, and Naxos, belonging to the group called the Cyclades, or 
islands encircling the sacred centre of Delos. Of these Cyclades, 
others are in like manner a continuance of the chain which reaches 
to Cape Sunium,— Keds, Kythnos, Seriphos, and Siphnos join on 
to Attica, as Andros does to Eubeea. And we might even ccn- 
sider the great island of Krete as a prolongation of the system of 
mountains which breasts the winds and waves at Cape Malea, the 
island of Kythéra forming the intermediate link between them. 
Skiathus, Skopelus, and Skyrus, to the north-east of Euboea, alse 


GEOLOGICAL FEATURES. 2156 


mark themselves out as outlying peaks of the range comprehena 
ing Pelion and Eubeea.! 

by this brief sketch, which the reader will naturally compzrs 
with one of the recent maps of the country, it will be seen that 
Greece proper is among the most mountainous territories in 
Europe. For although it is convenient, in giving a systematic 
view of the face of the country, to group the multiplicity of 
mountains into certain chains, or ranges, founded upon approxi- 
mative uniformity of direction; yet, in point of fact, there are so 
many ramifications and dispersed peaks,— so vast a number of 
hills and crags of different magnitude and elevation,— that a 
comparatively small proportion of the surface is left for level 
ground. Not only few continuous plains, but even few contin- 
uous valleys, exist throughout all Greece proper. The largest 
spaces of level ground are seen in Thessaly, in AXtolia, in the 
western portion of Peloponnesus, and in Beotia; but irregular 
mountains, valleys frequent but isolated, land-locked basins and 
declivities, which often occur, but seldom last long, form the 
character of the country.? 

The islands of the Cyclades, Eubcea, Attica, and Laconia, 
consist for the most part of micaceous schist, combined with and 
often covered by crystalline granular limestone The centre 


1 For the general sketch of the mountain system of Hellas, see Kruse, Hellas, 
vol. i. ch. 4, pp. 280-290 ; Dr. Cramer, Geog. of An. Greece, vol. i. pp. 3-8. 

Respecting the northern regions, Epirus, Illyria, and Macedonia, O. Mél- 
ler, in his short but valuable treatise Ueber die Makedoner, p. 7 (Berlin, 
1825), may be consulted with advantage. This treatise is annexed to the 
English translation of his History of the Dorians by Mr. G. C. Lewis. 

2 Out of the 47,600,000 stremas (= 12,000,000 English acres) included in 
the present kingdom of Greece, 26,500,000 go to mountains, rocks, rivers, 
lakes, and forests, — and 21,000,000 to arable land, vineyards, olive and cur 
rant grounds, etc. By arable land is meant, land fit for cultivation; for a 
comparatively small portion of it is actually cultivated at present (Stroag, 
Statistics of Greece, p. 2, London, 1842). 

The modern kingdom of Greece does not include Thessaly. The epithet 
κοιλὸς (hollow) is applied to several of the chief Grecian states, — κοιλὴ 
Ἦλις, κοιλὴ Λακεδαίμων, κοιλὸν "“Apyog, ete. 

Κόρινϑος ὀφρύᾳ τε καὶ κοιλαΐνεται, Strabo, viii. p. 381. 

The fertility of Boeotia is noticed in Strabo, ix. p. 400, and in the valuable 
fragment of Diksarchus, Βίος Ἑλλάδος, p. 140, ed. Fuhr. 

2 For the geological and mineralogical character of Greece, see the surver 


216 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


and west of Peloponnesus, as well as the country north of the 
Corinthian gulf from the gulf of Ambrakia to the strait of Eubeea, 
present a calcareous formation, varying in different localities as 
to color, consistency, and hardness, but, generally, belonging or 
approximating to the chalk: it is often very compact, but is dis- 
tinguished in a marked manner from the crystalline limestone 
above mentioned. The two loftiest summits in Greece! (both, 
however, lower than Olympus, estimated at nine thousand seven 
hundred feet) exhibit this formation,— Parnassus, which atiains 
eight thousand feet, and the point of St. Elias in Taygetus, which 
is not less than seven thousand eight hundred feet. Clay-slate, 
and conglomerates of sand, lime, and clay, are found in many 
parts: a close and firm conglomerate of lime composes the Isth- 
mus of Corinth: loose deposits of pebbles, and calcareous breccia, 
occupy also some portions of the territory. But the most impor 
tant and essential elements of the Grecian soil, consist of the 
diluvial and alluvial formations, with which the troughs and 
basins are filled up, resulting from the decomposition of the older 
adjoining rocks. In these reside the productive powers of the 
country, and upon these the grain and vegetables for the subsis- 
tence of the people depend. The mountain regions are to a great 
degree barren, destitute at present of wood or any useful vegeta- 
jon, though there is reason to believe that they were better 
wooded in antiquity: in many parts, however, and especially in 
/Etolia and Akarnania, they afford plenty of timber, and in all 
parts, pasture for the catile during summer, at a time when the 
plains are thoroughly burnt up.2 For other articles of food, 


undertaken by Dr. Fiedler, by orders of the present government of Greece, 
in 1834 and the following years (Reise durch alle Theile des Kénigreichs 
Griechenland in Auftrag der K. G. Regierung in den Jahren 1834 bis 1837, 
especially vol. ii. pp. 512-530). 

Frofessor Ross remarks upon the character of the Greek limestone, — 
hard and intractable to the mason, — jagged and irregular in its fracture, — 
as having first (letermined in early times the polygonal style of architecture, 
which has been denominated (he observes) Cyclopian and Pelasgic, without 
the east reason for either denomination (Reise in den Griech. Inseln, vol. i 
Pp. 19). 

᾿ Griesebach, Reisen durch Rumelien, vol. ii. ch. 13, p. 124. 

7In passing through the valley between (Eta and Parnassus, going 
towards Elateia, Fiedler observes the striking change in the character of the 


RIVERS. 217 


dependence must be had on the valleys, which are occasionally of 
singular fertility. The low ground of Thessaly, the valley of 
the Kephisus, and the borders of the lake Kopais, in Beeotia, the 
western portion of Elis, the plains of Stratus on the confines of 
Akarnania and ZEtolia, and those near the river Pamisus in 
Messenia, both are now, and were in ancient times, remarkable 
for their abundant produce. 

Besides the scarcity of wood for fuel, there is another serious 
incunvenience to which the low grounds of Greece are exposed, 
—the want of a supply of water at once adequate and regular.! 
Abundance of rain falls during the autumnal and winter months, 
little or none during the summer; while the naked limestone of 
the numerous hills, neither absorbs nor retains moisture, so that 
the rain runs off as rapidly as it falls, and springs are rare# 
Most of the rivers of Greece are torrents in early spring, and dry 
before the ena of the summer: the copious combinations of the 
ancient language, designated the winter torrent by a special and 
separate word.3 ‘The most considerable rivers in the country are, 
the Peneius, which carries off all the waters of Thessaly, finding 
an exit into the Augean through the narrow defile which parts 
Ossa from Olympus,— and the Acheldus, which flows from Pin- 
dus in a south-westerly direction, separating AStolia from Akar 
nania, and emptying itself into the Ionian sea: the Euénus aise 


country: “ Romelia (i. 6. Akarnania, tolia, Ozolian Lokris, ete.), woody 
well-watered, and covered with a good soil, ceases at once and precipitously : 
while craggy limestone mountains, of a white-grey color, exhibit the cold 
character of Attica and the Morea.” (Fiedler, Reise, 1. p. 213.) 

The Homeric Hymn to Apollo conceives even the πέδιον πυρήφορον 
of Thebes as having in its primitive state been covered with wood (v. 227 ). 

The best timber used by the ancient Greeks came from Macedonia, the 
Euxine, and the Propontis: the timber of Mount Parnassus and of Eubosa 
was reckoned very bad; that of Arcadia better (Theophrast. v. 2, 1}; iii. 9}. 

1 See Fiedler, Reise, etc. vol. i. pp. 84, 219, 362, etc. 

Both Fiedler and Strong (Statistics of Greece, p. 169) dwell with great 
yeason upon the inestimable value of Artesian wells for the country. 

3 Ross, Reise auf den Griechischen Inseln, vol. i. letter 2, p. 12. 

3 The Greek language seems to stand singular in the expression χειμαῤ 
ῥοῦς, --- the Wadys of Arabia manifest the like alternation, of extreme tem: 
᾿ with absolute dryness (Kriegk, Schriften zur 


porary fulness and violence, 1 al 
allgemeinen Erdkunde, p. 201, Leipzig, 1840). 


VOL. I. 10 


218 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


takes its rise at a more southerly part of the same mountain 
chain, and falls into the same sea more to the eastward. The 
rivers more to the southward are unequal and inferior. Ke- 
phisus and Asépus, in Beeotia, Alpheius, in Elis and Arcadia, 
Pamisus in Messenia, maintain each a languid stream throughout 
the summer ; while the Inachus near Argos, and the Kephisus 
and Ilissus near Athens, present a scanty reality which falls short 
still more of their great poetical celebrity. Of all those rivers 
which have been noticed, the Achelous is by far the most impor- 
tant. The quantity of mud which its turbid stream brought 
down and deposited, occasioned a sensible increase of the land at 
its embouchure, within the observation of Thucydidés.! 

But the disposition and properties of the Grecian territory, 
though not maintaining permanent rivers, are favorable to the 
multiplication of lakes and marshes. ‘There are numerous 
hollows and inclosed basins, out of which the water ean find ne 
superficial escape, and where, unless it makes for itself a subter- 
ranean passage through rifts in the mountains, it remains either 
as a marsh or a lake according to the time of year. In Thessaly, 
we find the lakes Nessénis and Beebéis-; in A®tolia, between the 
Achel6us and Euénus, Strabo mentions the lake of Trichénis, 
besides several other lakes, which it is difficult to identify indi- 
vidually, though the quantity of ground covered by lake and 
marsh is, as a whole, very considerable. In Beeotia, are situated 
the lakes Kopais, Hyliké, and Harma; the first of the three 
formed chiefly by the river Kephisus, flowing from Parnassus on 
the north-west, and shaping for itself a sinuous course through 
the mountains of Phokis. On the north-east and east, the lake 
Kopais is bounded by the high land of Mount Ptdon, which 
intercepts its communication with the strait of θα θα. Through 

e limestone of this mountain, the water has either found or 
urced several subterraneous cavities, by which it obtains a partial 
,yress on the other side of the rocky hill, and-then flows into the 

strait. The Katabothra, as they were termed in antiquity, yet 
exist, but in an imperfect and half-obstructed condition. Even 
in antiquity, however, they never fully sufficed to carry off the 
surplus waters of the Kephisus; for the remains are still found 


? Thucydid. ii. 102, 


MARSHES AND LAKES. 219 


of an artificial tunnel, pierced through the whole breadth of the 
rock, and with perpendicular apertures at proper intervals to let 
in the air from above. This tunnel—one of the most interest- 
ing remnants of antiquity, since-it must date from the prosperous 
days of the old Orchomenus, anterior to its absorption into the 
Beeotian league, as well as to the preponderance of Thebes,— is 
now choked up and®rendered useless. It may, perhaps, have 
been designedly obstructed by the hand of an enemy, and the 
scheme of Alexander the Great, who commissioned an engineer 
trom Chalkis to reopen it, was defeated, first, by discontents in 
Beeotia, and ultimately by his early death.! 

The Katabothra of the lake Kopais, are a specimen of the 
phenomenon so frequent in Greece,— lakes and rivers finding for 
themselves subterranean passages through the cavities in the 
limestone rocks, and even pursuing their unseen course for a 
considerable distance before they emerge to the light of day. In 
Arcadia, especially, several remarkable examples of subterranean 
water communication occur ; this central region of Peloponnesus 
presents a cluster of such completely inclosed valleys, or basins.? 


1 Strabo, ix. p. 407. 

2 Colonel Leake observes (Travels in Morea, vol. iii. pp. 45, 153-155), 
« The plain of Tripolitza (anciently that of Tegea and Mantineia) is by far 
the greatest of that cluster of valleys in the centre of Peloponnesus, each of 
which is so closely shut in by the intersecting mountains, that no outlet is 
afforded to the waters except through the mountains themselves,” etc. Re- 
specting the Arcadian Orchomenns, and: its inclosed lake with Katabothra, 
and the mountain plains near Corinth, p. 263. 


see the same work, p- 103 ; 
ar to the ancient 


This temporary disappearance of the rivers was famili 
observers — οἱ καταπινόμενοι τῶν ποτάμων. (Aristot. Meteorolog.i.13. Dio- 
dor. xv. 49. Strabo, vi. p. 271; vin. p. 389, etc.) 

Their familiarity with this phenomenon was in part the source of some 
geographical suppositions, which now appear to us extravagant, respecting 
the long subterranean and submarine course of certain rivers, and their re- 
appearance at very distant points. Sophokles said that the Inachus of Akar- 
nania joined the Inachus of Argolis: Ibykus the poet affirmed that the 
Asopus, near Sikyon, had its source in Phrygia; the river Indpus of the little 
island of Delos was alleged by others to be an effluent from the mighty 
Nile ; and the rhetor Zéilus, in a panegyrical oration to the inhabitants of 
Tenedos, went the length of assuring them that the Alpheius in Elis had its 
source in their island (Strabo, vi. p. 271). Not only Pindar and other poets 
{Antigon. Caryst. c. 155),.but also the historian Timeus (Timsei Frag. 127 


220 HISTORY OF GREECF. 


It will be seen from these circumstances, that Greece, con 
sidering its limited total extent, offers but little motive, and still 
less of convenient means, for internal communication among its 
various inhabitants.! Each village, or township, occupying its 


ed. Galler), and Pausanias, also, with the greatest confidence (v. 7, 2), believed 
that the fountain Arethusa, at Syracuse, was nothing else but the reappear- 
ance of the river Alpheius from J’eloponnesus: this was attested by the 
actual fact that a goblet or cup (94.7), thrown into the Alpheius, had come 
ap at the Syracusan fountain, which Timzus professed to have verified, — 
but even the arguments by which Strabo justifies his disbelief of this tale, 
show how powerfully the phenomena of the Grecian rivers acted upon his 
mind. “ If (says he, /.c.) the Alpheius, instead of flowing into the sea, fell 
into some chasm in the earth, there would be some plausibility in supposing 
that it cortinued its subterranean course as far as Sicily without mixing 
with the sea: but since its junction with the sea is matter of observation, 
and since there is no aperture visible near the shore to absorb the water of 
the river (στόμα τὸ καταπῖνον τὸ ῥεῦμα τοῦ ποτάμου), so it is plain that the 
water cannot maintain its separation and its sweetness, whereas the spring 
Arethusa is perfectly good to drink.” I have translated here the sense 
rather than the words of Strabo; but the phenomena of “ rivers falling into 
chasms and being drunk up,” for a time, is exactly what happens in Greece. 
It did not appear to Strabo impossible that the Alpheius might traverse this 
great distance underground; nor do we wonder at this, when we learn that 
a more able geographer than he (Eratosthenés) supposed that the marshes 
of Rhinokolura, between the Mediterranean and the Red sea, were formed 
by the Euphrates and Tigris, which flowed underground for the length of 
6000 stadia or furlongs (Strabo, xvi. p. 741; Seidel. Fragm. Eratosth. p. 
194): compare the story about the Euphrates passing underground, and 
reappearing in Ethiopia as the river Nile (Pausan. ii. 5, 3). This disap- 
pearance and reappearance of rivers connected itself, in the minds of ancient 
physical philosophers, with the supposition of vast reservoirs of water in the 
inierior of the earth, which were protruded upwards to the surface by some 
gaseous force (see Seneca, Nat. Quest. vi. 8). Pomponius Mela mentions 
an idea of some writers, that the source of the Nile was to be found, not in 
our (οἰκουμένη) habitable section of the globe, but in the Antichthon, or 
southern continent, and that it flowed under the ocean τὸ rise up in Ethiopia 
(Mela, i. 9, 55). 

These views of the ancients, evidently based upon the analogy of Grecian 
rivers, are well set forth by M. Letronne, in a paper on the situation of the 
Terrestrial Paradise, as represented by the Fathers of the Church; cited in 
A. von Humboldt, Examen Critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie, etc. 
vol. iii. pp. 118-130. 

' “ Upon the arrival of the king and regency in 1833 (observes Mr. Strong). 
no carriage-roads existed in Greece; nor were they, indeed, much wanted 
oreviously, as dwn to that pericd not a carriage, waggon, or cart, or any 


WANT OF INTERNAL COMMUNICATION. 22} 


plain with the inclosing mountains,' supplied its own mair vants 
whilst the transport of commodities by land was sufficiently 
difficult to discourage greatly any regular commerce with 
neighbors. In so far as the face of the interior country was 
concerned, it seemed as if nature had been disposed, from tha 
beginning, to keep the population of Greece socially and _politi- 
cally disunited, —by providing so many hedges of separation, 
and so many boundaries, S¢"erally hard, sometimes impossible, 
to overleap. One special Motive to intercourse, however, arosc 
out of this very geographical constitutien of the country, and its 
endless alternation of mountain and valley. The difference of 
climate and temperature between the high and low grounds is 
very great; the harvest is secured in one place before it is ripe 
in another, and the cattle find during the heat of summer shelter 
and pasture on the hills, at a time when the plains are burnt up.? 
The practice of transferring them from the mountains to the 
plain according to the change of season, which subsists still as ix 


other description of vehicles, was to be found in the whole country. ‘The 
traffic in general was carried on by means of boats, to which the long indented 
line of the Grecian coast and its numerous islands afforded every facility. 
Between the seaports and the interior of the kingdom, the communication 
was effected by means of beasts of burden, such as mules, horses, and camels.” 
(Statistics of Greece, p. 33.) 

This exhibits a retrograde march to a point lower than the description of 
the Odyssey, where Telemachus and Peisistratus drive their chariot from 
Pylus to Sparta. The remains of the ancient roads are still seen in many 
parts of Greece (Strong, p. 34). 

! Dr. Clarke’s description deserves to be noticed, though his warm eulogies 
on the fertility of the soil, taken generally, are not borne out by later ob- 
servers: “ The physical phenomena of Greece, differing from those of any 
other country, present a series of beautiful plains, successively surrounded 
by mountains of limestone ; resembling, although upon a larger scale, and 
rarely accompanied by volcanic products, the craters of the Phlegrean fields. 
Everywhere, their level surfaces seems to have been deposited by water, 
gradually retired or evaporated ; they consist for the most part of the richest 
soil, and their produce is yet proverbially abundant. In this manner, stood 
the cities of Argos, Sikyon, Corinth, Megara, Eleusis, Athens, Thebes, Am. 
phissa, Orchomenns, Cheronea, Lebadea, Larissa, Pella, and many others.” 
(Dr. Clarke’s Travels, vol. ii. ch. 4, p. 74.) 

2 Sir W. Gell found, in the month of March, summer in the low plains of 
Messenia, spring in Laconia, winter in Arcadia (Journey in Greece, pp 
855-359). 


222 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


did in ancient times, is intimately connected with the structure 
of the country, and must from the earliest period have brought 
about communication among the otherwise disunited villages.! 
Such difficulties, however, in the internal transit by land, were 
to a great extent counteracted by the large proportion of coast. 
and the accessibility of the country by sea. The prominences 
and indentations in the line of Grecian coast, are hardly less 
remarkable than the multiplicity of elevations and depressions 
which everywhere mark the surface.2 The shape of Pelopon- 
nesus, with its three southern gulfs, (the Argolic, Laconian, and 
Messenian,) was compared by the ancient geographers to the 
leaf of a plane-tree: the Pagasean gulf on the eastern side of 
Greece, and the Ambrakian gulf on the western, with their nar- 
row entrances and considerable area, are equivalent to internal 


! The cold central region (or mountain plain, — ὀρυπέδιον) of Tripolitza, 
differs in climate from the maritime regions of Veloponessus, as much as 
the south of England from the south of France...... No appearance of 
spring on the trees near Tegea, though not more than twenty-four miles 
from Argos Cattle are sent from thence every winter to the maritime 
plains of Elos in Laconia (Leake, Tray. in Morea, vol. i. pp. 88, 98, 197). 
The pasture on Mount Olono (boundary of Elis, Arcadia, and Achaia) is 
aot healthy until June (Leake, vol. ii. p. 119); compare p. 348, and Fiedler, 
Reise, i. p. 314. 

See also the Instructive Inscription of Orchomenus, in Boeckh, Staats 
haushaltung der Athener, t. ii. p. 380. 

The transference of cattle, belonging to proprietors in one state, for tem- 
porary pasturage in another, is as old as the Odyssey, and is marked by 
various illustrative incidents: see the cause of the first Messenian war 
(Diodor. Fragm. viii. vol. iv. p. 23, ed. Wess; Pausan. iv. 4, 2). 

5 “ Universa autem (Peloponnesus), velut pensante «quorum incursus 
natura, in montes 76 extollitur.” (Plin. H. N. iv. 6.) 

Strabo touches, in a striking passage (ii. pp. 121-122), on the influence 
of the sea in determining the shape and boundaries of the land: his obser- 
vations upon the great superiority of Europe over Asia and Africa, in re 
spect of intersection and interpenetration of land by the sea-water are remark- 
able: ἡ μὲν οὖν Εὐρώπη πολυσχημονεστώτη πασῶν ἐστι, etc. He does not 
especially name the coast of Greece, though his remarks have a more exact 
bearing upon Greece than upon any other country. And we may copy a 
passage out of Tacitus (Agricol. c. 10), written in reference to Britain, which 
applies far more precisely to Greece: “ nusquam latius dominari mare...... 
mee litore tenus accrescere aut resorberi, sel influere penitus et ambire, @ 
jugis etiam atzue montibus irseri velut τὴ suo.” 


ACCESSIBILITY BY SEA. 223 


lakes: Xenophon boasts of the double sea which embraces 80 
large a proportion of Attica, Ephorus of the triple sea, by which 
Beeotia was accessible from west, north, and south,—the Eu- 
beean strait, opening a long line of country on both sides to 
coasting navigation.! But the most important of all Grecian 
gulfs are the Corinthian and the Saronic, washing the northern 
and north-eastern shores of Peloponnesus, and separated by the 
narrow barrier of the Isthmus of Corinth. The former, espe- 
cially, lays open &tolia, Phokis, and Beeotia, as well as the 
whole northern coast of Peloponnesus, to water approach. Co- 
rinth, in ancient times, served as an entrepdt for the trade 
between Italy and Asia Minor,—goods being unshipped at 
Lechzum, the port on the Corinthian gulf, and carried by land 
across to Cenchrex, the port on the Saronic: indeed, even the 
merchant-vessels themselves, when not very large,? were con- 
veyed across by the same route. It was accounted a prodigious 
advantage to escape the necessity of sailing round Cape Malea: 
and the violent winds and currents which modern experience 
attests to prevail around that formidable promontory, are quite 
sufficient to justify the apprehensions of the ancient Greek 
merchant, with his imperfect apparatus for navigation.? 


! Xenophon, De Vectigal. c. 1; Ephor. Frag. 67, ed. Marx; Stephan. Byz. 
Βοιωτία. 

* Pliny, Η. N. iv. 5, about the Isthmus of Corinth: “ Leche hinc, Cen 
chrez illinc, angustiarum termini, longo et ancipiti navium ambitu (7. 6. 
round Cape Malea), quas magnitudo pluustris transvehi prohibet: quam ob 
causam perfodere navigabili alveo angustias eas tentavere Demetrius rex, 
dictator Cesar, Caius princeps, Domitius Nero, — infausto (ut omnium exitu 
patuit) incepto.” 

The διολκὸς, less than four miles across, where ships were drawn across, 
if their size permitted, stretched from Lechzum on the Corinthian gulf, to 
Scheenus, a little eastward of Cenchrex, on the Sarénic gulf (Strabo, viii. p. 
$80). Strabo (viii. p. 335) reckons the breadth of the διολκὸς at forty stadia 
(about 43 English miles); the reality, according to Leake, is 34 English 
miles (Travels in Morea, vol. iii. ch. xxix. p. 297). 

3'The north wind, the Etesian wind of the ancients, blows strong in the 
£gean nearly the whole summer, and with especially dangerous violence at 
three points, — under Karystos, the southern cape of Euboa, near Cape 
Malea, and in the narrow strait between the islands of Ténos, Mykonos, 
and Délos (Ross, Reisen auf den Griechischen Inseln, vol. i. p. 20). See 
also Colonel Leake’s account of the terror of the Greck boatman, from the 


224 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


It will thus appear that there was no part of Greece proper 
which could be considered as out of reach of the sea, while most 
parts of it were convenient and easy of access: in fact, the Arca- 
dians were the only large section of the Hellenic name, (we may 
add the Doric, Tetrapolis, and the mountaineers along the chain 
of Pindus and Tymphréstus ) who were altogether without a 
seaport.!. But Greece proper constituted only a fraction of the 
entire Hellenic world, during the historical age: there were the 
numerous islands, and still more numerous continental colonies, 
all located as independent intruders on distinct points of the 
coast2 in the Euxine, the A®gean, the Mediterranean, and the 
Adriatic; and distant from each other by the space which sepa- 
rates Trebizond from Marseilles. All these various cities were 
comprised in the name Hellas, which implied no geographical 
continuity: all prided themselves on Hellenic blood, name, 
religion, and mythical ancestry. As the only communication 


gales and currents round Mount Athos: the canal cut by Xerxes through 
the isthmus was justitied by sound reasons (Travels in Northern Greece, 
vol. iii. c. 24, p. 145). 

1 The Periplus of Skylax enumerates every section of the Greek name, 
with the insignificant exceptions noticed in the text, as partaking of the line 
of coast; it even mentions Arcadia (c. 45), because at that time Lepreum 
had shaken off the supremacy of Elis, and was confederated with the Arca 
dians (about 360 B.c.): Lepreum possessed about twelve miles of coast 
which therefore count as Arcadian. 

2 Cicero (De Republica, ii. 2-4, in the Fragments of that lost treatise, ed 
Maii) notices emphatically both the general maritime accessibility of Greciar 
towns, and the effects of that circumstance on Grecian character: “ Quod 
de Corintho dixi, id haud scio an liceat de cuncté Gracia verissime dicere. 
Nam et ipsa Peloponnesus fere tota in mari est: nec preeter Phliuntios ulli 
sunt, quorum agri non contingant mare: et extra Peloponnesum Ainianes 
et Dores et Dolopes soli absunt a mari. Quid dicam insulas Greciw, quz 
fluctibus cinctze natant psene ipse simul cum civitatium institutis et mori- 
bus? Atque hee quidem, ut supra dixi, veteris sunt Grecia. Coloniarum 
vero qu est deducta a Graiis in Asiam, Thraciam, Italiam, Siciliam, Afri- 
cam, preter unam Magnesiam, quam unda non alluat? Ita barbarorum 
agris quasi adtexta quedam videtur ora esse Greecie.” 

Compare Cicero, Epistol. ad Attic. vi. 2, with the reference to Dikawarchus, 
who agreed to a great extent in Plato’s objections against a maritime site 
‘De Legg. iv. p. 705; also, Aristot. Politic. vii. 5-6). The sea (says Plato) 
is indeed a salt and bitter neighbor (μάλα ye uv ὄντως ἀλμυρὸν καὶ πικρὸν 
γειτόνημα), though convenient for purposes of daily use. 


GRECIAN LANDSMEN AND SEAMEN. ῳ 98 


between them was maritime, so the sea, important, even if we 
look to Greece proper exclusively, was the sole channel for 
transmitting ideas and improvements, as well as for maintaining 
sympathies — social, political, religious, and literary -~ throughout 
these outlying members of the Hellenic aggregate. 

The ancient philosophers and legislators were deeply im- 
pressed with the contrast between an inland and a maritime city: 
in the former, simplicity and xniformity of life, tenacity of 
ancient habits, and dislike of what is new or foreign, great force 
of exclusive sympathy, and narrow range both of objects and 
ideas ; in the latter, variety and novelty of sensations, expansive 
imagination, toleration, and occasional preference for extraneous 
customs, greater activity of the individual, and corresponding 
mutability of the state. This distinetion stands prominent in 
the many comparisons instituted between the Athens of Periklés 
and the Athens of the earlier times down to Solén. Both Plato 
and Aristotle dwell upon it emphatically,—and the former 
especially, whose genius conceived the comprehensive scheme 
of prescribing beforehand and insuring in practice the whole 
course of individual thought and feeling in his imaginary com- 
munity, treats maritime communication, if pushed beyond the 
narrowest limits, as fatal to the success and permanence of any 
wise scheme of education. Certain it is, that a great difference 
of character existed between those Greeks who mingled much 
in maritime affairs, and those who did not. The Arcadian may 
stand as a type of the pure Grecian landsman, with his rustic 
and illiterate habits,! — his diet of sweet chestnuts, barley-cakes, 
and pork (as contrasted with the fish which formed the chief 
seasoning for the bread of an Athenian,)— his superior courage 
and endurance, — his reverence for Lacedzemonian headship as 


1 Hekateus, Fragm. ᾿Αρκαδικὸν δεῖπνον. . μάζας καὶ ὕεια κρέα. Herodot 

i 66. Βαλανήφαγοι ἄνδρες. Theocrit. Id. vii. 106. — 

Κὴν μὲν tad? ἑρδῇς, © Ἰ]ᾶν φίλε, uy τί τυ παῖδες 

᾿Αρκαδικοὶ σκίλλαισιν ὑπὸ πλευράς τε καὶ ὥμους 

Tavixa μαστίσδοιεν ὅτε κρέα τυτϑὰ παρείη" 

Ei δ᾽ ἄλλως νεύσαις κατὰ μὲν χρόα πάντ᾽ ὀνύχεσσι 

Δακνόμενος κνάσαιο, ete. 
The alteration of Χῖοι, which is obviously out of place, in the scholia on thy 
passage, to ἔνεοι, appears unquestionable. ᾿ 


VOL. Π. 10* i5oc. 


we HISTORY OF GREECE 


le will thus appear that there was no part of Greece proper 


which could be consi red as out of reach of the sea, while most 


puartss of it were cone racial and Causy of 
large section of the Iiellenic name, (we may 


neeeaa : in fact, the Arca- 


liane were the only 
add the Dorie, Tetrapolis, and the mountaineers along the chain 


of Pindus and ‘Tyrphréstus ) who were altogether without a 


seaport.! But Greece proper constituted only a fraction of the 


entire Hellenic world, during the historical age: there were the 
numerous islands, and still more numerous continental colonies, 
all located as independent intruders on distinct points of the 
coust2 in the Euxine, the /gean, the Mediterranean, and the 
Adriatic; and distant from each other by the space which sepa- 
rates Trebizond from Marseilles. All these various cities were 
the name Hellas, which implied no geographical 
all prided themselves on Hellenic blood, name, 
As the only communication 


comprised in 
continuity : 
religion, and mythical ancestry. 
gales and currents round Mount Athos: the canal cut by Xerxes through 
the isthmus was justited by sound reasons (Travels in Northern Greece, 
vol. iii. c. 24, p. 145) 

‘The Periplus of Skylax enumerates every section of the Greek name, 
with the insignificant exceptions noticed in the text, as partaking of the line 
of coast; it even mentions Arcadia (c. 45), because at that time Lepreum 
had shaken off the supremacy of Elis, and was confederated with the Arca 
dians (about 360 5. 0.}: Lepreum possessed about twelve miles of coast 
which therefore count as Arcadian. 

3 Cicero (De Republica, ii. 2-4, in the Fragments of that lost treatise, ed 
Maii) notices emphatically both the general maritime accessibility of Greciar 
towns, and the effects of that circumstance on Grecian character: “ Quod 
de Corintho dixi, id haud scio an liceat de cunctd Greecid verissime dicere 
Nam et ipsa Peloponnesus fere tota in mari est: nec preter Phliuntios ulli 
sunt, quorum agri non contingant mare: et extra Peloponnesum Afniancs 
et Dores et Dolopes soli absunt a mari. Quid dicam insulas Grecia, 4: 
Huctibus cinct natant pene ipse simul cum civitatium institutis et movt- 
bus? Atque hee quidem, ut supra dixi, veteris sunt Greciz. Coloniarum 
vero qua est deducta a Graiis in Asiam, Thraciam, Italiam, Siciliam, Afri- 
cam, preter unam Magnesiam, quam unda non alluat? Ita barbarorum 
agris quasi adtexta quedam videtur ora esse Graecia.” 

Compare Cicero, Epistol. ad Attic. vi. 2, with the reference to Dikwarchus, 
who agreed to a great extent in Plato’s objections against a maritime site 
‘De Legg. iv. p. 705; also, Aristot. Politic. vii. 5-6). The sea (says Plato) 
is indeed a salt and bitter neighbor (μάλα ye μὴν ὄντως ἁλμυρὸν καὶ πικρὸν 
γειτόνημα), though convenient for purposes of daily use. 


ων “αν ον» παππον" Ε « 
¥ a οὐ αυμ. ῸΝ τ 
~~ ΘΝ 


GRECIAN LANDSMEN AND SEAMEN. 935 


between them was maritime, so the sea, important, even if we 
look to Greece proper exclusively, was the sole channel for 
transmitting ideas and improvements, as well as for maintaining 
sympathies — social, political, religious, and literary -—- throughout 
these outlying members of the Hellenic aggregate. ‘ 
The ancient philosophers and legislators were deeply im- 
pressed with the contrast between an inland and a maritime city: 
in the former, simplicity and «uniformity of life, tenacity of 
ancient habits, and dislike of what is new or foreign, great force 
of exclusive sympathy, and narrow range both of objects and 
ideas 5 in the latter, variety and novelty of sensations, expansive 
imagination, toleration, and oc ‘asional preference for extraneous 
customs, greater activity of the individual, and corresponding 
mutability of the state. This distinetion stands prominent in 
the many comparisons instituted between the Athens of Periklés 
and the Athens of the earlier times down to Solén. Both Plato 
and Aristotle dwell upon it emphatically,— and the former 
especially, whose genius conceived the comprehensive scheme 
of prescribing beforehand and insuring in practice the whole 
course of individual thought and feeling in his imaginary com- 
munity, treats maritime communication, if pushed beyond the 
narrowest limits, as fatal to the success and permanence of any 
wise scheme of education. Certain it is, that a great difference 
of character existed between those Greeks who mingled much 
in maritime affairs, and those who did not. The Arcadian may 
stand as a type of the pure Grecian Jandsman, with his rustic 
and illiterate habits,! — his diet of sweet chestnuts, barley-cakes 
and pork (as contrasted with the fish which formed the chief 
seasoning for the bread of an Athenian,)— his superior courage 
and endurance, — his reverence for Lacedemonian headship as 


| 1 Hekateus, Fragm. ᾿Αρκαδικὸν δεῖπνον... μάζας καὶ ὕεια κρέα. Herodot 
iL 66. Βαλανήφαγοι ἄνδρες. Theocrit. Id. vii. 106. -- 

Κὴν μὲν trad? ἑρδῆῇς, ὦ Ildv φίλε, μῆ τί τυ παῖδες 

᾿Αρκαδικοὶ σκίλλαισιν ὑπὸ πλευράς τε καὶ ὥμους 

Τανίκα μαστίσδοιεν ὅτε κρέα τυτϑὰ παρείη" 

Εἰ δ᾽ ἄλλως νεύσαις κατὰ μὲν χρόα πάντ᾽ ὀνύχεσσι 

Δακνόμενος κνάσαιο, ete. 
The alteration of Χῖοι, which is obviously out of place, in the scholia on thy 
passage, to ἔνεοι, appears unquestionable. Ὁ 


VOL. Ul. 10* loc. 


226 WiSTORY OF GREECE. 

an old and customary influence, — his sterility of intellect and 
mmagination, as well as his slackness in enterprise, — his un- 
changeable rudeness of relations with the gods, which led him 
to scourge and prick Pan. if he came back empty-handed from 
the chase; while the inhabitant of Phékza or Miletus exem- 
plifies the Grecian mariner, eager in search of gain, — active, 
skilful, and daring at sea, but inferior in stedfast bravery on 
land, — more excitable in imagination as well as more mutable 
in character, — full of pomp and expense in religious manifesta- 
tions towards the Ephesian Artemis or the Apollo of Branchidee ; 
with a mind more open to the varieties of Grecian energy ane 
to the refining influences οἵ Grecian civilization. The Pelopon- 
nesians generally, and the Lacedwmonians in particular, ap- 
proached to the Arcadian type,— while the Athenians of the 
fifth century B. 6. stood foremost in the other; superadding to it, 
however, a delicacy of taste, and a predominance of intellectual 
sympathy and enjoyments, which seem to have been peculiar to 
themselves. 

The configuration of the Grecian territory, so like in many re- 
gepects to that of Sw itzerland, produced two effects of great moment 
upon the character and history of the people. In the first place, 
it materially strengthened their powers of defence : it shut up the 
country against those ‘nvasions from the interior, which succes- 
sively subjugated all their continental colonies ; and it at the same 
time rendered each fraction more difficult to be attacked by the 
rest, so as to exercise a certain conservative influence in assuring 
the tenure of actual possessors : for the pass of Thermopyle, 
between Thessaly and Phokis, that of Kitherén, between Beeotia 
and Attica, or the mountainous range of Oneion and Geraneia 
along the Isthmus of Corinth, were positi which an inferior 
number of brave men could hold against a much greater force of 
assailants. But, in the next place, while it tended to protect 
each section of Greeks from being conquered, it also kept them 
politically disunited, and perpetuated their separate autonomy. 
It fostered that powerful principle of repulsion, which disposed 
even the smallest tewnship to constitute itself a political unit 
apart from the rest, and to resist all idea of coalescence with 
others, either amicable or compulsory. To a modern :eader, 


accustomed to large political aggregations, and securities for good 


INTELLECTUAL EFFECTS OF LOCALITY. 997 


government through the representative system, it requires a 
certain mental effort to transport himself back to a time when 
even the smallest town clung so tenaciously to its right of self- 
legislation. Nevertheless, such was the general habit and feel- 
ing of the ancient world, throughout Italy, Sicily, Spain, and 
Gaul. Among the Hellenes, it stands out more conspicuously, 
for several reasons,— first, because they seem to have pushed the 
multiplication of autonomous units to an extreme point, seeing 
that even islands not larger than Peparéthos and Amorgos had two 
or three separate city communities εἰ secondly, because they pro- 
duced, for the first time in the history of mankind, acute system- 
atie thinkers on matters of government, amongst all of whom the 
‘dea of the autonomous city was accepted as the indispensable basis 
f politic al speculation ; thirdly, because this incurable subdivision 
proved finally the cause of their ruin, in spite of pronounced 
intellectual superiority over their conquerors : and lastly, because 
incapacity of political coalescence did not preclude a powerful and 
extensive sympathy between the iphabitanis of all the separate 
cities. with a constant tendency to fraternize for numerous pur- 
poses, social, religious, recreative, intellectual, and ssthetical. 
For these reasons, the indefinite multiplication of self-governing 
towns, though in truth a phenomeno® common to ancient Europe, 
as contrasted with the large monar thies of Asia, appears more 
marked among the ancient Greek* than elsewhere: and there 
cannot be any doubt that they owe it, in a considerable degree, 
to the multitude of insulating bovrdaries which the configuration 
of their country presented. 

Nor is it rash to suppose that the same causes may have tended 
to promote that unborrowed intrllectual development for which 
they stand so conspicuous. Gereral propositions respecting the 
working of climate and physical agencies upon character are, 
indeed, treacherous; for our knowledge of the globe is now suffi- 
cient to teach us that heat and cold, mountain and plain, sea and 
land, moist and dry atmosphere, are all consistent with the 
greatest diversities of res*dent men: moreover, the contrast 
between the population of Greece itself, for the seven centuries 
preceding the Christian era, and the Greeks of more moders 


—a a  * ore - 


+ Skylax, Peripl. 59. 


928 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


times, is alone enough to inculcate reserve in such speculatioas 
Nevertheless, we may venture to note certain improving influ- 
ences, connected with their geographical position, at a time when 
they had no books to study, and no more advanced predecessors 
to imitate. We may remark, first, that their position made them 
at once mountaineers and mariners, thus supplying them with 
great variety of objects, sensations, and adventures; next, that 
each petty community, nestled apart amidst its own rocks,' was 
sufficiently severed from the rest to possess an individual life and 
attributes of its own, yet not so far as to subtract it from the sym- 
pathies of the remainder; so that an observant Greek, com- 
mercing with a great diversity of half countrymen, whose language 
he understood, and whose idiosyncrasies he could appreciate, had 
access to a larger mass of social and political experience than any 
other man in so unadvanced an age could personally obtain. The 
Pheenician, superior to the Greek on ship-board, traversed wider 
distances, and saw a greater number of strangers, but had not the 
same means of intimate communion with a multiplicity of fellows 
in blood and language. His relations, confined to purchase and 
sale, did not comprise that mutuality of action and reaction which 
pervaded the crowd at a Grecian festival. ‘The scene which here 
presented itself, was a mixture of uniformity and variety highly 
stimulating to the observant faculties of a man of genius, — who 
at the same time, if he sought to communicate his own impres- 
sions, or to act upon this mingled and diverse audience, was 
forced to shake off what was peculiar to his own town or commu- 
nity, and to put forth matter in harmony with the feelings of all. 
It is thus that we may explain, in part, that penetrating appre- 
hension of human life and character, and that power of touching 
sympathies common to all ages and nations, which surprises us 50 
much in the unlettered authors of the old epic. Such periodical 
intercommunion of brethren habitually isolated from each other, 
was the only means then open of procuring for the bard a diver- 
sified range of experience and a many-colored audience ; and it 
was toa great degree the result of geographical causes. Perhaps 
among other nations such facilitating causes might have been 

1 Cicero, de Orator. i.44. “ Ithacam illam in asperrimis saxulis, sicut nidu 
jam, affixam.” 


MINERAL PRODUCTIONS. 999 


found, yet without producing any result comparable to the [iad 
and Odyssey. But Homer was, nevertheless, dependent upon 
the conditions of his age, and we can at least point out those 
peculiarities in early Grecian society, without which Homeric 
excellence would never have existed, — the geographical position 
is one, the language another. 

In mineral and metallic wealth, Greece was not distinguished. 
ἥ Γ . . . * 

Gold was obtained in considerable abundance in the island of 
Siphnos, which, throughout the sixth century B. C., was among 
the richest communities of Greece, and possessed a treasure- 
chamber at Delphi, distinguished for the richness of its votive 
offerings. At that time, gold was so rare in Greece, that the 
Lacedzemonians were obliged to send to the Lydian Croesus, in 
order to provide enough of it for the gilding of a statue.' It 
appears to have been more abundant in Asia Minor, and the 
quantity of it in Greece was much multiplied by the opening of 
mines in Thrace, Macedonia, Epirus, and even some parts of 
Thessaly. In the island of Thasos, too, some mines were reopened 
with profitable result, which had been originally begun, and sub- 
sequently abandoned, by Pheenician settlers of an earlier century. 
; = \¢ +o inte ] r ᾿ Ἵ 
From these same districts, also, was procured a considerable 
amount of silver; while, about the beginning of the fifth century 
Β. C., the first effective commencement seems to have been made 
of turning to account the rich southern district of Attica, called 
Laureion. Copper was obtained in various parts of Greece, 
especially in Cyprus and Eubcea, — in which latter island was 
also found the earth called Cadmia, employed for the purification 
of the ore. Bronze was used among the Greeks for many pur- 
poses in which iron is now employed: and even the arms of the 
Homeric heroes (different in this respect from the later historical 
Greeks) are composed of copper, tempered in such a way as to 
impart to it an astonishing hardness. Iron was found in Eubea, 
Boeétia, and Melos, — but still more abundantly in the moun- 


ι Herodot. i. 52; iii. 57; vi.46-125. Boeckh, Public Economy of Athens, 
b. i. ch. 3. 

The gold and silver offerings sent to the Delphian temple, even from the 
Homeric times (Il. ix. 405) downwards, were numerous and valuable; 
especially those dedicated by Croesus, who (Herodot. i. 17-52) seems w 
uave surpassed all predecessors. 


230 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


tainous ταμίου cf the Laconian Taygetus. There is, however 
no part of Greece where the remains of ancient metallurgy 
appear now 80 conspicuous, as the island of Seriphos. The 
excellence and varieties of marble, from Pentelikus, Hymettus, 
Paros, Karystus, ete., and other parts of the country, — 580 ¢ssen- 
tial for the purposes of sculpture and architecture, —is well 
known.! 

Situated under the same parallels of latitude as the coast of 
Asia Minor, and the southernmost regions of Italy and Spain, 
Greece produced wheat, barley, flax, wine, and oil, in the earliest 
times of which we have any knowledge :": though the currants, 
Indian corn, silk, and tobacco, which the country now exhibits, 
are an addition of more recent times. Theophrastus and other 
authors, amply attest the observant and industrious agriculture 
prevalent among thie ancient Greeks, as well as the care with 
which its various natural productions, comprehending a great 
diversity of plants, herbs, and trees, were turned to account. The 
cultivation of the vine and the olive, — the latter indispensable 
to ancient life, not merely for the purposes which it serves at 
present, but also from the constant habit then prevalent of anoint- 
ing the body, — appears to have been particularly elaborate ; and 
the many different accidents of soil, level, and exposure, which 
were to be found, not only in Hellas proper, but also among the 
scattered Greek settlements, afforded to observant planters mate- 
rials for study and comparison. The barley-cake esems to have 
been more generally eaten than the wheaten loaf;? but one Ο; 


1 Strabo, x. p. 447; xiv. pp. 680-684. Stephan. Byz. v. Aldnwoc, Aake- 
ϑαίμων. Kruse, Hellas, ch. iv. vol. i. p. 328. Fiedler, Reisen in Griechen- 
land, vol. ii. pp. 118-559. 

2 Note to second edition. — In my first edition, I had asserted that cotton 
grew in Greece in the time of Pausanias, — following, though with some 
doubt, the judgment of some critics, that βυσσὸς meant cotton. I now 
believe that this was a mistake, and have expunged the passage. 

3 At the repast provided at the public cost for those who dined in the 
Prytaneium of Athens, Solon directed barley-cakes for ordinary days, wheaten 
bread for festivals (Athenzeus, iv. p. 137). 

The milk of ewes and goats was in ancient Greece preferred to that of 
cows (Aristot. Hist. Animal. iii. 15, 5-7); at present, also, cow’s-milk and 
butter is considered unwholesome in Greece, and is seldom or never eaten 
(Kruse, Hellas, vol. i. ch. 4, p. 368). 


VEGETATION. — DIET. 231 


othe: of them, together with vegetables and fish, (sometimes fresh, 
but more frequently salt,) was the common food of the population ; 
the Arcadians fed much upon pork, and the Spartans also i 
sumed animal food; but by the Greeks, generally, fresh meat 
seems to have been little eaten, except at festivals and sacrifices. 
The Athenians, the most commercial people in Greece proper 
though their light, dry, and comparatively poor soil pecilinedid 
excellent barley, nevertheless, did not grow enough corn for their 
own consumption: they imported considerable supplies of corn 
from Sicily, from the coast of the Euxine, and the Tauric Cher- 
sonese, and salt-fish both from the Propontis and even from 
Gades :! the distance from whence these supplies came, when we 
take into consideration the extent of fine corn-land in Beeotia and 
Thessaly, proves how little internal trade existed between the 
various regions of Greece proper. The exports of Athens 
consisted in her figs and other fruit, olives, oil, — for all of which 
rhe was distinguished, — together with pottery, ornamental man- 
ufactures, and the silver from her mines at Laureion. Salt-fish 
Joubtless, found its way more or less throughout all Greece ;? but 
the population of other states in Greece lived more exclusively 
upon their own produce than the Athenians, with less of purchase 
and sale,3— a mode of life assisted by the simple domestic econ- 


1 Theophrast. Caus. Pl. ix. 2; Demosthen. adv. Leptin. c. 9. That salt- 
fish from the Propontis and from Gadzes was sold in the markets of pena 
during the Peloponnesian war, appears from a fragment of the Marikas of 
KEupolis (Fr. 23, ed. Meineke ; Stephan. Byz. v. Γάδειρα) — 

Πότερ᾽ ἢν τὸ raptxoc, Φρύγιον ἢ Ταδειρικόν ; 

The Phenician merchants who brought the salt-fish from Gades took 
back with them Attic pottery for sale among the African tribes of the coast 
of Morocco (Skylax, Peripl. ¢. 109). 

® Simonidés, Fragm. 109, Gaisford. — 

Πρόσϑε μὲν ἀμφ᾽ ὦμοισιν ἔχων τρηχεῖαν ἄσιλλαν 
᾿Ιχϑῦς ἐξ "Apyoug εἰς Τεγέαν ἔφερον, ete. 

The Odyssey mentions certain inland people, whe knew nothing either of 
the sea, or of ships, or the taste of salt: Pausanias looks for them in Epirus 
(Odyss. xi. 121; Pausan. i. 12, 3). 

‘ Αὐτουργοΐ te γάρ εἰσι Πελοποννήσιοι (says Perikles, in his speech to the 
Athenians, at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, Thucyd. i. 141) 
καὶ οὔτε ἰδίᾳ οὔτε ἐν κοινῷ χρήματά ἐστιν αὐτοῖς, οἷς., --- ἄνδρες γεωργοὶ καὶ 


οὐ ϑαλάσσιοι, etc. (ib. ς. 142) 


232 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


omy universally prevalent, in whith the women no only carded 
and spun all the wool, but also wove out of it the clothing and 
bedding employed in the family. Weaving was then considered 
as much a woman’s business as spinning, and the same feeling 
and habits still prevail to the present day in modern Grecce, 
where the loom is constantly seen in the peasants’ cottages, and 
always worked by women.! 

The climate of Greece appears to be generally described by 
modern travellers in more favorable terms than it was by the 
ancients, which is easily explicable from the classical interest, 
picturesque beauties, and transparent atmosphere, so vividly 
appreciated by an English or a German eye. Herodotus,? Hip- 
pocrates, and Aristotle, treat the climate of Asia as far more 
genial and favorable both to animal and vegetable life, but at the 
same time more enervating than that of Greece: the latter, they 
speak of chiefly in reference to its changeful character and diversi- 
ties of local temperature, which they consider as highly stimulant 
to the energies of the inhabitants. There is reason to conclude 
that ancient Greece was much more healthy than the same terri- 


tory is at present, inasmuch as it was more industriously culti- 


vated, and the towns both more carefully administered and better 
supplied with water. But the differences in respect of health- 
iness, between one portion of Greece and another, appear always 
to have been considerable, and this, as well as the diversities ct 
climate, affected the local habits and character of the particular 
sections. Not merely were there great differences between 
the mountaineers and the inhabitants of the plains,? — between 
Lokrians, &tolians, Phokians, Dorians, (iéteeans, and Arcadians, 
on one hand, and the inhabitants of Attica, Beeotia, and Elis, on 


‘In Egypt, the men sat at home and wove, while the women did out-door 
business: both the one and the other excite the surprise of Herodotus and 
Sophoklés (Herod. ii. 35 ; Soph. (ΕΑ. Col. 340). 

For the spinning and weaving of the modern Greek peasant women, 800 
Leake, Trav. Morea, vol. i. pp. 13, 18, 223, ete. ; Strong, Stat. p. 185. 

2 Herodot. i. 142; Hippocrat. De Aére, Loc. et Aq. c. 12-13; Aristot 
Polit. vii. 6, 1. 

3 The mountaineers of AXtolia are, at this tim, unable to come down into 
the marshy plain of Wrachdri, without being taken ill after a few days 


(Fiedler, Reise in Griech. i. p. 184). 


LOCAL DIVERSITY. 233 


the other, — but each of the various tribes which went ta compose 
these categories, had its peculiarities; and the marked contrast 
between Athenians and Beeotians was supposed to be represented 
by the light and heavy atmosphere which they respectively 
breathed. Nor was this all: for, even among the Beotian aggre- 
gate, every town had its own separate attributes, physical as aie 
as moral and political :! Orépus, Tanagra, Thespize, Thebes, 
Anthédén, Haliartus, Koréneia, Onchéstus, and Platza, were 
known to Beeotians each by its own characteristic epithet: and 
Dikzarchus even notices a marked distinction between the inhab- 
itants of the city of Athens and those in the country of Attica 
Sparta, Argos, Corinth, and Siky6n, though all called Doric, had 
each its own dialect and peculiarities. All these differences, 
depending in part upon climate, site, and other physical consid- 
erations, contributed to nourish antipathies, and to perpetuate 
that imperfect cohesion, which has already been noticed as an 
indelible feature in Hellas. 

The Epirotic tribes, neighbors of the /£tolians and Akarna 
nians, filled the space between Piudus and the Ionian sea until 
they joined to the northward the territory inhabited by the pow- 
erful and barbarous Illyrians. Of these Illyrians, the native 
Macedonian tribes appear to have been an outlying section 
dwelling northward of Thessaly and Mount Olympus, ἐμέν 
of the chain by which Pindus is continued, and westward of the 
river Axius. The Epirots were comprehended under the various 
denominations of Chaonians, Molossians, Thesprotians, Kasso- 
peans, Amphilochians, Athamanes, the 4Ethikes, Tymphezi, 
Orestz, Parorei, and Atintanes,2— most of the latter being 
small communities dispersed about the mountainous region of 


' Dikeearch. Fragm. p. 145, ed. Fuhr — Biog Ἑλλάδος. “ἱστοροῦσι ὑ᾽ οἱ 
Βοιωτοὶ τὰ Kat’ αὐτοὺς ὑπάρχοντα ἴδια ἀκληρήματα λέγοντες ταῦτα ---- Τὴν 
υὲν αἰσχροκέρδειαν κατοικεῖν ἐν ᾿Ωρώπῳ, τὸν δὲ φϑόνον ἐν Τανάγρᾳ, τὴν 
ηιλονεικίαν ἐν Θεσπίαις, τὴν ὕβριν ἐν Θήβαις, τὴν πλεονεξίαν ἐν ᾿Ανϑήδονι, 
τὴν περιεργίαν ἐν Κορωνείᾳ, ἐν Πλαταίαις τὴν ἀλαζόνειαν, τὸν πυρετὸν ἐν 
(υγήστῳ, τὴν ἀναισϑηςίαν ἐν ᾿Αλιώρτῳ. 

About the distinction between ᾿Αϑηναῖοι and ᾿Αττικοὶ, see the same work, 
ρ. 141, 

? Strabo, vii. pp. 322, 324, 326, Thucydid. ii. 68. Theopompus (ap 
Strab. 1. c.) reckoned 14 Epirotic ἔϑνῃ. 


HISTORY OF GREECE. 
234 


ion 1 »pli 
however, much confusion in the app 

1e Epirot, which was a title 
and given purely upon geo- 
Epirus seems at 


Pindus. ‘There was, 
cation of the comprehensive nau 
altozether by the Greeks, ι 
Ἵ ethnical considerations. ems 
osed to Peloponnesus, and to have signified 
the general region northward of the gulf of π᾿ le 
᾿ e sense it comprehended the JEtolians and Akarné 
a dialect difficult to understand, 
Epirots from Hel- 


given 
graphical, not upom 
first to have stood opp 


this primitiv 
nians, portions of whom spoke 
and were not less wdely removed than the , 3 
ae The oracle of Dodona forms the point of ancien 
“ce ae a wrseded b 
ion between Greeks and Epirots, which was superseded y 
unl yetwe | ᾿ he gece 
ivilizati ' Hellas developed itself. or is 
} i, as “vilization of Hellas developec 
Delphi, as the civilizati . ὴ oem var 
iff isti ἢ Epirots from Macedonians on the 
less difficult to distinguish Epiro Se Gace 
hand. than from Hellenes on the other; the language, the sts 
: : | i i of ani wus, Wile 
i i . hair being often analogous, wh 
‘as wearing the hair being Ω 
and the fashion of g ae μέσα 
the boundaries, amidst rude men and untravelled tracts, 
1 2 AC rae | 
4 r Ὗ 1.2 
-ery inaccurately understood. ee 
ie ibi + t+, oooupied by the Hellens in {Ὁ B. C+ 
In describing the limits occupiee ©) aia 
, 8.0 eu- 
we cannot yet take nna tale 
kas and Ambrakia, established by the Corinthians subse quently 
as ra) ange am “4. ἰ ἰ HS 
on the western coast of Epirus. The Greeks of that es ἐν : 
. " , r " ᾿ μὴν" r " q ω S. t i ca 
seem to comprise the islands of Kephallenia, Zakynthu ao 3 
wa: | , ' ither ink sular 
and Dulichium, but no settlement, either inland or in Ἶ 
« y 
farther northward. a a 
« ' . * ns ν vod Ὶ y ( MW ( i t 1e 
They include farther, confining ourselves to 776 B. C., the 
| ‘coast of Greece and that of 
rreat mass of islands between the coast ὁ > an 
ye i Ι Ἵ : he north, to Rhodes, Krete, and 
Asia Minor, from Tenedos on the north, ad εἶν 
Sic ° . " . 23 5, 1108 
Kvthéra southward; and the great islands of wi © ; , 
' ‘hoa as well as the groups called the Sporades 
Samos, and Eubcea, as well as the g i, apheagne peegromiet 
1 the Cyclades. Respecting the four considerable 1s 
— | Hy ᾿ a ᾽ ͵ iy, et } ~ ne - 
r to the coasts of Macedomia and Thrace, — Lemnos, Imbros, 
Thasos,— it may be doubted whether they 
Cov 


lenic habits.! 


account of the important colonie 


neare 
Samothrace, and 


! Herodot. i. 146, ii. 56, vi. 127. 
Strabo, vii. p. 327. 
Several of the Epirotic tribes were di 
to their native tongue. . 
See. on all the inhabitants of these regions, 
QO. Μάϊον above quoted, Ueber die Makedoner ; appen 
of the English translation of his History of the Dorians. 


γλωσσοι, — spoke Greek in addition 


the excellent dissertation of 
pended to the first volume 


GREEKS IN ASIA MINOR. 235 


were at that time Hellenized. The Catalogue of the Iliad ineludes, 
under Agamemnon, contingents from gina, Eubea, Krete, 
Karpathus, Kasus, Kés, and Rhodes: in the oldest epical tes- 
timony which we possess, these islands thus appear inhabited by 
Greeks; but the others do not occur in the Catalogue, and are 
never mentioned in such manner as to enable us to draw any 
inference. Eubcea ought, perhaps, rather to be looked upon as 
a portion of Grecian mainland (from which it was only separated 
by a strait narrow enough to be bridged over) than as an island. 
But the last five islands named in the Catalogue are all either 
wholly or partially Doric: no Ionic or olic island appears in 
it: these latter, though it was among them that the poet sung, 
appear to be represented by their ancestral heroes, who came 
from Greece proper. 
The last element to be included, as going to make up the 
Greece of 776 B. c., is the long string of Doric, Ionic, and 
fEolie settlements on the coast of Asia Minor, — occupying a 
space bounded on the north by the Troad and the region of Ida, 
and extending southward as far as the peninsula of Knidus. 
‘l'welve continental cities, over and above the islands of Lesbos 
and 'Tenedos, are reckoned by Herodotus az ancient AXolic foun- 
dations, — Smyrna, Kymé, Larissa, Neon-Teichos, Témnos, 
Killa, Notium, /®gircessa, Pitana, ge, Myrina, and Gryneia. 
Smyrna, having been at first /£olic, was afterwards acquired 
through a stratagem by Ionic inhabitants, and remained per- 
manently Ionic. Phoka, the northernmost of the Ionic settle- 
ments, bordered upon #olis: Klazomenxe, Erythre, Teds, 
Lebedos, Kolophén, Priéné, Myus, and Milétus, continued the 
Ionic name to the southward. These, together with Samos and 
Chios, formed the Panionic federation.' To the south of Milé- 
tus, after a considerable interval, lay the Doric establishments of 
Myndus, Halikarnassus, and Knidus: the two latter, together 
with the island of Kos and the three townships in Rhodes, 
constituted the Doric Hexapolis, or communion of six cities, 
concerted primarily with a view to religious purposes, but pro- 
ducing a secondary effect analogous to political federation. 
Such, then, is the extent of Hellas, as it stood at the com. 


! Herodot. i. 143-15€ 


936 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


t of the recorded Olympiads. To draw a picture even 
possess no authentic materials, and are obliged 
belong to a later age: and this 
how uncertified are all 


he supposed epoch of 


mencemen 


for this date, we 
to ante-date statements which 


consideration might alone suffice to show 
delineations of the Greece of 1183 B. C., t 
the Trojan war, four centuries earlier. 


CHAPTER II. 


THE HELLENIC PEOPLE GENERALLY, IN THE EARLY 
HISTORICAL TIMES. 


Tux territory indicated in the last chapter — south of Mount 


Olympus, and south of the line which connects the city of Am- 
brakia with Mount Pindus, — was occupied during the historical 
period by the central stock of the Hellens, or Greeks, from which 
their numerous outlying colonies were planted out. 
Both metropolitans and colonists styled themselves Hellens, 
and were recognized as such by each other ; all glorying in the 
name as the prominent symbol of fraternity ; — all describing 
non-Hellenic men, or cities, by a word which involved associa- 
tions of repugnance. Our term barbarian, borrowed from this 
latter word, does not express the same idea; for the Greeks 
spoke thus indiscriminately of the extra-Hellenic world, with all 
its inhabitants ;! whatever might be the gentleness of their char- 
acter, and whatever might be their degree of civilization. The 


rulers and people of Egyptian 
gigantic monuments, the wealthy 
phil-Hellene Arganthonius of Tartéssus, 


patricians of Rome (t 


1 See the protest of Eratosthenés again 


rbarian, after the latter w 
6; Eratosth. Fragm. Seidel. p. 85). 
46; ap. Plin. H. N. xxii. 1. 


tion into Greek and Ba 


rudeness (ap Strabo. ii. p- © 
2 Cato, Fragment. ed. Lion. Ρ. 


extract from Cato’s letter to his son, 


Thebes, with their ancient and 
Tyrians and Carthaginians, the 
and the well-disciplined 


ο the indignation of old Cato,2) were all 


st the continuance of the classifica- 
ord had come to imply 


A remarkable 
intimating his strong antipathy [Ὁ the 


HE 4h4 Ν } O] LI GE . 237 


somprised in it. At first, it seemed to have expressed 
pic ae ap of contempt, and repugnance apaahi pani 
16 sound of a foreign language.! pegs i Bae 
om superior intelligence ae pene Ren ps es ae of their 
Greeks, and their term barbarian was used so as “τ ahs Tee 
state of the temper and intelligence ; in sso ον 
retained by the semi-Hellenized Romans, as the pro π᾿ τ nh 
te their state of civilization. The want of a ot ἘΠῊΝ 
: — ᾿" barbarian, as the Greeks perverse er sap 
PEAT WT με description of Grecian phenomena and aie 
sage c may be obliged occasionally to use the w “ν" 
primitive sense. se the word in its 
The Hellens were : 
were all rents phe ele τα — and parentage, — 
Me of the historical Greeks, we <i iene ngs bs rsa 
represents : . 5 at . 
ee sentiment under the influence of which ee 
at cog “an It is placed by Herodotus in the front ᾿ς 
peti . Se dis ties which bound together the Hellenic 
Papa . xe ship of blood; 2. Fellowship of 1 
ὃ. Fixed domiciles of gods, and_ sacrifices ip etapa 
A. manners and dispositions. 23, common to all; 
“Ἵ 86 (Say 2 tt = . 
ae ἫΝ ἡμὴ oe mans, in their reply to the Spartan envoys 
᾿ ies: crisis of the Persian invasion) “ Athens will ἦν 
sgrace herself by betraying.” And Zeus Hellenius rece 
mius was recog- 


(ireeks: he g ; 
eeks; he proscribes thetr medicine 
: 8 edicine altozether, and i 
taste of their liter: ee! of , and admits only a slig 
“kc “ Quod bonum sit eorum literas tnaptocré, Ht 
urart inter s ark papel ed 
ae a : unt inter se, Barbaros necare omnes medicinA, sed toe 
dictitant Barb ᾿ : nes <i Gk ke eee Nos quod 
1ctite arbaros et spurios, nosque magis i ; 
Priam | ‘ que magis quam alios, Opicos appellatione 
ll ΑΝ Be: 
apwy nynoat £ 
sale wig aoe βαρβαοοφώνων, Homer, Iliad, ii. 867. Homer ἃ 
Pie ¢ ° 
sco d βάρβαροι, or any words signifying either a Hellen gen vail a 
hy an” » > « rT 4 = ; * 
en generally (Thucyd. i. 3). Compare Str: ili ogres 
XIV. p. 662. ‘ ompare Strabo, viii. p. 370; and 
Ovid repr i 
oduces the primitiv ap 
a 8 ive sense of the 36 
οἱ γυς og ~ Ὕ word 36 ἡ t 
himself as an exile at Tomi (Trist. v. 10-37): i aor 
st. v. 10-37):— 


Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor ulli.” 


The Egy es 
ryptians had a word in thei 
Sapo¢ in this sense (Herod. ii. 188). MEnEagD; ὅσ δ a ee 


238 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


nized as the god watching over and enforcing the fraternity thue 


constituted.! 

Hekatzus, Herodotus, and Thucydidés,? all believed that there 
had been an ante-Hellenic period, when different languages, 
lligible, were spoken between Mount Olympus 
and Cape Malea. However this may be, during the historical 
times the Greek language was universal throughout these limits, 
at variety of dialects, which 
rary men into Ionic, Doric, 


mutually uninte 


— branching out, however, into a gre 
roughly classified by later lite 
But the classification 
oint of fact does 


were 
ZEolic, and Attic. 


regularity, which in } 
realized; each town, each smaller subdivision of the Hellenic 


eculiarities of dialect belonging to itself. Now 
who framed the quadruple division took notice 
isively, of the written dialects, — those which 
oets or other authors ; the mere spoken 
for the most part neglected.# That there was no 
dialect in the speech of the people called 
indisputable testimony of Herodo- 
apital varieties of speech 


Ionic. Ot 


presents a semblance of 
not seem to have been 


name, having | 
the lettered men 
chiefly, if not exch 
had been ennobled by } 
idioms were 
such thing as one Ionic 
Tonic Greek, we know from the 


tus,4 who tells us that there were four ¢ 
, Asiatic towns especially known as 


among the twelv: 
_.7d Ἑλληνικὸν ἐὸν ὅμαιμόν τε καὶ ὁμόγλωσσον, και 


ἤϑεα Te ὁμότροπα" τῶν προδότας γενέσ 


(Ib. x. 7.) Ἡμεῖς de, Δία te Ἑλλήνιον 


' Herod. vill. 144... 
ϑεὼν ἱδρύματά Te κοινὰ καὶ ϑυσίαι, 
Sar ᾿Αϑηναίους οὐκ ἂν εὖ ἔχοι. 
αἰδεσϑέντες, καὶ τὴν Ἔλλαδα δεινὸν ποιεύμενοι προδοῦναι, εἴο. 

Compare Diksarch. Fragm. p. 147, ed. Fuhr; and Thucyd. iii. 59, -- τὰ 
κοινὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων νόμιμα ϑεοὺς τοὺς ὁμοβωμίους καὶ κοινοὺς τῶν 
Ἑλλήνων» " also, the provision about the κοινὰ ἱερὰ in the treaty between 
Sparta and Athens (Thue. v. 18; Strabo, ix. p. 419). 

It was a part of the proclamation solemnly made by the Eumolpide, 
prior to the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, “ All non-Hellens to 
keep away,” —elpysadat τῶν ἱερῶν (Isocrates, Orat. iv. Panegyr. p- 74). 

? Hekate. Fragm. 356, ed. Klausen : compare Strabo, vii. p- 321; Herod. 
ji. 57; Thucyd. i. 3,— Κατὰ πόλεις Te, ὅσοι GA λήλων συνίεσαν, ek. 

3% Antiqui grammati2i eas tantum dialectes spectabant, quibus scriptores 
usi essent: ceteras’, qu@ non vigebant nisi in ore populi, non notabant.” 
(Ahrens, De Dialecto Folic, p. 2.) The same has been the case, to ® 
great degree, ever in the linguistic researches of modern times, though 
printing now affords such increased facility for the registration of nopulas 


dialects. 
4 Herod. i. 142. 


LANGL AGE AND DIALECTS. 249 


course, the varieties w 
7 ée ‘d varieties would have been much more numerous if 
: 1ad given us the impressions of his ear in Eub th Cy 
clades, Massalia, Rhegi ; OB! Aye itin Hi 
μὲν 8, = assalia, Rhegium, and Olbia, — all numbered as Gr i 
ay ere AE: ΕΣ hg ; s Greeks 
—s ians. The lonic dialect of the grammarians was 
extract from er Ki * gy 
= * Homer, Hekatwus, Herodotus, Hippocrates, ete 
ξ ivine speech 1 ‘ : ah 
ing speech it made the nearest approach amidst I 
ivergences which the historian has gua ce 
ne ᾿ Md ian has made known to us, we cannot 
aii. app ‘ / "ons 1 t 
on PI pe Alkexus in Lesbos, Myrtis and Korinna in 
a, rere » ores : "TAS ἢ ν ; 
pets vere the great sources of reierence for the Lesbian and 
CEOLIE rarieties of > Ae Ἷ Ἢ : " amy 
eotian varieties οἵ the olic dialect, — of whicl 
third variety, untouched by the poets, i TI nag aides 
; : y the poets, in Thessaly.! 
— fey y roets, ssaly.! The analog 
tween the different manifestations of Doric and oli ie 
as that between the Doric generall d tl Ἐπ’ τ τι πόνο 
| ; g rand the olic ge 
contrasted with the Attic, is only Ἂ- be t k Bit tt κτοῤ. 
approximative. ἀμ ἢ ere μὰ 
} 
λαΐ all these differe iale 
Ὁ different dialects are nothing more than dialects 
ee 1ed as modifications of one and the same |; Sa 
exhibiting evidence of certai a. 
a — ᾿ certain laws and principles ρϑυνδάϊι 
all. ley seem capable of being traced back in 
ideal mother-language, peculiar in it if ἢ Aeaidiatic fees 
ruage, peculiz self and distinguis 2 ἢ 
though cognate with, the Lati eae ae Lone μὴ 
bie: g ἃ , the Latin ; a substantive member of what 
as bee ‘alle 2 ) ag 
n called the Indo-European family of lang oe : 
truth has been brought out, in recent ti b πὴ" 
vo ὅν σ ; cent times, by the 
examin: ae ae gp crane 
. ation applied to the Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, Latin G Ἷ 
a mee τ ‘ ἕ 
uid Lithuanian languages, as well as by the m dildo 
ehaledin of the Ciresk & - ἢ ore accurate 
ysis the Greek language itself to which such studies ha 
ren rise, in ¢ or | i leon tae 
Ε 1 rise, In a manne! much more clear than could have b : 
magine ancl ᾿ 
“Att by the ancients themselves.2 It is needless to d vel 
unos the 1 Ba ai ἐε δ ἐ: τς : : ὕ ess tO dwe 
he " importance of this uniformity of language in holding t 
ther ace. and in r ; 7 T ite 
gy s 16 race, and in rendering the genius of its most ἢ ‘ 4 
newest - dering: st favore 
eo ῃ available to the civilization of all. Except in the rarest 
na 2 Hage es ares 
, the divergences of dialect were not such as to prevent 
suc even 


’ Respecti 
specting the three varieties of the 2 i 
Pei. Angeli s of the Molic dialect, differing i 
each other, see the valuable work of Ahrens. De Di: p cate 
— ens, De Dial. Aol. sect. 2, 32, 
* The work | 
of Albert Giese, U 
se, Ueber den Kolischen Di 
voli: ialekt (unhappily 


not finished, on ; inge 
oe , on account of the early death of she author,) prese i 
us specimen of such analysis id icin ay: 


9 4() HISTORY OF GREECE. 
understanding, and being understood by, every 
act remarkable, when we consider how many 
of their outlying colonists, not having taken out women in thear 
‘ntermarried with non-Hellenic wives. And the 
perfection and popularity of their early epic poems, was here of 
‘,estimable value for the diffusion of a common type of language, 
and for thus keeping together the sympathies of the Hellenic 
world.! The Homeric dialect became the standard followed by 
all Greek poets for the hexameter, as may be seen particularly 


from the example of Hesiod, — who adheres to it in the main, 
olic Kymé, and he himself 


though his father was a native of the 

at Askra, in the /Molic Beeotia, —and the early iambic 
compositions are framed on the same model. Intel- 
outcasts from 


every Greek from 
other Greek, —a 1 


emigration, 


resident 
and elegiac 
lectual Greeks in all cities, even the most distant 
the central hearth, became early accustomed to 
| possessors of a common stock of legends, 


one type ot 


literary speech, ant 
imaxims, and metaphors. 

That community of religious sentiments, 
dotus names as the third bond of union among 
and the lan- 


localities, and sacri- 


fices, which Hero 
the Greeks, was a phenomenon, not (like the race 
guage) interwoven with their primitive constitution, but of gradual 
growth. In the time of 

it was at its full maturity : 


Llerodotus, and even a century earlier, 
but there had been a period when no 
o the whole Hellenic body existed. 


religious meetings common | 
vthian, Nemean, and Isthmian 


What are called the Olympic, I 
games, (the four most conspicuous amidst many others analogous, ) 
were, in reality, great re 
their special sanction, name 
—the closest association the 
mmon worship and the sympathy in common amusemen 


ligious festivals, — for the gods then gave 
, and presence, to reereative meetings, 
n prevailed between the feelings of 
co t.3 


’ See the interesting remarks of Dio Chrysostom on the attachment of the 
‘nhabitants of Olbia (or Borysthenes) to the Homeric poems: most of them, 
he says, could repeat the Iliad by heart, though their dialect was partially 
barbarized, and the cify in a sad state of ruin (Dio Chrysost. Orat. XXXVI. Pp. 
78, Reisk). 

3 Plato, Legg. ii. 1, p. 653; Kratylus, p. 406; and Dionys. Hal. Ars Rhe- 
toric. c. 1-2, p. 226, --. Θεὸς μὲν γέ που πάντως πάσης ἡστιυοσοῦν πινηγυρεως 
ἡγεμὼν καὶ ἐπώνυμος " οἷον ᾿Ολυωπίων wiv, ᾿Ολύαπιος Ζεύς " τοῦ 
᾿Απολλῶν 


δ᾽ ἐν ᾿υϑοῦ, 


OLYMPIC AND PYTHIAN GAMES. 241 


’ . . , . 

Though this association is now no longer recorn} it i 
theless, essential that we should k = it fi ΠΝ hci 0d 
: : eep it fu fi τ 

ae τῇ pt y before us, it 
— to understand the life and proceedings of the Greek: To 
ero . is ; 7 
, dotus and his contemporaries, these creat festivals, th Ἵ 
~~ ᾿ a Ὁ Ψ᾿ ᾿ _ ν᾿ 
requented by crowds from every part of Greece, w “dbo 
᾽ 


" > i ; . er γ 
whelming importance and interest ; yet they ἢ digs 


loc: “acti s.8 : ad once been pu 
eal, attracting no visitors except from a very narro Mis ρα 
W neighbor- 
> 


hood. In the Homeric poems, much is said ak 
SS νος κονδν νοις ' Said about the common 
~~ special places consecrated to and occupied ἢ 
severé 2M : thief: Ἷ μὴ 
al of them: the chiefs celehrate funeral eames ; is 
a deceased father, which are visited b ids ie, ge 
parts of Greece, but nothing meen 3 Nearer ee 
part : ars to manifest publi 
— αὐ me g st public or tow 
stivals open to Grecian visitors generally.! And : 
rocky Pytho, with its templ i i gtd 
‘ emple, stands out in the ΠῚ: 
doth venerated and rich, — the Pythi pei 
. ‘thian games : 
intendence of the Amphi ve eee under the super- 
he Amphiktyons, with continuous enrolment of 
nt ὁ 


after 


victors ᾿ς i 
: ors, and a t an-Hellenic reputation, do not begin until 
γον. War, in the 48th Olympiad, or 586 B o2 
: 16 Olympic games, more conspicuous than the Pythian 
ae ee ξ as 
as considerably older, are also remarkable on another pear 


Apollo, the Muses, and Dionysus are ξυνεορτασταὶ καὶ &v 
ymn t . ao ; 
oe be τον" 146). The same view of the sacred games is given | 
BR nai erence to the Romans and the Volsci (ii. 36-37): “ Se, nie cd 
᾿ εκ conte ins 2 ¢ . . - = * C ‘ad 
Dargeanien a εν αι δῷ ab ludis, festis diebus, ccetu quodammodo tna 
abigi.” δ Ἢ — tos esse......ideo nos ab sede piorum, ctu, concili 
‘Tested Mien = pare ἴο contrast this with the dislike and a ὅν 
ine an: ololatria omnium ludorum mater est, — quod ee a te 
ον me idolo, quis ludus sine sacrificio 2” (De Spectaculi p ag 
1a ΧΧΠΙ. 20... - ᾿ Ε . 9 . 
ia Ἂ ἐᾷ 630 679. The games celebrated by hens, in ie i 
rc ’ = amed in the old epic (Pausan. v. 17 4; Apollodér 9 28) . 
> Stra 0, ix. p. 42]: Paus in 7 =F «de My Ole 
<1; san. x. 7,3. The first Pythi 
hy ‘the ἃ “pa ΟΞ aks rst Pythian games celebrat 
reward i sera after the Sacred War, carried with them a havens 
. Θ victor (an ἀγὼν γρηματίτ: ᾿ . ἢ 
᾿ ; yc); but in the ne 
an ga : xt, or second Pyth- 
pte μι nothing was given but an honorary reward or-wrenth of | ae 
Ι ἀγὼν στεφανίτης): the first coinci τ ᾽ aure 
“ cide w i : 
with Olympiad 49, 3. ith Olympiad 48, 3; the second 
Com ῷ »ν 
ὩΣ -_ = ad Pindar. Pyth. Argument.: Pausan. x. 37, 4-5: Kraus 
y — emeen, und Isthmien, sect. 3, 4, 5 = 
e Homeri . η 
Sacred War poy map oct sage seers δου κα ρράδηγρν ἐμ 
9 Whe is flourishing; earli ; 
colebrated by the Amphiktyons. £3 er than the Pythian games. ae 


WOL, IL 
1 l6nc 


yxopevrat (Homer 


en a 


— 


942 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


inasmuch as they supplied historical computers with the oldest 
backward record of continuous time. It was in the year 776 
r. C., that the Eleians inseribed the name of their countryman, 
Korcebus, as victor in the competition of runners, and that they 
began the practice of inseribing in like manner, in each Olympic, 
or fifth recurring year, the name of the runner who won the 
prize. Even for a long time after this, however, the Olympic 
games seem to have remained a local festival; the prize being 
uniformly carried off, at the first twelve Olympiads, by some 
competitor either of Elis or its immediate neighborhood. The 
Nemean and Isthmian games did not become notorious or fre- 
quented until later even than the Pythian. Soldn,! in his legis- 
lation, proclaimed the large reward of five hundred drachms fo: 
every Athenian who gained an Olympic prize, and the lower sum 
of one hundred drachms for an Isthmiac prize. He counts the 
former, as Pan-Hellenic rank and renown, an ornament even to 
the city of which the victor was a member, —the latter, as par- 
tial. and confined to the neighborhood. 

Of the beginnings of these great solemnities, we cannot pre 
sume to speak, except in mythical language: we know them only 


| Plutarch, Solén, 23. The Isthmian Agon was to a certain exteD! ἃ 
festival of old Athenian origin; for among the many legends respecting its 
first institution, one of the most notorious represented it as having heen 
founded by Theseus after his victory over Sinis at the Isthmus (see Schol. 
ad Pindar. Isth. Argument.; Pausan. i. 1, 4), or over Skeirén (Plutarch, 
Theseus, c. 25). Plutarch says that they were first established by Theseus 
as funeral games for Skeirén, and Pliny gives the same story (H. N. vii 47) 
According to Hellanikus, the Athenian Thedrs at the Isthmian games had 
a privileged place, (Plutarch, /. c.). 

There is, therefore, good reason why Solén should single out the ἀφίῃ 
mioniks as persons to be specially rewarded, not mentioning the Pythiop 
ἱκ and Nemeonikw,— the Nemean and Pythian games not having ther 
acquired Hellenic importance. Diogenes Laért. (i. 55) says that Sold 
provided rewards, not only for victories at the Olympic and Isthmian, but 
also ἀνάλογον ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλων, which Krause (Pythien, Nemeen und Isthmien, 
sect. 3, p. 13) supposes to be the truth: I think, very improbably. The 
sharp invective of Timokreon against -Themistocles, charging him among 
other things with providing nothing but cold meat at the Isthmian gamer 
(Ισϑμοῖ δ᾽ ἐπανδόκευε γελοίως ψυχρὰ κρέα παρέχων, Plutarch. Themistoc. « 
21), seems to imply that the Athenian visitors, whom the Theérs were calle 
upon to take care of at those games, were namerous. 


Vol. 2 8 


i _—s 


Ν 
1 
: 
J 
‘ 
; 
᾿ 


AMPHIKTYONIES. 248 


in their comparative maturity. But the habit of common sacri- 
fice, on a small scale, and between near neighbors, is a part of 
the earliest habits of Greece. The sentiment of fraternity, 
between two tribes or villages, first manifested itself by sending a 
sacred legation, or Theoria,' to offer sacrifice at each other’s fes- 
tivals, and to partake in the recreations which followed; thus 
establishing a truce with solemn guarantee, and bringing them- 
selves into direct connection each with the god of the other under 
his appropriate local surname. The pacific communion 80 
fostered, and the increased assurance of intercourse, as Greece 
cradually emerged from the turbulence and pugnacity of the 
heroic age, operated especially in extending the range of this 
ancient habit: the village festivals became town festivals, largely 
frequented by the citizens of other towns, and sometimes with 
special invitations sent round to attract Thedrs from every 
Hellenic community, — and thus these once humble assemblages 
gradually swelled into the pomp and immense confluence of the 
Olympic and Pythian games. The city administering such holy 
ceremonies enjoyed inviolability of territory during the month 
of their occurrence, being itself under obligation at that time 
to refrain from all aggression, as well as to notify by heralds? 
the commencement of the truce to all other cities not in avowed 
hostility with it. Elis imposed heavy fines upon other towns — 
even on the powerful Lacedemon — for violation of the Olympic 
truce, on pain of exclusion from the festival in case of non- 
payment. 

Sometimes this tendency to religious fraternity took a form 
called an Amphiktyony, different from the common festival. <A 


'In many Grecian states (as at /Egina, Mantineia, Troezen, Thasos, etc.) 
these Thedrs formed a permanent college, and seem to have been invested 
with extensive functions in reference to religious ceremonies: at Athens, 
they were chosen for the special occasion (see Thucyd. v. 47; Aristotel. 
Polit. ν. 8,3; O. Maller, Aginetica, p. 135; Demosthen. de Fals. Leg. p. 
380). 

2 About the sacred truce, Olympian, Isthmian, etc., formally announced 
by two heralds crowned with garlands sent from the administering city, and 
with respect to which many tricks were played, see Thucyd. v. 49; Xenophon, 
Hellen. iv. 7, 1-7; Plutarch, Lycurg. 23; Pindar, Isthm. ii. 35, — σπονδόφο- 
ροι --- κάρυκες opav—Thucyd. viii. 9-10, is also peculiarly instructive im 
regard to the practice and the feeling. 


Oe em, ee 


244 HISTORY Oc GREECE 


sertain number of towns entered into an exclusive religious 
partnership, for the celebration of sacrifices periodically to the 
god of a particular temple, which was supposed to be the common 
property, and under the common protection of all, though one of 
the number was often named as permanent administrator ; while 
all other Greeks were excluded. ‘That there were many religious 
partnerships of this sort, which have never acquired a place in 
history, among the early Grecian villages, we may, perhaps, 
gather from the etymology of the word, (Amphiktyons! desig- 
nates residents around, or neighbors, considered in the point of 
view of fellow-religionists,) as well as from the indications pre- 
served to us in reference to various parts of the country. Thua 
there was an Amphiktyony? of seven cities at the holy island 
of Kalauria, close to the harbor of Troezén. Hermioné, Epi- 
JEgina, Athens, Prasie, Nauplia, and Orchomenus, 
aintained the temple and sanctuary of Poseid6én in that 


daurus, 
jointly m 
island, (with which it would seem that the city of Troezén, though 


at hand, had no connection,) meeting there at stated periods, 
These seven cities, indeed, were not 


close 
to offer formal sacrifices. 
immediate neighbors, but the speciality and exclusiveness of 
their interest in the temple is seen from the fact, that when the 
Argeians took Nauplia, they adopted and fulfilled these religious 
obligations on behalf of the prior inhabitants: so, also, did the 
Lacedemonians, when they had captured Prasie, Again, in 
Triphylia,? situated between the Pisatid and Messenia, in the 
western part of Peloponnesus, there was a similar religious 
meeting and partnership of the Triphylians on Cape Samikon, 
at the temple of the Samian Poseid6n. Here, the inhabitants 
of Makiston were intrusted with the details of superintendence, 
as well as with the duty of notifying beforehand the exact time 
of meeting, (a precaution essential amidst the diversities and 
irregularities of the Greek ealendar,) and also of proclaiming 
what was called the Samian truce,—a temporary abstinence 
from hostilities, which bound all Triphylians during the holy 
period. This latter custom discloses the salutary influence of 
such institutions in presenting to men’s minds a common object 


“τῷ 


: Pindar, Isthm. iii. 26 (iv. 14) ; Nem. vi. 40. 
* Strabo, viii. p. 3764 3 Strabo. viii. p. 343; Pausan v. 6, L 


AMPHIKTYONIES. 245 


vf reverence, common duties, and common enjoyments; thus 
generating sympathies and feelings of mutual obligation amidst 
petty communities not less fierce than suspicious.! So, too, the 
twelve chief lonic cities in and near Asia Minor, had their Pan- 
Ionic Amphiktyony peculiar to themselves: the six Doric cities, 
in and near the southern corner of that peninsula, combined for 
the like purpose at the temple of the Triopian Apollo; and the 
feeling of special partnership is here particularly illustrated by 
the fact, that Halikarnassus, one of the six, was formally extruded 
by the remaining five, in consequence of a violation of the rules.? 
“here was also an Amphiktyonic union at Onchéstus in Beootia, 
in the venerated grove and temple of Poseidon: of whom it 
consisted, we are not informed. ‘These are some specimens of 
the sort of special religious conventions and assemblies which 
seem to have been frequent throughout Greece. Nor ought we 
t) omit those religious meetings and sacrifices which were com- 
mon to all the members of one Hellenic subdivision, such as the 
Pam-Beeotia to all the Boeotians, celebrated at the temple of the 
lionian Athéné near Koréneia,s—the common _ observances, 
rendered to the temple of Apollo Pythaéus at Argos, by all those 
neighboring towns which had once been attached by this religious 


At lolkos, on the north coast of the Gulf of Pagasa, and at the borders 

of the Magnétes, Thessalians, and Acheans of Phthiotis, was celebrated a 
periodical religious festival, or panegyris, the title of which we are prevented 
from making out by the imperfection of Strabo’s text (Strabo, ix. 436). It 
stands in the text as printed in ‘T’zschucke’s edition, Evravva δὲ καὶ τὴν 
lluAaixiy πανήγυριν, συνετέλουν. ‘The mention of Πυλαϊκὴ πανήγυρις, which 
‘onducts us only to the Amphiktyonic convocations of Thermopyle and 
Delphi is here unsuitable ; and the best or Parisian MS. of Strabo presents 
ἃ gap (one among the many which embarrass the ninth book) in the place 
of the word Πυλαϊκῆν. Dutneil conjectures τὴν Π :Aiaxny πανήγυριν, deriv- 
ing the name from the celebrated funeral games of the old epic celebrated 
by Akastus in honor of his father Pelias. Grosskurd (in his note on the 
passage) approves the conjecture, but it seems to me not probable that a 
Grecian panegyris would be named after Pelias. IlnAiaxyy, in reference to 
the neighboring mountain and town of Pelion, might perhaps be less ob- 
jectionable (see Dikwarch. Fragm. pp. 407-409, ed. Fuhr.), but we cannot 
determine with certainty. 

3 Herod. i.; Dionys. Hal. iv. 25. 

3 Strabo, ix. p. 412; Homer. Hymn. Apoll. 232. 

* Strabo, ix. p. 411. 


246 HISTORY OF GREECK. 


Argeians, — the similar periodical ceremonies 


thread to the 
frequented by all who bore the Achzan or /Etolian name, — and 


the splendid and exhilarating festivals, so favorable to the diffu- 
sion of the early Grecian poetry, which brought all Jonians at 
stated intervals to the sacred island of Delos.' This latter class 
of festivals agreed with the Amphiktyony, in being of a special 
‘ve character, not open to all Greeks. 


and exclus 
amongst these many Amphiktyonies, which, 


δὶ there was one 
though starting from the 
into so comprehensive 


smallest beginnings, gradually expanded 
a character, and acquired so marked a 
predominance over the rest, as to be called The Amphiktyonic 
Assembly, and even to have been mistaken by some authors for 
a sort of federal Hellenic Diet. Twelve sub-races, out of the 
number which made up entire Hellas, belonged to this ancient 
Amphiktyony, the meetings of which were held twice in every 
αὐ the temple of Apollo at Delphi; in autumn, 
at Thermopyl, in the sacred precinct of Démétér Amphiktyonis. 
Sacred deputies, including a chief called the Hieromnémon, and 
subordinates called the Pylagore, attended at these meetings 
from each of the twelve races: a crowd of volunteers seem to 
for purposes of sacrifice, trade, or 


year: in spring 


have accompanied them, 
Their special, and most important function, con- 


enjoyment. 
Delphian temple, in which all the 


sisted in watching over the 
a joint interest; and it was the immense 


twelve sub-races had 
which enhanced 


wealth and national ascendency of this temple, 
to so great a pitch the dignity of its acknowledged adminis- 
trators. 

The twelve constituent members were as follows: Thessalians, 


Beeotians, Dorians, lonians, Perrhebians, Magnétes, Lokrians, 
(Eteans, Achaans, Phokians, Dolopes, and Malians.2 All are 


i Thucyd. iii. 104; v. 59. Pausan. vii. 7,1; 24,3. Polyb. v. 8; ii. 54, 


Homer. Hymn. Apoll. 146. 

According to what seems to have been the ancient and 
the whole of the month Karneius was a time of peace among the Dorians; 
thoagh this was often neglected in practice at the time of the Peloponnesian 
war (Thue. v. 54). But it may be doubted whether there was any festival 
of Karneia common to all the Dorians: the Karneia at Sparta seems ta 


bave been a Lacedsemonian festival. 
* The list of the Amphiktyonic constituency is differer tly given by Aa 


sacred tradition, 


THE GREAT AMPHIKTYONIC ASSEMBLY. 347 


counted as races, (if we treat the Hellenes as a race, we must 
call these sub-races,) no mention being made of cities :! all count 
equally in respect to voting, two votes being given by the de 
ties from each of the twelve: moreover, we are told ‘saa te 
determining the deputies to be sent, or the manner in which the 
votes of each race should be given, the powerful Athens, Spar 
and Thebes, had no more influence than the ἜΘ ΥΥΝΝ te 
Dorian, or Beeotian city. This latter fact is distinctly stated a 
4¥schines, himself a pylagore sent to Delphi by Athens hal 
so, doubtless, the theory of the case stood: the votes of the Toni 
races counted for neither more nor less than two, whether - 
i deputies from Athens, or from the small towns of Erythre and 
riéné ; and, in like manner. the Dorian votes were as good in 
the division, when given by deputies from Boeon and Kytinion 
in the little territory of Doris, as if the men delivering thems had 
been Spartans. But there can be as little question that, in 
practice, the little Ionic cities, and the little Doric cities μὐονυ λοι 
tono share in the Amphiktyonic deliberations. ily the Ionic 
vote came to be substantially the vote of Athens, so, if Sparta 
was ever obstructed in the management of the Doric valle ight 
have been by powerful Doric cities like Argos or Corinth not 
by the insignificant towns of Doris. But the theory of Am shik- 
tyonic suffrage, as laid down by Aéschines, however little Soittued 
in practice during his day, is important, inasmuch as it shows ἴῃ 
full evidence the primitive and original constitution. The first 
establishment of the Amphiktyonic convocation dates from a 
time when all the twelve members were on a footing of equal 
independence, and when there were no overwhelming ie 
(such as Sparta and Athens) to cast in the shade the Liskin 
members, — when Sparta was only one Doric city, and Athens 
peg Pay city, among various others of consideration, not 
There are also other proofs which show the high antiquity of 


chines, by Harpokration, and by Pausanias. Tittmann (Ueber den Amphik- 
tyonischen Bund, sect. 3, 4, 5) analyzes and compares their various te 
ments, and elicits the catalogue given in the text. 

ἢ Hechines, De Fals. Legat. p. 280, c. 86. --- Κατημεϑμησάμην δὲ ἔϑνη 
ῥώδεκα, τὰ μετέχοντα τοῦ ἱεροῦ καὶ τούτων ἔδειξα ἕκαστον ἔϑνος ἰσό 
ψηφον γενόμενον, τὸ μέγιστον τῷ ἐλάττονι, ete. 


2438 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


this Amphiktyonic convocation. Adschines gives us an extrac 
from the oath which bad been taken by the sacred deputies, who 
attended on behalf of their respective races, ever since its first 
establishment, and which still apparently continued to be taken 
in his day. ‘The antique simplicity of this oath, and of the con- 
ditions to which the members bind themselves, betrays the early 
age in which it originated, as well as the humble resources of 
those towns to which it was applied.' “ We will not destroy 
any Amphiktyonic town, — we will not cut off any Amphiktyonic 
town from running water,” — such are the two prominent obliga- 
tions which ZEschines specifies out of the old oath. The second 
of the two carries us back to the simplest state of society, and 
to towns of the smallest size, when the maidens went out with 
their basins to fetch water from the spring, like the daughters 
οἵ Keleos at Eleusis. or those of Athens from the fountain of 
Kallirrhoé.2. We may even conceive that the special mention 
of this detail, in the covenant between the twelve races, is bor- 
rowed literally from agreements still earlier, among the villages 
or little towns in which the members of each race were distrib. 
ated. At any rate, il proves satisfactorily the very ancient date 
to which the commencement of the Amphiktyonic convocation 
must be referred. The belief of A®schines (perhaps, also, the 
belief general in his time) was, that it commenced simultaneously 
with the first foundation of the Delphian temple,—an event 
of which we have no historical knowledge ; but there seems rea- 
son to suppose that its original establishment is connected with 
Thermopy lez and Démétér Amphiktyonis, rather than with 
Delphi and Apollo. The special surname by which Demetér 
and her temple at Thermopyle was known,’ — the temple ot the 
hero Amphiktyon which stood at its side, —the word Pvla, 
which obtained footing in the language to designate the half- 
yearly meeting of the deputies both at Thermopyle and at 


—— -.. 


1 Aschin. Fals. Legat. p. 279, c. 35: “Awa δὲ ἐξ ἀρχὴς διεξῆλϑον τὴν 
κτίσιν τοῦ ἱεροῦ, καὶ τὴν πρώτην σύνοδον γενομένην τῶν ᾿Αμφικτυόνωψ, καὶ 
τοὺς ὅρκους αὐτῶν ἀνέγνων, ἐν οἷς ἔνορκον ἣν τοῖς ἀρχαίοις μηδεμίαν πόλει 
τῶν ᾿Αμφικτυονίδων ἀνάστατον ποιήσειν und’ ὑδάτων ναματιαίων εἴρξειν, etc. 

? Homer, Iliad, vi. 457. Homer, Hymn to 1)ξιμδιδε, 10, 107, 170. He 
rwot. vi. 137. Thucyd. ii. 15. 

* Herodot. vii. 200; Livy, xxxi- 32. 


FUNCTIONS OF THE AMPHIEKTYONIC ASSEMBLY. 949 


Delphi, — these indications point to Thermopylz (the real cen- 
tral point for all the twelve) as the primary place of meeting, 
and to the Delphian half-year as something secondary and super- 
added. On such a matter, however, we cannot go beyond a 
wnjecture. 

The hero Amphiktyon, whose temple stood at Thermopylae, 
passed in mythical genealogy for the brother of Hellén. And it 
may be aflirmed, with truth, that the habit of forming Amphikty 
onic unions, and of frequenting each other’s religious festivals 
was the great means of crrating and fostering the primitive 
feeling of brotherhood among the children of Hellén, in those 
early times when rudeness, insecurity, and pugnacity did so 
much to isolate them. A certain number of salutary habits and 
sentiments, such as that which the Amphiktyonic oath embodies, 
in regard to abstinence from injury, as well as to mutual protec- 
tion,! gradually found their way into men’s minds : the obligations 
thus brought into play, acquired a substantive efficacy of their 
own, and the religious feeling which always remained connected 
with them, came afterwards to be only one out of many complex 
agencies by which the later historical Greek was moved. Athens 
and Sparta in the days of their might, and the inferior cities in 
relation to them, played each their own political game, in which 
religious considerations will be found to bear only a subordinate 
part. 

The special function of the Amphiktyonic council, so far as 
we know it, consisted in watching over the safety, the interests, 
and the treasures of the Delphian temple. “If any one shall 
plunder the property of the god, or shall be cognizant thereof, or 
shall take treacherous counsel against the things in the temple, 
we will punish him with foot, and hand, and voice, and by every 
means in our power.” Soran the old Amphiktyonic oath, with 


' The festival of the Amarynthia in Eubcea, held at the temple of Artemis 
of Amarynthus, was frequented by the Ionic Chalcis and Eretria as well as 
by the Dryopic Karystus. In a combat proclaimed between Chalcis aud 
Eretria, to settle the question about the possession of the plain of Lelantum, 
lt was stipulated that no missile weapons should be used by either party 
this agreement was inscribed*and recorded in the temple of Artemis (Strabo 
ws. p. 448; Livy, xxxv. 38). 

11* 


Du HISTORY OF GREECE. 


an energetic imprecation attached to it.! And there are some 
examples in which the council? construes its functions so largely 
as to receive and adjudicate upon complaints against entire cities, 
for offences against the religious and patriotic sentiment of the 
Greeks generally. But for the most part its interference relates 
directly to the Delphian temple. The earliest case in which it is 
brought to our view, is the Sacred War against Kirrha, in the 
46th Olympiad, or 599 B. C., conducted by Eurylochus, the Thes 
salian, and Kleisthenes of Sikyén, and proposed by Solon of 
Athens 3 we find the Amphiktyons also, about half a century 
afterwards, undertaking the duty of collecting subscriptions 
throughout the Hellenic world, and making the contract with 
the Alkmzonids for rebuilding the temple after a conflagration.‘ 
But the influence of this council is essentially of a fluctuating 
and intermittent character. Sometimes it appears forward to 
decide, and its decisions command respect; but such occasions 
are rare, taking the general course of known Grecian history ; 
while there are other occasions, and those too especially affecting 
the Delphian temple, on which we are surprised to find nothing 
said about it. In the long and perturbed period which Thucydi 
dés describes, he never once mentioned the Amphiktyons, though 
the temple and the safety of its treasures form the repeated sub- 


1 Aschin. De Fals. Legat. c. 35, p. 279: compare ady. Ktesiphont. c. 36 
p. 406. 

9 See the charge which Aschines alleges to have been brought by the 
Lokrians of Amphissa against Athens in the Amphiktyonic Council (adv. 
Ktesiphont. c. 38, p. 409). Demosthenes contradicts his rival as to the fact 
of the charge having been brought, saying that the Amphisseans had not 
given the notice, customary and required, of their intention to bring it: a 
reply which admits that the charge mig/t be brought (Demosth. de Corona, 
c. 43, p. 277). 

The Amphiktyons offer a reward for the life of Ephialtes, the betrayer of 
the Greeks at Thermopyle; they also erect columns to the memory of the 
fallen Greeks in that memorable strait, the place of their half-yearly meeting 
(Herod. vii. 213-228) 

3 Zschin. adv. Ktesiph. 1, c. Plutarch, Solén. c. xi, who refers to Aris- 
totle ἐν τῇ τῶν Πυϑιονικῶν ἀναγραφῇ — Pausan. x. 37, 4; Schol. ad Pindar 
Nem. ix. 2. Τὰς ᾿Αμφικτυονικὰς δίκας, ὅσαι πόλεσι πρὸς πόλεις εἰσίν (Strabo 
ix. p. 420). These Amphiktyonic arbitrations, however are of rare occur 
rence in history, and very common γ᾽ abused. 

4 Herodot. ii. 180 v. 62. 


᾿ 
—— =. — oh es = 


+: 


POWER OF THE AMPHIKTYONIC ASSEMBLY. 951 


ject! as well of dispute as of express stipulation between Athens 
and Sparta : moreover, among the twelve constituent members 
of the council, we find three —the Perrhebians, the Magnétes, 
and the Achzans of Phthia— who were not even independent, 
but subject to the Thessalians, so that its meetings, when they 
were not matters of mere form, probably expressed only the feel- 
ings of the three or four leading members. When one or more 
of these great powers had a party purpose to accomplish against 
others, — when Philip of Macedon wished to extrude one of the 
members in order to procure admission for himself, — it became 
convenient to turn this ancient form into a serious reality, and we 
shall see the Athenian Aéschines providing a pretext for Philip 
to meddle in favor of the minor Beeotian cities against Thebes, 
by alleging that these cities were under the protection of the old 
Amphiktyonic oath.2 

It is thus that we have to consider the council as an element 
in Grecian affairs, — an ancient institution, one amongst many 
instances of the primitive habit of religious fraternization, but 
wider and more comprehensive than the rest, — at first, purely 
religious, then religious and political at once; lastly, more the 
latter than the former, — highly valuable in the infancy, but 
unsuited to the maturity of Greece, and called into real working 


only on rare occasions, when its efficiency happened to fall in 
with the views of Athens, Thebes, or the king of Macedon. In 
such special moments it shines with a transient light which at- 


fords a partial pretence for the imposing title bestowed on it by 
Cicero, — “ commune Gracie concilium :”3 but we should com- 


$54) pretended that the 

istration of the Delphian temple, under account 

of Greeks for the proper employment of its possessions, — thus setting aside 
the Amphiktyons altogether (Diodor. xvi. 27). 

2 Aschin. de Fals. Legat. p. 280,c. 36. The party intrigues which moved 
the council in regard to the Sacred War against the Phokians (B. ©. 355) 
may be seen in Didorus, XVi. 23-28, seq. 

3 Cicero, De Invention. ii. 23. The representation of Dionysius of Hali 
karnassus (Ant. Rom. iv. 25) overshoots the reality still more. 

About the common festivals and Amphiktyones of the Hellenic world 
generally, see Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, vol. i. sect. 22, 
24, 25; also, C. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech. StaatsalterthOmer. sect 


ll-13. 


252 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


pletely misi:terpret Grecian history if we regarded it as a fed- 
eral council, habitually directing or habitually obeyed. Had thers 
existed any such “ commune concilium” of tolerable wisdom and 
patriotism, and had the tendencies of the Hellenic mind been 
capable of adapting themselves to it, the whole course of later 
Grecian history would probably have been altered; the Mace- 
donian kings would have remained only as respectable neighbors, 
borrowing civilization from Greece, and expending their military 
energies upon Thracians and Illyrians ; while united Hellas might 
even have maintained her own territory against the conquering 
legions of Rome. 

The twelve constituent Amphiktyonic races remained unchanged 
until the Sacred War against the Phokians (Β. ο. 355), after 
which, though the number twelve was continued, the Phokians 
were disfranchised, and their votes transferred to Philip of Mace- 
don. It has been already mentioned that these twelve did not 
exhaust the whole of Hellas. Arcadians, Eleans, Pisans, Miny2, 
Dryopes, /£tolians, all genuine Hellens, are not comprehended 
in it; but all of them had a right to make use of the temple of 
Delphi, and to contend in the Pythian and Olympic games. The 
Pythian games, celebrated near Delphi, were under the superin- 
tendence of the Amphiktyons,! or of some acting magistrate chosen 
by and presumed to represent them: like the Olympic games, 
they came round every four years (the interval between one 
celebration and another being four complete years, which the 
Greeks called a Pentaetéris): the Isthmian and Nemean games 
recurred every two years. In its first humble form, of a compe- 
tition among bards to sing a hymn in praise of Apollo, this festi- 
val was doubtless of immemorial antiquity ;2 but the first exten. 


* Plutarch, Sympos. vii. 5, 1. 

*In this early phase of the Pythian festival, it is said to have been cele- 
brated every eight years, marking what we should call an Octaetéris, and 
what the early Greeks called an Ennaetéris (Censorinus, De Die Natali, c. 
18). This period is one of considerable importance in reference to the prin- 
ciple of the Grecian calendar, for ninety-nine lunar months coincide very 
nearly with eight solar years. The discovery of this coincidence is ascribed 
by Censorinus to Kleostratus of Tenedos, whose age is not directly known: 
he must be anterior to Meton, who discovered the cycle of nineteen 8018) 
years, but (I imagine) not much anterior. In spite of the authority of Idele: 
it seems to me not proved, nor can I believe, that this octennial period with its 


DELPHIAN ORACLE. 253 


sion of it into Pan-Hellenic notoriety (as I have already remark- 
ed), the first multiplication of the subjects of competition, and 
the first introduction of a continuous record of the conquerors, 
date only from the time when it came under the presidency of 
the Amphiktyons, at the close of the Sacred War against Kirrha. 
What is called the first Pythian contest coincides with the third 
year of the 48th Olympiad, or 585 B. c. From that period for- 
ward, the games become crowded and celebrated: but the date 
just named, nearly two centuries after the first Olympiad, is a 
proof that the habit of periodical frequentation of festivals, by 
numbers and from distant parts, grew up but slowly in the Gre- 
cian world. 

The foundation of the temple of Delphi itself reaches far be- 
vond all historical knowledge, forming one of the aboriginal in- 
stitutions of Hellas. It is a sanctified and wealthy place, even in 
the Iliad: the legislation of Lykurgus at Sparta is introduced 
under its auspices, and the earliest Grecian colonies, those of 
Sicily and Italy in the eighth century B. C., are established in 
consonance with its mandate. Delphi and Dodona appear, ir. 
the most ancient circumstances of Greece, as universally vene- 
rated oracles and sanctuaries : and Delphi not only receives honors 
and donations, but also answers questions, from Lydians, Phry- 
cians, Etruscans, Romans, ete.: it is not exclusively Hellenic. 
One of the valuable services which a Greek looked for from this 
and other great religious establishments was, that it should resolve 
his doubts in cases of perplexity, — that it should advise him 
whether to begin a new, or to persist in an old project, — that it 
should foretell what would be his fate under given circumstances, 
and inform him, if suffering under distress, on what conditions 


solar and lunar coincidence was known to the Grecks in the earliest times of 
their mythical antiquity, or before the year 600 8. c. See Ideler, Handbuch 
der Chronologie, vol. i. p. 366; vol. ii. p. 607. The practice of the Eleians to 
celebrate the Olympic games alternately after forty-nine and fifty lunar months, 
though attested for a later time by the Scholiast on Pindar, is not proved to 
be old. The fact that there were ancient octennial recurring festivals, does 
not establish a knowledge of the properties of the octaeteric or ennacteric 
period : nor does it seem to me that the details of the Beeotian δαφνηφορία͵ 
described in Proclus ap. Photium, sect. 239, are very ancient. See, on the 
old mythical Octaetéris, Ὁ. Miiller, Orchomenos 218, segq., and Krause, Dis 
Pythiern, Nemeen, und Isthmien, sect. 4, p. 22. 


254 HISTORY OF GREECL 


the gods would grant him relief. The three priestesses of Do- 
dona with their venerable oak, and the priestess of Delphi sit- 
ting on her tripod under the influence of a certain gas or vapor 
exhaling from the rock, were alike competent to determine these 
difficult points: and we shall have constant occasion to notice in 
this history, with what complete faith both the question was put 
and the answer treasured up,— what serious influence it often 
exercised both upon public and private proceeding.! The hex- 
ameter verses, in which the Pythian priestess delivered herself, 
were, indeed, often so equivocal or unintelligible, that the most 
serious believer, with all anxiety to interpret and obey them, 
often found himself ruined by the result; yet the general faith 
in the oracle was noway shaken by such painful experience. For 
as the unfortunate issue always admitted of being explained upon 
two hypotheses, — either that the god had spoken falsely, or that 
his meaning had not been correctly understood, —no man of 
genuine piety ever hesitated to adopt the latter. There were 
many other oracles throughout Greece besides Delphi and Do- 
dona: Apollo was open to the inquiries of the faithful at Ptdon 
in Beotia, at Abz in Phokis, at Branchide near Miletus, at 
Patara in Lykia, and other places: in like manner, Zeus gave 
answers at Olympia, Poseid6n at Tenarus, Amphiaraus at Thebes, 
Amphilochus at Mallas, ete. And this habit of consulting the 


‘See the argument of Cicero in favor of divination, in the first book of 
his valuable treatise De Divinatione. Chrysippus, and the ablest of the stoic 
philosophers, both set forth a plausible theory demonstrating, a priori, the 
probability of prophetic warnings deduced from the existence and attributes 
of the gods: if you deny altogether the occurrence of such warnings, so 
essential to the welfare of man, you must deny either the existence, ar the 
foreknowledge, or the beneficence, of the gods (c. 38). Then the veracity of 
the Delphian oracle had been demonstrated in innumerable instances, of 
which Chrysippus had made a large collection: and upon what other sup- 
position could the immense credit of the oracle be explained (c. 19) 1 “ Col- 
legit innumerabilia oracula Chrysippus, et nullum sine locuplete teste et 
auctore: qu quia nota tibi sunt, relinquo. Defendo unum hoc: nunquam 
illud oraculum Delphis tam celebre clarumque fuisset, neque tantis donis 
refertum omnium populorum et regum, nisi omnis xtas oraculorum illoram 
veritatem esset experta...... Maneat id, quod negari non potest, nisi omnem 
historiam perverterimus, multis ssecu/is verax fuisse id oraculum.” Cicero 
admits that it had become less trustworthy in his time, and tries to explain 
this decline of prophetic power : compare Plutarch, De Defeet. Oracu). 


ANALOGIES PERVADING THE HELLENIC RACE. 255 


aracle formed part of the still more general tendency of the 
Greek mind to undertake no enterprise without having first as- 
certained how the gods viewed it, and what measures they were 
likely to take. Sacrifices were offered, and the interior of the 
victim carefully examined, with the same intent: omens, prodi- 
gies, unlooked-for coincidences, casual expressions, etc., were all 
construed as significant of the divine will. To sacrifice with a 
view to this or that undertaking, or to consult the oracle with the 
same view, are familiar expressions! embodied in the language. 
Nor could any man set about a scheme with comfort, until he 
had satisfied himself in some manner or other that the gods were 
favorable to it. 

The disposition here adverted to is one of those mental analo- 
cies pervading the whole Hellenic nation, which Herodotus indi- 
cates. And the common habit among all Greeks, of respectfully 
listening to the oracle of Delphi, will be found on many occasions 
useful in maintaining unanimity among men not accustomed to 
obey the same political superior. In the numerous colonies espe- 
cially, founded by mixed multitudes from distant parts of Greece, 
the minds of the emigrants were greatly determined towards cor- 
dial coéperation by their knowledge that the expedition had been 
directed, the cekist indicated, and the spot either chosen or ap- 
proved, by Apollo of Delphi. Such in most cases was the fact: 
that god, according to the conception of the Greeks, “ takes de- 
licght always in the foundation of new cities, and himself in person 
lays the first stone.”? 

These are the elements of union — over and above the com- 
mon territory, described in the last chapter — with which the 
historical Hellens take their start: community of blood, language, 
religious point of view, legends, sacrifices, festivals,3 and also 
(with certain allowances) of manners and character. The anal 


' Xenophon, Anabas. vii. 8, 20: Ὁ δὲ ᾿Ασιδάτης ἀκούσας, ὅτι πάλιν é 7’ 
αὐτὸν τεϑυμένος εἴη Ξενοφὼν, ἐξαυλίζεται, ete. Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 2, 
22: μὴ χρηστηριάζεσϑαι τοὺς “Ἕλληνας ἐφ᾽ Ἑλλήνων πολέμῳ, -τ-ι compare 
Iliad, vii. 450. 

3 Callimach. Hymn. Apoil. 55, with Spanheim’s note ; Cicero, De Divinat 


it. 
* See this point strikingly illustrated by Plato, Repub. v. pp. 70-471 


(c. 16), and Isocrates, Panegyr. p. 12 


256 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ogy of manners and character between the rude inhabitants of 
the Arcadian Kynetha' and the polite At.ens, was indeed ac- 
companied with wide differences: yet if we compare the twu 
with foreign contemporaries, we shall find certain negative char- 
acteristics, of much importance, common to both. In no city 
of historical Greece did there prevail either human sacrifices, 
—or deliberate mutilation, such as cutting off the nose, ears, 
hands, feet, etc,,—or castration,—or selling of children into 
slavery, — or polygamy, — or the feeling of nnlimited obedience 
towards one man: all customs which might be pointed out as 
existing among the contemporary Carthaginians, Egyptians, Per- 
sians, Thracians,? ete. ‘The habit of running, wrestling, boxing, 


ete.. in gymnastic contests, with the body perfectly naked, 


was common to all Greeks, having been first adopted as a Lace- 
demonian fashion in the fourteenth Olympiad: Thucydidés and 
Herodotus remark, that it was not only not practised, but even 
regarded as unseemly, among non-Hellens.4 Of such customs, 
indeed, at once common to all the Greeks, and peculiar to them 


' Respecting the Arcadian Kynetha, see the remarkable observations of 
Polybius iv, 17-23, 

3 See above, vol. i. ch. vi. p. 126 of this History. 

3 For examples and evidences of these practices, see Herodot, ii. 162; the 
umputation of the nose and ears of Patarbémis, by Apries, king of Egypt 
(Xenophon, Anab. i. 9-13). There were a large number of men deprived 
of hands, feet, or eyesight, in the satrapy of Cyrus the younger, who had 
inflicted all these severe punishments for the prevention of crime, — he did 
not (says Xenophon) suffer criminals to scoff at him (ela καταγελᾷν), The 
ἐκτομὴ was carried on at Sardis (Herodot. iii. 49), — 500 παῖδες ἐκτόμεαι 
formed a portion of the yearly tribute paid by the Babylonians to the court 
of Susa (Herod. iii, 92). Selling of children for exportation by the Thra- 
cians (Herod. v. 6); there is some trace of this at Athens, prior to the Solo- 
nian legislation (Plutarch, Solén, 23), arising probably out of the cruel 
state of the law between debtor and creditor. For the sacrifice of children 
to Kronus by the Carthaginians, in troubled times, (according to the lan- 
guage of Ennius, “ Pceni soliti suos sacrificare puellos,”) Didor. xx. 14; xiii. 
86. Porphyr. de Abstinent. ii. 56: the practice is abundantly illustrated in 
Μόνον" Die Religion der Phonizier, pp. 298-304. 

Arnan blames Alexander for cutting off the nose and ears of the Satrap 
Séssus, saying that it was an act altogether barbaric, (i. 6. non-Hellenic,) 
(Exp. Al iv. 7, 6.) About the σεθασμὸς ϑεοπγεπὴς περὶ τὸν θασιλέα in 
Asia, see Strabo, xi. p. 526. 

4 Thucyd. i 6; Herodot. i. 10. 


POLITICAL DISUNION. 257 


as distinguished from others, we cannot specify a great number; 
but we may see enough to convince ourselves that there did really 
exist, in spite of local differences, a general Hellenic sentiment 
and character, which counted among the cementing causes of an 
union apparently so little assured. 

For we must recollect that, in respect to political sovereignty, 
complete disunion was among their most cherished principles, 
The only source of supreme authority to which a Greek felt 
respect and attachment, was to be sought within the walls of his 
own city. Authority seated in another city might operate upon 
his fears, — might procure for him increased security and advan- 
tages, as we shall have occasion hereafter to show with regard to 
Athens and her subject allies, — might even be mildly exercised, 
and inspire no special aversion : but, still, the principle of it was 
repugnant to the rooted sentiment of hie mind, and he is always 
found gravitating towards the distinct sovereignty of his own 
boulé, or ekklésia. This is a disposition common both to democ- 
racies and oligarchies, and operative even among the different 
towns belonging to the same subdivision of the Hellenic name,— 
Achans, Phokians, Boeotians, etc. The twelve Achwan cities 
are harmonious allies, with a periodical festival which partakes 
of the character of a congress,— but equal and independent 
political communities: the Beeotian towns, under the presidency 
of Thebes, their reputed metropolis, recognize certain common 
obligations, and obey, on various particular matters, chosen offi- 
cers named beeotarchs, —but we shall see, in this, as in other 
cases, the centrifugal tendencies constantly manifesting them- 
selves, and resisted chiefly by the interests and power of Thebes 
That great, successful, and fortunate revolution, which merged 
the several independent political communities of Attica into the 
single unity of Athens, took place before the time of authentie 
history: it is connected with the name of the hero Theseus, 
but we know not how it was effected, while its comparatively 
large size and extent, render it a signal exception to Hellenic 
tendencies generally. 

Political disunion — sovereign authority within the city walls 
—thus formed a settled maxim in the Greek mind. The rela 


tion between one city and another was an international relation, 
VOL. & 17oc. 


2958 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


not a relation subsisting between members of a common politica! 
aggregate. Within a few miles from his own city-walls, an 
Athenian found himself in the territory of another city, wherein 
he was nothing more than an alien, — where he could not acquire 
property in house or land, nor contract a legal marriage with any 
native woman, nor sue for legal protection against injury, except 
through the mediation of some friendly citizen. The right of 
intermarriage, and of acquiring landed property, was occasionally 
granted by a city to some individual non-freeman, as matter of 
special favor, and sometimes (though very rarely) reciprocated 
generally between two separate cities.!| But the obligations 
between one city and another, or between the citizen of the one 
and the citizen of the other, are all matters of special covenant, 
agreed to by the sovereign authority ineach. Such coexistence 
of entire political severance with so much fellowship in other 
ways, is perplexing in modern ideas, and modern language is not 
well furnished with expressions to describe Greek political 
phenomena. We may say that an Athenian citizen was an alien 
when he arrived as a visitor in Corinth, but we can hardly say 
that he was a foreigner; and though the relations between Cor- 
inth and Athens were in principle international, yet that word 
would be obvious!y unsuitable to the numerous petty autonomies 
of Hellas, besides that we require it for describing the relations 
of Hellenes generally with Persians or Carthaginians. We are 
compelled to use a word such as interpolitical, to describe the 
transactions between separate Greek cities, so numerous in the 
course of this history. 

As, on the one hand, a Greek will not consent to look for sove- 
reign authority beyond the limits of his own city, so, on the other 
hand, he must have a city to look to: scattered villages will not 
satisfy in his mind the exigencies of social order, security, and 
dignity. Though the coalescence of smaller towns into a larger 
is repugnant to his feelings, that of villages into a town appears 
to him a manifest. advance in the scale of civilization. Such, at 
least, is the governing sentiment of Greece throughout the his- 
torical period; for there was always a certain portion of the 


' Aristot. Polit. iii 6.12. It is unnecessary to refer to the mapy inserip- 
tions which confer spon some individual non-freeman the right of ἐπιγαμία 


and éyxTye:c 


VILLAGE COMMUNITIES. 259 


Hellenic aggregate — the rudest and least advanced among them 
—who dwelt in unfortified villages, and upon whom the citizen 
of Athens, Corinth, or Thebes, looked down as inferiors. Such 
village residence was the character of the Epirots! universally, 
and prevailed throughout Hellas itself, in those very early and 
even ante-Homeric times upon which Thucydidés looked back 
as deplorably barbarous ;—times of universal poverty and inse- 
curity, — absence of pacific intercourse,— petty warfare and 
plunder, compelling every man to pass his life armed, — endless 
migration without any local attachments. Many of the consid- 
erable cities of Greece are mentioned as aggregations of pre- 
existing villages, some of them in times comparatively recent. 
Tegea and Mantineia in Arcadia, represent, in this way, the 
confluence of eight villages, and five villages respectively; Dymé 
in Achaia was brought together out of eight villages, and Elis in 
the same manner, at a period even later than the Persian inva- 
sion ;2 the like seems to have happened with Megara and Tan- 
agra. A large proportion of the Arcadians continued their 
village life down to the time of the battle of Leuktra, and it 
suited the purposes of Sparta to keep them thus disunited; a 
policy which we shall see hereafter illustrated by the dismember- 
ment of Mantineia (into its primitive component villages), which 
Agesilaus carried into effect, but which was reversed as soon as 
the power of Sparta was no longer paramount, — as well as by 
the foundation of Megalopolis out of a large number of petty 
Arcadian towns and villages, one of the capital measures ot 
Epameinondas. As this measure was an elevation of Arcadian 


' Skylax, Peripi. c. 28-33; Thucyd. ii. 80. See Dio Chrysostom, Or. 
xlvii. p. 225, vol. ii. ed. Reisk, — μᾶλλον ἠροῦντο διοικιεῖσϑαι κατὰ κώμας, τοῖς 
BapBapore ὁμοίους, ἢ σχῆμα πόλεως καὶ ὄνομα ἔχειν. 

2 Strabo, viii. pp. 337, 342, 386; Pausan. viii. 45, 1; Plutarch, Quasst 
Gree. c. 17-37. 

3 Pausan. viii. 27, 2-5; Diod. xv. 72: compare Arist. Polit. ii. 1, 5. 

The description of the διοίκεσις of Mantineia is in Xenophon, Hellen. v. 
2, 6-8: it is a flagrant example of his philo-Laconian bias. We see by the 
case of the Phokians after the Sacred War, (Diodor. νι 60; Pausan. x. 3, 
2,) how heavy a punishment this διοίκεσις was. Compare, also, the instructive 
speech of the Akanthian envoy Kleigenés, at Sparta, when he invoked the 
Lacedzmonian interference for the purpose of crushing the incepient feder- 
ation, or junction of towns into a common political aggregate, which was 


260 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


importance, so the reverse proceeding —the breaking up of a 
city into its elementary villages — was not only a sentence of 
privation and suffering, but also a complete extinction of Grecian 
rank and dignity. 

The QOzolian Lokrians, the /®tolians, and the Akarnanians 
maintained their separate village residence down to a still later 
period, preserving along with it their primitive rudeness and 
disorderly pugnacity.!| Their villages were unfortified, and 
defended only by comparative inaccessibility ; in case of need, 
they fled for safety with their cattle into the woods and mountains. 
Amidst such inauspicious circumstances, there was no room ἴοι 
that expansion of the social and political feelings to which pro- 
tected intramural residence and increased numbers gave birth; 
there was no consecrated acropolis or agora,— no ornamented tem- 
ples and porticos, exhibiting the continued offerings of successive 
generations,” — no theatre for music or recitation, no gymnasium 
for athletic exercises,-—none of those fixed arrangements, for 
transacting public business with regularity and decorum, which the 
Greek citizen, with his powerful seutiment of locality, deemed 
essential to a dignified existence. The village was nothing 
more than a fraction and a subordinate, appertaining as a limb 
to the organized body called the city. But the city and the state 
growing up round Olynthus (Xen. Hellen. v. 2, 11-2). The wise and 
admirable conduct of Olynthus, and the reluctance of the neighboring cities 
to merge themselves in this union, are forcibly set forth; also, the interest 
of Sparta in keeping all the Greek towns disunited. Compare the descrip- 
tion of the treatment of Capua by the Romans (Livy, xxvi. 16). 

' Thucyd. i. 5; iii. 94. Xenoph. Hellen. iv. 6, 5. 

* Pausanias, x. 4, 1 ; his remarks on the Phokian πόλις Panopeus indicate 
what he included in the ide: of a πόλις : eiye ὀνομώσαι τις πόλιν καὶ τού- 
τους, οἷς ye οὐκ ἀρχεῖα, ov γυμνάσιόν ἐστιν" οὐ ϑέατρον, οὐκ ἀγορὰν ἔχουσιν, 
οὐχ ὕδωρ κατερχόμενον ἐς κρήνην " ἀλλὰ ἐν PTEYOU κείλαις κατὰ τὰς καλύβας 
μάλιστα τὰς ἐν τοῖς ὄρεσιν, ἐνταῦϑα οἰκοῦσι, emt Χαμώδρᾳ. ὅμως δὲ ὕροι γε 
τῆς χώρας εἰσιν αὐτοῖς εἰς τοὺς ὁμόρους, καὶ ἐς τὸν σύλλογον συνέδρους καὶ 
αὐτοι πέμπουσι τὸν Φωκικόν. 

The μικρὰ πολίσματα of the Pelasgians on the peninsula of Mount Athés 
(Thucyd. iv. 109) seem to have been something between villages and cities. 
When the Phokians, after the Sacred War, were deprived of their cities and 
forced into villages by the Amphiktyons, the order was that no village should 
contain more than fifty houses, and that no village should be within the dis 
tance of a furlong of any otier (Diodor. xvi. 60). 


ANTI-HELLENIC INHABITANTS. 201 


ste in his mind, and in his language, one and the same. While 
no organization less than the city can satisfy the exigencies! of 
an intelligent freeman, the city is itself a perfect and self-sufficient 
whole, admitting no incorporation into any higher political unity. 
It deserves notice that Sparta, even in the days of her greatest 
power, was not (properly speaking) a city, but a mere aggluti- 
nation of five adjacent villages, retaining unchanged its old- 
fashioned trim: for the extreme defensibility of its frontier and the 
military prowess of its inhabitants, supplied the absence of walls, 
while the discipline imposed upon the Spartan, exceeded in rigor 
and minuteness anything known in Greece. And thus Sparta, 
though less than a city in respect to external appearance, was 
more than a city in respect to perfection of drilling and fixity 
of political routine. The contrast between the humble appear- 
ance and the mighty reality, is pointed out by Thucydidés.2_ The 
inhabitants of the small territory of Pisa, wherein Olympia is 
situated, had once enjoyed the honorable privilege of adminis- 
tering the Olympic festival. Having been robbed of it, and 
subjected by the more powerful Eleians, they took advantage ot 
various movements and tendencies among the larger Grecian 
powers to try and regain it; and on one of these occasions, we 
find their claim repudiated because they were villagers, and 
unworthy of so great a distinction. There was nothing to be 
called a city in the Pisatid territory. 

In going through historical Greece, we are compelled to 
accept the Hellenic aggregate with its constituent elements as a 
primary fact to start from, because the state of our information 
does not enable us to ascend any higher. By what circumstances, 
or out of what preéxisting elements, this aggregate was brought 
together and modified, we find no evidence entitled to credit. 
There are, indeed, various names which are affirmed to designate 
ante-Hellenic inhabitants of many parts of Greece, — the Pelasgi, 


' Aristot. Polit. i. 1,8. ἡ δ᾽ ἐκ πλειόνω: μῶν κοινωνία τέλειος πόλις ἡ δὴ 
πάσης ἔχουσα πέρας τῆς αὐταρκείας. Compare also iii. 6,14; and Plata 
Legg. viii. p 848. 

* Thucyd. i. 10. οὔτε ξυνοικισϑείσης πόλεως, οὔτε ἱεροῖς καὶ κατασκευαΐῖᾳ 
πολυτέλεσι χρησαμένης, κατὰ κώμας δὲ τῷ παλαιῷ τῆς Ἕλλώδος τρόπῳ οἰκισ 
ϑείσης, φαίνοιτ᾽ ἂν ὑποδεεστέρα. 

* Xenophon, Hellen. iii. 2, 31. 


962 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the Leleges, the Kurétes, the Kaukones, the Aones, the Tem- 
mikes, the Hyantes, the Telchines, the Boeotian Thracians, the 
Telebox, the Ephyri, the Phlegyx, etc. These are names 
belonging to legendary, not to historical Greece, — extracted out 
of a variety of conflicting legends, by the logographers and subse- 
quent historians, who strung together out of them a supposed 
history of the past, at a time when the conditions of historical 
evidence were very little understood. ‘That these names desig- 
nated real nations, may be true, but here our knowledge ends. 
We have no well-informed witness to tell us their times, thei 
limits of residence, their acts, or their character; nor do we know 
how far they are identical with or diverse from the historical 
Hellens,— whom we are warranted in calling, not, indeed, the first 
inhabitants of the country, but the first known to us upon any tol- 
erable evidence. If any man is inclined to call the unknown ante- 
Hellenic period of Greece by the name of Pelasgic, it is open to 
him to do so; but this is a name carrying with it no assured 
predicates, noway enlarging our insight into real history, nor 
enabling us to explain — what would be the real historical 
problem — how or from whom the Hellens acquired that stock 
of dispositions, aptitudes, arts, etc., with which they begin their 
career. Whoever has examined the many conflicting systems 
respecting the Pelasgi,—from the literal belief of Clavier, 
Larcher, and Raoul Rechette, (which appears to me, at least, the 
most consistent way of proceeding,) to the interpretative and 
half-incredulous processes applied by abler men, such as Niebuhr, 


or O. Miller, or Dr. Thirlwall,! — will not be displeased with my 


! Larcher, Chronologie d’Hérodote, ch. viii. pp. 215, 274; Raoul Rochette, 
Histoire des Colonies Grecques, book i. ch. 5; Niebuhr, ROmische Geschichte, 
vol. i. pp. 26-64, 2d ed. (the section entitled Die Oenotrer und Pelasger) ; 
O. Miiller, Die Etrusker, vol. i. (Einleitung, ch. ii. pp. 75-100); Dr. Thirl- 
wall, History of Greece, vol. i. ch. ii. pp. 36-64. The dissentient opinions of 
Kruse and Mannert may be found in Kruse, Hellas, vol. i. pp. 398-425; 
Mannert, Geographie der Griechen und Romer, part viii. Introduct. p. 4, 
8¢ 74. 

Niebuhr puts together all the mythical and genealogical traces, many of 
them in the highest degree vague and equivoéal, of the existence of Pelasgi 
in various localities ; and then, summing up their cumulative effect, asserts 
‘“not as an hypothesis, but with full historical conviction,” p. 54) “that 
there was a time when the Pelasgians, perhaps the most extended people in 


PELASGIAN LANGUAGE. 268 


resolution to decline so insoluble a problem. No attested facts 
are now present to us—none were present to Herodotus and 
Thucydides, even in their age —on which to build trustworthy 
affirmations respecting the ante-Hellenic Pelasgians. And where 
such is the case, we may without impropriety apply the remark 
of Herodotus, respecting one of the theories which he had heard 
for explaining the inundation of the Nile by a supposed con- 
nection with the circumfluous Ocean, —that “the man who 
carries up his story tnto the invisible world, passes out of the 
range of criticism.”! 

As far as our knowledge extends, there were no towns or vil- 
lages called Pelasgian, in Greece proper, since 776 B. c. But 
there still existed in two different «'aces, even in the age of 
[{erodotus, people whom he believed to be Pelasgians. One 
portion of these occupied the towns of Plakia and Skylaké near 
Kyzikus, on the Propontis ; anothe: dwelt in a town called Krés- 
ton, near the Thermaic gulf.2 There were, moreover, certain 
other Pelasgian townships which he does not specify, — it seems, 
indeed, from Thucydides, that there were some little Pelasgian 
townships on the peninsula of Athos.3 Now, Herodotus acquaints 
us with the remarkable fact, that the people of Kréstén, those of 
Plakia and Skylaké, and those of the other unnamed Pelasgian 
townships, all spoke the same language, and each of them re 
spectively a different language from their neighbors around them. 


ail Europe, were spread from the Po and the Arno to the Rhyndakus,” (near 
Kyzikus,) with only an interruption in Thrace. What is perhaps the most 
remarkable of all, is the contrast between his feeling of disgust, despair, and 
aversion to the subject, when he begins the inquiry (“the name Pelasgi,” he 
says, “is odious to the historian, who hates the spurious philology out of which the 
pretences to knowledge on the subject of such extinct people arise,” p. 28), and the 
full confidence and satisfaction with which he concludes it. 

' Herodot. ii. 23: Ὁ δὲ περὶ τοῦ ᾿Ὡκεάνου εἴπας, ἐς ἀφανὲς τὸν μῦϑον 
ἀνενείκας, οὐκ ἔχει ἔλεγχον 

* That Kréstén is the proper reading in Herodotus, there seems every 
reason to believe —not Kroton, as Dionys. Hal. represents it (Ant. Rom 
i. 26) —in spite of the authority of Niebuhr in favor of the latter. 

ὃ Thucyd. iv. 109. Compare the new Fragmenta of Strabo, lib. vii. edited 
from the Vatican MS. by Kramer, and since by Tafel (Tiibingen, 1844), 
sect. 34, p. 26, --- ὥκησαν δὲ τὴν Χεῤῥόνησον ταύτην τῶν ἐκ Λῆμναυ Πελασ. 
γῶν τινες, εἰς πέντε διῃρήμενοι πολίσματα" Κλεωνὰς, ᾽Ολόφυξον, As οϑώους, 
Δῖον, Θύσσον. 


264 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


He informs us, moreover, that their language was a barbarous (4. 6 
a non-Hellenic) language; and this fact he quotes as an evidences 
to prove that the ancient Pelasgian language was a barbarous 
language, or distinct from the Hellenic. He at the same time 
states expressly that he has no positive knowledge what language 
the ancient Pelasgians spoke, — one proof, among others, that no 
memorials nor means of distinct information concerning that 
people, could have been open to him. 

This is the one single fact, amidst so many conjectures con- 
cerning the Pelasgians, which we can be said to know upon the 
testimony of a eompetent and contemporary witness : the few town- 
ships —scattered and inconsiderable, but all that Herodotus in his 
day knew as Pelasgian — spoke a barbarous language. And upon 
such a point, he must be regarded as an excellent judge. If, then, 
(infers the historian,) all the early Pelasgians spoke the same 
language as those of Kréstén and Plakia, they must have changed 
their language at the time when they passed into the Hellenic 
aggregate, or became Hellens. Now, Herodotus conceives that 
aggregate to have been gradually enlarged to its great actual size 
by incorporating with itself not only the Pelasgians, but several 
other nations once barbarians ;' the Hellens having been origi- 
nally an inconsiderable people. Among those other nations 
once barbarian, whom Herodotus supposes to have become 
Hellenized, we may probably number the Leleges; and with 
respect to them, as well as to the Pelasgians, we have contem- 
porary testimony proving the existence of barbarian Leleges in 
later times. Philippus, the Karian historian, attested the pres- 
ent existence, and believed in the past existence, of Leleges 
in his country, as serfs or dependent cultivators under the 
Karians, analogous to the Helots in Laconia, or the Peneste in 
Thessaly.2 We may be very sure that there were no Hellens 
—no men speaking the Hellenic tongue — standing in such a 
relation to the Karians. Among those many barbaric-speaking 


' Herod. i. 57. προσκεχωρηκότων αὐτῷ καὶ ἄλλων ἐϑνέων βαρβάρων 


συχνῶν. 

* Athenzx. vi. p. 271. Φίλιππος ἐν τῷ περὶ Καρῶν καὶ Λελέγων συγγράμ- 
ματι, καταλέξας τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίων Εἵλωτας καὶ τοὺς Θετταλικοὺς πενέστας, 
καὶ Kaépac φησι τοῖς Λέλεξιν ὡς οἰκέταις χρήσασϑαι πάλαι τε καὶ νῦν. 


HISTORICAL PELASGIANS. 265 


nations whom Herodotus believed to have changed their language 
and passed into Hellens, we may, therefore, fairly consider the 
Leleges to have been included. Fcr next to the Pelasgians and 
Pelasgus, the Leleges and Lelex figure most conspicuously in 
the legendary genealogies; and both together cover the larger 
portion of the Hellenic soil. 

Confining myself to historical evidence, and believing that no 
assured results can be derived from the attempt to transform 
legend into history, I accept the statement of Herodotus with 
confidence, as to the barbaric language spoken by the Pelasgians 
of his day ; and I believe the same with regard to the historical 
Leleges,— but without presuming to determine anything in 
regard to the legendary Pelasgians and Leleges, the supposed 
ante-Hellenic inhabitants of Greece. And I think this course 
more consonant to the laws of historical inquiry than that which 
comes recommended by the high authority of Dr. Thirlwall, who 
softens and explains away the statement of Herodotus, until it is 
made to mean only that the Pelasgians of Plakia and Kréstén 
spoke a very bad Greek. The affirmation of Herodotus is dis- 
tinct, and twice repeated, that the Pelasgians of these towns, 
and of his own time, spoke a barbaric language; and that word 
appears to me to admit of but one interpretation.!' To suppose 


' Herod. i. 57. Ἤντινα δὲ γλῶσσαν ἴεσαν οἱ Πελασγοὶ, οὐκ ἔχω ἀτρεκέως 
εἶπαι. εἰ δὲ χρεῶν ἐστι τεκμαιρομένοις λέγειν τοῖσι νῦν ἔτι ἐοῦσι Πελασγῶν, 
τῶν ὑπὲρ Τυρσηνῶν Κρηστῶνα πόλιν οἰκεόντῶν. καὶ τὴν Πλακιῆν τε καὶ 
Σκυλάκην Πελασγῶν οἰκισάντων ly Ἑλλησπόντῳ. .... «καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα Πελασ- 
γικὰ ἐόντα πολίσματα τὸ οὔνομα μετέβαλε" εἰ τουτοῖπι δεῖ λέγειν, ἦσαν οἱ 
Πελασγοὶ βάρβαρον γλῶσσαν ἰέντες. Εἰ τοίνυν ἣν καὶ πᾶν τοιοῦτο τὸ Πελασ- 
γικὸν, τὸ ᾿Αττικὸν ἔϑνος, ἐὸν Πελασγικὸν ἅμα τῇ μεταβολῇ τῇ ἐς Ἕλληνας 
καὶ τὴν γλῶσσαν μετέμαϑε" καί γὰρ δῆ οὔτε οἱ Κρηστωνιῆται οὐδάμοισι τῶν 
νῦν σφέας περιοικεόντων bot ὁμόγλωσσοι, οὔτε οἱ Πλακιηνοί" σφίσε δὲ, ὁμό- 
γλωσσοι. δηλοῦσι δὲ, ὅτι τὸν ἠνείκαντο γλώσσης χαρακτῆρα μετα 
βαίνοντες ἐς ταῦτα τὰ χώρια, τοῦτον ἔχουσι ἐν φυλακῇ. 

In the next chapter, Herodotus again calls the Pelasgian nation up 


βαοον. 

Respecting this language, heard by Herodotus at Krést6n and Plakia, Dr. 
Thirlwall observes (chap. ii. p. 60), “ This language Herodotus describes as 
barbarous, and it is on this fact he grounds his general conclusion as to the 
ancient Pelasgian tongue. But he has not entered into any details that 
might have served to ascertain the manner or degree in which it differed 
from the Greek. Still, the expressions he uses would have appeared to 


VOL. U. 12 


266 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


that a man, who, like Herodotus, had heard almost every variety 
of Greek, in the course of his long travels, as well as Egyptian, 


imply that it was essentially foreign, had he not spoken quite as strongly in 
another passage, where it is impossible to ascribe a similar meaning to his 
words. When he is enumerating the dialects that prevailed among the 
Ionian Greeks, he observes that the Ionian cities in Lydia agree not at all in 
their tongue with those of Karia; and he applies the very same term to these 

( Ὡ - , ν La " * " . . > slag. 
dialects, which he had before used in speaking of the remains of the I elas 
gian language. This passage affords a measure by which we may estimate 
Nothing more can be safely 


the force of the word barbarian in the former. 
inferred from it, than that the Pelasgian language which Herodotus heard on 
the Hellespont, and elsewhere, sounded to him a strange jargon ; as did the 
dialect of Ephesus to a Milesian, and as the Bolognese does to a Florentine. 
This fact leaves its real nature and relation to the Greek quite uncertain 
and we are the less justified in building on it, as the history of Pelasgian 
settlements is extremely obscure, and the traditions which Herodotus reports 
on that subject have by no means equal weight with statements made from 
his personal observation.” (‘Thirlwall, History of ( reece, ch. ii. Ρ. 60, 2d edit.) 
In the statement delivered by Herodotus (to which Dr. Thirlwall here 
refers) about the language spoken in the Ionic Greek cities, the historian 
had said (i. 142),—T'Adocav δὲ ov τὴν a ὑτὴν οὗτοι νενομίκασι, ἀλλὰ τρόπους 
τέσσερας παραγωγέων. Miletus, Myus, and Priéne, — ἐν τῇ Καρίῃ κατοίκην- 
ται κατὰ ταὐτὰ διαλεγόμεναί σφι. Ephesus, Kolophon, ete, — αὐταὶ αἱ πόλεις 


τῇοι πρότερον λεχϑείσῃσι ὁμολογέουσι κατὰ γλῶσσαν οὐδὲν, api δὲ ὁμοφωνέ:- 
The Chians and Erythreans,— κατὰ τωῦτὸ διαλέγονται, Σάμιοι δὲ 


ουσι. 
ἐπ᾽ ἑωῦτῶν μοῦνοι. 
The words γλώσσης χαρακτὴρ (“ distinctive mode of speech ”) are common 


OvrTot χαρακτῆρες } λώσσης τέσσερες γίγνονται. 


to both these passages, but their meaning in the one and in the other is to 
be measured by reference to the subject-matter of which the author is speak- 
ing, «s well as to the words which accompany them, — especially the word 
βάρβαρος in the first passage. Nor can I think (with Dr. Thirlwall) that the 
meaning of βάρβαρος is to be determined by reference to the other two 
words: the reverse is, in my judgment, correct. Βάρβαρος is a term definite 
and unequivocal, but γλώσσης χαρακτὴρ varies according to the comparison 
which you happen at the moment to be making, and its meaning is here 
determined by its conjunction with βάρβαρος. 

When Herodotus was speaking of the twelve Ionic cities in Asia, he 
might properly point out the differences of speech among them as 80 many 
different χαρακτῆρες yAwoons: the limits of difference were fixed by the 
knowledge which his hearers possessed of the persons about whom he was 
speaking ; the Jonians being all notoriously Hellens. | So an author, describ- 
ing Italy, might say that Bolognese, Romans, Neapolitans, Genoese, etc. had 
different χαρακτῆρες γλώσσης; it being understood that the difference was 
such as might subsist among persons all Italians. : 

But there is also a χαρακτὴρ γλώσσης of Greek generally (abstractiou 


ALLEGED ANTE-HELLENIC COLONIES. 267 


Pheenician, Assyrian, Lydian, and other languages, did not know 
how to distinguish bad Hellenic from non-Hellenic, is, in my 
judgment, inadmissible ; at any rate, the supposition is not ta be 
adopted without more cogent evidence than any which is here 
found. 

As I do not presume to determine what were the antecedent 
internal elements out of which the Hellenic aggregate was formed, 
so I confess myself equally uninformed with regard to its external 
constituents. Kadmus, Danaus, Kekrops, — the eponyms of the 
Kadmeians, of the Danaans, and of the Attic Kekropia, — present 
themselves to my vision as creatures of legend, and in that charac- 
ter I have already adverted to them. That there may have been 
very early settlements in contunental Greece, from Pheenicia and 
Egypt, is nowise impossible ; but I see neither positive proof, nor 
ground for probable inference, that there were any such, though 
traces of Phoenician settlements in some of the islands may doubt- 
less be pointed out. And if we examine the character and 
aptitudes of Greeks, as compared either with Egyptians or Pheeni- 
cians, it will appear that there is not only no analogy, but an 
obvious and fundamental contrast: the Greek may occasionally 
be found as a borrower from these ultramurine contemporaries, 
but he cannot be looked upon as their offspring or derivative 
Nor can I bring myself to accept an hypothesis which implies 
(unless we are to regard the supposed foreign emigrants as very 


made of its various dialects and diversities), as contrasted with Persian, 
Pheenician, or Latin, — and of Italian generally, as contrasted with German 
or English. It is this comparison which Herodotus is taking, when he 
llescribes the language spoken by the people of Kréstén and Plakia, and 
which he notes by the word βάρβαρον as opposed to Ἑλληνικόν: it is with 
reference to this comparison that χαρακτὴρ γλώσσης, in the fifty-seventh 
chapter, is to be construed. The word βάρβαρος is the usual and recognized 
antithesis of “EAAnv, or ‘EAAnvixoc. 

It is not the least remarkable part of the statement of Herodotus, that 
the language spoken at Kréstén and at Plakia was the same, though the 
places were so far apart from each other. This identity of itself shows that 
he meant to speak of a substantive language, not of a “ strange jargon.” 

[ think it, therefore, certain that Herodotus pronounces the Pelasgians of 
his day to speak a substantive language different from Greek; but whether 
differing from it in a greater or less degree (e. g. in the degree of Latin o# 
«of Phoenician), we have no means of deciding. 


268 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


few in number, in which case the question loses most of its 1m 
portance) that the Hellenic language — the noblest among the 
many varieties of human speech, and possessing within itself a 
pervading symmetry and organization — is a mere confluence of 
two foreign barbaric languages (Phoenician and Egyptian) with 
two or more internal barbaric languages, — Pelasgian, Lelegian, 
ete. In the mode of investigation pursued by different historians 
into this question of early foreign colonies, there is great differ- 
ence (as in the case of the Pelasgi) between the different authors, 
—from the acquiescent Euemerism of Raoul Rochette to the 
refined distillation of Dr. Thirlwall, in the third chapter of his 
History. It will be found that the amount of positive knowledge 
which Dr. Thirlwall guarantees to his readers in that chapter is 
extremely inconsiderable ; for though he proceeds upon the gene- 
ral theory (different from that which I hold) that historical mat- 
ter may be distinguished and elicited from the legends, yet when 
the question arises respecting any definite historical result, his 
canon of credibility is too just to permit him to overlook the 
absence of positive evidence, even when all intrinsic incredibility 
is removed. That which I note as Terra Incognita, is in his view 
a land which may be known up to a certain point; but the map 
which he draws of it contains so few ascertained places as to 
differ very little from absolute vacuity. 

The most ancient district called Hellas is affirmed by Aristotle 
to have been near Dédona and the river Achelous, — a description 
which would have been unintelligible (since the river does not 
flow near Dodéna), if it had not been qualtfied by the remark, 
thut the river had often in former times changed its course. He 
states, moreover, that the deluge of Deukalién took place chiefly 
in this district, which was in those early days inhabited by the 
Selli, and by the people then called Greci, but now Hellenes.! 
The Selli (called by Pindar, Helli) are mentioned in the Iliad as 
the ministers of the Dodonzan Zeus, —“ men who slept on the 
ground, and never washed their feet ;” and Hesiod, in one of the 
lost poems (the Eoiai), speaks of the fat land and rich pastures 
of the land called Hellopia, wherein Dédéna was situated? On 


‘ Aristotel. Meteorol. i. 14. 
3 Homer, Iliad, xvi. 234; Hesiod, Fragm. 149, ed. Marktschetfel; So 


phokl. Trachin. 1174; Strabo, vii. Ὁ. 328. 


AMPHIKTYONIC CONVOCATION. 269 


what authcrity Aristotle made his statement, we do not know; 
but the general feeling of the Greeks was different, — connecting 
Deukalién, Hellen, and the Hellenes, primarily and specially 
with the territory called Achaia Phthidtis, between Mount 
Othrys and (1. Nor can we either affirm or deny his asser- 
tion that the people in the neighborhood of Déddéna were called 
Greci before they were called Hellenes. There is no ascertained 
instance of the mention of a people called Greci, in any author 
earlier than this Aristotelian treatise ; for the allusions to Alkman 
and Sophoklés prove nothing to the point.'’ Nor can we explain 
how it came to pass that the Hellenes were known to the Romans 
only under the name of Greci, or Graii. But the name by which 
a people is known to foreigners is often completely different from 
its own domestic name, and we are not less at a loss to assion the 
reason, how the Rasena of Etruria came to be known te the 
Romans by the name of Tuscans, or Etruscans. 


CHAPTER III. 


MEMBERS OF THE HELLENIC AGGREGATE, SEPARATELY TAKEN. 
— GREEKS NORTH OF PELOPONNESUS. 


Havine in the preceding chapter touched upon the Greeks 
in their aggregate capacity, I now come to describe sepa- 
rately the portions of which this aggregate consisted, as they 
present themselves at the first discernible period of history. 


' Stephan. Byz. v. Γραικός. -- Τραῖκες δὲ παρὰ τῷ ᾿Αλκμᾶνι al τῶν Ἑλλῆ- 
γῶν μητέρες, καὶ παρὰ Σοφοκλεῖ ἐν Ποίμεσιν. ἐστὶ δὲ ἢ μεταπλασμὸς, ἢ τῆς 
Γραὶξ εὐθείας κλίσις ἐστίν. : 

The word Γραῖκες, in Alkman, meaning “the mothers of the Hellenes, ' 
may well be only a dialectic variety of γρᾶες, analogous to «Agé and ὄρνιξ 
for κλεὶς, ὄρνις, etc. (Ahrens, De Dialecto Doricd, sect. 11 p- 91; and sect 
31, p. 242), perhaps declined like γυναῖκες. 

The term used by Sophoklés, if we may believe Photius, was not Γραικὸς 
sat Ῥαικός (Photius, p. 480,15; Dindorf, Fragment. Soph. 933: compare 
455: Eustathius ‘p. 890) seems undecided between the two 


870 FISTORY OF GREFCE. 


It has already been mentioned that the twelve races or subd)- 
visions, members of what is called the Amphiktyonic convocation, 
were as follows: — 

North of the pass of Thermopyla,— Thessalians, Perrhebians 
Magnétes, Achaans, Melians, Atnianes, Dolopes. 

South of the pass of Thermopylw,— Dorians, Ionians, Boo- 
jians, Lokrians, Phokians. 

Other Hellenic races, not comprised among the Amphik 
tyons, were — 

The tolians and Akarnanians, north of the gulf of Corinth. 

The Arcadians, Eleians, Pisatans, and Triphylians, in the cen- 
tral and western portion of Peloponnésus: I do not here name 
the Achzans, who occupied the southern or Peloponnesian coast 
of the Corinthian gulf, because they may be presumed to have 
been originally of the same race as the Phthiot Achzans, and 
therefore participant in the Amphiktyonic constituency, though 
their actual connection with it may have been disused. 

The Dryopes, an inconsiderable, but seemingly peculiar sub- 
division, who occupied some scattered points on the sea-coast, — 
Hermioné on the Argolic peninsula; Styrus and Karystus in 
Eubeea ; the island of Kythnus, etc. 

Though it may be said, in a general way, that our historical 
discernment of the Hellenic aggregate, apart from the illusions of 
legend, commences with 776 B.c., yet, with regard to the larger 
number of its subdivisions just enumerated, we can hardly be 
said to possess any specific facts anterior to the invasion of 
Xerxes in 480 8. c. Until the year 560 Β ., (the epoch of 
Creesus in Asia Minor, and of Peisistratus at Athens,) the his- 
tory of the Greeks presents hardly anything of a collective 
character: the movements of each portion of the Hellenic world 
begin and end anart from the rest. The destruction of Kirrha 
by the Amphiktyors is the first historical incident which brings 
into play, in defence of the Delphian temple, a common Hellenic 
feeling of active obligation. 

But about 560 B. c., two important changes are seen to come 
into operation, which alter the character of Grecian history, — 
sxtricating it out of its former chaos of detail, and centralizing 
its isolated phenomena: 1. The subjugation of the Asiatio 
Gresks by Lydia and by Persia, followed by their struggles for 


SLOW TENDENCY TO COOPERATION. 271 


emancipation, — wherein the European Greeks became impli- 
cated, first as accessories, and afterwards as principals. 2. The 
combined action of the large mass of Greeks under Sparta, as 
their most powerful state and acknowledged chief, succeeded by 
the rapid and extraordinary growth of Athens, the complete 
development of Grecian maritime power, and the struggle 
between Athens and Sparta for the headship. These two causes, 
though distinct in themselves, must, nevertheless, be regarded as 
working together to a certain degree,—or rather, the second 
grew out of the first. For it was the Persian invasions of 
Greece which first gave birth to a wide-spread alarm and antipa- 
thy among the leading Greeks (we must not call it Pan-Hellenic, 
since more than half of the Amphiktyonic constituency gave 
earth and water to Xerxes) against the barbarians of the East, 
and impressed them with the necessity of joint active operations 
under a leader. ‘The idea of a leadership or hegemony of col 
lective Hellas, as a privilege necessarily vested in some one 
state for common security against the barbarians, thus became 
current, —an idea foreign to the mind of Soldn, or any one of 
the same age. Next, came the miraculous development of 
Athens, and the violent contest between her and Sparta, which 
should be the leader; the larger portion of Hellas taking side 
with one or the other, and the common quarrel against the Per- 
sian being for the time put out of sight. Athens is put down, 
Sparta acquires the undisputed hegemony, and again the anti- 
barbaric feeling manifests itself, though faintly, in the Asiatic 
expeditions of Agesilaus. But the Spartans, too incompetent 
either to deserve or maintain this exalted position, are over- 
thrown by the Thebans, — themselves not less incompetent, with 
the single exception of Epameinondas. The death of that single 
man extinguishes the pretensions of Thebes to the hegemony, 
and Hellas is left, like the deserted Penelopé in the Odyssey, 
worried by the competition of several suitors, none of whom is 
strong enough to stretch the bow on which the prize depends.! 
Such a manifestation of force, as well as the trampling down of 


1 Xenophon, Hellen. vii. 5, 27; Demosthenes, De Coron. ¢. 7, p. 23) — 
ἀλλά τις ἣν ἄκριτος Kai παρὰ τούτοις Kai παρὰ τοῖς ἄλλοις "EAAnow Epes καὶ 
"Cpayn. 


272 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the competing suitors, is reserved, not for any legitimate Hellenic 
arm, but for a semi-Hellenized! Macedonian, “brought up at 
Pella,” and making gocd his encroachments gradually from the 
north of Olympus. ‘The hegemony of Greece thus passes forever 
vut of Grecian hands; but the conqueror finds his interest in 
rekindling the old sentiment under the influence of which it had 
first sprung up. He binds to him the discordant Greeks, by the 
force of their ancient and common antipathy against the Great 
King, until the desolation and sacrilege once committed by 
Xerxes at Athens is avenged by annihilation of the Persian 
empire. And this victorious consummation of Pan-Hellenic 
antipathy, —the dream of Xenophon? and the Ten ‘Thousand 
Greeks after the battle of Kunaxa,—the hope of Jason of 
Phere, — the exhortation of Isokratés,? — the project of Philip, 
and the achievement of Alexander,— while it manifests the 
irresistible might of Hellenic ideas and organization in the then 
existing state of the world, is at the same time the closing scene 
of substantive Grecian life. The citizen-feelings of Greece 
become afterwards merely secondary forces, subordinate to the 
preponderance of Greek mercenaries under Macedonian order, 
and to the rudest of all native Hellens,—the tolian moun- 
taineers. Some few individuals are indeed found, even in the 
third century B. C., worthy of the best times of Hellas, and the 
Achean confederation of that century is an honorable attempt 
to contend against irresistible difficulties: but on the wuole, 
that free, social, and political march, which gives so much 
interest to the earlier centuries, is irrevocably banished trom 
Greece after the generation of Alexander the Great. 

The foregoing brief sketch will show that, taking the period 
from Croesus and Peisistratus down to the generation of Alex- 
ander (560-300 B. c.), the phenomena of Hellas generall,, and 


* Demosthen. de Coron. ¢. 21, p. 247. 

* Xenophon, Anabas. iii. 2, 25--26. 

* Xenophon, Hellen. vi. 1, 12; Isocrates, Orat. ad Philipp. Orat. v p. 107. 
This discourse of Isokratés is composed expressly for the purpose of calling 
on Philip to put himself at the head of united Greece against the Persians 
the Oratio iv, called Panegyrica, recommends a combination of all Greeks 
for the same purpose, but under the negemony of Athens, putting aside all 
mtestine differences: see Orat. iv. pp. 45-68. 


COMMON APATHY AGAINST THE PERSIANS, 273 


her relations both foreign and inter-political, admit of being 
grouped together in masses, with continued dependence on one 
or a few predominant circumstances. They may be said to 
constitute a sort of historical epopee, analogous to that which 
Herodotus has constructed out of the wars between Greeks and 
barbarians, from the legends of I6 and Eurépa down to the 
repulse of Xerxes. But when we are called back to the period 
between 776 and 560 B. c., the phenomena brought to our knowl 
edge are scanty in number, — exhibiting few common feelings o1 
interests, and no tendency towards any one assignable purpose. 
To impart attraction to this first period, so obscure and unprom- 
ising, we shall be compelled to consider it in its relation with the 
second ; partly as a preparation, partly as a contrast. 

Of the extra-Peloponnesian Greeks north of Attica, during 
these two centuries, we know absolutely nothing; but it will be 
possible to furnish some information respecting the early condi- 
tion and struggles of the great Dorian states in Peloponnesus. 
and respecting the rise of Sparta from the second to the first 
place in the comparative scale of Grecian powers. Athens 
becomes first known to us at the legislation of Drako and the 
attempt of Kylén (620 B. c.) to make himself despot; and we 
gather some facts concerning the Ionic cities in Eubcea and Asia 
Minor, during the century of their chief prosperity, prior to the 
reign and conquests of Croesus. In this way, we shall form te 
ourselves some idea of the growth of Sparta and Athens, — of 
the short-lived and energetic development of the Ionic Greeks, 
-—and of the slow working of those causes which tended to 
bring about increased Hellenic intercommunication,— as con- 
trasted with the enlarged range of ambition, the grand Pan- 
Hellenie ideas, the systematized party-antipathies, and the 
intensified action, both abroad and at home, which grew out of 
the contest with Persia. 

There are also two or three remarkable manifestations which 
will require special notice during this first period of Grecian 
history: 1. The great multiplicity of colonies sent forth by 
individual cities, and the rise and progress of these several 
colonies ; 2. The number of despots who arose in the various 
Grecian cities; 3. The lyric poetry; 4. The rudiments of that 

VOL. Il. 129 180c. 


974 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


which afterwards ripened into moral philosophy, as manifested 
in gnomes, or aphorisms, — or the age of the Seven Wise Men. 

But before I proceed to relate those earliest proceedings (un- 
fortunately too few) of the Dorians and Ionians during the his- 
torical period, together with the other matters just alluded to, it 
will be convenient to go over the names and positions of those 
other Grecian states respecting which we have no information 
during these first two centuries. Some idea will thus be formed 
of the less important members of the Hellenic aggregate, pre- 
vious to the time when they will be called into action. We 
begin by the territory north of the pass of Thermopyle. 

Of the different races who dwelt between this celebrated pass 
and the mouth of the river Peneius, by far the most powerful and 
important were the Thessalians. Sometimes, indeed. the whole 
of this area passes under the name of Thessaly, — since nomi- 
nally, though not always really, the power of the Thessalians 
extended over the whole. We know that the Trachinian Hera- 
kleia, founded by the Lacedemonians in the early years of the 
Peloponnesian war, close at the pass of Thermopyle, was plant- 
ed upon the territory of the Thessalians.! But there were also 
within these limits other races, inferior and dependent on the 
Thessalians, yet said to be of more ancient date, and certainly 
not less genuine subdivisions of the Hellenic name. The Perr- 
habi2 occupied the northern portion of the territory between the 
lower course of the river Peneius and Mount Olympus. The 
Magnétes 3 dwelt along the eastern coast, between Mount Ossa 
and Pelion on one side and the AXgean on the other, compris- 
ing the south-eastern cape and the eastern coast of the gulf of 
Pagase as far as Idlkos. The Achwans occupied the territory 
called Phthidtis, extending from near Mount Pindus on the west 
to the gulf of Pagasz on the east,’ — along the mountain chain 


1 Thucyd. iii. 93. Οἱ Θεσσαλοὶ ἐν δυνάμει ὄντες τῶν ταύτῃ χωρίων, καὶ ὧν 
ἐπὶ τῇ γῇ ἐκτίζετο (Herakleia), etc. 

¥ Herodot. vii. 173; Strabo, ix. pp. 440-441. Herodotus notices the pass 
over the chain of Olympus or the Cambunian mountains by which Xerxes 
and his army passed out of Macedonia into Perrhebia ; see the description 
of the pass and the neighboring country in Leake, Travels in Northern 
Greece, ch. xxviii. vol. iii. pp. 338-348 ; compare Livy, xlii. 53. 

3 Skylax, Periplus, c. 66 ; Herodot. vii. 183-188. τς 

4 Skylax, Peripl. c. 64; Strabo, ix. pp. 433-454. Sophoklés included the 


Vol. 2 9 


rHESSALY 975 


of Othrys with its lateral projections northerly into the Ihessa. 
lian plain, and southerly even to its junction with Gita. Thr 
three tribes of the Malians dwelt between Achza Phthiotis and 
Thermopyle, including both Trachin and Herakleia. Westward 
of Achza Phthidtis, the lofty region of Pindus or Tymphréstus, 
with its declivities both westward and eastward, was occupied 
by the Dolopes. 

All these five tribes, or subdivisions, — Perrhzbians, Magnetes, 
Acheans of Phthidtis, Malians, and Dolopes, together with cer 
tain Epirotic and Macedonian tribes besides, beyond the boun- 
daries of Pindus and Olympus, — were in a state of irregular 
dependence upon the Thessalians, who occupied the central plain 
or basin drained by the Peneius. That river receives the streams 
from Olympus, from Pindus, and from Othrys, — flowing through 
a region which was supposed by its inhabitants to have been 
once a lake, until Poseidén eut open the defile of Tempé, through 
which the waters found an efflux. In travelling northward from 
Thermopylz, the commencement of this fertile region — the am- 
plest space of land continuously productive which Hellas presents 
— is strikingly marked by the steep rock and ancient fortress of 
Thaumaki ;! from whence the traveller, passing over the moun- 
tains of Achwa Phthidtis and Othrys, sees before him the plains 
and low declivities which reach northward across Thessaly to 
Olympus. <A narrow strip of coast — in the interior of the gulf 
of Pagasz, between the Magnétes and the Achwans, and con- 
taining the towns of Amphanzum and Pagase®— belonged te 


territory of Trachin in the limits of Phthidtis (Strabo, /.c.). Herodotus 
considers Phthidtis as terminating a little north of the river Spercheins 
(vii. 198). 

' See the description of Thaumaki in Livy, xxxii. 4, and in Dr. Holland's 
Travels, ch. xvii. vol. ii. p. 112, — now Thomoko. 

2 Skylax, Peripl. c. 65. Hesychius (v. Παγασίτης ᾿Απόλλων) seems to 
reckon Pagasz as Achzan. 

About the towns in Thessaly, and their various positions, see Manner‘, 
Geograph. der Gr. und Romer, part vii. book iii. ch. 8 and 9. 

There was an ancient religious ceremony, celebrated by the Delphians 
every ninth year (Ennaétéris): a procession was sent from Delphi to the 
puss of Tempé, consisting of well-born youths under an archi-thedér, who 
represented the proceeding ascribed by an old legend to Apollo; that god 
vas believed to have gone thither to receive expiation after the slaugliter of 


970 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


this proper territory of Thessaly, but its great expansion was 
inland: within it were situated the cities of Phere, Pharsalus, 
Skotussa, Larissa, Krannon, Atrax, Pharkadén, Trikka, Metro 
polis, Pelinna, ete. 

The abundance of corn and cattle from the neighboring plains 
rustained in these cities a numerous population, and above all a 
proud and disorderly noblesse, whose manners bore much resem- 
blance to those of the heroic times. They were violent in their 
behavior, eager in armed feud, but unaccustomed to political 
discussion or compromise ; faithless as to obligations, yet at the 
same time generous in their hospitalities, and much given to the 
enjoyments of the table.!' Breeding the finest horses in Greece, 
they were distinguished for their excellence as cavalry ; but their 
infantry is little noticed, nor do the Thessalian cities seem te 
have possessed that congregation of free and tolerably equal citi 
zens, each master of his own arms, out of whom the ranks of 


the serpent Pytho: at least, this was one among several discrepant legends. 
The chief youth plucked and brought back a branch from the sacred laurel at 
Tempé, as a token that he had fulfilled his mission: he returned by “the 
sacred road,” and broke his fast at a place called Δειπνεὰς, near Larissa. A 
solemn festival, frequented by a large concourse of people from the sur- 
rounding regions, was celebrated on this occasion at Tempé, in honor of 
Apollo Tempeités (᾿Απλοῦνι Teureira, in the Aolic dialect of Thessaly : see 
{nscript. in Boeckh, Corp. Ins. No. 1767). The procession was accompanied 
by a flute-player. 

See Plutarch, Quest. Greece. ch. xi. p. 292; De Musica, ch. xiv. p. 1136, 
lian, V. H. iii. 1: Stephan. Byz. νυ. Δειπνιάς. 

It is important to notice these religious processions as establishing inter- 
course and sympathies between the distant members of Hellas: but the 
inferences which Ὁ. Maller (Dorians, ὃ. ii. 1, p. 222) would build upon them, 
as to the original seat of the Dorians and the worship of Apollo, are not to 
be trusted. 

’ Plato, Krito, ¢. 15, p. 53. ἐκεῖ yap δὴ πλείστη ἀταξία καὶ ἀκολασία (com- 
pare the beginning of the Menén)—a remark the more striking, since he 
had just before described the Bootian Thebes as a well-regulated city, 
though both Dikwxarchus and Polybius represent it in their times as so much 
the contrary. 

See also Demosthen. Olynth. i. c. 9, p. 16, cont. Aristokrat. c. 2°, p. 657; 
Schol. Eurip. Phoeniss. 1466; Theopomp. Fragment. 54-178, ed. Didot; 
Aristuphanés, Plut. 591. 

The march of political affairs in Thessaly is understood from Xenoph 
Bellen vi. ‘: compare Anabas. i 1, 10, and Thucyd. iv 78. 


THESSALY. 277 


hoplites were constituted, — the warlike nobles, such as the Aleu- 
ade at Larissa, or the Skopade at Krannon, despising everything 
but equestrian service for themselves, furnished, from their ex- 
tensive herds on the plain, horses for the poorer soldiers. ‘These 
Thessalian cities exhibit the extreme of turbulent oligarchy, oc- 
casionally trampled down by some one man of great vigor, but 
little tempered by that sense of political communion and rever- 
ence for established law, which was found among the better 
cities of Hellas. Both in Athens and Sparta, so different in 
many respects from each other, this feeling will be found, if not 
indeed constantly predominant, yet constantly present and ope- 
rative. Both of them exhibit a contrast with Larissa or Phera 
not unlike that between Rome and Capua, — the former, with 
her endless civil disputes constitutionally conducted, admitting 
the joint action of parties against a common foe ; the latter, with 
her abundant soil enriching a luxurious oligarchy, and impelled 
according to the feuds of her great proprietors, the Magii, Blossii, 
ind Jubellii.! 

The Thessalians are, indeed, in their character and capacity 
1s much Epirotic or Macedonian as Hellenic, forming a sort of 
link between the two. For the Macedonians, though trained in 
aftertimes upon Grecian principles by the genius of Philip and 
Alexander, so as to constitute the celebrated heavy-armed pha- 
lanx, were originally {even in the Peloponnesian war) distin- 
cuished chiefly for the excellence of their cavalry, like the Thes- 
salians ;2 while the broad-brimmed hat, or kausia, and the short 
spreading-mantle, or chlamys, were common to both. ; 

We are told that the Thessalians were originally emigrants 


from Thesprotia in Epirus, and conquerors of the plain of the 
Peneius, which (according to Herodotus) was then called A¢olis, 


3 «It may be 


: ἐάν ee 
and which they found occupied by the Pelasgi. ᾿ 
doubted whether the great Thessalian families, — such as i @ 
Aleuade of Larissa. descendants from Héraklés, and placed oy 


-- 


ι See Cicero, Orat. in Pison.c. 11; De Leg. Agrar. cont. Rullnm, 6 
34-35 
3 Compare the Thessalian cavalry as described by Polybius, iv. 8, with tha 
Macedonian as described by Thucydidés, i. 100. 

2 Herodot. vii. 176; Thucyd. i. 12 


278 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Pindar on the same level as the Lacedemonian kings! — would 
have admitted this Thesprotian origin; nor does it coincide with 
the tenor of those legends which make the eponym, Thessalus, 
son of Héraklés. Moreover, it is to be remarked that the lan- 
guage of the Thessalians was Hellenic, a variety of the olic 
dialect ;? the same (so far as we can make out) as that of the 
people whom they must have found settled in the country at 
their first conquest. If then it be true that, at some period ante- 
rior to the commencement of authentic history, a body of Thes- 
protian warriors crossed the passes of Pindus, and established 
themselves as conquerors in Thessaly, we must suppose them to 
have been more warlike than numerous, and to have gradually 
dropped their primitive language. 

In other respects, the condition of the population of Thessaly, 
such as we find it during the histerical period, favors the supposi- 
tion of an original mixture of conquerors and conquered: for it 
secms that there was among the Thessalians and their dependents 
a triple gradation, somewhat analogous to that of Laconia. First, 
a class of rich proprietors distributed throughout the principal 
cities, possessing most of the soil, and constituting separate oli- 
garchies, loosely hanging together.3 Next, the subject Achwans, 
Magnétes, Perrhzbi, differing from the Laconian Periceki in 
this point, that they retained their ancient tribe-name and sepa- 
rate Amphiktyonie franchise. Thirdly, a class of serfs, or depen- 
dent cultivators, corresponding to the Laconian Helots, who, till- 
ing the lands of the wealthy oligarchs, paid over a proportion of 
its produce, furnished the retainers by which these great fami- 
lies were surrounded, served as their followers in the cavalry, 
and were in a condition of villanage, — yet with the important 
reserve, that they could not be sold out of the country,‘ that they 


' Pindar, Pyth. x. init. with the Scholia, and the valuable comment of 
Boeckh, in referenve to the Aleuadx; Schneider ad Aristot. Polit. vy. 5, 9; 
ani the Essay of Huttmann, Von dem Geschlecht der Aleuaden, art. xxii. 
vol, ii. p. 254, cf the collection called “ Mythol sgus.” 

* Ahrens, De Dialect. olica, c. 1, 2. 

* See Aristot. Polit. ii. 6,3; Thucyd. ii. 99-- 00. 

* The words ascribed by Xenophon (Hellen. vi. 1, 11) to Jason of Phere 
as well as to Theocritus (xvi. 34), attest the numbers and vigor of the Thes- 
salian Penestx, and the great wealth of the Aleuade and Skopade. Both 
these families acquired celebrity from the verses of Simonides: he was ps 


PERRHAEBIANS. — MAGNETES. 279 


had a permanent tenure in the soil, and that they maintained among 
one another the relations of family and village. ‘This last mention- 
ed order of men, in Thessaly called the Penestz, is assimilated 
by all ancient authors to the Helots of Laconia, and in both cases 
the danger attending such a social arrangement is noticed by 
Plato and Aristotle. For the Helots as well as the Penestz had 
their own common language and mutual sympathies, a separate 
residence, arms, and courage; to a certain extent, also, they pos- 
sessed the means of acquiring property, since we are told that 
some of the Penestz were richer than their masters.! So many 
means of action, combined with a degraded social position, gave 
rise to frequent revolt and incessant apprehensions. As a general 
rule, indeed, the cultivation of the soil by slaves, or dependents, 
for the benefit of proprietors in the cities, prevailed throughout 
most parts of Greece. ‘The rich men of Thebes, Argos, Athens, 
or Elis, must have derived their incomes in the same manner; 
but it seems that there was often, in other places, a larger in 
termixture of bought foreign slaves,‘and also that the number, 
fellow-feeling, and courage of the degraded village population 
was nowhere so great as in Thessaly and Laconia. Now the 


origin of the Penest, in Thessaly, is ascribed to the conquest οἱ 


. td Ἢ . a A fh il 
tronized and his muse invoked by both of them; see A¢lian, V. H. χ 1; 
Ovid, Ibis, 512; Quintilian, xi. 2,15. Pindar also boasts of his friendship 


with Thorax the Aleuad (Pyth. x. 99). 


The Thessalian ἀνδραποδισταὶ, alluded to in Aristophanes (Plutus, 521), 
must have sold men out of the country for slaves, — either refractory Penes- 
188, or Perrhebian, Magnetic, and Achsan freemen, seized by violence: the 
Athenian comic poet Mnésimachus, in jesting on the voracity of the Pharsa- 
lians, exclaims, ap. Athens, x. p. 418 — 

apa ποῦυ 
ὀπτὴν κατεσϑίουσι πόλιν ᾿Αχαϊκῆν; 
Ῥαᾶραβθθ was celebrated as‘a place of export for slaves (Hermippus ap. 
Athene. 1. 49). 

Menon of Pharsalus assisted the Athenians against Amphipolis with 200, 
or 300 “ Penestx, on horseback, of his own” — [Πενέσταις ἰδίοις) Demos- 
then. περὶ Συνταξ. c. 9, p. 173, cont. Aristokrat. c. 51, p. 687. 

ι Archemachus ap. Atheng. vi. p. 264; Plato, Legg. vi. p. 777; Aristot 
Polit. ii. 6, 8; vii. 9,9; Dionys. Halic. A. R. ii. 84. 

Both Plato and Aristotle insist on the extreme danger of having numer 
ous slaves, fellow-countrymen and of one language — (ὁμόφυλοι, ὁμόφωνοι, 


πατρίωται ἀλλήλων). 


280) HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the territory by the Thesprotians, as that of the Helots in La 
conia is traced to the Dorian conquest. The victors in both 
countries are said to have entered into a convention with the 
vanquished population, whereby the latter became serfs and 
tillers of the land for the benefit of the former, but were at the 
same time protected in their holdings, constituted subjects of the 
stace, and secured against being sold away as slaves. Even in 
the Thessalian cities, though inhabited in common by Thessalian 
proprietors and their Penestxw, the quarters assigned to each 
were to a great degree separated: what was called the Free 
Agora could not be trodden by any Penest, except when specially 
summoned. ! 

Who the people were, whom the conquest of Thessaly by the 
Thesprotians reduced to this predial villanage, we find differently 
stated. According to Theopompus, they were Perrhxbians and 
Magnétes; according to others. Pelasgians ; while Archemachus 
alleged them to have been Beeotians of the territory of Arné,2 
— some emigrating, to escape the conquerors, others remaining 
and accepting the condition of serfs. But the conquest, assuming 
it as a fact, occurred at far too early a day to allow of ou 
making out either the manner in which it came to pass, or the 
state of things which preceded it. The Pelasgians whom 
Herodotus saw at Kréston are affirmed by him to have been the 
descendants of those who quitted Thessaly to escape? the invading 
Thesprotians ; though others held that the Beeotians, driven on 
this occasion from their habitations on the gulf of Pagase near 
the Achwzans of Phthidtis, precipitated themselves on Orchome- 
nus and Beeotia, and settled in it, expelling the Minyz and 
the Pelasgians. 


' Aristot. Polit. vii. 11, 2, 

* Theopompus and Archemachus ap. Athen. vi. pp. 264-26. compare 
Thucyd. ii. 12; Steph. Byz. v. "Apv7 — the converse of this story in Strabo, 
ix. pp. 401-411, of the Thessalian Arné being settled from Beotia. That 
the villains or Peneste were completely distinct from the circumjacent de- 
pendents. — Achwans, Magnétes, Perrhbians, we see by Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 
3. ‘They had their eponymous hero Penestés, whose descent was traced ta 
Thessalus son of Héraklés; they were thus connected with the mythical 
father of the nation (Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 1271). 

* Herodot. i. 5": compare vii. 176. 


DIVISIONS OF THESSALY. 28) 


Passing over the legends on this subject, and εἰ nfining our. 
selves to historical time, we find an established quadr iple division 
of Thessaly, said to have been introduced in the time of Aleuas, 
the ancestor (real or mythical) of the powerful Aleuadw, — 
Thessalidtis, Pelasgidtis, Histizotis, Phthidtis.'| In Phthidtis 
were comprehended the Achzans, whose chief towns were Meli- 
tea, Iténus, Thebe, Phthidtides, Alos, Larissa, Kremasté, and 
Pteleon, on or near the western coast of the gulf of Pagase. 
Histixétis, to the north of the Peneius, comprised the Perrhx- 
bians, with numerous towns strong in situation, but of no great 
size or importance; they occupied the passes of Olympus? and 
are sometimes considered as extending westward across Pindus. 
Pelasgidtis included the Magnétes, together with that which was 
called the Pelasgic plain, bordering on the western side of Pelton 
and Ossa.3 Thessalidtis comprised the central plain of Thessaly 
and the upper course of the river Peneius. This was the political 
classification of the Thessalian power, framed to suit a time 
wher the separate cities were maintained in harmonious action 
by favorable circumstances, or by some energetic individual 
ascendency ; for their union was in general interrupted and dis- 
orderly, and we find certain cities standing aloof while the rest 
went to ware! Though a certain political junction, and obliga- 
tions of some kind towards a common authority, were recognized 
in theory by all, and a chief, or Tagus,5 was nominated to enforce 


’ Hellanikus, Fragm. 28, ed. Didot ; Harpocration, v. Terpapxia: the quad- 
uple division was older than Hekatseus (Steph. Byz. v. Κραννων). 

Hekatzeus connected the Perrhzbians with the genealogy of Molus through 
Tyré, the daughter of Salmoéneus: they passed as Αἰολεῖς (Hekataeus, Frag 
834, ed. Didot; Stephan. Byz. v. ®aAavva and Tovvor). 

The territory of the city of Histiwa (in the north part of the island of 
Eubeea) was also called Histixétis. The double occurrence of this name 
(no uncommon thing in ancient Greece) seems to have given rise to the 
staement, that the Perrhebi had subdued the northern parts of Eubeea, and 
carried over the inhabitants of the Eubcean Histiea captive into the north 


wrest of Thessaly (Strabo, ix. p. 437, x. p. 446). 

* Pliny, H. N. iv. 1; Strabo, ix. p. 440. 

* Strabo, ix. p. 443. 

4 Diodor xviii. 11; Taucyd. ii. 22. 

* The Inscription No. 1770 in Boeckh’s Corpus Inscript. contains a letras 
of the Reman consul, Titus Quinctius Flamininus, add-essed to the city of 


282 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


obedience, — yet it frequently happened that the disputes of the 
cities among themselves prevented the choice of a Tagus, of 
drove him out of the country ; and left the alliance little more 
than nominal. Larissa, Pharsalus,! and Phers,— each with its 
cluster of dependent towns as adjuncts, —seem to have been 
nearly on a par in strength, and each torn by intestine faction 
so that not only was the supremacy over common depenibiats 
relaxed, but even the means of repelling invaders greatly en- 
feebled. The dependence of the Perrhebians, ‘ Maanstes 
Achzans, and Malians, might, under these iccamebites “tk 
often loose and easy. But the condition of the Penestz th ore 
occupied the villages belonging to these great cities, in the cen- 
tral plain of Pelasgiotis and Thessalidtis, and from whom the 
Aleuadz and Skopadze derived their exuberance of landed prod- 
uce — was noway mitigated, if it was not even aggravated, by 
such constant factions. Nor were there wanting cases in which 
the discontent of this subject-class was employed by members of 
the native oligarchy,? or even by foreign states, for the purpose 
of bringing about political revolutions. | 


‘ a UM ie , “ὦν i 
‘When Thessaly is under her Tagus, all the neighboring people 
g pec 


pay tribute to her; she can send into the field six thousand cav- 
alry and ten thousand hoplites, or heavy-armed infantry,” ‘ob: 
served Jason, despot of Pherx, to Polydamas of Fhanales in 
endeavoring to prevail on the latter to second his sdelenalons to 
that dignity. ‘The impost due from the tributaries, seemingly 
considerable, was then realized with arrears, and the duties spon 


Kyretiz (north of Atrax in Perrhebia). The letter is addressed, Kuperiéwr 
τοῖς ταγοῖς καὶ τῇ 70/1, — the title of Tagi seems thus to have been given 
to the magistrates of separate Thessalian cities. The Inscriptions of Than- 
maki (No. 1773-1774) have the title ἄρχοντες, not tayoi. The title ταγὸς 
was peculiar to Thessaly (Pollux, i. 128). hss 

1 Xenophon, Hellen. vi. 1,9; Diodor. xiv. 82; Thucyd. i. 3. Herod. vii 
6, calls the Aleuadxe Θεσσαλίης βασιλῆες. : ren 

2 Xenophon, Memorab. i. 2,24; Hellenic. ii. 3,37. The loss of the comedy 
called Πόλεις of Eupolis (see Meineke, Fragm. Comicor. Gree. p. 513) τοῦ» 
ably prevents us from understanding the sarcasm of Aristophanes (Veep 
1263) about the παραπρέσβεια of Amynias among the Peneste of Ῥω, 
but the incident there alluded to can have nothing to do with the seeene’d 
ings of Kritias, touched upon by Xenophon : 

3 Xenophon, Hellen. vi. 1, 912 


POWER UF THE THESSALIANS. 2838 


imports at the harbors of the Pagaszean gulf, imposed for the 
benefit of the confederacy, were then enforced with strictness ; 
but the observation shows that, while unanimous Thessaly was 
very powerful, her periods of unanimity were only occasional.! 
Among the nations which thus paid tribute to the fulness of 
Thessalian power, we may number not merely the Perrhxbi, 
Magnétes, and Achzans of Phthidtis, but also the Malians and 
Dolopes, and various tribes of Epirots extending to the west- 
ward of Pindus.2 We may remark that they were all (except 
the Malians) javelin-men, or light-armed troops, not serving in 
rank with the full panoply; a fact which, in Greece, counts as 
presumptive evidence of a lower civilization: the Magnétes, too, 
had a peculiar close-fitting mode of dress, probably suited to move- 
ments in a mountainous country.’ ‘There was even a time wher 
the Thessalian power threatened to extend southward of Ther- 
mopy le, subjugating the Phokians, Dorians, and Lokrians. So 
much were the Phokians alarmed at this danger, that they had 
built a wall across the pass of Thermopyle, for the purpose of 
more easily defending it against Thessalian invaders, who are 
reported to have penetrated more than once into the Phokian 
valleys, and to have sustained some severe defeats.4 At what 
precise time these events happened, we find no information ; but 
‘t must have been considerably earlier than the invasion of 
Xerxes, since the defensive wall which had been built at Ther- 
mopyle, by the Phokians, was found by Leonidas in a state of 
ruin. But the Phokians, though they no longer felt the neces- 
sity of keeping up this wall, had not ceased to fear and hate the 
Thessalians, —an antipathy which will be found to manifest 
itself palpably in connection with the Persian invasion. On the 


—— — - 


1! Demosthen. Olynth. i. c. 3, p. 15; ii. 5.}. 21. The orator had occasion 
to denounce Philip, as having got possession of the public authority of the 
Thessalian confederation, partly by intrigue, partly by force; and we thus 
hear of the λιμένες and the ayopai, which formed the revenue of the con- 
federacy. 

2 Xenophon (Hellen. vi. 1, 7) numbers the Μαρακοὶ among these tribute 
rivs along with the Dolopes: the Maraces are named by Pliny (H. N iv 
8), also, along with the Dolopes, but we do not know where they dwelt. 

2 Xenophon, Hellen. vi. 1, 9; Pindar, Pyth. iv. 80, 

4 taerodot. vii. 176; viii. 27-28. 


284 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


whole, the resistance of the Phokians was successful, for tha 
power of the Thessalians never reached southward of the pass.! 

It will be recollected that these different ancient races, Per- 
rhebi, Magnétes, Achzans, Malians, Dolopes,—thougn tribu- 
taries of the Thessalians, still retained their Amphiktyouic 
franchise, and were considered as legitimate Hellenes: all except 
the Malians are, indeed, mentioned in the Iliad. We shall rarely 
have occasion to speak much of them in the course of this his- 
tory: they are found siding with Xerxes (chiefly by constraint) 
in his attack of Greece, and almost indifferent in the struggle 
between Sparta and Athens. That the Achzans of Phthidtis 
are a portion of the same race as the Achzans of Peloponnesus 
it seems reasonable to believe, though we trace πὸ historical 
evidence to authenticate it. Achwa Phthidtis is the seat of 
Hellén, the patriarch of the entire race,—of the primitive 
Hellas, by some treated as a town, by others as a district of some 
breadth,— and of the great national hero, Achilles. Its con- 
nection with the Peloponnesian Achzans is not unlike that of 
Doris with the Peloponnesian Dorians.2, We have, also, to 
notice another ethnical kindred, the date and circumstances of 
which are given to us only in a mythical form, but which seems, 
nevertheless, to be in itself a reality, — that of the Magnétes on 
Pelion and Ossa, with the two divisions of Asiatic Magnétes, or 
Magnesia, on Mount Sipylus and Magnesia on the river Mean- 
der. It is said that these two Asiatic homonymous towns were 
founded by migrations of the Thessalian Magnétes, a body of 
whom became consecrated to the Delphian god, and chose a new 
abode under his directions. According to one story, these emi- 
grants were warriors, returning from the Siege of Troy ; accord- 
ing to another, they sought fresh seats, to escape from the 
Thesprotian conquerors of Thessaly. There was a third story, 
according to which the Thessalian Magnétes themselves were 
represented as colonists? from Delphi. Though we can elicit no 


! The story of invading Thessalians at Keréssus, near Leuktra in Beotia, 
( Pausan. ix. 13, 1,) is not at all probable. 

Ξ One story was, that these Achzans of Phthia went into Peloponnesus 
with Pelops, and settled in Laconia (Strabo, viii. p. 365). 

? Aristoteles ap. Athenx. iv. p. 173 Conon, Narrat. 29; Suwbo, xiv. p 
847 


(ETH ANS. — ENIANES. 285 


distinct matter of fact from these legends, we may, neverthelesa 
admit the connection of race between the Thessalian and the 
Asiatic Magnétes, as well as the reverential dependence of both, 
manifested in this supposed filiation, on the temple of Delphi 
Of the Magnétes in Krete, noticed by Plato as long extinct in 
nis time, we cannot absolutely verify even the existence. 

Of the Malians, Thucydidés notices three tribes (γένη) as 
existing in his time, —the Paralii, the Hierés (priests), and the 
Trachinii, or men of Trachin:! it is possible that the second ot 
the two may have been possessors of the sacred spot on which 
the Amphiktyonic meetings were held. The prevalence of the 
hoplites or heavy-armed infantry among the Malians, indicates 
that we are stepping from Thessalian to more southerly Hellenic 
habits: the Malians recognized every man as a qualified citizen, 
who either had served, or was serving, in the ranks with his full 
panoply.2 Yet the panoply was probably not perfectly suitable 
to the mountainous regions by which they were surrounded ; for, 
at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, the aggressive moun- 
taineers of the neighboring region of C&ta, had so harassed and 


Hoeck (Kreta, b. iii. vol. ii. p. 409) attempts (unsuccessfully, in my judg- 
ment) te reduce these stories into the form of substantial history. 

1 Thuevd. iii. 92. The distinction made by Skylax (c. 61) and Diodorus 
( xviii. 11) between Μηλιεῖς and Μαλιεῖς — the latter adjoining the former 
on the north — appears inadmissible, though Letronne still defends it (Péri- 
ple de Marcien d’Héraclée, etc., Paris, 1839, p. 212). 

Instead of Μαλιεῖς, we ought to read Λαμιεῖς, as Ὁ. Miiller observes (Do- 
rians, i. 6, p. 48). 

It is remarkable that the important town of Lamia (the modern Zeitun) 
is not noticed either by Herodotus, Thucydidés, or Xenophon; Skylax is 
the first who mentions it. The route of Xerxes towards Thermopyle lay 
along the coast from Alos. 

The Lamieis (assuming that to be the correct reading) occupied the north- 
ern coast of the Maliac gulf, from the north bank of the Spercheius to the 
town of Echinus; in which position Dr. Cramer places the Μηλιεῖς Παράλιο' 
—an error, I think (Geography of Greece, vol. i. p. 436). 

It is not improbable that Lamia first acquired importance during the 
course of those events towards the close of the Pelopommesian war, when the 
Lacedsmonians, in defence of Herakleia, attacked the Achzans of Phthi6tia 


see 


and even expelled the C&tzans for a time from their seats (see Thucyd. viii 


3; Diodor. xiv. 38). 
2 Aristot. Polit. iv. 10, 10. 


286 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


overwhelmed them in war. that they were forced to throw them 
selves on the protection of Sparta; and the establishment of the 
Spartan colony of Herakleia, near Trachin, was the result of 
their urgent application. Of these mountaineers, described under 
the general name of Cteans, the principal were the A®nianes, 
(# Eniénes, as they are termed in the Homeric Catalogue, as 
well as by Herodotus),—an ancient Hellenic! Amphiktyonic 
race, who are said to have passed through several successive 
migrations in ‘Thessaly and Epirus, but who, in the historical 
times, had their settlement and their chief town, Hypata, in the 


upper valley of the Spercheius, on the northern declivity ot 


Mount CEta. But other tribes were probably also included in 
the name, such as those Attolian tribes, the Bomians and Kalli- 
ans, whose high and cold abodes approached near to the Maliac 
cult. It is in this sense that we are to understand the name, as 
comprehending all the predatory tribes along this extensive 
mountain range, when we are told of the damage done by the 
(Etzans, both to the Malians on the east, and to the Dorians on 
the south: but there are some cases in which the name C&teans 
seems to designate expressly the Acnianes, especially when they 
are mentioned as exercising the Amphiktyonic franchise.? 

The fine soil, abundant moisture, and genial exposure of the 
southern declivities of Othrys,? — especially the valley of the 
Spercheius, through which river all these waters pass away, and 
which annually gives forth a fertilizing inundation, — present a 
marked contrast with the barren, craggy, and naked masses of 
Mount Cita, which forms one side of the pass of Thermopyle. 
Southward of the pass, the Lokrians, Phokians, and Dorians, 
occupied the mountains and passes between Thessaly and Beo 


' Plutarch, Question. Gree. p. 294. 

* Thucyd. iii. 92-97 ; viii. 3. Xenoph. Hellen. i. 2, 18; in another passage 
Xenophon expressly distinguishes the Ceti and the Anianes (Hellen. iii 
5,6). Diodor. xiv. 38. Xschines, De Fals. Leg. c. 44, p. 290. 

8. About the fertility as well as the beauty of this valley, see Dr. Holland’s 
Travels, ch. xvii. vol. ii. p. 108, and Forchhammer (Hellenika, Griechenland, 
im Neuen das Alte, Berlin, 1837). I do not concur with the latter in his 
attempts to resolve the mythes of Héraklés, Achilles, and others, into physi- 
cal phenomena ; but his descriptions of local scenery and attributes are moat 
vivid and masterly. 


LOKRIANS. 287 


tia. The coast opposite to the western side of Eubcea, from the 
neighborhood of Thermopyle, as far as the Beeotian frontier at 
Anthédén, was possessed by the Lokrians, whose northern fron 
tier town, Alpéni, was conterminous with the Malians. There 
was, however, one narrow strip of Phokis—the town of Daph- 
nus, where the Phokians also touched the Eubcean sea— which 
broke this continuity, and divided the Lokrians into two sections, 
— Lokrians of Mount Knémis, or Epiknemidian Lokrians, and 
Lokrians of Opus, or Opuntian Lokrians. The mountain called 
Knémis, running southward parallel to the coast from the end 
of CEta, divided the former section from the inland Phokians 
and the upper valley of the Kephisus: farther southward, joining 
continuously with Mount Ptéon by means of an intervening 
mountain which is now called Chlomo, it separated the Lokrians 
of Opus from the territories of Orchomenus, Thebes, and Anthé- 
don, the north-eastern portions of Beotia. Besides these two 
sections of the Lokrian name, there was also a third, completely 
separate, and said to have been colonized out from Opus, — the 
Lokrians surnamed Ozole,— who dwelt apart on the western 
side of Phokis, along the northern coast of the Corinthian gulf. 
They reached from Amphissa— which overhung the plain of 
Krissa, and stood within seven miles of Delphi—to Naupaktus, 
near the narrow entrance of the gulf; which latter town was 
taken from these Lokrians by the Athenians, a little before the 
Peloponnesian war. Opus prided itself on being the mother-city 
of the Lokrian name, and the legends of Deukalién and Pyrrha 
found a home there as well as in Phthidtis. Alpeni, Nikza, 
Thronium, and Skarpheia, were towns, ancient but unimportant, 
af the Epiknemidian Lokrians; but the whole length of this 
Lokrian coast is celebrated for its beauty and fertility, both by 
ancient and modern observers.! 


! Strabo, ix. p. 425; Forchhammer, Hellenika, pp. 11-12. Kynus is some- 
times spoken of as the harbor of Opus, but it was a city of itself as old as 
the Homeric Catalogue, and of some moment in the later wars of Greece, 
when military position came to be more va‘ued than legendary celebrity 
(Livy, xxviii. 6; Pausan. x. 1,1; Skylax, c. 61-62); the latter counts Thro- 
nium and Knémis or Knémides as being Phokian, not Lokrian; which they 
were for a short time, during the prosperity of the Phokians, at the beginning 
of the Sacred War, though not permanently (Zschin. Fals. Legat. c. 42. ν 


288 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The Phokians were bounded on the north by the little terr+ 
tories called Doris and Dryopis, which separated them from the 
Malians,—on the north-east, east, and south-west, by the dif- 
ferent branches of Lokrians,—and on the south-east, by the 
Beotians. They touched the Eubcean sea, (as has been men- 
tioned) at Daphnus, the point where it approaches nearest to 
their chief town, Elateia ; their territory also comprised most part 
of the lofty and bleak range of Parnassus, as far as its southerly 
termination, where a lower portion of it, called Kirphis, pro- 
jects into the Corinthian gulf, between the two bays of An- 
tikvra and Krissa; the latter, with its once fertile plain, lay 
immediately under the sacred rock of the Delphian Apollo. 
Both Delphi and Krissa originally belonged to the Phokian 
race, but the sanctity of the temple, together with Lacedzmonian 
aid, enabled the Delphians to set up for themselves, disavowing 
their connection with the Phokian brotherhood. Territorially 
speaking, the most valuable part of Phokis' consisted ia the 
valley of the river Kephisus, which takes its rise from Parnassus, 
not far from the Phokian town of Lilwa, passes between Cita 
and Knémis on one side, and Parnassus on the other, and enters 
Beeotia near Chieroneia, discharging itself into the lake Kopais. 
[t was on the projecting mountain ledges and rocks on each side 
of this river, that the numerous little Phokian towns were situ- 
ated. ‘Twenty-two of them were destroyed and broken up into 
villages by the Amphiktyonic order, after the second Sacred 
War; Abe (one of the few, if not the only one, that was spared) 
being protected by the sanctity of its temple and oracle. ΟἹ 
these cities, the most important was Elateia, situated on the left 
bank of the Kephisus, and on the road from Lokris into Phokis, in 
the natural march of an army from Thermopyle into Beeotia. 
The Phokian towns? were embodied in an ancient confederacy, 


46). ‘This serves as one presumption about the age of the Periplus of Sky- 
lax (see the notes of Klausen ad Skyl. p. 269). These Lokrian towns lay 
along the important road from Thermopylez to Elateia and Beotia (Pausan 
vii. 15, 2; Livy, xxxiii. 3) 


1 Pausan. x. 33, 4. 
® Pausan. x. 5,1; Demosth. Fals. Leg. c. 22-28; Diodor. xvi. 60, with 


the note of Wesseling j 
The tenth book of Pausanias, though the larger half of it is devoted te 


PHOKIANS. — DORIANS. 289 


which held its periodical meetings at a temple between Daulis 
and Delphi. 

The little territory called Doris and Dryopis, occupied the 
southern declivity of Mount C&ta, dividing Phokis on the north 
an 1 north-west, from the A®tolians, AEnianes, and Malians. That 
which was called Doris in the historical times, and which 
reached, in the time of Herodotus, nearly as far eastward as the 
Maliac gulf, is said to have formed a part of what had been once 
called Dryopis; a territory which had comprised the summit of 
(Eta as far as the Spercheius, northward, and which had been 
inhabited by an old Hellenic tribe called Dryopes. The Dorians 
acquired their settlement in Dryopis by gift from Héraklés, who, 
along with the Malians (so ran the legend), had expelled the 
Dryopes, and compelled them to find for themselves new seats 
at Hermioné, and Asiné, in the Argolic peninsula of Pelopon- 
nesus, —at Styra and Karystus in Eubcea,— and in the island 
of Kythnus ;! it is only in these five last-mentioned places, that 
history recognizes them. The territory of Doris was distributed 
into four little townships, — Pindus, or Akyphas, Beeon, Kytinion, 
and Erineon, — each of which seems to have occupied a separate 
valley belonging to one of the feeders of the river Kephisus, — 
the only narrow spaces of cultivated ground which this “small 
and sad” region presented.2 In itself, this tetrapolis is so insig- 
nificant, that we shall rarely find occasion to mention it; but it 
acquired a factitious consequence by being regarded as the me- 
tropolis of the great Dorian cities in Peloponnesus, and receiving 
on that ground special protection from Sparta. I do not here 
touch upon that string of ante-historical migrations — stated by 


Ielphi, tells us all that we know respecting the less important towns of 
Phokis. Compare also Dr. Cramer’s Geography of Greece, vol. ii. sect. 10; 
and Leake’s Travels in Northern Greece, vol. ii. ch. 13. 

Two funeral monuments of the Phokian hero Schedius (who commands 
the Phokian troops before Troy, and is slain in the Iliad) marked the two 
extremities of Phokis, — one at Daphnus on the Eubcean sea, the other at 
Antikyra on the Corinthian gulf (Strabo, ix. p. 425; Pausan. x. 36, 4). 

' Herodot. viii. 31, 43, 46; Diodor. iv. 57; Aristot. ap. Strabo, viii. p. 373, 

0. Miiller (History of the Dorians, book i. ch. ii.) has given all that can 
be known about Doris and Dryopis, together with some matters which appear 
to me very inadequately authenticated. 

* Πόλεις «pal καὶ Avrpoxwoot, Strabo, ix. p. 427 

VOL. Πα m= 190c. 


296 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Herodotus, and illustrated by the ingenuity as well as deco. ated 
by the fancy of ©. Miller — through which the Dorians are 
affiliated with the patriarch of the Hellenic race,— moving 
originally out of Phthidtis to Histiadtis, then to Pindus, and 


lastly to Doris. The residence of Dorians in Doris, is a fact 
which meets us at the commencement of history, like that of the 
Phokians and Lokrians in their respective territories. 

We next pass to the /#tolians, whose extreme tribes covered 
the bleak heights of Céta and Korax, reaching almost within 
sieht of the Maliac gulf, where they bordered on the Dorians and 
Malians, — while their central and western tribes stretched along 
the frontier of the Ozolian Lokrians to the flat plain, abundant in 
marsh and lake, near the mouth of the Euénus. Jn the time of 
Herodotus and Thucydidés, they do not seem to have extended 
so far westward as the Achelous; but in later times, this latter 
river, throughout the greater part of its lower course, divided 
them from the Akarnanians:' on the north, they touched upon 
the Dolopians, and upon a parallel of latitude nearly as far north 
as Ambrakia. There were three great divisions of the A*tolian 
name, — the Apodéti, Ophioneis, and Eurytanes, — each of which 
was subdivided into several different village tribes. ‘The north- 
ern and eastern portion of the territory? consisted of very high 
mountain ranges, and even in the southern portion, the mountains 
Arakynthus, Kurion, Chalkis, Taphiassus, are found at no great 
distance from the sea; while the chief towns in /#tolia, Kalyd6n, 
Pleuron, Chalkis, -— seem to have been situated eastward of the 
Euénus, between the last-mentioned mountains and the sea.’ 
The first two towns have been greatly ennobled in legend, but 


' Herod. vii. 126; Thucyd. ii. 102. 

® See the difficult journey of Fiedler from Wrachori northward by Karpe- 
nitz, and then across the north-western portion of the mountains of the an- 
cient Eurytanes (the southern continuation of Mount Tymphréstus and (Eta), 
into the upper valley of the Spercheius (Fiedler’s Reise in Griechenland, vol. 
i. pp. 177-191), a part of the longer journey from Missolonghi to Zeitun. 

Skylax (c. 35) reckons /Etolia as extending inland as far as the bounda- 
ries of the ASnianes on the Spercheius — which is quite correct — A®tolia 
Epiktétus — μέτρι τῆς Oiraiac, Strabo, x. p. 450. 

8 Strabo, x. pp. 459-460. There is, however, great uncertainty about the 

sition of these ancient towns: compare Kruse, Hellas, vol. iii. ch. xi. pp 
233-255, and Brandstiiter, Geschichte des tolischen Landes, pp. 121-134. 


AKARNANIANS. 291 


are little named in history ; while, on the contrary, Thermus, the 
chief town of the historical A®tolians, and the place where the 
aggregate meeting and festival of the A®tolian name, for the 
choice of a Pan-Z2tolic general, was convoked, is not noticed by 
any one earlier than Ephorus.! It was partly legendary renown, 
partly ethnical kindred (publicly acknowledged on both sides) with 
the Eleians in Peloponnesus, which authenticated the title of the 
JEtolians to rank as Hellens. But the great mass of the Apodoti, 
Eurytanes, and Ophioneis in the inland mountains, were 80 rude 
in their manners, and so unintelligible? in their speech (which, 
however, was not barbaric, but very bad Hellenic,) that this title 
might well seem disputable, — in point of fact it was disputed, in 
later times, when the A®tolian power and depredations had 
become obnoxious nearly to all Greece. And it is, probably, to 
this difference of manners between the A®tolians on the sea-coast 
and those in the interior, that we are to trace a geographical 
division mentioned by Strabo, into ancient Atolia, and /Xtolia 
Epiktétus, or acquired. When or by whom this division was 
introduced, we do not know. It cannot be founded upon any 
conquest, for the inland A&tolians were the most unconquerable 
of mankind: and the affirmation which Ephorus applied to the 
whole Aétolian race,—that it had never been reduced to sub- 
jection by any one, — is, most of all, beyond dispute concerning 
the inland portion of it.? 

Adjoining the /Etolians were the Akarnanians, the western- 
most of extra-Peloponnesian Greeks. They extended to the 
Ivuian sea, and seem, in the time of Thucydidés, to have occupied 


' Ephorus, Fragm. 29, Marx. ap. Strabo, p. 463. The situation of Ther- 
snus, “ the acropolis as it were of all AEtolia,” and placed on a spot almost 
unapproachable by an army, is to a certain extent, though not wholly, capa- 
ble of being determined by the description which Polybius gives of the rapid 
march of Philip and the Macedonian army to surprise it. The maps, both 
of Kruse and Kiepert, place it too much on the north of the lake Trichénis: 
the map of Fiedler notes it, more correctly, to the east of that lake (Polyb 
~ 7-8; compare Brandstiter, Geschichte des tol. Landes, p. 133). 

: Thucyd. iii. 102.— ἀγνωστότατοι δὲ γλῶσσάν εἶσι, καὶ ὠμόφαγοι ὡς λέ 
γονται. It seems that Thucydidés had not himself seen or conversed 
with them, but he does not call them βάρβαροι. 

ὁ Ephorus, Fragment. 29, ed. Marx.; Skymn. Chius, v. 471; Strabo, x p 
45) 


4 = 


= se ee. 


τ.» “..». 


292 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


both banks of the river Acheléus, in the lower part of its cou sse, 
—-though the left bank appears afterwards as belonging to the 
Etolians, so that the river came to constitute the boundary, often 
disputed and decided by arms, between them. The principal 
Akarnanian towns, Stratus and Csiniadz, were both on the right 
bank ; the latter on the marshy and overflowed land near its 
mouth. Near the Akarnanians, towards the gulf of Ambrakia, 
were found barbarian, or non-Hellenic nations, — the Agreans 
and the Amphilochians: in the midst of the latter, on the shores 
of the Ambrakian gulf, the Greek colony, called Argos Amphi- 
lochicum, was established. 

Of the five Hellenic subdivisions now enumerated, — Lo- 
krians, Phokians, Dorians (of Doris), A®tolians, and Akarnanians 
(of whom Lokrians, Phokians, and /&tolians are comprised in 
the Homeric catalogue), — we have to say the same as of those 
north of Thermopylaw: there is no information respecting them 
from the commencement of the historical period down to the 
Persian war. Even that important event brings into action only 
the Lokrians of the Eubcean sea, the Phokians, and the Dorians: 
we have to wait until near the Peloponnesian war, before we 
require information respecting the Ozolian Lokrians, the /£to- 
lians, and the Akarnanians. ‘These last three were unquestionably 
the most backward members of the Hellenic aggregate. Though 
uot absolutely without a central town, they lived dispersed in 
villages, retiring, when attacked, to inaccessible heights, perpetu- 
ally armed and in readiness for aggression and plunder whereve1 
they found an opportunity.! Very different was the condition of 
the Lokrians opposite Euboa, the Phokians, and the Dorians. 
These were all orderly town communities, small, indeed, and 
poor, but not less well administered than the average of Grecian 
townships, and perhaps exempt from those individual violences 
which so frequently troubled the Beeotian Thebes or the great 
cities of Thessaly. ‘Timzus affirmed (contrary, as it seems, to 
the supposition of Aristotle) that, in early times, there were no 


' Thucyu. i. 6; iii. 94. Aristotle, however, included, in his large collection 
of Πολιτείαι, an ᾿Ακαρνάνων Πολιτεία as well as an Αἰτωλῶν Πολιτεία 
(Aristotelis Rerum Publicarum Reliqaiz, ed. Neumann, p. 102; Strabo. vid 
p S21). 


BEOTIANS. — ORCHOMENUS. νυ 


slaves either among the Lokrians or Phokians, and that the 
work required to be done for proprietors was performed by poor 
freemen ;! a habit which is alleged to have been continued until 
the temporary prosperity of the second Sacred War, when the 
plunder of the Delphian temple so greatly enriched the Pho- 
kian leaders. But this statement is too briefly given, and too 
imperfectly authenticated, to justify any inferences. 
We find in the poet Alkman (about 6108. c.), the Erysi- 
cheer, or Kalydonian shepherd, named as a type of rude rus- 
ticity, —the antithesis of Sardis, where the poet was born.? 
And among the suitors who are represented as coming forward 
to claim the daughter of the Sikyonian Kleisthenes in marriage, 
there appears both the Thessalian Diaktoridés from Krannon, a 
member of the Skopad family, — and the /Etolian Malés, brother 
of that Titormus who in muscular strength surpassed all his con- 
temporary Greeks, and who had seceded from mankind into the 
‘nmost recesses of Z@tolia: this /Etolian seems to be set forth as 
a sort of antithesis to the delicate Smindyridés of Sybaris, the 
most luxurious of mankind. Herodotus introduces these charac- 
ters into his dramatic picture of this memorable wedding. 
Between Phokis and Lokris on one side, and Attica (from 
which it is divided by the mountains Kitherén and Parnés) on 
the other, we find the important territory called Beeotia, with its 
ten or twelve autonomous cities, forming a sort of confederacy 
under the presidency of Thebes, the most powerful among them. 
Even of this territory, destined during the second period of this 
history, to play a part so conspicuous and effective, we know 
nothing during the first two centuries after 776 B. C. We first 
acquire some insight into it, on occasion of the disputes between 
Thebes and Platea, about the year 520 8.c. Orchomenus, on 
the north-west of the lake K6pais, forms throughout the histori- 
cal times one of the cities of the Beotian league, seemingly the 
second after Thebes. But I have already stated that the Orcho- 


' Timeus, Fragw. xvii. ed. Géller; Polyb. xii. 6-7; Athensus, vi. p 


264. 
2 This brief fragment of the Παρϑενεῖα of Alkman is preserved by Ste 


phan. Byz. (’"Epvcix7), and alluded to by Strabo, x. p. 460: see Welcker 


Alkm. Fragm. xi. and Bergk, Alk. Fr. xii. 
3 Heredot. vi. 127. 


294 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


menian legends, the Catalogue, and other allusions in Homer, and 
the traces of past power and importance yet visible in the his- 
torical age, attest the early political existence of Orchomenus 
and its neighborhood apart from Beotia.' The Amphiktyony in 
which Orchomenus participated, at the holy island of Kalauria 
near the Argolic peninsula, seems to show that it must once have 
possessed a naval force and commerce, and that its territory must 
have touched the sea at Hale and the lower town of Larymna, 
near the southern frontier of Lokris; this sea is separated by a 
very narrow space from the range of mountains which join Knémis 
and Ptéon, and which inclose on the east both the basin of Orcho- 
menus, Aspléd6n, and Κῦρε, and the lake Kopais. The migration 
of the Beeotians out of Thessaly into Beeotia (which is repre- 
sented as a consequence of the conquest of the former country by 
the Thesprotians) is commonly assigned as the compulsory force 
which Bootized Orchomenus. By whatever cause, or at what- 
ever time (whether before or after 776 Β. 0.) the transition may 
have been effected, we find Orchomenus completely Beeotian 
throughout the known historical age, - 75 still retaieing its local 
Minyeian legends, and subject to the jealous rivalry” of Thebes, 
as being the second city in the Boeotian league. 1 he direct road 
from the passes of Phokis southward into Beeotia went through 
Cheroneia, leaving Lebadeia on the right, and Orchomenus on 
the left hand, and passed the south-western edge of the lake 


! See an admirable topographical description of the north part of Beotia, 
—the lake K6pais and its environs, in Forchhammer’s Hellenika, pp. 159- 
186, with an explanatory map. The two long and laborious tunnels con- 
structed by the old Orchomenians for the drainage of the lake, as an aid to 
the insufficiency of the natural Katabothra, are there very clearly laid down : 
one goes to the sea, the other into the neighboring lake Hylika, which is 
surrounded by high rocky banks and can take more water without overflow- 
ing. The lake Kopais is an inclosed Lasia, receiving all the water from 
Doris and Phokis through the Képhisus. A copy of Forchhammer’s map 
will be found at the end of the present volume. 

Forchhammer thinks that it was nothing but the similarity of the name 
It6nea (derived from lréa, a willow-tree) which gave rise to the tale of an 
emigration of people from the Thessalian to the Beeotian I[t6né (p. 148). 

The Homeric Catalogue presents K6pz, on the north of the lake, as Boo 
tian, but not Orchomenus nor Asplédon (Tliad, ii. 502). 

* Sce O. Miiller, Orchomenos, cap. xx. p. 418, seq. 


BEOTIAN CONFEDERACY. 295 


Kopais near the towns of Koroneia, Alalkomena, and Haliarius, 
—all situated on the mountain Tilphéssion, an outlying ridge 
connected with Helicon by the intervention of Mount Leibe 
thrius. The Tilphosseon was an important military post, com- 
manding that narrow pass between the mountain and the lake 
which lay in the great road from Phokis to Thebes.! The ter- 
ritory of this latter city occupied the greater part of central 
Beeotia, south of the lake K6épais; it comprehended Akrezphia 
and Mount Ptdon, and probably touched the Eubcean sea at the 
village of Salganeus south of Anthéd6n. South-west of Thebes, 
occupying the southern descent of lofty Helicon towards the 
inmost corner of the Corinthian gulf, and bordering on the south- 
eastern extremity of Phokis with the Phokian town of Bulis, 
stood the city of Thespize. Southward of the Asdpus, between 
that river and Mount Kitheron, were Platea and Tanagra; in 
the south-eastern corner of Beeotia stood Orépus, the frequent 
subject of contention between Thebes and Athens; and in the 
road between the Eubcean Chalkis and Thebes, the town of 
Mykaléssus. 

From our first view of historical Boeotia downward, there 
appears a confederation which embraces the whole territory: 
and during the Peloponnesian war, the Thebans invoke “the 
ancient constitutional maxims of the Beeotians” as a justification 
of extreme rigor, as well as of treacherous breach of the peace, 
against the recusant Plateans.2 Of this confederation, the 
greater cities were primary members, while the lesser were 
attached to one or other of them in a kind of dependent union. 
Neither the names nor the number of these primary members 
can be certainly known: there seem grounds for including 
Thebes, Orchomenus, Lebadeia, Koréneia, Haliartus, Κόρα, 
Anthédén, Tanagra, Thespiz, and Plataa before its secession.3 


' See Demosthen. De Fals. Legat. c. 43-45. Another portion of this nar- 
row road is probably meant by the pass of Koréneia— ra περὶ Κορώνειαν 
στενὰ (Diodor. xv. 52; Xenoph. Hellen. iv. 3, 15)— which Epameinondas 
occupied to prevent the invasion of Kleombrotus from Phokis, 

? Thucyd. ii. 2—xard τὰ πάτρια τῶν πάντων Βοιωτῶν : compare the 
speech of the Thebans to the Lacedzemonians after the capture of Platea. 
iii. 61, 65, 66. 

* Thucyd. iv. 91; C. F. Hermann, Griechische Staats Alterthiimer. sect 


296 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Akrephia, with the neighboring Mount Ptéon and its oracle, 
Skélus, Glisas, and other places, were dependencies of ‘l'‘hebes: 
Cheroneia, Asplédén, Holménes, and Hyéttus, of Orchomenus: 
Siphxe, Leuktra, Keréssus, and Thisbé, of Thespiw.! Certain 
generals or magistrates, called Bootarchs, were chosen annually 
to manage the common affairs of the confederation. At the time 
of the battle of Delium in the Peloponnesian war, they were 
eleven in number, two of them from Thebes; but whether this 
number was always maintained, or in what proportions the choice 
was made by the different cities, we find no distinct information. 
There were likewise, during the Peloponnesian war, four different 
senates, with whom the Beeotarchs consulted on matters of im- 
portance; a curious arrangement, of which we have no explana- 
tion. Lastly, there was the general concilium and religious 
festival,— the Pambeeotia,— held periodically at Koréneia. Such 
were the forms, as far as we can make them out, of the Beeotian 
confederacy ; each of the separate cities possessing its own senate 
and constitution, and having its political consciousness as an 
autonomous unit, yet with a certain habitual deference to the fed. 
eral obligations. Substantially, the affairs of the confederation 
will be found in the hands of Thebes, managed in the interests 
of Theban ascendency, which appears to have been sustained by 
no other feeling except respect for superior force and bravery. 
The discontents of the minor Beotian towns, harshly repressed 
and punished, form an uninviting chapter in Grecian history. 
One piece of information we find, respecting Thebes singly and 
apart from the other boeotian towns anterior to the year 700 B.C. 
Though brief, and incompletely recorded, it is yet highly valuable, 
as one of the first incidents of solid and positive Grecian history. 
Dioklés, the Corinthian, stands enrolled as Olympic victor in the 
13th Olympiad, or 728 B. c., at a time when the oligarchy called 
Bacchiadz possessed the government of Corinth. The beauty 
of his person attracted towards him the attachment of Philolaus, 
one of the members of this oligarchical body,—a sentiment 


179: Herodot. ν. 79; Boeckh, Commentat. ad Inscript. Beotic. ap. Corp. 


Ins. Gr. part v. p. 726. 
' Herodot. viii. 135; ix. 15-43. Pausan ix. 13, 1; ix. 23, 3; ix. 24,3 


ix. 32, 1-4. Xenophon, Hellen. vi. 4,3-4: compare Ὁ. Miiller, Orchome 
nos, cap. xx. p. 403 


EARLY LAWS OF PHILOLAUS AT THEBES. 297 


which Grecian manners did not proscribe; but it also provokea 
an incestuous passion on the part of his own mother, Halcyoné, 
from which Dioklés shrunk with hatred and horror. He aban- 
doned forever his native city and retired to Thebes, whither he 
was followed by Philolaus, and where both of them liyed and 
died. Their tombs were yet shown in the time of Aristotle 
close adjoining to each other, yet with an opposite frontage; that 
of Philolaus being so placed that the inmate could command a 
view of the lofty peak of his native city, while that of Dioklés 
was 80 disposed as to block out all prospect of the hateful spot. 
That which preserves to us the memory of so remarkable an 
incident, js, the esteem entertained for Philolaus by the Thebans 
—a feeling so profound, that they invited him to make laws foe 
them. We shall have occasion to point out one or two similar 
cases, in which Grecian cities invoked the aid of an intelligent 
stranger; and the practice became common, among the Italian 
republics in the Middle Ages, to nominate a person not belonging 
to their city either as podesta or as arbitrator in civil dissensions, 
It would have been highly interesting to know, at length, what 
laws Philolaus made for. the Thebans; but Aristotle, with his 
usual conciseness, merely alludes to his regulations respecting the 
adoption of children and respecting the multiplication of offspring 
in each separate family. His laws were framed with the view 
to maintain the original number of lots of land, without either 
subdivision or consolidation ; but by what means the purpose was 
to be fulfilled we are not informed.! There existed a law at 


Aristot. Polit. ii. 9, 6-7. Νομοϑέτης δ᾽ αὐτοὶς (to the Thebans) éyévero 
Φιλόλαος περί τ᾽ ἄλλων τινῶν καὶ περὶ τῆς παιδοποιΐας, οὗς καλοῦσιν ἐκεῖνοι 
νόμους ϑετικούς " καὶ τοῦτ᾽ éariv ἰδίως ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνου νενομοϑετημένον, ὅπως ὁ 
ἀριϑμὸς σώζηται τῶν κλήρων. A perplexing passage follows within three 
lines of this, — Φιλολάου δὲ ἴδιον ἐστιν 7 TOV οὐσιῶν ἀνομώλωσις, ---- which 
raises two questions: first, whether Philolaus can really be meant in the 
second passage, which talks of what is idcov to Philolaus, while the first pas- 
sage had already spoken of something ἰδίως vevouodternuéve~ hy the same 
person. Accordingly, Gottling and M. Barthélemy St. Hitaa:e follow one 
of the MSS. by writing Φαλέου in place of Φιλολάου. Nexi, what is the 
meaning of ἀνομάλωσις ὁ Ο. Miiller ( Dorians, ch. x. 5, p. 209) considers it 
to mean a “fresh equalization, just as ἀναδασμὸς means a fresh division,” 
adopting the translation of Victorius and Schldsser. 

The point can hardly be -: settled; but if this translation οἵ dve 


233 HISTORY OF GREECE. 
Thebes, which perhaps may have been par 


Philolaus, prohibiting exposure of children, 
poverty, to bring his new- 


t of the scheme of 
and empowering a 


father, under the pressure of extreme 
born infant to the magistrates, who sold it fora price to any 


r,-— taking from him the obligation to bring it 
n. to consider the adult as his slave. 
ing to us without accompanying 
- inference, except that the great 


citizen-purchase 
up, but allowing him in retur 
From these brief allusions, com 


iliustration, we can draw no other 
problem of population—the relation between the well-being of 


the citizens and their mot 
had engaged the serious attention even of the 
We may, however, observe that the old Corinthian 
legislator, Pheid6n, (whose precise date cannot be fixed) is stated 
by Aristotle,? to have contemplated much the same object as that 
isecribed to Philolaus at Thebes; an unchangeable num- 

any attempt to 


‘e or less rapid increase in numbers— 
arliest Grecian 


legislators. 


which is ¢ 


ber both of citizens and of lots of land, without 
τ the unequal ratio of the lots, one to the other. 


alte 


CHAPTER IV. 


EARLIEST HISTORICAL VIEW OF PELOPONNESUS. DORIANS IN 
NEIGHBORING CITIES. 


ARGOS AND THE 


Wer now pass from the northern members 
head of Greece, --- Peloponnesus and Attica, 


first in order, and giving 

specting its early historical phenomena. 
The traveller who entered Peloponne 

the youthful days of Herodotus and Thucydides, 


uadworc be correct, there is good 
Φιλολάου : since the proceeding described would har 
ideas of Phaleas (Aristot. Pol. ui. 4, 3). 

1 lian, V. H. ἢ. 7. 

3 Aristot Polit. ii. 3, 7 
Argos, as far as we are enabled to judge 


to the heart and 
taking the former 


as much as can be ascertained re- 


sus from Beeotia during 
found an array 


ground for preferring the word Φαλέου τὸ 
monize better with the 


This Pheidén seems different from Pheidén of 


EARLIEST HISTORICAL VIEW OF PELOPONNESUS 999 


of powerful Doric cities conterminous to each other, and begi 
1ing at the isthmus of Corinth. First came gpa Pi 
across the isthmus from sea to sea. and occupying she high Bi 
rugged mountain-ridge called Geraneia; next. Corinth hei 
strong and conspicuous acropolis, and its territory i 7 ling 
Mount Oneion as well as the portion of the isthmus at ol ve tir 
level and narrowest, which divided its two mean it aa 3 
chavum and Kenchree. Westward of Corinth, along the Ἢ = 
thian gulf, stood Sikyén, with a plain of ptiopminedin fertility, 
between the two towns: southward of Sikyén and Corint} ‘tats 
Phlius and Kleonz, both conterminous, as well as Corinth alee 
Argos and the Argolic peninsula. The inmost bend ie : 
Argolic gulf, including a considerable space of flat and 1 ive 
ground adjoining to the sea, was possessed by δῶμ. be ee 
- peninsula was divided by Argos with the πω asks at 
uP é ¥ 3 Treze Ἢ i j ᾿ | 
sane poomedng the eotanciie: cutie, asain sais 
i in ew a stern corner. Proceeding south- 
i ae Ν Se oe ern coast of the gulf, and passing over the 
ittle river called Tanos, the traveller found himself in the ἢ 
minion of Sparta, which comprised the entire southern region ἪΡ 
the peninsula from its eastern to its western sea, where the ety 
Neda flows into the latter. He first passed from βθραβνάρι 
the difficult mountain range called Parnén (which elite to the 
west the southern portion of Argolis), until he found himself i 
the valley of the river Genus, which he followed until it ‘oined 
. Eurotas. In the larger valley of the Eurotas, far BE Canty 
ah ta te Se ee ενπσθενν το ΠΡΌ 
. ι ᾿ , unadorned, adjoining 
villages, which bore collectively the formidable nenis of 8 arts. 
The whole valley of the Eurotas, from Skiritis and et 
at the border of Arcadia, to tle Laconian gulf, — expanding 
several parts into fertile plain, especially near to its mouth 
hee the towns of Gythium and Helos were found, — belonged 
to Sparta; toge ri i i " 
ies contd ohdeh,ponpasie ee Ae phoma Ma aol 
promontory of Malea,— and 
the still loftier chain of Taygetus to the westward, which ends 
in the promontory of Teznarus. On the other side of Taygetus 
on the banks of the river Pamisus, which there flows ‘sites the 
Messenian gulf, lay the plain of Messéné, the richest land in the 


300 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


peninsula. This plain had once yielded its ample produce to the 
free Messenians Dorians, resident in the towns of Stenyklérus 
and Andania. But in the time of which we speak, the name of 
Messenians was borne only by a body of brave but homeless 
exiles, whose restoration to the land of their forefathers over 
passed even the exile’s proverbially sanguine hope. Their land 
was confounded with the western portion of Laconia, which 
reached in a south-westerly direction down to the extreme point 
of Cape Akritas, and northward as far as the river Neda. 
Throughout his whole journey to the point last mentioned, 
from the borders of Boeotia and Megaris, the traveller would only 
step from one Dorian state into another. But on crossing from 
the south to the north bank of the river Neda, at a point near 
to its mouth, he would find himself out of Doric land altogether : 
first, in the territory called Triphylia, — next, in that of Pisa, or 
the Pisatid,— thirdly, in the more spacious and powerful state 
called Elis; these three comprising the coast-land of Peloponne- 
sus from the mouth of the Neda to that of the Larissus. The 
Triphylians, distributed into a number of small townships, the 
largest of which was Lepreon, — and the Pisatans, equally des- 
titute of any centralizing city,—had both, at the period of 
which we are now speaking, been conquered *y ¢heir more 
powerful northern neighbors of Elis, who enjoyed the advantage 
of a spacious territory united under one governmwvat¢ the mid- 
dle portion, called the Hollow Elis, being for the most part 
fertile, though the tracts near the sea were more sandy and 
barren. The Eleians were a section of /£tolian emigrants 
into Peloponnesus, but the Pisatans and Triphylians had both 
been originally independent inhabitants of the peninsula, — the 
latter being affirmed to belong to the same race as the Minya 
who had occupied the ante-Boeotian Orchomenos : both, too, bore 
the ascendency of Elis with perpetual murmur and occ¢ sional 
resistance. 

Crossing the river Larissus, and pursuing the northern coast 
of Peloponnesus south of the Corinthian gulf, the traveller would 
pass into Achaia,— a name which designated the narrow strip of 
level land, and the projecting spurs and declivities, between that 
gulf and the northernmost mountains of the peninsula, — Skollis, 
Erymanthus, Aroania, Krathis, and the towering eminence called 


ARCADIA 301 


Kyl/éné. Achzan cities,— twelve in number at least. if not 
mor 2, — divided this lung strip of land amongst them fon th 
mouth of the Larissus and the north-western Cape Sasi ᾿ 
one side, to the western boundary of the Sikyonian servis μὰ 
the other. According to the accounts of the ancient esa dan 
the belief of Herodotus, this territory had once been Bia ae 4 
Jonian inhabitants whom the Achzans had expelled. . 
| In making this journey, the traveller would have finished the 
circuit of Peloponnesus; but he would still have left caivedl 
the great central region, inclosed between the terstulten BHA 
enumerated, — approaching nearest to the sea on the Means of 
lriphylia, but never touching it anywhere. This region was 
Arcadia, possessed by inhabitants who are uniformly represented 
as all of one race, and all aboriginal. It was high and bl a 
full of wild mountain, rock, and forest, and abounding to μὴν : 
gree unusual even in Greece, with those land-locked baste ἡ 
whence the water finds only a subterraneous issue. It was dis. 
mH coca. a large number of distinct villages and aie 
Many of the village tribes, — the alii li 
etc., occupying the central ae pa ae βοοσοσνι 
bered among the rudest of the Greeks: but slong τα eases 
frontier there were several Arcadian cities which ranked ᾿. 
ὺ rvedly among the more civilized Peloponnesians. Tegea ‘Man. 
tineia, Orchomenus, Stymphalus, Pheneus, possessed thie whole 
eastern frontier of Arcadia from the borders of Laconia to thos 
ot Sikyén and Pelléné in Achaia: Phigaleia at the south cane 
ern corner, near the borders of Triphylia, and Hera, on ths 
north bank of the Alpheius, near the place where that diver site 
Arcadia to enter the Pisatis, were also towns deserving of eae 
towards the north of this cold and thinly-peopled region near 
Pheneos, was situated the small town of Nonakris, adjoining to 
which rose the hardly accessible crags where the rivulet of Styx! 


: — ve wi Pausan. viii. 18, 2. See the description and pide of the 
iver Styx, and the neighboring rocks, in Fj ’s Rei i 
* Sty g 8, iedler’s Reise du : 

nie rch Griechenland, 
Pre Ay ον a scene amids: these rocks, in 1826, when the troops οὔ 
— Pasha were in the Morea, which realizes the fearful pictures of war 
after the manner of the ancient Gauls, or Thracians. A crowd of five thou. 
sand Greeks, of every age and sex, had found she'ter in a grassy and bushy 


802 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


flowed down: a point of common feeling for all Arcadians, from 
the terrific sanction which this water was understood to impart 
to their oaths. 

The distribution of Peloponnesus here sketched, suitable to 
the Persian invasion and the succeeding half century, may also 
be said (with some allowances) to be adapted to the whole inter- 
αἱ between about B. 6. 550-370; from the time of the conquest 
of Thyreatis by Sparta to the battle of Leuktra. But it is not 
the earliest distribution which history presents to us. Not pre- 
suming to criticize the Homeric map of Peloponnesus, and going 
back only to 776 B.c., we find this material difference, — that 
Sparta occupies only a very small fraction of the large territory 
above described as belonging to her. Westward of the summit of 
Mount Taygetus are found another section of Dorians, independ. 
ent of Sparta: the Messenian Dorians, whose city is on the hill 
of Stenyklérus, near the south-western boundary of Arcadia, and 
whose possessions cover the fertile plain of Messéne along the 
river Pamisus to its mouth in the Messenian gulf: it is to be noted 
that Messéné was then the name of the plain generally, and that 
no town so called existed until after the battle of Leuktra. Again, 
sastward of the valley of the Eurotas, the mountainous region 
and the western shores of the Argolic gulf down to Cape Malea 
are also independent of Sparta; belonging to Argos, or rather 
to Dorian towns in unison with Argos. All the great Dorian 
towns, from the borders of the Megarid to the eastern frontier 
of Arcadia, as above enumerated, appear to have existed in 776 
s.c.: Achaia was in the same condition, so far as we are able 
to judge, as well as Arcadia, except in regard to its southern 
frontier, conterminous with Sparta, of which more will hereafter 
be said. In respect to the western portion of Peloponnesus, 


Elis (properly so called) appears to have embraced the same 


spot embosomed amidst these crags, —few of them armed. They were 
pursued by five thousand Egyptians and Arabians: a very small resistance, 
in such ground, would have kept thé troops at bay, but the poor men either 
could not or would not offer it. They were forced to surrender : the young: 
est and most energetic cast themselves headlong from the rocks and per 
ished : three thousand prisoners were carried away captive, and sold for 


slaves at Corinth, Patras, and Modon : all those who were unfit for sale were 


massacred on the spot by the Egyptian troops. 


DORIAN EMIGRATION INTO PELOPONNESUS, 303 


territory in 776 B.c. as in 550 B. c.: but the Pisatid had been 
recently conquered, and was yet imperfectly subjected by the 
Eleians; while Triphylia seems to have been quite independ- 
ent of them. Respecting the south-western promontory of Pelo- 
ponnesus down to Cape Akritas, we are altogether without infore 
mation : reasons will hereafter be given for believing that it did not 
at that time form part of the territory of the Messenian Dorians. 

Of the different races or people whom Herodotus knew im 
Peloponnesus, he believed three *to be aboriginal, — the Arca- 
dians, the Achwans, and the Kynurians. The Achwans, though 
belonging indigenously to the peninsula, had yet removed from 
the southern portion of it to the northern, expelling the previous 
Jonian tenants: this is a part of the legend respecting the Dorian 
conquest, or Return of the Herakleids, and we can neither verify 
nor contradict it. But neither the Arcadians nor the Kynurians 
had ever changed their abodes. Of the latter, I have not before 
spoken, because they were never (so far as history knows them) 
an independent population. They occupied the larger portion! 
of the territory of Argolis, from Orne, near the northern2 or 
Phliasian border, to Thyrea and the Thyreatis, on the Laconian 
border: and though belonging originally (as Herodotus imagines 
rather than asserts) to the Ionic race —they had been so long 
subjects of Argos in his time, that almost all evidence of their 
ante-Dorian condition had vanished. 

But the great Dorian states in Peloponnesus — the capital 
powers in the peninsula — were all originally emigrants, accord- 
ing to the belief not only of Herodotus, but of all the Grecian 
world: so also were the A®tolians of Elis, the Triphylians, and 
the Dryopes at Hermioné and Asiné. All these emigrations 
are so described as to give them a root in the Grecian legendary 
world: the Triphylians are traced back to Lemnos, as the off- 
spring of the Argonautic heroes,’ and we are too uninformed 


' This is the only way of reconciling Herodotus (viii. 73) with Thucydi- 
dés (iv. 56, and v.41). The original extent of the Kynurian territory is a 
point on which neither of them had any means of very ccrrect information , 
but there is no occasion to reject the one in favor of the other. 

* Herod. viii. 73. Ol δὲ Κυνούριοι, αὐτόχϑονες ἐόντες, δοκέουσι μοῦνοι 
εἶναι “lwvec: ἐκδεδωρίευνται δὲ, ὑπό τε ᾿Αργείων ἀρχόμενοι καὶ τοῦ χρόνον 
ἐόντες ᾿Ορνιῆται καὶ περίοικοι. 3 Herodot. iv. 145-146 


304 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


about them tu venture upon any historical guesses. But respec 
ing the Dorians, it may perhaps be possible, by examining the 
first historical situation in which they are presented to us, to otfer 
some conjectures as to the probable circumstances under which 
they arrived. The legendary narrative of it has already been 
given in the first chapter of this volume, — that great mythical 
event called the Return of the Children of Héraklés, by which 
the first establishment of the Dorians in the promised land of 
Peloponnesus was explained to the full satisfaction of Grecian 
faith. One single armament and expedition, acting by the special 
direction of the Delphian god, and conducted by three brothers. 
lineal descendants of the principal Achzxo-Dorian heroes through 
Hyllus, (the eponymus of the principal tribe,) —the national 
heroes of the preéxisting population vanquished and expelled, 
and the greater part of the peninsula both acquired and parti- 
ances of the partition adjusted 


tioned at a stroke, — the circumst 
and Messenia, — the friend- 


to the historical relations of Laconia 
ly power of Etolian Elis, with its Olympic games as the bond 
of union in Peloponnesus, attached to this event as an appendage, 
in the person of Oxylus, —all these particulars compose ἃ narrar 
tive well calculated to impress the retrospective imagination of a 
Greek. They exhibit an epical fitness and sufficiency which it 
would be unseasonable to impair by historical criticism. 

The Alexandrine chronology sets down a period of 525 years 
from the Return of the Herakleids to the first Olympiad (1104 
B. c.— 776 B.C,),—— @ period measured by the lists of the kings 
of Sparta, on the trustworthiness of which some remarks have 
already been offered. Of these 328 years, the first 250, at the 
least, are altogether barren of facts; and even if we admitted 
them to be historical, we should have nothing to recount except 
a succession of royal names. Being unable either to guarantee 
the entire list, or to discover any valid test for discriminating the 
historical and the non-historical items, I here enumerate the 
T.acedeemonian kings as they appear in Mr. Clinton’s Fasti Hel- 
lenici. ‘There were two joint kings at Sparta, throughout nearly 
all the historical time ot independent Greece, deducing their 
descent from Héraklés through Eurysthenés and Proklés, the 
twin sons of Aristodémus ; the latter being one of those three 


EARLIEST HISTORICAL VIEW OF PELOPONNESUS. 805 


Herakleid brothers 
ρος. quest of the peninsula is 


] ine Oo 0 . ν 
4 } Hurystheni s. ] Ἰ or } I] 
7 i ne "ro, ν és. 


Eurysthenés....... reigned 42 years. "οἱ H 

reigneu 51 years 
35 | Eurypon .... 
Doryssus "5555" is a Mid 
Agesilaus ‘ 


Archelaus.. 


Eunomus 
Charilaus 
Nikander 
Lheopompus ... 


2 


Alkamenés 


Both Theopompus ¢ és rel 
1 Theopompus and Alkamenés reigned considera 
a σους πρόννς g siderably longei 
pe iologists affirm that the year 776 B.c. (or tl ti 
.) VI na — Po . ο᾽ . ἢ i Γ 1c inst 
Ol npiad) occurred in the tenth year of each of their reigns 
is necessary to add, with regard to this list, that th ae 
mat ν᾿ "le soar ‘ νϑο ᾿ - ἐὰν : re y sie sins micas 
erial discrepancies between different authors even as to tl 
nal 5 4 ; Ρ Η τῇ « 4 ‘ : ; 
_— of individual kings, and still more as to the duration of 
their reigns, as ‘ 2 j 
ῳ _ as may be seen both in Mr. Clinton’s chronolog 
anc ars J ndi ; 
r sf uller’s Appendix to the History of the Dorians.! The 
alleged sum total ca ine: . 
σ al cannot be made to ag 
3 ree rT . “| ry 
a ἡμακκάῦρε τὸν οπεουῦ ) agree with the items without 
tng nse onjecture. QO. Miller observes,? in reference to 
his Alexandrine ¢ r ) 
| aed chronology, “ that our materials only enable us 
Ὁ restor its origi με 
e it to its original state, not to verify its correctness.” 


ἐὰν. a 

uae Cle eee ve Proklés and Euryp6én, and inserts Poly- 

oe. ni ears ΜΕ Eunomus: moreover, the accounts of the 

se ie 89 ag e states them, represented Lykurgus, the law- giver, as 

n¢ guardian of Labdtas, of the Eurysthenid house, — while Si ide 

made him son of Prytanis, and others made him son ‘of E a. ak 

Proklid line: compare Herod. i. 65; viii. 131. Plutarch L naka ® Ci 

᾿ eee ee Pagans on this early series of Spartan kings will be found 
Mr. G. C. Lewis’s article in the Phi ice οἱ. ii 

in 3 review of Dr. Arnold on the "Ἀόρταπι sratine gy islet tad 
Compare also Larcher, Chronologie d’Hérodote, ch 13 484-5 

iengthens many of the reigns considerably, in order to wat te ite spiel 


which he assigns to the ca 
pture of Troy and the Return i 
* History of the Dorians, vol. ii. Append. p. 442 ὙΠ 


VOL. Il. 2000 


B00 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


In point of fact they are insufficient even for the former purpose, 
as the dissensions among learned critics attest. 

We have a succession of names, still more barren of facts, in 
the case of the Dorian sovereigns of Corinth. This city had its 
ovn line of Herakleids, descended from Héraklés, but not through 
Hyllus. Hippotés, the progenitor of the Corinthian Herakleids, 
was reported in the legend to have originally joined the Dorian 
invaders of the Peloponnesus, but to have quitted them in conse- 
quence of having slain the prophet Karnus.' The three brothers, 
when they became masters of the peninsula, sent for Alétés, the 
son of Hippotés, and placed him in possession of Corinth, over 
which the chronolegists make him begin to reign thirty years 
after the Herakleid conquest. His successors are thus given’ - 


Aletes . 
Ixion 

Agelas ee 
Prymnis 
ΠΥ να νην ων. 
Agelas .. 
Eudémus 
Aristomédés 
Agémon 
Alexander... 
Telest’s 


! This story — that the heroic ancestor of the great Corinthian Bacchiads 
had slain the holy man Karnus, and had been punished for it by long ban- 
ishment and privation -— leads to the conjecture, that the Corinthians did not 
eclebrate the festival of the Karneia, common to the Dorians generally. 

Herodotus tells us, with regard to the Ionic cities, that all of them cele- 
brated the festival of Apaturia, except Ephesus and Kolophon; and that 
these two cities did not celebrate it, “ because of a certain reason of murder 
committed,” — οὗτοι γὰρ μοῦνοι ᾿Ιώνων οὐκ ἄγουσιν ᾿Απατούρια" καὶ οὗτοι 
κατὰ φόνου τινα σκῆψιν (Herod. i. 147). 

The murder οἵ Karnus by Hippotés was probably the φόνου σκῆψις which 
forbade the Corinthians from zelebrating the Karneia; at least, this supposi- 
tion gives to the legend a special pertinence which is otherwise wanting to 
Ι Respecting the Karneia and Hyacinthia, see Schoell De Origine Graecl 


ramatis, pp. 70-78. Tiibingen, 1828. 
There were varic vs singular customs connezted with the Grecian festivals 


Vol. 2 10 


BACCHIADE AT CORINTH. 307 


Such was the celebrity of Bacchis, we are told, that those whe 
succeeded him took the name of Bacchiads in place of Aletiads 
or Herakleids. One year after the accession of Automenés, the 
family of the Bacchiads generally, amounting to 200 persons, 
determined to abolish royalty, to constitute themselves a standing 
oligarchy, and to elect out of their own number an annual Pry- 
tanis. Thus commenced the oligarchy of the Bacchiads, which 
lasted for ninety years, until it was subverted by Kypselus in 
657 p.c.! Reckoning the thirty years previous to the begin- 
ning of the reign of Alétés, the chronologists thus provide an 
interval of 447 years between the Return of the Herakleids and 
the accession of Kypselus, and 357 years between the same 
period and the commencement of the Bacchiad oligarchy. The 
Bacchiad oligarchy is unquestionably historical ; the conquest of 
the Herakleids belongs to the legendary world; while the inter- 
val between the two is filled up, as in so many other cases, by a 
mere barren genealogy. 

When we jump this vacant space, and place ourselves at the 
first opening of history, we find that, although ultimately Sparta 
came to hold the first place, not only in Peloponnezas, but in all 
Hellas, this was not the case at the earliest moment of which we 
have historical cognizance. Argos, and the neighboring towns 
connected with her by a bond of semi-religious, semi-political 
union, — Sikyén, Phlius, Epidaurus, and Treezén, — were at first 
of greater power and consideration than Sparta; a fact which 
the legend of the Herakleids seems to recognize by making Té- 


which it was usual to account for by some legendary tale. Thus, no native 
of Elis ever entered himself as a competitor, or contended for the prize, at 
the Isthmian games. The legendary reason given for this was, that Héraklés 
had waylaid and slain (at Kleénz) the two Molionid brothers, when they 
were proceeding to the Isthmian games as Thedrs or sacred envoys from the 
Eleian king Augeas. Redress was in vain demanded for this outrage, and 
Molioné, mother of the slain envoys, imprecated a curse upon the Eleians 
generally if they should ever visit the Isthmian festival. This legend is the 
φόνου σκῆψις, explaining why no Eleian runner or wrestler was ever known 
to contend th re (Pausan. ii. 15, 1; v. 2, 1-4. Ister, Fragment. 46, ed. 
Didot). 

’ Diodor. Fragm. 115. vii. p. 14, with the note of Wesseling. Strabo (viii. 
p. 378) states the Barchiad oligarchy to have lasted nearly two hundred 


years. 


808 HISTORY OF GREECE 


menus the eldest brother of the three And Herodotus assures 
us that at one time all the eastern coast of Peloponnesus down to 
Cape Melea, including the island of Cythéra, all which came 
afterwards to constitute a material part of Laconia, had belonged 
to Argos.! Down to the time of the first Messenian war, the 
comparative importance of the Dorian establishments in Pelo- 
ponnesus appears to have been in the order in which the legend 
placed them, — Argos first,2 Sparta second, Messéné third. It 
will be seen hereafter that the Argeians never lost the recollec- 
tion of this early preéminence, from which the growth of Sparta 
had extruded them; and the liberties of entire Hellas were more 
than once in danger from their disastrous jealousy of a more for- 
tunate competitor. 

At a short distance of about three miles from Argos, and at 
the exact point where that city approaches nearest to the sea,3 
was situated the isolated hillock called Temenion, noticed both by 
Strabo and Pausanias. It was a small village, deriving both its 
name and its celebrity from the chapel and tomb of the hero 
Témenus, who was there worshipped by the Dorians; and the 
statement which Pausanias heard was, tliat ‘Témenus, with his 
invading Dorians, had seized and fortified the spot, and employed 
it as an armed post to make war upon Tisamenus and the Achex- 
ans. What renders this report deserving of the greater attention, 
is, that the same thing is affirmed with regard to-the eminence 
called Solygeius, near Corinth: this too was believed to be the 
place which the Dorian assailants had occupied and fortified against 


' Herodot. i. 82. The historian adds, besides Cythéra, καὶ ai λοιπαὶ τῶν 
νήσων. What other islands are meant, I do not distinctly understand. 

3 So Plato (Legg. iii. p. 692), whose mind is full of the old mythe and the 
tripartite distribution of Peloponnesus among the Herakleids,—7 δ᾽ αὖ, 
πρωτεύουσα ἐν τοῖς τότε χρόνοις τοὶς πεοὶ τὴν διανομὴν, ἣ περὶ τὸ “Apyog, 
εἴο. 

3 Pausan. ii. 38,1: Strabo, viii. p. 368. Professor Ross observes, 1espect- 
ing the line of coast near Argos, “ The sea-side is thoroughly flat, and for 
the most part marshy; only at the single point where Argos comes nearest 
to the coast, — between the month, now choked by sand, of the united Inachus 
and Charadrus, and the efflux of the Erasinus, overgrown with weeds and 
bulrushes, — stands an eminence of some elevation and composed of firmer 
earth, upon which the ancient Temenion was placed.” (Reisen im Pelopon 
ves, vol. i. sect. δ, p. 149, Berlin, 1841.) 


DORIAN CONQUEST OF ARGOS AND CORINTL. 809 


the preéxisting Corinthians in the city. Situated close upon 
the Sarénic gulf, it was the spot which invaders landing from 
that gulf would naturally seize upon, and which Nikias with his 
powertul Athenian fleet did actually seize and occupy against 
Corinth in the Peloponnesian war.! In early days, the only way 
of overpowering the inhabitants of a fortified town, generally 
also planted in a position itself very defensible, was, — that the 
invaders, entrenching themselves in the neighborhood, harassed 
the inhabitants and ruined their produce until they brought them 
to terms. Even during the Peloponnesian war, when the art of 
besieging had made some progress, we read of several instances 
in which this mode of aggressive warfare was adopted with effi- 
cient results.2 We may readily believe that the Dorians obtain- 
ed admittance both into Argos and Corinth in this manner. And 
it is remarkable that, except Sikyén (which is affirmed to have 
been surprised by night), these were the only towns in the Argo- 
lic region which are said to have resisted them; the story being, 
that Phlius, Epidaurus, and Troezén had admitted the Dorian 
intruders without opposition, although a certain portion of the 
previous inhabitants seceded. We shall hereafter see that the 
non-Dorian population of Sikyén and Corinth still remained con- 
siderable. 

The separate statements which we thus find, and the position 
of the Temenion and the Solygeius, lead to two conjectures, — 
first, that the acquisitions of the Dorians in Peloponnesus were 
also isolated and gradual, not at all conformable to the rapid 
strides of the old Herakleid legend ; next, that the Dorian invad- 
ers of Argos and Corinth made their attack from the Argolic 
and the Saronic gulfs, — by sea and not by land. It is, indeed, 
difficult to see how they can have got to the Temenion in any 
other way than by sea; and a glance at the map will show that 
the eminence Solygeius presents itself3 with reference to Corinth, 
as the nearest and most convenient holding-ground for a mari- 
time invader, conformably to the scheme of operations laid by 
Nikias. ‘To illustrate the supposition of a Dorian attack by sea 
on Corinth, we may refer to a story quoted from Aristotle (which 


' Thucyd. iv. 42. T :ucyd. i. 122; iii 85, vii. 18-27; viii. 38-40. 
ὃ Thucyd. iv. 42. 


310 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


we find embodied in the explanation of an old adage), represent 
ing Hippotés the father of Alétés as having crossed the Maliae 
gulf! (the sea immediately bordering on the ancient Maleans, 
Dryopians, and Dorians) in ships, for the purpose of colonizing, 
And if it be safe to trust the mention of Dorians in the Odyssey, 
43 a part of the population of the island of Crete, we there have 
n example of Dorian settlements which must have been effected 


by sea, and that too at a very early period. “ We must suppose 
(observes O. Miiller,? in reference to these Kretan Dorians) that 
the Dorians, pressed by want or restless from inactivity, con- 
structed piratical canoes, manned these frail and narrow barks 


with soldiers who themselves worked at the oar, and thus being 
changed from mountaineers into seamen,—the Normans of 
Greece, — set sail for the distant island of Kréte.” In the same 
manner, we may conceive the expeditions of the Dorians against 
Argos and Corinth to have been effected ; and whatever diflicul- 
ties may attach to this hypothesis, certain it is that the difficulties 
of a long land-march, along such a territory as Greece, are still 
more serious. 

The supposition of Dorian emigrations by sea, from the Ma- 
liac gulf to the north-eastern promontory of Peloponnesus, is 
farther borne out by the analogy of the Dryopes, or Dryopians. 
During the historical times, this people occupied several detached 
settlements in various parts of Greece, all maritime, and some 
insular ;— they were found at Hermioné, Asiné, and Eion, in 
the Argolic peninsula (very near to the important Dorian towns 


' Aristot. ap. Prov. Vatican. iv. 4, Μηλιακὸν tAoiov, — also, Prov. Suidas 
». &. 

2 Hist. of Dorians, ch. i. 9. Andrén positively affirms that the Dorians 
came from Histixdétis to Kréte; but his affirmation does not seem to me 
to constitute any adilitional evidence of the fact: it is a conjecture adapted 
to the passage in the Odyssey (xix. 174), as the mention of Achzans and 
Pelasgians evidently shows. 

Aristotle (ap. Strab. viii. p. 374) appears to have believed that the Hera 
kleids returned to Argos out of the Attic Tetrapolis (where, according to 
the Athenian legend, they had obtained shelter when persecuted by Eurys- 
theus), accompanying a body of Ionians who then settled at Epidaurus. He 
cannot, therefore, have connected the Dorian occupation of Argos with the 
expedition from Naupaktus. 


DORIANS AT SPART.A AND IN MESSENE. 811 


constituting the Amphiktyony of Argos,!) — at Styra and Karys- 
tus in the island of Kuboea, — in the island of Kythnus, and even 
at Cyprus. ‘These dispersed colonies can only have been plant- 
ed by expeditions over the sea. Now we are told that the origi- 
nal Dryopis, the native country of this people, comprehended 
both the territory near the river Spercheius, and north of CEta, 
afterwards occupied by the Malians, as well as the neighboring 
district south of Cita, which was afterwards called Doris. From 
hence the Dryopians were expelled, — according to one story, by 
the Dorians, — according to another, by Héraklés and the Malians: 
however this may be, it was from the Maliac gulf that they started 
on shipboard in quest of new homes, which some of them found 
on the headlands of the Argolic peninsula.2 And it was from 
this very country, according to Herodotus,’ that the Dorians also 
set forth, in order to reach Peloponnesus. Nor does it seem 
unreasonable to imagine, that the same means of conveyance, 
which bore the Dryopians from the Maliac gulf to Hermioné 
and Asiné, also carried the Dorians from the same place to the 
Temenion, and the hill Solygeius. 

The legend represents Sikyén, Epidaurus, Troezen, Phiius, 
and Klednz, as all occupied by Dorian colonists from Argos, 
under the different sons of Témenus: the first three are on the 
sea, and fit places for the occupation of maritime invaders. Ar- 
gos and the Dorian towns in and near the Argolic peninsula are 
to be regarded as a cluster of settlements by themselves, com- 
pletely distinct from Sparta and the Messenian Stenyklérus, 
which appear to have been formed under totally different condi- 
tions. First, both of them are very far inland, — Stenyklérus 
not easy, Sparta very difficult of access from the sea; next, we 
know that the conquests of Sparta were gradually made down 
the valley of the Eurotas seaward. Both these acquisitions pre- 
sent the appearance of having been made from the land-side, and 


1 Herod. viii. 43-46; Diodor. iv. 37; Pausan. iv. 34, 6. 
2 Strabo, viii. p. 373; ix. p. 434. Herodot. viii. 43. Pherekydés, Fr. 23 
and 38, ed. Didot. Steph. Byz. v. Δρνόπη. Apoll-wor. ii. 7, 7. Schol. 


Apollon. Rhod. i. 12153. 
3 Herodot. i. 56. -- ἐνθεῦτεν δὲ aitic ἐς τὴν Δρυοπιδα uewé3y, καὶ ἐκ τῆς 


Δρυοπίδος οὕτως ἐς Πελοπόννησον ἐλϑὸν, Δωρικὸν ἐκλήϑη, --α ἴο the sams 
purpose, Vili. 31-43. 


312 HISTORY OF GREEC«r. 


perhaps in the direction which the Herakleid legend describes, 
— by warriors entering Peloponnesus across the narrow mouth 
of the Corinthian gulf, through the aid or invitation of those 
Etolian settlers who at the same time colonized Elis. The early 
and intimate connection (en which I shall touch presently) be- 
tween Sparta and the Olympic games as administered by the 
Eleians, as well as the leading part ascribed to Lykurgus in the 
constitution of the solemn Olympic truce, tend to strengthen such 
& persuasion. 

In considering the early affairs of the Derians in Peloponnesus, 
we are apt to have our minds biased, first, by the Herakleid 
legend, which imparts to them an impressive, but deceitful. epical 
unity; next, by the aspect of the later and better-known history, 
which presents the Spartan power as unquestionably preponder- 
ant, and Argos only as second by a long interval. But the first 
view (as I have already remarked) which opens to us, of real 
Grecian history, a little before 776 B. c., exhibits Argos with its 
alliance or confederacy of neighboring cities colonized from itself. 
as the great seat of Dorian power in the peninsula, and Sparta 
as an outlying state of inferior consequence. The recollection 
of this state of things lasted after it had ceased to be a reality, 
end kept alive pretensions on the part of Argos to the headship 
of the Greeks as a matter of right, which she became quite inca- 
pable of sustaining either by adequate power or by statesmanlike 
sagacity. The growth of Spartan power was a succession of en- 
croachments upon Argos.' 

How Sparta came constantly to gain upon Argos will be matter 
for future explanation : at present, it is sufficient to remark. that 
the ascendency of Argos was derived not exclusively from her 
own territory, but came in part from her position as metropolis 
of an alliance of autonomous neighboring cities, all Dorian and 
all colonized from herself, — and this was an element of power 


* See Herodot. vii.148. The Argeians say to the Lacedwemonians, in refer 
ence to the chief command of the Greeks — καίτοι κατά γε TO δίκαιον γίνε" 
Va: τὴν ἡγεμονίην ἑωύτων, etc. Schweighauser and others explain the poir. 
by reference to the command of Agamemnén : but this is at best only a part 
of the foundation of their claim: they had a more recent historical reality 


»"Δ 


to plead also: compare Strabo. viii. p. 376. 


ARGEIAN CONFEDERACY. 818 


essentially fluctuating. What Thébes was to the cities ot Beeotia, 
ef which she either was, or professed to have been, the founder, 

the same was Argos in reference to Kleénx, Phlius, Siky6n, 
iipidaurus, Treezén, and A°gina. These towns formed, in mythi- 
cal language, “ the lot of ‘Témenus,”2 — in real matter of fact, the 
confederated allies or subordinates of Argos: the first four of 
them were said to have been Dorized by the sons or immediate 
relatives of ‘Témenus; and the kings of Argos, as acknowledged 
descendants of the latter, claimed and exercised a sort of suzeraineté 
over them. Hermioné, Asiné, and Nauplia seem also to have 
»een under the supremacy of Argos, though not colonies.2 But 


‘his supremacy was not claimed directly and nakedly : agreeably 


[0 the ideas of the time, the ostensible purposes of the Argeian 
contederacy or Amphiktyony were religious, though its secondary 
and not less real effects, were political. The great patron-god of 
‘he league was Apollo Pythaéus, in whose name the obligations 
incumbent on the members of the league were imposed. While 
in each of the confederated cities there was a temple to this god, 
ais most holy and central sanctuary was on the Larissa or acrops 
olis of Argos. At this central Argeian sanctuary, solemn sacri- 
tices were offered by Epidaurus as well as by other members of 
the confederacy, and, as it should seem, accompanied by moneys 

' Ἡμῶν κτισάντων (so runs the accusation of the Theban orators. against 
the captive Platzans, before their Lacedemonian judges, Thucyd. iii. 61.) 
Πλάταιαν ὕστερον τῆς ἄλλης Βοιωτίας --- οὐκ ἠξίουν αὐτοὶ, ὥσπερ ἐτάχϑη τὸ 
πρῶτον, ἡγεμονεύεσϑαι ὑφ᾽ ἡμῶν, ἔξω δὲ τῶν ἄλλων Βοιωτῶν παραβαίνοντες 
τὰ πάτρια, ἐπειδὴ προσηναγκάζοντο, προσεχώρησαν πρὸς ᾿Αϑηναίους καὶ μετ᾽ 
αὑτων πολλὰ ἡμᾶς ἔβλαπτον. 

* Respecting Pheidén, king of Argos, Ephorus said, — τὴν λῆξιν ὅλην 
ἐνέλαβε τὴν Τημένου διεσπασμένην εἰς πλείω μέρη (ap. Strabo. viii. Ρ. 358). 

* The worship of Apollo Pythaéus, adopted from Argos both δὲ Hermioné 
and Asiné, shows the connection between them and Argos (Pausan. ii. 35, 
2; 11. 36, 5): but Pausanias can hardly be justified in saying that the 
Argeians actually Dorized Hermioné: it was Dryopian in the time of He- 
rodotas, and seemingly for a long time afterwards (Herodot. viii. 43). The 
Hermionian Inscription, No. 1193, in Boeckh’s Collection, recognizes their 
old Dryopian connection with Asiné in Laconia: that town had once been 
neighbor of Hermioné, but was destroyed by the Argeians, and the inhab- 
itants received a new home from the Spartans. The dialect of the Hermio- 
mians (probably that of the Dryopians generally) was Doric. See Ahrens, 


De Dialecto Dorica, pp. 2-12. 
VOL. αἰ λὲ 


814 HISTORY OF GREECE 


payments,!— which the Argeians, as chief administrators on 
behalf of the common god, took upon them to enforce against 
defaulters, and actually tried to enforce during the Peloponnesian 
war against Epidaurus. On another occasion. during the 66th 
Olympiad (B. c. 514), they imposed the large fine of 500 talents 
upon each of the two states Sikyén and A®gina, for having lent 
ships to the Spartan king Kleomenes, wherewith he invaded the 
Argeian territory. The Aginetans set the claim at defiance, but 
the Sikyonians acknowledged its justice, and only demurred to 
its amount, professing themselves ready to pay 100 talents.2 
There can be no doubt that, at this later period, the ascendency 
of Argos over the members of her primitive confederacy had 
become practically inoperative ; but the tenor of the cases men- 
tioned shows that her claims were revivals of bygone privileges, 
which had once been effective and valuable. 

How valuable the privileges of Argos were, before the great 
rise of the Spartan power, — how important an ascendency they 
conferred, in the hands of an energetic man, and how easily they 
admitted of being used in furtherance of ambitious views, is 
shown by the remarkable case of Pheidén, the Temenid. The 
few facts which we learn respecting this prince exhibit to us, for 
the first time, something like a real position of parties in the 
Peloponnesus, wherein the actual conflict of living historical 
men and cities, comes out in tolerable distinctness. 

Pheidén was designated by Ephorus as the tenth, and by 
Theopompus as the sixth, in lineal descent from Témenus. 
Respecting the date of his existence, opinions the most dis- 
crepant and irreconcilable have been delivered; but there 
seems good reason for referring him to the period a little before 
and a little after the 8th Olympiad, — between 770 B. c. and 730 


' Thueyd. v.53. Κυριώτατοι τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἧσαν οἱ ᾿Αργεῖοι. The word 
εἰσπραξις, which the historian uses in regard to the claim of Argos againsr 
Epidaurus, seems to imply a money-payment withheld : compare the offer- 
ings exacted by Athens from Epidaurus (Herod. v. 82). 

The peculiar and intimate connection between the Argeians, and Apollo, 
with his surname of Pythaéus, was dwelt upon by the Argeian povtess 
Telesilla (Pausan. ii. 36, 2). 

3 Herodot. vi. 92. See O. Miiller History of the Dorians, ch. 7, 1%. 


PHEIDON OF ARGOS. 315 


B. c.! Of the preceding kings of Argos we hear little: one of 
them, Eratus, is said to have expelled the Dryopian inhabitants 
of Asiné from their town on the Argolic peninsula, in conse- 
quence of their having codperated with the Spartan king, Nikan- 
der, when he invaded the Argeian territory, seemingly during 
the generation preceding Pheidén; there is another, Damokra- 
tidas, whose date cannot be positively determined, but he appears 
rather as subsequent than as anterior to Pheidén.2 We are in- 
formed, however, that these anterior kings, even beginning with 
Medon, the grandson of Témenus, had been forced to sub 
mit to great abridgment of their power and privileges, and 
that a form of government substantially popular, though nomi- 
nally regal, had been established.3 Pheid6én, breaking through 

' Ephor. Fragm. 15, ed. Marx; ap. Strabo, viii. p. 358; Theopompus, 
Fragm. 30, ed. Didot; ap. Diodor. Fragm. lib. iv. 

The Parian Marble makes Pheid6n the eleventh from Héraklés, and places 
him B. c. 895; Herodotus, on the contrary (in a passage which affords con- 
siderable grounds for discussion), places him at a period which cannot be 
much higher than 600 B. c. (vi. 127.) Some authors suspect the text of 
Herodotus to be incorrect: at any rate, the real epoch of Pheidén is 
determined by the 8th Olympiad. Several critics suppose two Pheidons, 
each king of Argos,— among others, Ὁ, Miiller (Dorians, iii. 6, 10); but 
there is nothing to countenance this, except the impossibility of reconciling 
Herodotus with the other authorities. And Weissenborn, in a dissertation 
of some length, vindicates the emendation of Pausanias proposed by some 
former critics, — altering the 8th Olympiad, which now stands in the text 
vf Pausanias, into the twenty-eighth, as the date of Pheidon’s usurpation at 
the Olympic games. Weissenborn endeavors to show that Pheiddén cannot 
have flourished earlier than 660 B. c.; but his arguments do not appear to 
me very forcible, and certainly not sufficient to justify so grave an alteration 
in the number of Pausanias (Beitrage zur Griechischen Alterthumskunde, 
p. 18, Jena, 1844). Mr. Clinton (Fasti Hellenici, vol. i. App. 1, p. 249) 
places Pheid6n between 783 and 744 B. c.; also, Boeckh. ad Corp. Inscript 
No. 2374, p. 335, and Miiller, Avginetica, p. 63. 

2 Pausan. ii. 36, 5; iv. 35, 2. 

3 Pausan. ii. 19, 1. ᾿Αργεῖοι δὲ, ἅτε ἰσηγορίαν καὶ τὸ αὐτόνομον ἀγαπῶντες 
ἐκ παλαιοτάτου, τὰ τῆς ἐξουσίας τῶν βασιλέων ἐς ἐλάχιστον προήγαγον, ὡς 
Μήδωνι τῷ Κείσου καὶ τοῖς ἀπογόνοις τὸ ὄνομα λειφϑῆναι τοῦ βασιλέως μόνον 
This passage has all the air of transferring back to the early government of 
Argos, feelings which were only true of the /ater. It is curious that, in this 
chapter, though devoted to the Argeian regal line and government, Pausa- 
nias takes no notice of Pheid6n: he mentions him only with reference to the 
disputed Olympic ceremony. 


816 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the limits imposed, made himself despot of Argos. He then re 
established the power of Argos over all the cities of her confed- 
eracy, which had before been so nearly dissolved as to leave all 
the members practically independent.! Next, he is said to have 
acquired dominioa over Corinth, and to have endeavored to 
assure it, by treacherously entrapping a thousand of her warlike 
citizens ; but his artifice was divulged and frustrated by Abrén, 
one of his confidential friends.2_ He is farther reported to have 
aimed at extending his sway over the greater part of Pelopon- 
nesus, — laying claim, as the descendant of Héraklés, through 
the eldest son of Hyllus, to all the cities which that restless 
and irresistible hero had ever taken. According to Grecian 
ideas, this legendary title was always seriously construed, and 
often admitted as conclusive; though of course, where there 
were strong opposing interests, reasons would be found to elude 
it. Pheidén would have the same ground of right as that 
which, two hundred and fifty years afterwards, determined the 
Herakleid Dorieus, irother of Kleomenés king of Sparta, to 
acquire for himself the territory near Mount Eryx in Sicily, be- 
cause his progenitor,s Héraklés, had conquered it before him. 
So numerous, however, were the legends respecting the con- 
quests of Héraklés, that the claim of Pheidén must have covered 
the greater part of Peloponnesus, except Sparta and the plain of 
Messéne, which were already in the hands of Herakleids. 

Nor was the ambition of Pheid6én satisfied even with these 
large pretensions. He farther claimed the right of presiding 
at the celebration of those religious games, or Agones, which had 


'Ephorus, ut supra. Φείδωνα τὸν ‘Apyeiov, δέκατον ὄντα ἀπὸ Τημένου, 
δυνάμει δὲ ὑπερβεβλημέίνον τοὺς κατ᾽ αὐτὸν, ἀφ᾽ ἧς τήν τε λῆξιν ὅλην ἀνέλαβε 
τὴν “Ὑμένου διεσπασμένην εἰς πλείω μέρη, etc. What is meant by the lot of 
Témenus has been already explained. 

3 Plutarch, Narrat. Amator. p. 772; Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iv. 1212; com- 
pare Didymus, ap. Schol. Pindar. Olymp. xiii. 27. 

I cannot, however, believe that Pheidon, the ancient Corinthian law giver 
mentioned by Aristotle, is the same person as Pheidén the king of Arges 
{ Polit. ii. 6, 4). 

3 Ephor. ut supra. Πρὸς τοῦτοις, ἐπιϑέσϑαι καὶ ταῖς ὑφ᾽ Ἡρακλέους aipy 
θεισαις πόλεσι, καὶ τοὺς ἀγῶνας ἀξιοῦν τιϑέναι αὐτὸν, οὖς éExeivoc ἔϑηκε 
ρούτων δὲ eivas καὶ τὸν ᾿Ολυμπιακὼν, etc. 4 Herodvt ¥. 43 


ae 
FR 


ee ee 


ADMINISTRATION OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES. 317 


heen instituted by Héraklés,—and among these was numbered 
the Olympic Agé6n, then, however, enjoying but a slender fraction 
of the lustre which afterwards came to attach to it. The presi- 
dency of any of the more celebrated festivals current throughout 
Greece, was a privilege immensely prized. It was at once dig- 
nified and lucrative, and the course of our history will present 
more than one example in which blood was shed to determine 
what state should enjoy it. Pheid6én marched to Olympia, at the 
epoch of the 8th recorded Olympiad, or 747 B. c.; on the 
oceasion of which event we are made acquainted with the real 
state of parties in the peninsula. 

The plain of Olympia,—now ennobled only by immortal 
revollections, but once crowded with all the decorations of 
religion and art, and forming for many centuries the brightest 
centre of attraction known in the ancient world, — was situated 
on the river Alpheius, in the territory called the Pisatid, hard 
by the borders of Arcadia. At what time its agonistic festival, 
recurring every fifth year, at the first full moon after the sum- 
mer solstice, first began or first acquired its character of special 
sanctity, we have no means of determining. As with so many of 
the native waters of Greece, — we follow the stream upward to 
a certain point, but the fountain-head, and the earlier flow of his- 
tory, is buried under mountains of unsearchable legend. The 
first celebration of the Olympic contests was ascribed by Grecian 
legendary faith to Héraklés, — and the site of the place, in the 
middle of the Pisatid, with its eight small townships, is quite suf- 
ficient to prove that the inhabitants of that little territory were 
warranted in describing themselves as the original administrators 
of the ceremony.! But this state of things seems to have been 
altered by the A®tolian settlement in Elis, which is represented 
as having been conducted by Oxylus and identified with the 
Return of the Herakleids. The /®tolo-Eleians, bordering upon 
the Pisatid to the north, employed their superior power in sub- 
duing their weaker neighbors,? who thus lost their autonomy and 
became annexed to the territory of Elis. It was the general rule 
throughout Greece, that a victorious state undertook to perform! 


' Xenoph. Hellen. vii. 4, 28; Diodor. xv. 78. 
3 Strabo, viii. p. 354. 3 Thucyd. iv. 98 


815 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the current services uf the conquered people towards \he gods, 
— such services being conceived as attaching to the soil: hence, 
the celebration of the Olympic games became numbered among 
the incumbences of Elis, just in the same way as the worship of 
the Eleusinian Démétér, when Eleusis lost its autonomy, was 
included among the religious obligations of Athens. The Pisa- 
tans, however, never willingly acquiesced in this absorption of 
what had once been their separate privilege; they long main- 
tained their conviction, that the celebration of the games was 
their right, and strove on several occasions to regain it. On those 
occasions, the earliest, so far as we hear, was connected with 
the intervention of Pheidén. It was at their invitation that the 
king of Argos went to Olympia, and celebrated the games him- 
self, in conjunction with the Pisatans, as the lineal successor of 
Héraklés; while the Eleians, being thus forcibly dispossessed, 
refused to include the 8th Olympiad in their register of the vic- 
torious runners. But their humiliation did not last long, for the 
Spartans took their part, and the contest ended in the defeat of 
Pheidén. In the next Olympiad, the Eleian management and 
the regular enrolment appear as before, and the Spartans are 
even said to have confirmed Elis in her possession both of Pisa- 
tis and Triphylia.' 

Unfortunately, these scanty particulars are all which we learn 
respecting the armed conflict at the 8th Olympiad, in which the 
religious and the political grounds of quarrel are so intimately 
blended, — as we shall find to be often the case in Grecian his- 
tory. But there is one act of Pheiddn yet more memorable, of 
which also nothing beyond a meagre notice has come down to 
us. He first coined both copper and silver money in ‘gina, 
and first established a scale of weights and measures,? which, 
through his influence, became adopted throughout Peloponnesus, 
and acquired, ultimately, footing both in all the Dorian states, 
and in Beotia, Thessaly, northern Hellas generally, and Mace- 
donia, — under the name of the A/ginean Scale. There arose 


1 Pausan. ν. 22, 2; Strabo, viii. pp. 354-358; Herodot. vi. 127. The name 
of the victor ( Antiklés the Messenian ), however, belonging to the 8th Olym 
piad, appears July in the lists; it must have been supplied afterwards. 

* Herodot. vi. 127; Ephor. ap. Strab. viii. pp. 358-376. 


AGINEZAN SCALE OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. 812 


subsequently another rival scale in Greece, called the Euboic, 
differing considerably from the A®ginean. We do not know at 
what time it was introduced, but it was employed both at Athens 
and in the Ionic cities generally, as well as in Euboea, — being 
modified at Athens, so far as money was concerned, by Solon’s 
debasement of the coinage. 

The copious and valuable information contained in M. Boeckh’s 
recent publication on Metrology, has thrown new light upon these 
monetary and statical scales.'. He has shown that both the Agi- 
nean and the Euboic scales — the former standing to the latter 
in the proportion of 6: 5—had contemporaneous currency in 
different parts of the Persian empire; the divisions and denomi- 
nations of the seale being the same in both, 100 drachme to a 
mina, and 60 mine to a talent. The Babylonian talent, mina, 
and drachma are identical with the “ginzan: the word mina is 
of Asiatic origin ; and it has now been rendered highly probable, 
that the scale circulated by Pheidén was borrowed immediately 
from the Pheenicians, and by them originally from the Babylonians. 
The Babylonian, Hebraic, Phoenician, Egyptian,? and Grecian 
scales of weight (which were subsequently followed wherever 
coined money was introduced) are found to be so nearly conform- 
able, as to warrant a belief that they are all deduced from one 
common origin; and that origin the Chaldean priesthood of 
Babylon. It is to Pheidén, and to his position as chief of the 


' Metrologische Untersuchungen iiber Gewichte, Miinzfusse, und Masse 
des Alterthums in ihrem Zusammenhange dargestellt, von Aug. Boeckh; 
3erlin, 1838. 

See chap. 7, 1-3. But I cannot agree with M. Boeckh, in thinking that 
Pheidén, in celebrating the Olympic games, deduced from the Olympic 
stadium, and formally adopted, the measure of the foot, or that he at all 
settled measures of length. In general, I do not think that M. Boeckh’s con- 
clusions are well made out, in respect to the Grecian measures of length and 
capacity. In an examination of this eminently learned treatise (inserted in 
the Classical Museum, 1844, vol. i.), I endeavored to set forth both the new 
and interesting points established by the author, and the various others in 
which he appeared to me to have failed. 

371 have modified this sentence as it stood in my first edition. It is not 
correct to speak of the Egyptian money scale: the Egyptians had no coined 
money. See a valuable article, in review of my History, in the Christian 
Reformer, by Mr. Kenrick, who pointed out this inaccuracy. 


820 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Argeian confederacy, that the Greeks owe the first introduction 
of the Babylonian scale of weight, and the first employment οἱ 
coined and stamped money. 

If we maturely weigh the few, but striking acis of Pheidéu 
which have been preserved to us, and which there is no reason to 
discredit, we shall find ourselves introduced to an early historical 
state of Peloponnesus very different from that to which another 
century will bring us. That Argos, with the federative cities 
attached to her, was at this early time decidedly the commanding 
power in that peninsula, is sufficiently shown by the establishment 
and reception of the Pheidonian weights, measures, and monetary 
system,— while the other incidents mentioned completely har- 
monize with the same idea. Against the oppressions of Elis, the 
Pisatans invoked Pheidon, — partly as exercising a primacy in 
Peloponnesus, just as the inhabitants of Lepreum in Triphylia,' 
three centuries afterwards, called in the aid of Sparta for the same 
object, at a time when Sparta possessed the headship, — and 
partly as the lineal representative of Héraklés, who had founded 
those games from the management of which they had been unjustly 
extruded. On the other hand, Sparta appears as a second-rate 
power. The Aginwan scale of weight and measure was adopted 
there as elsewhere,2— the Messenian Dorians were still equal 
and independent, — and we find Sparta interfering to assist Elis 
by virtue of an obligation growing (so the legend represents it) 
out of the common J®tolo-Dorian emigration; not at all from 
any acknowledged primacy, such as we shall see her enjoying 
hereafter. The first coinage of copper and silver money is a 
capital event in Grecian history, and must be held to imply con- 
siderable commerce as well as those extensive views which belong 
only to a conspicuous and leading position. The ambition of 
Pheidén to resume all the acquisitions made by his ancestor 
Héraklés, suggests the same large estimate of his actual power. 
He is characterized as a despot, and even as the most insolent 


1 Thucyd. v. 31. 
3 Plutarch, Apophthegm. Laconic. p. 226; Dikxarchus ap. Athens. iv. 


p- 141]. 
The Aginwan mina, drachma, and obolus were the denominations em 


ploved in stipulations among the Peloponnesian states (Thucyd. v. 47). 


ARGOS AND SPARTA. 32) 


all despots:! how far he deserved such a reputation, we have 
no means of judging. We may remark, however, that he lived 
before the age of despots or tyrants, properly so called, and 
before the Herakleid lineage had yet lost its primary, half-politi- 
cal, halt-religious character. Moreover, the later historians have 
invested his actions with a color of exorbitant aggression, by 
applying them to a state of things which belonged to their time 
and not to his. Thus Ephorus represents him as having de- 
prived the Lacedemonians of the headship of Peloponnesus, which 
they never possessed until long after him,— and also as setting 
at naught the sworn inviolability of the territory of the Eleians, 
enjoyed by the latter as celebrators of the Olympic games ; where- 
as the Agonothesia, or right of superintendence claimed by Elis, 
had not at that time acquired the sanction of prescription, — 
while the conquest of Pisa by the Eleians themselves had proved 
that this sacred function did not protect the territory of a weaker 
people. 

How Pheidon fell, and how the Argeians lost that supremacy 
which they once evidently possessed, we have no positive details 
to inform us: with respect to the latter point, however, we can 
discern a sufficient explanation. The Argeians stood predomi- 
nant as an entire and unanimous confederacy, which required a 
vigorous and able hand to render its internal organization effec- 
tive or its ascendency respected without. No such leader after- 
wards appeared at Argos, the whole history of which city is 
destitute of eminent individuals: her line of kings continued at 
least down to the Persian war,? but seemingly with only titular 
functions, for the government had long been decidedly popular 
The statements, which represent the government as popular an- 
terior to the time of Pheidén, appear unworthy of trust. That 
prince is rather to be taken as wielding the old, undiminished 
prerogatives of the Herakleid kings ut wielding them with un- 
usual effect, — enforcing relaxed privileges, and appealing to the 


' Herodot. vi. 127. Φείδωνος τοῦ ᾿Αργείων τυράννου --- τοῦ ὑβρίσαντος 
μέγιστα δὴ Ἑλλήνων ἁπάντων. Pausanias (vi. 22, 2) copies the expression. 

Aristotle cites Pheid6n as a person who, being a βασιλεὺς, made himself » 
ripavvoc (Politic. viii. 8, 5). 

5 Herodot. vii. 149. 

VOL. 11. 14* 21loc. 


$22 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


old heroic sentiment in reference to Héraklés, rather than revo 
lutionizing the existing relations either of Argos or of Pelopon- 
nesus. It was in fact the great and steady growth of Sparta, for 
three centuries after the Lykurgean institutions, which operated 
as a cause of subversion to the previous order of command and 
obedience in Greece. 

The assertion made by Herodotus, — that, in earlier times, the 


7] 


«hole eastern coast of Laconia as far as Cape Malea, including 
the island of Kythéra and several other islands, had belonged to 
Argos, — is referred by O. Miller to about the 50th Olympiad, or 
580 B.c. Perhaps it had ceased to be true at that period; but 
that it was true in the age of Pheidén, there seem good grounds 


ey 
i” 


YAALSNOIVAA 


SUPRA Gaia, a) | 


for believing. What is probably meant is, that the Dorian towns 
on this coast, Prasiw, Zaréx, Epidaurus Liméra, and Bow, were 


gedit 
mn" 


PAAR NN τι;  ὙΎαΥ, 


once autonomous, and members of the Argeian confederacy, — a 


) NOTL. 


οἵ( 
i TM 


fact highly probable, on independent evidence, with respect to 
Epidaurus Liméra, inasmuch as that town was a settlement from 


HHL 


Epidaurus in the Argolic peninsula: and Βα too had its own 
ekist and eponymus, the Herakleid Boeus,! noway connected with 


Ἵν 


Sparta, — perhaps derived from the same source as the name 


avL 


of the town Beeon in Doris. The Argeian confederated towns 


NO 


would thus comprehend the whole coast of the Argolic and Saro- 
nic gulfs, from Kythéra as far as A®gina, besides other islands 


HHL 


which we do not know: gina had received a colony of Dorians 
from Argos and Epidaurus, upon which latter town it continued 
for some time in a state of dependence.' It will at once be seen 
that this extent of coast implies a considerable degree of com- 


merce and maritime activity. We have besides to consider the 


ST1TOdOUIV 


range of Doric colonies in the southern islands of the <gean ν iu. mane i 
i] 


bie 

Ὁ 

μή 

ral 

ΜΝ“ = 

κ΄ x Ρ 

4 

»» = = 

4 se ize * 

—_ Ξῖῶν Ἵ 

~ = t= = Ε 

.» - = = i H 

vA = ΞΞΙΞΞῚ [ΞΞ ἘΠ 
:4 oJ = { 
= ΕΞ 


and in the south-western corner of Asia Minor, — Kréte, Kos, 
Rhodes (with its three distinct cities), Halikarnassus, Knidus, 
Myndus, Nisyrus, Syme, Karpathus, Kalydna, ete. Of the Dorie 
establishments here named, several are connected (as has been 
before stated) with the great emigration of the Témenid Altha» 
menés from Argos: but what we particularly observe is, that they 
are often. referred as colonies promiscuously to Argos, ‘Troezén, 


— 


δ Pausan. iii. 22, 9; iii. 23, 4. 
3 Herodot. v. 83; Strabo, viii. p. 375. 


i} 
Hii) 
\ 


| Wh, 
eH 


{ ᾿ : “δ | WH 
Se κ ey! Ἶ τ κοῦ ΜΝ 1111. 


DORIANS IN ASIA AND IN THE ISLANDS. 323 


Epidauras !— more frequently however, as it seems, to Argos. 
All these settlements are doubtless older than Pheidén, and we 
may conceive them as proceeding conjointly from the allied Dorian 
towns in the Argolic peninsula, at a time when they were more 
in the habit of united action than they afterwards became: a 
captain of emigrants selected from the line of Héraklés and 
Témenus was suitable to the feelings of all of them. We may 
thus look back to a period, at the very beginning of the Olym- 
piads, when the maritime Dorians on the east of Peloponnesus 
maintained a considerable intercourse and commerce, not only 
among themselves, but also with their settlements on the Asiatic 
coast and islands. ‘That the Argolic peninsula formed an early 
centre for maritime rendezvous, we may farther infer from the 
very ancient Amphiktyony of the seven cities (Hermioné, Epi- 
daurus, gina, Athens, Prasiw, Nauplia, and the Minyeian Or- 
chomenus), on the holy island of Kalauria, off the harbor of 
‘Treezén.2 

The view here given of the early ascendency of Argos, as the 
head of the Peloponnesian Dorians and the metropolis of the 
Asiatic Dorians, enables us to understand the capital innovation 
of Pheidon, — the first coinage, and the first determinate scale 
of weight and measure, known in Greece. Of the value of such 


improvements, in the history of Grecian civilization, it is super- 
fluous to speak, especially when we recollect that the Hellenie 
states, having no political unity, were only held together by the 


' Rhodes, Kos, Knidus, and Halikarnassus are all treated by Strabo (xiv 
p. 653) as colonies of Argos: Rhodes is so described by Thucydidés (vii. 
57), and Kés by Tacitus (xii. 61). Kos, Kalydna, and Nisyrus are described 
by Herodotus as colonies of Epidaurus (vii. 99): Halikarnassus passes 
sometimes for a colony of Troezén, sometimes of Troezén and Argos con- 
jointly: “Cum Melas et Areuanius ab Argis et Troezene coloniam com- 
munem eo loco induxerunt, barbaros Caras et Leleges ejecerunt ( Vitruv. ii. 
Compare Strabo, x. p. 479; Conon, 


4 


8 12; Steph. Byz. v. ᾿Αλεκάρνασσος) 
Narr. 47: Diodor. v. 80. 

Raoul Rochette (Histoire des Colonies Grecques, t. iii. ch. 9) and O. Miil- 
ler (History of the Dorians, ch. 6) have collected the facts about these 
Asiatic Dorians. 

The little town of Boew had its counterpart of the same name in Kréte 
(Steph. Byz. v. Βοῖον). 

© Strabo, p. 374. 


324 HISTORY OF GREECE 


aggregate of spontaneous uniformities, in language, religion, sym- 
pathies, recreations, and general habits. We see both how Phei- 
dén came to contract the wish, and how he acquired the power, 
to introduce throughout so much of the Grecian world an uni- 
form scale; we also see that the Asiatic Dorians form the link 
between him and Phoenicia, from whence the scale was derived, 
just as the Euboic scale came, in all probability, through the 
lonic cities in Asia, from Lydia. It is asserted by Ephorus, and 
admitted even by the ablest modern critics, that Pheidon first 
coined money “ in A‘gina:”! other authors (erroneously believ- 
ing that his seale was the Euboic scale) alleged that his coinage 
had been carried on “in a place of Argos called Eubeea.”2 Now 
both these statements appear highly improbable, and both are 
traceable to the same mistake, — of supposing that the title, by 
which the scale had come to be commonly known, must neces- 
sarily be derived from the place in which the coinage had been 
struck. ‘There is every reason to conclude, that what Pheidon 
did was done in Argos, and nowhere else: his coinage and scale 
were the earliest known in Greece, and seem to have been known 
by his own name, “ the Pheidonian measures,” under which de- 
signation they were described by Aristotle, in his account of the 
constitution of Argos.? They probably did not come to bear the 
specific epithet of ginean until there was another scale in 
vogue, the Huboic, from which to distinguish them; and both the 
epithets were probably derived, not from the place where the 
scale first originated, bat from the people whose commercial 
activity tended to make them most generally known, — in the one 
case, the Aiginetans ; in the other case, the inhabitants of Chalkis 
and Eretria. I think, therefore, that we are to look upon the 
Pheidonian measures as emanating from Argos, and as having 


' Ephorus ap. Strabo, viii. p. 376; Boeckh, Metrologie, Abschn. 7, 1: see 
also the Marmor Parium, Epoch 30. 

* Etymologicon Magn. Εὐβοϊκὸν νόμισμα. 

* Pollux, Onomastic. x. 179. Ely δ᾽ ἂν καὶ Φείδων τι ἀγγείον ἐλαιηρὸν, ἀπὸ 
τῶι Φειδωνίων μέτρων ὠνομασμένον, ὑπὲρ ὧν ἐν ᾿Αργείων πολιτείᾳ ᾿Αρεστοτέ 
λης λέγει. 

Also Ephorus ap. Strab. viii. p. 358. καὶ μέτρα ἐξεῦρε τὰ Φειδώνεια καλοῦ. 
weva καὶ σταϑμοὺς, καὶ νόμισμα κεχαράγμενον, ete. 


ETOLO-DORIAN EMIGRATION 325 


no greater connection, originally, with /tgina, than with any 


other city dependent upon Argos. 
There is, moreover, another point which deserves notice. What 


was known by the name of the A°ginzan scale, as contrasted 
with and standing in a definite ratio (6: 5) with the Euboic scale, 
related only to weight and money, so far as our knowledge eX- 
tends:! we have no evidence to show that the same ratio extend- 
ed either to measures of length or measures of capacity. ‘But 
there seems ground for believing that the Pheidonian regulations, 
taken in their full comprehension, embraced measures of capacity 
as well as weights: Pheidon, at the same time when he deter- 
mined the talent, mina, and drachm, seems also to have fixed the 
dry and liquid measures, — the medimnus and metrétés, with then 
parts and multiples: and there existed? Pheidonian measures 
of capacity, though not of length, so far as we know. The /Egin- 
sean scale may thus have comprised only a portion of what was 
established by Pheid6n, namely, that which related to weight and 


Molcy- 


CHAPTER V. 


ETOLO-DOQRIAN EMIGRATION INTO PELOPONNESUS.—ELIS, 
LACONIA, AND MESSENIA. 


Ir has already been stated that the territory properly called 
Elis, apart from the enlargement which it acquired by conquest, 
included the westernmost land in Peloponnesus, south of Achaia, 
and west of Mount Pholoé and Olenus in Arcadia, — but not 
extending so far southward as the river Alpheius, the course of 
which lay along the southern portion of Pisatis and on the bor 
ders of Triphylia. This territory, which appears in the Odyssey 


’ This differs from Boeckh’s opinion: see the note in page 315. 
3 Theophrast. Character. c. 13; Pollux, x. 179. 


325 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


as “the divine Elis, where the Epeians hold sway,”! is in the his 
torical times occupied by a population of /Etolian origin. The 
connection of race between the historical Eleians and the his- 
torical Etolians was recognized by both parties, nor is there any 
ground for disputing it.2 

That /X®tolian invaders, or emigrants, into Elis, would cross 
from Naupaktus, or some neighboring point in the Corinthian 
gulf, is in the natural course of things, —and such is the course 
which Oxylus, the conductor of the invasion, is represented by the 
Herakleid legend as taking. That legend (as has been already 
recounted) introduces Oxylus as the guide of the three Hera- 
kleid brothers, —'Témenus, Kresphontés, and Aristodémus, — 
and as stipulating with them that, in the new distribution about to 
take place of Peloponnesus, he shall be allowed to possess the 
Eleian territory, coupled with many holy privileges as to the 
celebration of the Olympic games. 

In the preceding chapter, I have endeavored to show that the 
settlements of the Dorians in and near the Argolic peninsula, so 
far as the probabilities of the case enable us to judge, were not 
accomplished by any inroad in this direction. But the localities 
occupied by the Dorians of Sparta, and by the Dorians of Steny- 
klérus, in the territory called Messéné, lead us to a different con- 
clusion. The easiest and most natural road through which emi- 
grants could reach either of these two spots, is through the Eleian 
and the Pisatid country. Colonel Leake observes, that the 
direct road from the Eleian territory to Sparta, ascending the 
valley of the Alpheius, near Olympia, to the sources of its branch, 
the Theius, and from thence descending the Eurotas, affords the 
only easy march towards that very inaccessible city: and both 
ancients and moderns have remarked the vicinity of the source 
of the Alpheius to that of the Eurotas. The situation of Steny- 
klérus and Andania, the original settlements of the Messenian 
Dorians, adjoining closely the Arcadian Parrhasii, is only at a 
short distance from the course of the Alpheius ; being thus reached 


' Odyss. xv. 297. * Strabo, x. p. 479. 

? Leake, Travels in Morea, vol. iii. ch. 23, Ρ. 29; compare Diodor. xv. 66. 
The distance from Olympia to Sparta, as marked on a pillar which Paa- 
— ~ at Olympia, was 660 stadia, — about 77 English miles (Pausan 
vi. 16, 6). 


DORIAN SETTLEMENTS AT SPARTA. 397 


most easily by the same route. Dismissing the idea of a great 
collective Dorian armament, powerful enough to grasp at once 
the entire peninsula,— we may conceive two moderate detach- 
ments of hardy mountaineers, from the cold regions in and near 
Doris, attaching themselves to the /£tolians, their neighbors, who 
were proceeding to the invasion of Elis. After having aided 
the /Etolians, both to occupy Elis and to subdue the Pisatid, 
these Dorians advanced up the valley of the Alpheius in quest 
of settlements for themselves. One of these bodies ripens into 
the stately, stubborn, and victorious Spartans ; the other, into the 
short-lived, trampled, and struggling Messenians. 

Amidst the darkness which overclouds these original settle- 
ments, we seem to discern something like special causes to deter- 
mine both of them. With respect to the Spartan Dorians, we 
are told that a person named Philonomus betrayed Sparta to 
them, persuading the sovereign in possession to retire with his 
people into the habitations of the Ionians, in the north of the 
peninsula, — and that he received as a recompense for this accept- 
able service Amyklx, with the district around it. It is farther 
stated, — and this important fact there seems no reason to doubt, 
— that Amykle,— though only twenty stadia or two miles and 
a half distant from Sparta, retained both its independence and 
its Achzan inhabitants, long after the Dorian emigrants had ac- 
quired possession of the latter place, and was only taken by 
them under the reign of Téleklus, one generation before the first 
Olympiad.! Without presuming to fill up by conjecture incurable 
gaps in the statements of our authorities, we may from hence 
reasonably presume that the Dorians were induced to invade, 
and enabled to acquire, Sparta, by the invitation and assistance 
of a party in the interior of the country. Again, with res 
to the Messenian Dorians, a different, but not less effectual {ι 
tation was presented by the alliance of the Arcadians, in the 
south-western portion of that central region of Peloponnesus, 
Kresphontés, the Herakleid leader, it is said, espoused the daugh- 
ter? of the Arcadian king, Kypselus, which procured for him the 


' Strabo, viii. pp. 364, 365; Pausan. iii. 2 5: compare the story of Krius 
Pausan. iii. 13, 3. 
* Pausan. iv. 3, 3; viii. 29, 4 


ae ὦ ὡὩῷῳσῳ -.. 
= ae eee .πὦ 


328 HISTORY OF GREECE 


support of a powerfal section of Arcadia. His settlement at 
Stenyklérus was a considerable distance from the sea, at the 
north-east corner of Messenia,! close to the Arcadian frontier ; 
and it will be seen hereafter that this Arcadian alliance is ἃ con- 
stant and material element in the disputes of the Messenian 
Dorians with Sparta. 

We may thus trace a reasonable sequence of events, showing 
how two bodies of Dorians, having first assisted the /Etolo- 
Kleians to conquer the Pisatid, and thus finding themselves on 
the banks of the Alpheius, followed the upward course of that 
river, the one to settle at Sparta, the other at Stenyklérus. The 
historian Ephorus, from whom our scanty fragments of informa 
tion respecting these early settlements are derived, —it is im- 
portant to note that he lived in the age immediately succeeding 
the first foundation of Messéné as a city, the restitution of the 
long-exiled Messenians, and the amputation of the fertile western 
half of Laconia, for their benefit, by Epameinondas, — imparts to 
these proceedings an immediate decisiveness of effect which does 
not properly belong to them: as if the Spartans had become at 
once possessed of all Laconia, and the Messenians of all Mes- 
senia: Pausanias, too, speaks as if the Arcadians collectively had 
assisted and allied themselves with Kresphontés. This is the 
general spirit which pervades his account, though the particular 
facts in so far as we find any such, do not always harmonize 
with it. Now we are ignorant of the preexisting divisions of 
the country, either east or west of Mount Taygetus, at the time 
when the Dorians invaded it. But to treat the one and the 
other as integral kingdoms, handed over at once to two Dorian 
leaders, is an illusion borrowed from the old legend, from the his- 
toricizing fancies of Ephorus, and from the fact that, in the well- 
known times, this whole territory came to be really united under 
the Spartan power. 

At what date the Dorian settlements at Sparta and Stenyk- 
lérus were effected, we have no means of determining. Yet, that 
there existed between them in the earliest times a degree of fra- 
ternity which did not prevail between Lacedemon and Argos, 


Ὁ Strabo (viii. p. 366) blames Euripidés for calling Messéné an inland 
oountry ; but the poet seems to have been quite correct in doing so. 


EARLIEST HISTORY OF SPARTA. 329 


we may fuirly presume from the common temple, with joint 
religious sacrifices, of Artemis Limnatis, or Artemis on the 
Marsh, erected on the confines of Messenia and Laconia.! Our 
first view of the two, at all approaching to distinctness, seems to 
date from a period about half a century earlier than the first 
Olympiad (776 B. c.),— about the reign of king Téleklus of the 
Eurystheneid or Agid line, and the introduction of the Lykurgean 
discipline. ‘Téleklus stands in the list as the eighth king dating 
from Eurysthenes. But how many of the seven kings before 
him are to be considered as real persons, — or how much, out of 
the brief warlike expeditions ascribed to them, is to be treated as 
authentic history, — I pretend not to define. 

The earliest determinable event in the internal history of Sparta 
is the introduction of the Lykurgean discipline; the earliest 
external events are the conquest of Amykle, Pharis, and Geron- 
thre, effected by king Téleklus, and the first quarrel with the 
Messenians, in which that prince was slain. When we come to 
see how deplorably great was the confusion and ignorance which 
reigned with reference to a matter so preéminently important as 
Lykurgus and his legislation, we shall not be inclined to think 
that facts much less important, and belonging to an earlier epoch, 
‘an have been handed down upon any good authority. And in 
like manner, when we learn that Amykle, Pharis, and Geronthra 
(all south of Sparta, and the first only two and a half miles dis- 
tant from that city) were independent of the Spartans until the 
reign of Téleklus, we shall require some decisive testimony before 
we can believe that a community so small, and so hemmed in as 
Sparta must then have been, had in earlier times undertaken 
expeditions against Helos on the sea-coast, against Kleitor on the 
extreme northern side of Arcadia, against the Kynurians, or 
against the Argeians. If Helos and Kynuria were conquered by 
these early kings, it appears that they had to be conquered a 
second time by kings succeeding Téleklus. It would be more 
natural that we should hear when and how they conquered the 
places nearer to them, — Sellasia, or Belemina, the valley of the 
Genus, or the upper valley of the Eurotas. But these seem to be 


---- - 


i Pausan. iv. 3, 2. μετεῖχον δὲ αὐτοῦ «ὄνοι Δωρίεων οὗ τε Μεσσήνιοι καὶ 


Λακεδαιμόνιοι. 


33) HISTORY OF GREECE. 


assumed as matters of course; the proceedings ascribed tw the 
early Spartan kings are such only as might beseem the palmy 
days when Sparta was undisputed mistress of all Laconia. 

The succession of Messenian kings, beginning with Kresphon- 
tés, the Herakleid brother, and continuing from father to son, — 
ZEpytus, Glaukus, Isthnius, Dotadas, Subotas, Phintas, the last 
being contemporary with ‘Téleklus, — is still less marked by inci- 


dent than that of the early Spartan kings. It is said that the 
reign of Kresphontés was troubled, and himself ultimately slain 


by mutinies among his subjects: /Xpytus, then a youth, having 
escaped into Arcadia, was afterwards restored to the throne by 
the Arcadians, Spartans, and Argeians.! From ‘Epytus, the 
Messenian line of kings are stated to have been denominated 
/Epytids in preference to Herakleids, — which affords another 
proof of their intimate connection with the Arcadians, since /Epy- 
tus was a very ancient name in Arcadian heroic antiquity.? 
There is considerable resemblance between the alleged behavior 
of Kresphontés on first settling at Stenyklérus, and that of Eurys- 
thenés and Proklés at Sparta, — so far as we gather from state- 
ments alike meagre and uncertified, resting on the authority of 
Ephorus. Both are said to have tried to place the preéxisting 
inhabitants of the country on a level with their own Dorian hands : 
both provoked discontents and incurred obloquy, with their con- 
temporaries as well as with posterity, by the attempt ; nor did 
either permanently succeed. Kresphontés was forced to concen- 
trate all his Dorians in Stenyklerus, while after all, the discontents 
ended in his violent death. And Agis, the son of Eurysthenés, 
is said to have reversed all the liberal tentatives of his father, so 
as to bring the whole of Laconia into subjection and dependenze 
on the Dorians at Sparta, with the single exception of Amykle. 
So odious to the Spartan Dorians was the conduct of Eurysthenés, 
that they refused to acknowledge him as their ckist, and conferre¢ 
that honor upon Agis; the two lines of kings being called Agiads 


' Pausan. iv. 3, 5-6. 
* Homer, Iliad, ii. 604. — 
Οἱ δ᾽ ἔχον ᾿Αρκαδίην,͵ ὑπὸ Κυλλήνης ὄρος αἰπὺ, 
Αἰπύτιοι παρὰ τύμβον. 
Sehol ad loc. ὁ δ᾽ Αἴπυτος ἀρχαιότατος ἥρως, ᾿Αρκὰς τὸ γένος. 


THE MESSENIAN DORIANS. 991 


and Eurypontids, instead of Eurystheneids and Prokleids.! We 
see in these statements the same tone of mind as that which 
pervades the Panathenaic oration of Isokratés, the master of 
Ephorus, — the facts of an unknown period, so colored as to suit 
an tdéal of haughty Dorian exclusiveness. 

Again, as Eurysthenés and Proklés appear, in the picture of 
Ephorus, to carry their authority at once over the whole of 
Laconia, so too does Kresphontés over the whole of Messenia, — 
over the entire south-western region of Peloponnesus, westward 
of Mount Taygetus and Cape Tenarus, and southward of the 
river Neda. He sends an envoy to Pylus and Rhium, the 
western and southern portions of the south-western promontory 
of Peloponnesus, treating the entire territory as if it were one 
sovereignty, and inviting the inhabitants to submit under equal 
laws.2 But it has already been observed, that this supposed 


* Compare the two citations from Ephorus, Strabo, viii. pp. 361-365. 
Unfortunately, a portion of the latter citation is incurably mutilated in the 
text: O. Miiller (History of the Dorians, book i. ch. v. 13) has proposed an 
ingenious conjecture, which, however, cannot be considered as trustworthy. 
Grosskurd, the German translator, usually skilful in these restorations, leaves 
the passage untouched. 

For a new coloring of the death of Kresphontés, adjusted by Isokratés so 
as to suit the purpose of the address which he puts into the mouth of Archi- 
damus king of Sparta, see the discourse in his works which passes under 
that name (Or. iv. pp. 120-122). Isokratés says that the Messenian Dorians 
slew Kresphontés, whose children fled as suppliants to Sparta, imploring 
revenge for the death of their father, and surrendering the territory to the 
Spartans. The Delphian god advised the latter to accept the tender, and 
they accordingly attacked the Messenians, avenged Kresphontés, and appro- 
priated the territory. 

Isokratés always starts from the basis of the old legend, —the triple 
Dorian conquest made all at once: compare Panathenaic. Or. xii. pp 
270-287. 

* Ephorus ap. Strabo, viii. p. 361. Dr. Thirlwall observes (History of 
Greece, ch. vii. p. 300, 2d edit.), “The Messenian Pylus seems long to have 
retained its independence, and to have been occupied for several centuries 
by one branch of the family of Neleus; for descendants of Nestor are men- 
tioned as allies of the Messenians in their struggle with Sparta in the latter 
half of the seventh century Β. c.” 

For this assertion, Dr. Thirlwall cites Strabo (viii. p. 355). I agree with 
him as to the matter of fact: I see no proof that the Dorians of Stenyklérus 
ver ruled aver what is called the Messenian Pylus; for, of course, if they 


$32 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


oneness and indivisibility is not less uncertified in regard to 
Messenia than in regard to Laconia. How large a proportion of 
the former territory these kings of Stenyklérus may have ruled, 
we have no means of determining, but there were certainly por- 
tions of it which they did not rule, — not merely during the reign 
of Téleklus at Sparta, but still later, during the first Messenian 
war. For not only are we informed that Téleklus established 
three townships, Poiéessa, Echeix,! and Tragium, near the Mes- 
senian gulf, and on the course of the river Nedon, but we read 
also a farther matter of evidence in the roll of Olympic vietors. 
Every competitor for the prize at one of these great festivals was 
always entered as member of some autonomous Hellenic commu- 
nity, which constituted his title to approach the lists ; if success- 
ful, he was proclaimed with the name of the community to which 
he belonged. Now during the first ten Olympiads, seven winners 
are proclaimed as Messenians; in the 11th Olympiad, we find the 


name of Oxythemis Korénzeus, — Oxythemis, not of Koréneia in 
Beeotia, but of Koréné in the western bend of the Messenian gulf? 


did not rule over it before the second Messenian war, they never acquired it 
at all, But on reference to the passage in Strabo, it will not be found to 
prove anything to the point; for Strabo is speaking, not of the Messenian 
Pylus, but of the Triphylian Pylus: he takes pains to show that Nestor 
had nothing to do with the Messenian Pylus, — Νέστορος ἀπόγονοι means 
the inhabitants of ‘Triphylia, near Lepreum: compare p. 350. 

' Strabo, viii. p. 360. Concerning the situation of Kordéné, in the Messe- 
nian gulf, sce Pausanias, iv.34, 2; Strabo, viii. p. 361; and the observations 
of Colonel Leake, Travels in Morea, ch. x. vol. i. pp. 439-448. He places 
it near the modern Petalidhi, seemingly on good grounds. 

2 See Mr. Clinton’s Chronological Tables for the year 732 B. c.; O. Malles 
{in the Chronological Table subjoined to his History of the Dorians) calls 
this victor, Oxythemis of Koréneia, in Beeotia. But this is inadmissible, on two 
grounds: 1. The occurrence of a Bootian competitor in that early day at 
the Olympic games. The first eleven victors (I put aside Oxythemis, 
Lecause he is the subject of the argument) are all from western and southern 
Peloponnesus; then come vietors from Corinth, Megara, and Epidaurus; 
then from Athens; there is one from Thebes in the 41st Olympiad. I infer 
from hence that the celebrity and frequentation of the Olympic games 
increased. only by degrees, and had not got beyond Peloponnesus in the 
e:guth century B. ©. 2. The name Coronzeus, Κορωναῖος, is the proper and 
formal title for a citizen of Koréné, not for a citizen of Koréneia: the latter 
styles himself Κορωνεύς. The ethnical name Kopwved,,as belonging to 
Knréneia in Beotia, is placed beyond doubt by several inscriptions in Boeckh’s 


Un. YM?PIC FESTIVAL. 533 


some miles on the right bank of the Pamisus, and a considerable 
distance to the north of the modern Coron. Now if Koréné had then 
been comprehended in Messenia, Oxythemis would have been 
proclaimed as a Messenian, like the seven winners who preceded 
him ; and the fact of his being proclaimed as a Koronean, proves 
that Koréné was then an independent community, not under the 
dominion of the Dorians of Stenyklérus. It seems clear, therefore, 
that the latter did not reign over the whole territory commonly 
known as Messenia, though we are unable to assign the proportion 
of it which they actually possessed. 

The Olympic festival, in its origin doubtless a privilege of the 
neighboring Pisatans, seems to have derived its great and gradu 
ully expanding importance from the A®tole-Eleian settlement in 
Peloponnesus, combined with the Dorians of Laconia and Mes- 
senia. Lykurgus of Sparta, and Iphitus of Elis, are alleged to 
have joined their efforts for the purpose of establishing both the 


collection; especially No. 1583, in which a citizen of that town is proclaimea 
as victorious at the festival of the Charitesia at Orchomenus: compare Nos 
1587-1593, in which the sume ethnical name occurs. The Beotian Inscrip 
tions attest in like manner the prevalence of the same etymological law in 
orming ethnical names, for the towns near Koroncia: thus, Cheréneia makes 
Xaipwved¢; Lebadeia, Λεβαδεὺς, Eluteia, ᾿Ελατεὺς, or ᾿Ελατειεὺς 
The Inscriptions afford evidence perfectly decisive as to the ethnical title 
inder which a citizen of Koréneia in Beeotia would have cansed himself to 
be entered and proclaimed at the Olympic games; better than the evidence 
of Herodotus and Thucydidés, who both call them Κορωναῖοι (Herodot. ν. 
79; Thucyd. iy. 93): Polybius agrees with the Inscription, and spcaks of the 
Kopwveic, Aesadeic, Χαιρωνεῖς (xxvii. 1). O. Mailer himself admits, in 
another place (Orchomenos, p. 480), that the proper ethnical name is Κορω- 
vevg. The reading of Strabo (ix. p. 411) is not trustworthy : see Greukest, 
ad loc.; compare Steph. Byz. Κορώνεια and Κορώνη. 

In regard to the formation of ethnical names. it seems the general rule, 
that a town ending in ἡ or az, preceded by a consonant, had its ethnical deriv- 
ative in acog; such as Σκιώνη, Τορώνη, Kian, Θῆβαι, A ϑῆναι; while names 
ending in eva had their ethnicon in eve, as ᾿Αλεξάνδρεια, ᾿Αμάσεια, Σελεύκεια, 
Λυσιμάχεια (the recent cities thus founded by the successors of Alexander 
are perhaps the best evidences that can be taken of the analogies of the 
language), Μελάμπεια, MeAireca, in addition to the Beeotian names of towns 
above quoted. ‘There is, however, great irregularity in particular cases, and 
the number of towns called by the same name created an anxiety to vary 
lhe ethnicon for ezch: see Stephan. Byz. νυ. Ἡράκλεια. ᾿ 


B34 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


sanctity of the Olympic truce and the inviolability of the Eleian 
territory. Hence, though this tale is not to be construed as 
matter of fact, we may see that the Lacedemonians regarded 
the Olympic games as a portion of their own antiquities. More- 
over, it is certain, both that the dignity of the festival increased 
simultaneously with their ascendency,! and that their peculiar 
fashions were very early introduced into the practice of the 
Olympic competitors. Probably, the three bands of cooperat- 
ing invaders, A®tolians and Spartan and Messenian Dorians, 
may have adopted this festival as a periodical renovation of mu- 
tual union and fraternity ; from which cause the games became 
an attractive centre for the western portion of Peloponnesus, be 
fore they were much frequented by people from the eastern, ΟἹ 
still more from extra-Peloponnesian Hellas. For it cannot be 
altogether accidental, when we read the names of the first twelve 
proclaimed Olympic victors (occupying nearly half a century from 
776 B.c. downwards), to find that seven of them are Messenians, 
three Eleians, one from Dymé, in Achaia, and one from Koroné ; 
while after the 12th Olympiad, Corinthians and Megarians and 
Kpidaurians begin to occur; later still, extra-Peloponnesian vic- 
tors. We may reasonably infer from hence that the Olympic 
ceremonies were at this early period chiefly frequented by visi- 
tors and competitors from the western regions of Peloponnesus, 
and that the affluence to them, from the more distant parts of 
the Hellenic world, did not become considerable until the first 
Messenian war had closed. 

Having thus set forth the conjectures, to which our very 
scanty knowledge points, respecting the first establishment of 
the AXtolian and Dorian settlements in Elis, Laconia, and Mes. 
senia, connected as they are with the steadily increasing dignity 
and frequentation of the Olympic festival, I proceed, in the 
next chapter, to that memorable circumstance which both deter. 
mined the character, and brought about the political ascendency, 
of the Spartans separately: I mean, the laws and discipline 
of Lykurgus. 


' The entire nakedness of the competitors at Olympia was adopted fron: 
the Spartan practice, seemingly in the 14th Olympiad, as is testified by the 
epigram on Orsippus the Megarian. Previous to that period, the Olympic 
Competitors had διαζώματα περὶ τὰ αἰδοῖα (Thucyd. i. 6). 


ACHE ANS IN PELOPONNESUS. 835 


Of the preéxisting inhabitants of Laconia and Messenia, whom 
we are accustomed to call Achwans and Pylians, so little is 
known, that we cannot at all measure the difference between 
them and their Dorian invaders, either in dialect, in habits, or in 
intelligence. There appear no traces of any difference of dialect 
among the various parts of the population of Laconia: the Mes- 
senian allies of Athens, in the Peloponnesian war, speak the same 
dialect as the Helots, and the same also as the Ambrakiotie colo- 
nists from Corinth: all Doric.! Nor are we to suppose that the 
Doric dialect was at all peculiar to the people called Dorians. 
As far as can be made out by the evidence of Inscriptions, it 
seems to have been the dialect of the Phokians, Delphians, Lo- 
krians, /Mtolians, and Achzans of Phthidtis: with respect to the 
latter, the Inscriptions of Thaumaki, in Achza Phthidtis, afford a 
proof the more curious and the more cogent of native dialect, 
because the Phthidts were both immediate neighbors and sub- 
jects of the Thessalians, who spoke a variety of the Aolic. So, 
too, within Peloponnesus, we find evidences of Doric dialect 
among the Achzans in the north of Peloponnesus, — the Dryo- 


pic inhabitants of Hermioné,2— and the Eleuthero-Lacones, or 
Laconian townships (compounded of Periceki and Helots), eman- 
cipated by the Romans in the second century B. c. Concerning 
the speech of that population whom the invading Dorians found 
in Laconia, we have no means of judging: the presumption 
would rather be that it did not differ materially from the Do- 
ric. Thucydidés designates the Corinthians, whom the invading 
Dorians attacked from the hill Solygeius, as being /£olians, and 
Strabo speaks both of the Achzans as an /£olic nation, and of 
the £olic dialect as having been originally preponderant im 
Peloponnesus.? But we do not readily see what means of in 
formation either of these authors possessed respecting the speech 
of a time which must have been four centuries anterior even to 
Thucydidés. 

Of that which is called the olic dialect there are three 

' Thucyd. iii. 112; iv. 41: compare vii. 44, about the sameness of sound 
cf the war-shout, or pan, as delivered by all the different Dorians. 

5 Corpus Inscript. Boeckh. Nos. 1771, 1772, 1773; Ahrens, De Dialects 


Dorica, sect. i-ii. 48. 
2 Thucyil. iv. 42; Strabo, viii. p. 333 


886 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


marked and distinguishable varieties, —- the Lesbiar., the Thes- 


salian, and the Beeotian; the Thessalian forming a mean term. 


between the othertwo. Ahrens has shown that the ancient gram 
matical critics are accustomed to affirm peculiarities, as belong- 
ing to the AXolic dialect generally, which in truth belong only to 
the Lesbian variety of it, or to the poems of Alkzus and Sappho, 
which these critics attentively studied. Lesbian Molic, Thes- 
salian ALolic, and Beeotian Colic, are all different: and if, ab- 
stracting from these differences, we confine our attention to that 
which is common to all three, we shall find little to distinguish this 
abstract Zolic from the abstract Doric, or that which is common 
Ὁ the many varieties of the Doric dialect.! These two are sis- 
lers, presenting, both of them, more or less the Latin side of the 
Greek language, while the relationship of either of them to the 
Attic and Ionic is more distant. Now it seems that, putting 
aside Attica, the speech of all Greece,? from Perrhebia and 
Mount Olympus to Cape Malea and Cape Akritas, consisted of 
different varieties, either of the Doric or of the /olic dialect; 
this being true (as far as we are able to judge) not Jess of the 
aboriginal Areadians than of the rest. ‘The Laconian dialect 


' See the valuable work of Ahrens, De Dialecto A®olica, sect. 51. He 
observes, in reference to the Lesbian, Thessalian, and Beeotian dialects : 
“Tres ias dialectos, que optimo jure Molice vocari videntur — quia, qui 
illis usi sunt, oles ecrant —- comparantem mirum habere oportet, quod Asia- 
norum Jolum et Beeotorum dialecti tantum inter se distant, quantum vix 
ab alid quivis Graces lingue dialecto.”. He then enumerates many points 
of difference: “ Contra tot tantasque differentias pauca reperiuntur eaque 
fere levia, que utrique dialecto, neque simul Dorice, communia sint 
Vides his comparatis tauturn interesse inter utramque dialectum, ut dubitare 
liceat, an ALoles Beeoti non magis cum olibus Asianis conjuncti fuerint, 
quam qui hodie miro quodam casu Saxones vocantur cum antiquis Saxon- 
ibus. Nib‘lominus Thessalica dialecto in comparationem vocata, diversis- 
sima que videntur aliquo vinculo conjungere licet. Quamvis enim pauca de 
eA comperta habeamus, noc tamen certum est, alia Thessalis cum Lesbiis, 
alia cum solis Beeotis communia esse.” (P. 222-223.) 

* About the Molic diatect of the Perrhzxbians, see Stephanus Byz. v. Tov 
veg, and ap. Eustath. ad Miad. p. 335. 

The Attic judgment, in comparing these different varieties of ..reek speech, 
is expressed in the story of a man being asked — Whether the Beotians or 
the Thessalians were most of barbarians? He answered —The Elem: 
{KEustath. ad Tliad. p 304). 


LAWS AND DISCIPLINE OF LYKURGUS. 337 


contained more specialties of its own, and approached nearer to 
the olic and to the Eleian, than any other variety of the 
Dorian: it stands at the extreme of what has been classified as 
the strict Dorian, — that is, the farthest removed from Ionic and 
Attic. The Kretan towns manifest also a strict Dorism; as well 
us the Lacedemonian colony of Tarentum, and, seemingly, most 
of the Italiotic Greeks, though some of them are called Achsean 
colonies. Most of the other varieties of the Doric dialect (Pho- 
kian, Lokrian, Delphian, Achxan of Phthiétis) exhibit a form 
departing less widely from the Ionic and Attic: Argos, and the 
towns in the Argolic peninsula, seem to form a stepping-stone 
between the two. 

These positions represent the little which can be known re- 
specting those varieties of Grecian speech which are not known 
to us by written works. The little presumption which can be 
raised upon them favors the belief that the Dorian invaders of 
Laconia and Messenia found there a dialect little different from 
that which they brought with them, —a conclusion which it is the 
more necessary to state distinctly, since the work of O. Miller 
has caused an exaggerated estimate to be formed of the distine- 


tive peculiarities whereby Dorism was parted off from the rest 
of Hellas 


CHAPTER VI. 


LAWS AND DISCIPLINE OF LYKURGUS AT SPARTA. 


PiLuTarcH begins his biography of Lykurgus with the 
following ominous words : — 

“ Concerning the lawgiver Lykurgus, we can assert absolutely 
nothing which is not controverted: there are different stories in 
respect to his birth, his travels, his death, and also his mode of 
proceeding, political as well as legislative: least of all is the time 
in which he lived agreed upon.” 

VOL. U. 15 2205. 


338 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


And this exordium is but too well borne out by the unsatisfac- 
tory nature of the accounts which we read, not only in Plutarch 
himself, but in those other authors out of whom we are obliged 
to make up our idea of the memorable Lykurgean system. If 
we examine the sources from which Plutarch’s life of Lykurgus 
is deduced, it will appear that— excepting the poets Alkman, 
Tyrtzus, and Simonidés, from whom he has borrowed less than 
we could have wished — he has no authorities older than Xen- 
ophon and Plato: Aristotle is cited several times, and is unques 
tionably the best of his witnesses, but the greater number of them 
belong to the century subsequent to that philosopher. Neither 
Herodotus nor Ephorus are named, though the former furnishes 
some brief, but interesting particulars, — and the latter also (as 
far as we can judge from the fragments remaining) entered at 
large into the proceedings of the Spartan lawgiver-.! 

Lykurgus is described by Herodotus as uncle and guardian to 
king Labétas, of the Eurystheneid or Agid line of Spartan kings ; 
and this would place him, according to the received chronology, 
about 220 years before the first recorded Olympiad (about B. c. 
996).2 All the other accounts, on the contrary, seem to repre 
sent him as a younger brother, belonging to the other or Prokleid 
line of Spartan kings, though they co not perfectly agree respect. 
ing his parentage. While Simonidés stated him to be the son of 
Prytanis, Dieutychidas described him as grandson of Prytanis, 
son of Eunomus, brother of Polydektés, and uncle as well as 
guardian to Charilaus,— thus making him eleventh in descent 
from Héraklés.3 This latter account was adopted by Aristotle, 
coinciding, according to the received chronology, with the date 
of Iphitus the Eleian, and the first celebration of the Olympic 
games by Lykurgus and Iphitus conjointly,* which Aristotle 


ν᾽ See Heeren, Dissertatio de Fontibus Plutarchi, pp. 19-25. 

8 Herodot. i. 65. Moreover, Herodotus gives this as the statement of the 
Lacedzmonians themselves. 

8 Plutarch, Lykurg. c. 1. According to Dionys. Halik. (Ant. Rom. ii. 49) 
Lykurgus was uncle, not son, of Eunomus. 

Aristotle considers Lykurgus as guardian of Charilaus (Politic. ii. 7, 1) 
oompare vy. 10,3. See O. Miiller (Hist. of Dorians, i. 7, 3). 

4 Phlegén also adds Kleosthenés of Pisa (De Olympiis ep. Meursii Opp 
vii. p. 128). It appears that there existed a quoit at Olympia, upon whicb 


Vol. 2 11 


DATE AND PARENTAGE OF LYKURGUS. 339 


accepted as a fact. Lykurgus, on the hypothesis here mentioned, 
would stand about B. c. 880, a century before the recorded 
Olympiads. Eratosthenés and Apollodorus placed him “not ἃ 
few years earlier than the first Olympiad.” If they meant hereby 
the epoch commonly assigned as the Olympiad of Iphitus, their 
date would coincide pretty nearly with that of Herodotus: if, on 
the other hand, they meant the first recorded Olympiad (B. c. 
776), they would be found not much removed from the opinion 
of Aristotle. An unequivocal proof of the inextricable confusion 
in ancient times respecting the epoch of the great Spartan law- 
giver is indirectly afforded by Timzus, who supposed that there 
had existed two persons named Lykurgus, and that the acts 
of both had been ascribed to one. It is plain from hence that 
there was no certainty attainable, even in the third century before 


the Christian era, respecting the date or parentage of Lykurgus. 

Thucydidés, without mentioning the name of Lykurgus, informs 
us that it was “400 years and somewhat more” anterior to the 
close of the Peloponnesian war,! when the Spartans emerged 
from their previous state of desperate internal disorder, and θη: 
tered upon “their present polity.” We may fairly presume that 


the formula of the Olympic truce was inscribed, together with the names of 
Iphitus and Lykurgus as the joint authors and proclaimers of it. Aristotie 
believed this to be genuine, and accepted it as an evidence of the fact which 
it professed to certify : and O. Miiller is also disposed to admit it as genuine, 
— that is, as contemporary with the times to which it professes to relate. [ 
come to a different conclusion: that the quoit existed, I do not doubt; but 
that the inscription upon it was actually set down in writing, in or near B. c. 
880, would be at variance with the reasonable probabilities resulting from 
Grecian paleography. Had this ancient and memorable instrument existed 
at Olympia in the days of Herodotus, he could hardly have assigned to 
Lykurgus the epoch which we now read in his writings. 

The assertions in Miiller’s History of the Dorians (i. 7, 7), about Lykur 
cus, Iphitus, and Kleosthenés “drawing up the fundamental law of the 
Olympic armistice,” are unsupported by any sufficient evidence. In the 
later times of established majesty of the Olympic festival, the Eleians did 
undoubtedly exercise the power which he describes ; but to connect this with 
any deliberate regulation of Iphitus and Lykurgus, is in my judgment incor- 
rect. See the mention of a similar truce proclaimed throughout Triphylia by 
the Makistians as presidents of the common festival at the temple of the 
Samian Poseidon (Strabo, viii. p. 343). 

! Thucyd. i. 18. 


340 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


this alludes to the Lykurgean discipline and constitution, which 
Thucydidés must thus have conceived as introduced about B. Ὁ. 
830-820, — coinciding with something near the commencement 
of the reign of king Teéleklus. In so far as it is possible to form 
an opinion, amidst evidence at once so scanty and so discordant, 
I incline to adopt the opinion of Thucydidés as to the time at 
which the Lykurgean constitution was introduced at Sparta. 
The state of “eunomy” and good order which that constitution 
brought about, — combined with the healing of great previous 
internal sedition, which had tended much to enfeeble them, — is 
represented (and with great plausibility) as the grand cause of 
the victorious carcer beginning with king Téleklus, the conqueror 
of Amyklw, Pharis, and Geronthre. Therefore it would seem, 
in the absence of better evidence, that a date, connecting the 
fresh stimulus of the new discipline with the reign of Téleklus, is 
more probable than any epoch either later or earlier.! 


. ‘ Mr. Clinton fixes the legislation of Lykurgus, “in conformity with Thu 
eydidés,” at about 817 B. c., and his regency at 852 B. c., about thirty-five 
years previous (Fasti Hellen. v. i. c. 7, p. 141): he also places the Olympiad 
of Iphitus Β. c. 828 (F. H. vol. ii. p. 410; App. c. 22). 

In that chapter, Mr. Clinton collects and discusses the various statements 
respecting the date of Lykurgus: compare, also, Larcher ad Herodot. i. 67 
and Chronologie, pp. 486-492. 

The differences in these statements must, after all, be taken as they stand, 
for they cannot be reconciled except by the help of arbitrary suppositions, 
which only mislead us by producing a show of agreement where there is 
none in reality. I agree with Mr. Clinton, in thinking that the assertion of 
Thucydidés is here to be taken as the best authority. But I altogether dis- 
sent from the proceeding which he (in common with Larcher, Wesseling, Sir 
John Marsham, and others) employs with regard to the passage of Herodotus, 
where that author calls Lykurgus the guardian and uncle of Labétas (of the 
Eurystheneid line). Mr. Clinton says: “ From the notoriety of the fact that 
Lycurgus was ascribed to the other house (the Prokleids), it is manifest that 
the passage must be corrupted” (p. 144); and he then goes on to correct the 
text of Herodotus, agreeably to the proposition of Sir J. Marsham. 

This proceeding seems to me inadmissible. ‘The text of Herodotus reads 
perfectly well, and is not contradicted by anything to be found elsewhere 
in Herodotus himself: moreover, we have here a positive guarantee of its 
accuracy, for Mr. Clinton himself admits that it stood in the days of Pausa- 
nias just as we now read it (Pausan. iii. 2,3). By what right, then, do we 
alter it? or what do we gain by doing so? Our only right to do so, is, the 
assurcption that there must have been uniformity of belief and means of 


CONTRADICTORY ACCOUNTS. 941 


O. Miller after glancing at the strange and ‘mprobable cir 
cumstances handed down to us respecting Lykurgus, observes, 
“that we have absolutely no account of him as an individual 
person.” This remark is perfectly just: but another remark, 
made by the same distinguished author, respecting the Lykurgean 
system of laws, appears to me erroneous,— and requires more 
especially to be noticed, inasmuch as the corollaries deduced from 
it pervade a large portion of his valuable History of the Dorians. 
Ile affirms that the laws of Sparta were considered the true Doric 
institutions, and that their origin was identical with that of the 
people: Sparta is, in his view, the full type of Dorian principles, 
tendencies, and sentiments,— and is so treated throughout his 
entire work.2 But such an opinion is at once gratuitous (for the 
passage of Pindar cited in support of it is scarcely of any value) 
and contrary to the whole tenor of ancient evidence. The insti- 
tutions of Sparta were not Dorian, but peculiar to herself ;% dis- 
tinguishing her not less from Argos, Corinth, Megara, Epidaurus, 
Siky6n, Korkyra, or Knidus, than from Athens or Thebes. Kréte 
was the only other portion of Greece im which there prevailed 
institutions in many respects analogous, yet still dissimilar in 
these two attributes which form the real mark and pinch of Spar- 
tan legislation, namely, the military discipline and the rigorous 
private training. There were doubtless Dorians in Kréte, but 

ed to 


satisfactory ascertainment, (respecting facts and persons of the ninth and 
-enth centuries before the Christian era,) existing among Greeks of the fifth 
ind succeeding centuries ; an assumption which I hold to be incorrect. And 
all we gain is, an illusory unanimity produced, by gratuitously putting words 
into the mouth of one of our witnesses. 

If we can prove Herodotus to have been erroneously informed, it is right 
to do so; but we have no ground for altering his deposition. It affords a 
clear proof that there were very different stories as to the mere question, to 
which of the two lines of Herakleids the Spartan lawgiver belonged, — and 
that there was an enormous difference as to the time in which he lived. 

' History of the Dorians, i. 7, 6. 

3 History of the Dorians, iii. 1,8. Alf. Kopstadt recognizes this as an 
error in Miller’s work: see his recent valuable Dissertation “De Rerum 
Laconicarum Constitutionis Lycurgee Origine et Indole,” Gryphiz, 1849, 
sect. 3, p. 18. 

3 Among the many other evidences to this point, see Aristotle, Ethic. ν᾿ 
9; Xenophon, Kepubl. Laced. 10, 8. 


842 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


them more thin to the other inhabitants of the island. That the 
Spartans had an original organization, and tendencies common te 
them with the other Dorians, we may readily concede ; but the 
Lykurgean constitution impressed upon them a p2culiar tendency, 
which took them out of the general march, and rendered them 
the least fit of all states to be cited as an example of the class- 
attributes of Dorism. One of the essential causes, which made 
the Spartan institutions work so impressively upon the Grecian 
mind, was their perfect singularity, combined with the conspicu- 
ous ascendency of the state in which they were manifested ; while 
the Kretan communities, even admitting their partial resemblance 
(which was chiefly in the institution of the Syssitia, and was alto- 
gether more in form than in spirit) to Sparta, were too insignifi- 
cant to attract notice except from speculative observers. It is 
therefore a mistake on the part of O. Miller, to treat Sparta as 
the type and representative of Dorians generally, and very many 
of the positions advanced in his History of the Dorians require 
to be modified when this mistake is pointed out. 

The first capital fact to notice respecting the institutions ascribed 
to Lykurgus, is the very early period at which they had their 
commencement: it seems impossible to place this period later 
than 825 B.c. We do not find, nor have we a right to expect, 
trustworthy history in reference to events so early. If we have 
one foot on historical ground, inasmuch as the institutions them- 
selves are real,—the other foot still floats in the unfaithful re- 
gion of mythe, when we strive to comprehend the generating 
causes: the mist yet prevails which hinders us from distinguish- 
ing between the god and the man. The light in which Lykur- 
gus appeared, to an intelligent Greek of the fifth century before 
the Christian era, is so clearly, yet briefly depicted, in the follow- 
ing passage of Herodotus, that I cannot do better than translate 
it :— 

“In the very early times (Herodotus observes) the Spartans 
were among themselves the most lawless of all Greeks, and unap- 
proachable by foreigners. ‘Their transition to good legal order 
took place in the following manner. When Lycurgus, a Spartan 
of consideration, visited Delphi to consult the oracle, the instant 
that he entered the sanctuary, the Pythian priestess exclaimed, — 

«Thou art come, Lycurgus, to my fat shrine, beloved by Zeus, 


LYKURGUS, AS DESUXIBED BY HERODOTUS. 348 


and by all the Olympic gods. Is it as god or as man that I am 
to address thee in the spirit? I hesitate, —and yet, Lycurgus, 
I incline more to call thee a god.” 

So spake the Pythian priestess. “ Moreover, in addition to 
these words, some affirm that the Pythia revealed to him the 
order of things now established among the Spartans. But the 
Lacedemonians themselves say, that Lycurgus, when guardian of 
his nephew Labdtas, king of the Spartans, introduced these insti- 
tutions out of Krete. No sooner had he obtained this guardian- 
ship, than he changed all the institutions into their present form, 
and took security against any transgression of it. Next, he con- 
stituted the military divisions, the Enémoties and the Triakads, 
as well as the Syssitia, or public mess: he also, farther, appointed 
the ephors and the senate. By this means the Spartans passed 
from bad to good order: to Lycurgus, after his death, they built 
a temple, and they still worship him reverentially. And as might 
naturally be expected in a productive soil, and with no inconsid- 
erable numbers of men, they immediately took a start forward, 
and flourished so much that they could not be content to remain 
tranquil within their own limits,” etc. 

Such is our oldest statement (coming from Herodotus) respect- 
ing Lykurgus, ascribing to him that entire order of things which 
the writer witnessed at Sparta. Thucydidés also, though not 
mentioning Lykurgus, agrees in stating that the system among 
the Lacedsemonians, as he saw it, had been adopted by them four 
centuries previously, — had rescued them from the most intoler- 
able disorders, and had immediately conducted them to prosper- 
ity and success.! Hellanikus, whose writings a little preceded 
those of Herodotus, not only did not (any more than Thucydidés) 
make mention of Lykurgus, but can hardly be thought to have 
attached any importance to the name; since he attributed the 
constitution of Sparta to the first kings, Eurysthenés and Prokles.4 

But those later writers, from whom Plutarch chiefly compiled 
his biography, profess to be far better informed on the subject of 
Lykurgus, and enter more into detail. His father, we are told, 
was assassinated during the preceding state of lawlessness; his 


elder brother Polydektés died early, leaving a pregnant widow 


' Herodot i. 65-66; Thucyd. i 18. ? Strabo, vii’. p. 363 


044 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


who made to Lykurgus propositions that he should marry he 
and become king. But Lykurgus, repudiating the offer with 
indignation, awaited the birth of his young nephew Charilaus, 
held up the child publicly in the agora, as the future king of 
Sparta, and immediately relinquished the authority which he had 
provisionally exercised. However, the widow and her brother 
Leonidas raised slanderous accusations against him, of designs 
menacing to the life of the infant king, — accusations which he 
deemed it proper to obviate, by a temporary absence. Accord- 
ingly, he left Sparta and went to Kréte, where he studied the 
polity and customs of the different cities; next, he visited Ionia 
and Egypt, and (as some authors affirmed) Libya, Iberia, and 
even India. While in Ionia, he is reported to have obtained 
from the descendants of Kreophylus a copy of the Homeric poems, 
which had not up to that time become known in Peloponnesus : 
there were not wanting authors, indeed, who said that he had 
conversed with Homer himself.! 

Meanwhile, the young king Charilaus grew up and assumed 
the sceptre, as representing the Prokleid or Eurypontid family. 
But the reins of government had become more relaxed, and the 
disorders worse than ever, when Lykurgus returned. Finding 
that .he two kings as well as the people were weary of so disas- 
trous a condition, he set himself to the task of applying a correc- 
tive, and with this view consulted the Delphian oracle; from 
which he received strong assurances of the divine encouragement, 
together with one or more special injunctions (the primitive 
Rhetrz of the constitution), which he brought with him to Sparta. 
He then suddenly presented himself in the agora, with thirty of 
the most distinguished Spartans, all in arms, as his guards and 
partisans. King Charilaus, though at first terrified, when iaformed 
of the designs of his uncle, stood forward willingly to second 
them; while the bulk of the Spartans respectfully submitted to 


? For an instructive review of the text as well as the meaning cf this 
ancient Rhetra, see Urlichs, Ueber die Lycurgischen Rhetrea, published sinca 
the first edition of this History. His refutation of the rash charges of Got- 
tling seems to me compete: but his own conjectures are not all equally 
plausible; ncz can 1 sabs:ribe to his explanation of ἀφιστάσϑαι. 


a 


SANCTION BROUGHT BY LYKURGUS FROM DELPHL $45 


from Delphi.! Such were the steps by which Lykurgus acquired 
his ascendency : we have now to see how he employed it. 

His first proceeding, pursuant to the Rhetra or Compact brought 
from Delphi, was to constitute the Spartan senate, consisting of 
twenty-eight ancient men; making an aggregate of thirty in con- 
junction with the two kings, who sat and voted in it. With this 
were combined periodical assemblies of the Spartan people, in the 
open air, between the river Knaki6n and the bridge Babyka. Yet 
no discussion was permitted in these assemblies, — their functiens 
were limited to the simple acceptance or rejection of that which 
had previously been determined in the senate.’ Such was the 

! Pjutarch. Lykurg. ὁ. 5-6. Hermippus, the scholar cf Aristotle, professed 
to give the names of twenty out of these thirt,’ devoted partisans. 

There was, however, a different story, which represented that Lykurgus, on 
his return from his travels, found Charilaus governing like a despot (Hera- 
«lid. Pontic. ¢. 2). 

The words of the old Rhetra— Διὸς Ἑλλανίου καὶ ᾿Αϑηνᾶς ‘EAAaviag 
ιερὺν ἱδρυσάμενον, φυλὰς φυλάξαντα, καὶ ὠβὰς ὠβάξαντα, τριάκοντα, γερουσίαν 
σὺν ἀρχαγέταις, καταστήσαντα, ὥρας ἐξ ὥὧρας ἀπελλάζειν μεταξὺ Βαβύκας καὶ 
Κνακίωνος. οὕτως εἰσφέρειν τε καὶ ἀφίστασϑαι" δάμῳ δ᾽ ἀγορὰν εἶμεν καὶ 
«pcetoc. (Plutarch, ib.) 

The reading ἀγορὰν (last word but three) is that of Coray’s edition: other 
readings proposed are κυρίαν, ἀνωγὰν, ἀγορίαν, ete. The MSS., however, are 
incurably corrupt, and none of the conjectures can be pronounced certain. 

The Rhetra contains various remarkable archaisms, — ἀπελλάζειν ---- age 
στασϑαι, ---- the latter word in the sense of putting the question for decision 
corresponding to the function of the ᾿Αφεστὴρ at Knidus, (Plutarch, Quest. 
Gree. c. 4; see Schneider, Lexicon, ad. voc.) 

QO. Miiller connects τριάκοντα with ὠβὰς, and lays it down that there were 
thirty Obes at Sparta: I rather agree with those critics who place the comma 
after ὠβάξαντα, and refer the number thirty to the senate. Urlichs, in his 
Dissertation Ueber Die Lykurgisch. Rhetren (published in the Rheinisches 
Museum for 1847, p. 204), introduces the word πρεσβυγενέας after τριάκοντα; 
which seems a just conjecture, when we look to the addition afterwards 
made by Theopompus. The statements of Maller about the Obes seem to 
me to rest on no authority. 

The word Rhetra means a solemn compact, either originally emanating 
from, or subsequently sanctioned by, the gods, who are always parties to 
such agreements: see the old Treaty between the Eleians and Hergans, — 
‘a Foaroa, between the two,—commemorated in the valuable inscriptio: 
still preserved, — as ancient, according to Boeckh, as Olymp. 40-60, ( Boeck). 
Corp. Inscript. No. 2, p. 26, parti.) The words of Tyrtzus imply such a 
rompact between comtracting parties: first the kings, then the senate, lastly 


15* 


846 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Spartan political constitution as fixed by Lykurgus; but a cen- 
tury afterwards (so Plutarch’s account runs), under the kings 
Polydérus and Theopompus, two important alterations were made. 
A rider was then attached to the old Lykurgean Rhetra, by which 
it was provided that, “in case the people decided crookedly, the 
senate, with the kings, should reverse their decisions :”! while 


the people — εὐθείαις ῥήτραις ἀνταπα “et 30 μ ἕνους -- where the parti 


ciple last occurring applies not to the people alone, but to all the three. The 
Rhetra of LLykurgus emanated from the Delphian god; but the kings, senate 
and people all bound themselves, both to each other and to the gods, to obey 
it. ‘The explanations given of the phrase by Nitzsch and Schomann (in Dr. 
Thirlwall’s note, ch. viii. p. 334) seem to me less satisfactory than what ap- 
pears in C. F. Hermann (Lehrbuch der Griech. Staatsalterthiimer, s. 23). 

Nitzsch (Histor. Homer. sect. xiv. pp. 50-55) does not take sufficient account 
of the distinction between the meaning of ῥήτρα in the early and in the later 
times. In the time of the Ephor Epitadeus, or of Agis the Third, he is right 
in saying that ῥῆτρα is equivalent to scitum, —still, however, with an idea of 
greater solemnity and unchangeability than is implied in the word νόμος, 
analogous to what is understood by a fundamental or organic enactment in 
modern ideas. The old ideas, of a mandate from the Delphian god, and a 
compact between the kings and the citizens, which had once been connected 
with the word, gradually dropped away from it. There is no contradiction 
in Plutarch, therefore, such as that to which Nitzsch alludes (p. 54). 

Kopstadt’s Dissertation (pp. 22, 30) touches on the same subject. I agree 
with Kopstadt (Dissert. pp. 28-30), in thinking it probable that Plutarch 
copied the words of the old Lykurgean constitutional Rhetra, from the ac 
count given by Aristotle of the Spartan polity. 

King Theopompus probably brought from the Delphian oracle the impor- 
tant rider which he tacked to the mandate as originally brought by Lykurgus 
— οἱ βασιλεῖς Θεόπομπος καὶ Πολύδωρος rade τῇ ῥήτρᾳ παρενέγραψαν. ‘The 
authority of the oracle, together with their own influence, would enable them 
to get these words accepted by the people. 

1 A? δὲ σκολιὰν ὁ δᾷμυς ἔλοιτο, τοὺς πρεσβυγένεας καὶ ἀρχαγέτας ἀποστατ- 
ἤἥρας εἷμεν. (Plutarch, 2d.) 

Plutarch tells us that the primitive Rhetra, anterior to this addition, spe- 
cially enjoined the assembled citizens either to adopt or reject, without change, 
the Rhetra proposed by the kings and senate, and that the rider was in- 
troduced because the assembly had disobeyed this injunction, and adopted 
amendments of its own. It is this latter sense which he puts on the word 
σκολιὰν. Urlichs (Ueber Lyc. Rhetr. p. 232) and Nitzsch (Hist. Homer. p 
54) follow him, and the latter even construes the epithet Εὐϑείαις ῥῆτραις 
ἐν ταπαμειβομένους of Tyrtzeus in a corresponding sense: he says, “ Populus 
tis (rhetris) εὐϑείαις, i. 6. nihil inflevis, suffragari jubetur: nam lex cujus 
Ty-teus admonet, ita sanxerat—si populus rogationem inferam (i. 6. non 


LYKURGEAN RHETRA. 347 


ane wer change, perhaps ‘ntended as a sort of compensation for 
bridle on the popular assembly, introduced into the constitu- 


this 4 : 
Directory of five men, called Ephors. This 


tion a new executive 
Board — annually chosen, by some capricious method, the result of 
which could not well be foreseen, and open to be filled by every 
Spartan citizen — either originally received, or gradually drew to 
itself, functions so extensive and commanding, in regard to inter- 
nal administration and police, as to limit the authority of the kings 
to little more than the exclusive command of the military force. 
Herodotus was informed, at Sparta, that the ephors as well as the 


) accipere voluerit, senatores et auctores 


nisi ad suum arbitrium immutatam 


” 
abolento totam. ao 
Now, in the first place, it seems highly improbable that the primitive Rhetra, 
: Ξ 


with its antique simplicity, would contain any such preconceived tne 
se . . Ξ ‘ : ᾿ : : a 

of restriction upon the competence of the assembly. That φορμρρεραρον μρέβομμον 
‘ts formal commencement only from the rider annexed by king Iheopom- 


pus, which evidently betokens a previous dispute and refractory behavior 


‘ " " £ sce bly 
on the part of the assembly, . . i 
In the second place, the explanation which these authors give of the 


εὐθείαις, is not conformable to the ancient Greek, as we 
1d: and these early analogies are the proper test, 
seeing that we are dealing with a very ancient document. In Hesiod, Hr 
πκολιὸς are used in a sense which almost exactly corresponds to dee 
and wrong (which words, indeed, in their primitive 2 lnceitiy 4 ig pg τοι 
back to the meaning of straight and crooked). See Hesiod, pp. i. = " 
918. 221, 226, 230, 250, 262, 264; also Theogon. 97, pryatbiaeg 8 με το 
Géttling ; where the phrases are constantly τερεαιθᾶ, ὁ ne ἫΝ a 
δίκαι, σκολιοὶ μῦϑοι. There is also the remarkable eisai 4 ᾿ " 
ῥεῖα δέ τ᾽ ἰϑύνει σκολιὸν : compare V. 263. ἰϑύνετε μύϑους: also ce 
Tliad, xvi. 387. Οἱ βίῃ εἰν ἀγορῇ σκολεὰς κρίνωσι —— and ΧΧΙΙ, : 
rot. wits 508. ὃς μετὰ τοῖσι δίκην ἰϑύντατα εἴπῃ, ete. 

"1 Ὁ by these analogies, we shall see that the words co 
εὐϑείαις PyTpatc, mean a straightforward, honest, statutes or 4g : a 
adopted without change, as Nitzs h supposes. nd so 


- oA ue "1. 
15 σκολιὰν ἕλοιτο, mean “adopt a wrong or dishonest determination, not 
words σκολ EAOLTO, ; ( 


a determination ditfere 
These words gave to the 


words σκολιὰν and 
find it in Homer and Hesiod : 


and oKoA 


not propositions 


nt from what was proposed to them. wi 
kings and senate power to cancel any decision 
of the public assembly whieh they disapproved. . It retained only the — 
of refusing assent to some substantive propositions of the authorities, rst 
of the kings and senate, afterwards of the ephors. And this limited pewer 
it seems always to have 
Kopstadt explains well the expr 
epithet of Tyrtzus, εὐϑείαις ῥήῆτραις ( 


preserved. ! 
ession σκολιὰν, as the antithesis to the 


Dissertat. sect. 15, p. 124). 


848 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


senate had been constituted by Lykurgus; but the authority of 
Aristotle, as well as the internal probability of the case, sanctions 
the belief that they were subsequently added.' Mh 
Taking the political constitution of Sparta aseribed to Lykurgus 
it appears not to have differed materially from the rude cipal 
tion exhibited in the Homeric poems, where we shiwes ted 8 
council of chiefs or old men, and occasional meetings οἵ a timening 
agora. It is hard to suppose that the Spartan kings can “via 
have governed without some formalities of this sort ig that the 
innovation (if innovation there really was) ascribed to Lykurgus 
must have consisted in some new details respecting the νεύρου 
and the agora, — in fixing the number® thirty, and the ii-perione 
of the former, — and the special place of mectine of the latter ᾿ 
well as the extent of privilege which it was τ aeniiion : sien’ 
crating the whole by the erection of the temples of Zeus Hlelianine 
and Athéné Hellania. The view of the subject sinenenised ω 
Plutarch as well as by Plato,’ as if the senate were an μὰν 
novelty, does not consist with the pictures of the old epic. Hence 
we may more naturally imagine that the Lykurgean political con- 
stitution, apart from the ephors who were afterwards tacked to it 
presents only the old features of the heroic government of Greens 
defined and regularized in a particular manner. The presence of 
two coexistent and coérdinate kings, indeed, succeeding in hered- 
itary descent, and both belonging to the gens of Herakleids 15 
8, is 


‘ Herod. i. 65: compare Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 7; Aristotet. Polit. v. 9, 1 
(where he gives the answer of king Theopompus). in Na 
bina tells us that the ephors were chosen, but not how they were 
chosen ; only, that it was in some manner excessively puerile, — παιδαριώδη 
yup ἐστι λίαν (ii. 6, 16). Ι ΠΝ ΠΝ. 

M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, in his note to the passage of Aristotle, pre 
sumes that they were of course chosen in the same manner as the eel 
bat there seems no sufficient ground in Aristotle to countenance this Nes 
> 3 ὁ oa » ἔν ἐν ‘a . r Ρ M4 " ’ 
is it easy to reconcile the words of Aristotle respecting the election of the 
—. where he assimilates it to an aipeoic δυναστευτικὴ (Polit. v. 5, 8; 
ii. 6, 18), with the description whi ‘ ) of that 

᾿ 8 : which Plutarch (Lycurg. 26) gives of 

ΣΝ (Lycurg. 26) gives of that 

2 K . * 

opstad 35 siti was 
ome : agrees in “ie supposition, that the rumber of the senate 
not peremptorily fixed before the Lyk issertat 
j y fi . ykurgean reform (Dis 

sup. sect. 13, p. 109). " ee" 

2 Ὶ one ~ 6 ove 

Plato, Legg. iii. p. 691; Plat> Epist. viii. p. 354, B. 


KETROSPECTIVE HYPOTHESES OF LATER SPARTANS. 348 


something peculiar to Sparta, — the origin of which receives ne 
other explanation than a reference to the twin sons of Aristode- 
mus, Eurysthenés and Proklés. These two primitive ancestors 
are a type of the two lines of Spartan kings; for they are said to 
have passed their lives in perpetual dissensions, which was the 
habitual state of the two contemporaneous kings at Sparta. While 
the coexistence of the pair of kings, equal in power and constantly 
thwarting each other, had often a baneful effect upon the course 
of public measures, it was, nevertheless, a security to the state 
against successful violence,! ending in the establishment of a des- 
potism, on the part of any ambitious individual among the regal 
line. 

During five successive centuries of Spartan history, from Poly- 
dorus and ‘Theopompus downward, no such violence was attempted 
by any of the kings,? until the times of Agis the Third and 
Kleomenés the Third, — 240 B. c. to 220 Β. c. The importance 
of Greece had at this last-mentioned period irretrievably declined, 
and the independent political action which she once possessed 


had become subordinate to the more powerful force either of the 


AEtolian mountaineers (the rudest among her own sons) or to 


Epirotic, Macedonian, and Asiatic foreigners, preparatory to the 


But amongst all the Grecian 


final absorption by the Romans. 
her ascendency was totally 


states, Sparta had declined the most ; 
gone, and her peculiar training and discipline (to which she had 
chiefly owed it) had degenerated in every way- Under these 
untoward circumstances, two young kings, Agis and Kleomenés, 
— the former a generous enthusiast, the latter more violent and 
ambitious, — conceived the design of restoring the Lykurgean 
constitution in its supposed pristine purity, with the hope of 
reviving both the spirit of the people and the ascendency of the 

te. But the Lykurgean constitution had been, even in the 


— 


1 Plato, Legg: iii. p. 691; Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 20. 

*-'The conspiracy of Pausanias, after the repulse of Xerxes, was against 
the liberty of combined Hellas, to constitute himself satrap of Hellas undcr 
the Persian monarch, rather than against the established Lacedsemonian 
government ; though undoubtedly one portion of his project was [9 excite 
the Helots to revolt, and Aristotle treats hin. as specially aiming to put 
down the power of the ephors (Polit. v. 5, 6; compare Thucyd. i. 128-134 


Herodot. v. 32). 


350 HISTORY OF GREECY¥. 


time of Xenophon,! in part, an ‘déal not fully realized in practice 
—— much less was it a reality in the days of Kleomenés and Agis 
moreover, it was an idéal which admitted of being colored accord- 
ing to the fancy or feelings of those reformers who professed, and 
probably believed, that they were aiming at its genuine restora- 
tion. What the reforming kings found most in their way, was 
the uncontrolled authority, and the conservative dispositions, of 
the ephors, — which they naturally contrasted with the original 
fulness of the kingly power, when kings and senate stood alone. 
Among the various ways in which men’s ideas of what the primi- 
tive constitution had been, were modified by the feelings of their 
own time (we shall presently see some other instances of this), is 
probably to be reckoned the assertion of Kleomenés respecting 
the first appointment of the ephors. Kleomenés affirmed that the 
ephors had originally been nothing more than subordinates and 
deputies of the kings, chosen by the latter to perform for a time 
their duties during the long absence of the Messenian war. Start- 
ing from this humble position, and profiting by the dissensions of 
the two kings,? they had in process of time, especially by the 
ambition of the ephor Asterépus, found means first to constitute 
themselves an independent board, then to usurp to themselves 
more and more of the kingly authority, until they at last reduced 
the kings to a state of intolerable humiliation and impotence. As 
a proof of the primitive relation between the kings and the ephors, 
he alluded to that which was the custom at Sparta in his own 
time. When the cphors sent for either of the kings, the latter 
had a right to refuse obedience to two successive summonses, but 
the third summons he was bound to obey.3 

It is obvious that the fact here adduced by Kleomenés (a 
curious point in Spartan manners) contributes little to prove the 
conclusion which he deduced from it, of the original nomination 
of the ephors as mere deputies by the kings. That they were 
first appointed at the time of the Messenian war is probable, and 
coincides with the tale that king Theopompus was a consenting 


1 Xenophon, Republic. Laced. c. 14. 

* Platarch, Agis, c. 12. Τοῦτο γὰρ τὸ ἀρχεῖον (the ephors) ἰσχύειν ἐκ 
διαφορώς τῶν βασιλέων, ete. 

8 Plutarch, Kleomenés, ¢ 10. σημεῖον δὲ τούτου, τὸ μέχρε viv, pm 
ταπεμπομένων τὸν 3ασιλέα τῶν ᾿Εφόρων, etc. 


ORIGINAL FUNCTIONS OF THE EPHORS. 351 


party to the measure, —- that their functions were at first com 
paratively circumscribed, and extended by successive encroach- 
ments, is also probable; but they seem to have been from the 
beginning a board of specially popular origin, in contraposition 
to the kings and the senate. One proof of this is to be found in 
the ancient oath, which was every month interchanged between 
the kings and the ephors; the king swearing for himself, that he 
would exercise his regal functions according to the established 
laws, — the ephors swearing on behalf of the city, that his au- 
thority should on that condition remain unshaken.! This mutual 
compact, which probably formed a part of the ceremony during 
the monthly sacrifices offered by the king,? continued down to a 
time when it must have become a pure form, and when the kings 
had long been subordinate in power to the ephors. But it evi- 
dently began first as a reality, — when the king was predominant 
and effective chief of the state, and when the ephors, clothed with 
functions chiefly defensive, served as guarantees to the people 
against abuse of the regal authority. Plato, Aristotle, and 
Cicero,3 all interpret the original institution of the ephors as 
designed to protect the people and restrain the kings : the latter 
assimilates them to the tribunes at Rome. 

Such were the relations which had once subsisted between 
the kings and the ephors: though in later times these relations 
had been so completely reversed, that Polybius considers the 
former as essentially subordinate to the latter, — reckoning it as 
a point of duty in the kings to respect the ephors “as their 
fathers.”4 And such is decidedly the state of things throughout 


' Xenophon, Republic. Lacedawmon. c. 15. Καὶ ὅρκους μὲν ἀλλῆλοις κατὰ 
μῆνα ποιοῦνται" Ἔφοροι μὲν ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως, βασιλεὺς δ᾽ ὑπὲρ ἑαυτοῦ. Ὃὧ δὲ 
bpxoc ἐστὶ, τῷ μὲν βασιλεῖ, κατὰ τοὺς τῆς πόλεως κειμένους νόμους βασιλεύ- 
σειν. τῇ δὲ πόλει, ἐμπεδορκοῦντος ἐκείνου, ἀστυφέλικτον τὴν βασιλείαν παρ- 
ἕξειν. 

3 Herodot. vi. 57. 

3 Plato, Legg. iii. p. 692; Aristot. Polit. v. 11, 1; Cicero de Republic. 
Fragm. ii. 33, ed. Maii—“ Ut contra consulare imperium tribuni plebis, sic 

‘li (ephori) contra vim regiam constituti ;’ — also, De Legg. iii. 7, and Valer. 


Vax. iv. 1. 
Compare Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 7; Tittmann, Griechisch. Staats erfassung 


p. 108, seq. 
4 Polyb. xxiv. 8. 


3852 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


all. the better-known period of: history which we shall hereaftes 
traverse. ‘The ephors are the general directors of public affairs! 
and the supreme controlling beard, holding in check every other 
authority in the state, without any assignable limit to their pow- 
ers. The extraordinary ascendency of these magistrates is par- 
ticularly manifested in the fact stated by Aristotle, that they 
ex‘mpted themselves from the public discipline, so that their 
self-indulgent year of office stood in marked contrast with the 
toilseme exercises and sober mess common to rich and poor alike. 
The kings are reduced to a certain number of special functions, 
eombined with privileges partly religious, partly honorary: their 
most important political attribute is, that they are ex officio gen- 
erals of the military force on foreign expeditions. But even 
here, we trace the sensible decline of their power. For whereas 
Herodotus was informed, and it probably had been the old privi- 
lege, that the king could levy war against whomsoever he chose, 
and that no Spartan could impede him on pain of committing 
sacrilege,2 — we shall see, throughout the best-known periods of 
this history, that it is usually the ephors (with or without the 
senate and public assembly) who determine upon war, — the 
king only takes the command when the army is put on the march. 
Aristotle seems to treat the Spartan king as a sort of hereditary 
genesal ; but even in this privilege, shackles were put upon him, 
—for two, out of the five ephors, accompanied the army, and 
their power seems to have been not seldom invoked to insure 
obedience to his ordvrs.* 

The direct political powers of the kings were thus greatly cur- 
tailed; yet importance, in many ways, was still left to them. 


' Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 14-16; "Eori δὲ καὶ ἡ δίαιτα τῶν ᾿Ε φόρων οὐχ duodw 


γουμένη τῷ βουλήματι τῆς πόλεως" αὐτὴ μὲν γὰρ ἀνειμένη λίαν ἐστί" ἐν δὲ 
τοῖς ἄλλοις μᾶλλον ὑπερβάλλει ἐπὶ τὸ σκληρὸν, ete. 

* Herodot. vi. 56. 

3 Aristot. ii. 7,4; Xenoph. Republ. Laced. c. 13. Παυσανίας, πείσας τὖν 
’Eddpwr τρεῖς, ἐξάγει φρουρὰν, Xenoph. Hellen. ii. 4, 29; φρουρὰν ἔφῃναν οἰ 
"Edopor, iii. 2, 23. 

A special restriction was put on the functions of the king, as military 
commander-in-chief, in 417 B.c., after the ill-conducted expedition of Agis, 
son of Archidamus, against Argos. It was then provided that ten Spartan 
counsellors should always accompany the king in every expedition (Thucyd 
v. 63) 


POWERS OF THE SPARTAN KINGS. 353 


They possessed large royal domains, in many of the townships 
of the Periceki: they received frequent occasional presents, and 
when victims were offered to the gods, the skins and other por- 
tions belonged to them as perquisftes : they had their votes in 
the senate, which, if they were absent, were given on their be- 
half, by such of the other senators as were most nearly related 
to them: the adoption of children received its formal accom- 
plishment in their presence, —and conflicting claims at law, for 
the hand of an unbequeathed orphan heiress, were adjudicated 
by them. But above all, their root was deep in the religious 
feelings of the people. Their preéminent lineage connected the 
entire state with a divine paternity. They, the chiefs of the 
Herakleids, were the special grantees of the soil of Sparta from 
the gods,— the occupation of the Dorians being only sanctified 
and blest by Zeus for the purpose of establishing the children of 
Hérakles in the valley of the Eurotas.2 They represented the 
state in its relations with the gods, being by right priests of 
Zeus Lacedemon, (the ideas of the god and the country coalesc- 
ing into one), and of Zeus Uranius, and offering the monthly 
sacrifices necessary to insure divine protection to the people. 
Though individual persons might sometimes be put aside, noth- 
ing short of a new divine revelation could induce the Spartans 
to step out of the genuine lineage of Eurysthenés and Prokleés. 
Moreover, the remarkable mourning ceremony, which took place 
at the death of every king, seems to indicate that the two kingly 
families — which counted themselves Achzan,? not Dorian — 


| The hide-money (δερματικὸν) arising from the numerous victims offered 
at public sacrifices at Athens, is accounted for as a special item of the public 
revenue in the careful economy of that city: see Boeckh, Public Econ. of 
Athens, iii. 7, p. 333 ; Eng. Trans. Corpus Inscription. No. 157. 
3 Tyrtets, Fragm. 1, ed. Bergk ; Strabo, xviii. p. 362 : — 
Αὐτὸς yap Κρονίων καλλιστεφάνου πόσις Ἥρης 
Ζεὺς Ἡρακλείδαις τῆνδε δέδωκε πόλιν" 
Οἷσιν ἅμα προλιπόντες ᾿Ἐρίνεον ἡνεμόεντα 
Εὐρεῖαν Πέλοπος vio w ἀφικόμεϑα. 
Compare Thucyd. v. 16; Herodot. v. 39; Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 3, 3; Plutarch, 


Lysand. ς. 22. 

3 Herod. v.72. See the account in Plutarch, of the abortive stratagem of 
Lysander, to make the kingly dignity elective, by putting forward a yeuth 
who passed for the son of Apollo (Plutarch, Lysand. c. 25-26). 


VOL, Il. 230e 


854 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


were considered as the great common bond of union between the 
three component parts of the population of Laconia, — Sparians, 
Perieki, and Helots. Not merely was it required, on this occa- 
sion, that two members of every house in Sparta should appear 
in sackcloth and ashes, — but the death of the king was formally 
made known throughout every part of Laconia, and deputies 
from the townships of the Perioki, and the villages of the 
Helots, to the number of several thousand, were summoned to 
Sparta to take their share in the profuse and public demonstra- 
tions of sorrow,'! which lasted for ten days, and which imparted 
to the funeral obsequies a superhuman solemnity. Nor ought 
we to forget, in enumerating the privileges of the Spartan king, 
that he (conjointly with two officers called Pythii, nominated by 
him,) carried on the communications between the state and the 
temple of Delphi, and had the custody of oracles and prophecies 
generally. In most of the Grecian states, such inspired declara- 
tions were treasured up, and consulted in cases of public emer- 
gency : but the intercourse of Sparta with the Delphian oracle 
was peculiarly frequent and intimate, and the responses of the 
Pythian priestess met with more reverential attention from the 
Spartans than from any other Greeks.? So much the more im- 
portant were the king’s functions, as the medium of this inter- 
course: the oracle always upheld his dignity, and often even 
seconded his underhand personal schemes. 

Sustained by so great a force of traditional reverence, a Spar 
tan king, of military talent and individual energy, like Agesilaus, 
exercised great ascendency ; but such cases were very rare, and 
we shall find the king throughout the historical period only a 
secondary force, available on special occasions. For real politi- 
cal orders, in the greatest cases as well as the least, the Spar- 
tan looks to the council of ephors, to whom obedience is paid 
with a degree of precision which nothing short of the Spartan 
discipline could have brought about,— by the most powerful 


' Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 3, 1. "Ayec —éruxe σεμνοτέρας ἢ κατ᾽ ἄνϑρωπου 
ταφῆς. 
3 For the privileges of the Spartan kings, see Herodot. vi. 56-57; Xone 
phon, Republ. Laced. c. 15; Plato, Alcib. i. p. 123. 
Hercdot. vi. 66, and Thucyd. v. 16, furnish examples of this. 


LARGE POWERS OF THE EPHORS. 355 


citizens not less than by the meanest.! Both the internal police 
and ihe foreign affairs of the state are in the hands of the ephors, 
-ho exercise an authority approaching to despotism, and alto- 
gether without accountability. They appoint and direct the body 
of three hundred young and active citizens, who performed the 
immediate police service of Laconia: they cashier at pleasure 
any subordinate functionary, and inflict fine or arrest at their own 
discretion: they assemble the military force, on occasion of 
foreign war, and determine its destination, though the king has 
the actual command of it: they imprison on suspicion even the 


recent or the king himself? they sit as judges, sometimes indi- 


vidually and sometimes as a board, upon causes and complaints of 
great moment, and they judge without the restraint of written laws, 
the use of which was peremptorily forbidden by a special Rhetra? 


! Xenophon, Republ. Laced. ο. 8, 2, and Agesilaus, cap. 7, 2. 

? Xenoph. Rep. Laced. 8, 4; Thucydid. 1, 131 ; Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 14- 
ἀρχὴν λίαν μεγάλην καὶ ἰσοτύραννον Plutarch, Lycurg. ο. 13, — μὴ χρῆσϑαι 
νόμοις ἐγγράφοις. 

Plato, in his Republic, in like manner disapproves of any general enact- 
ments, tying up beforehand the discretion of perfectly educated men, like his 
guardians, who will always do what is best on each special occasion (Re- 
public, iv. p. 425). 

' Besides the primitive constitutional Rhetra mentioned above, page 345, 
various other Rhetr are also attributed to Lykurgus: and Plutarch singles 
out three under the title of “ The Three Rhetre,” as if they were either the 
only genuine Lykurgean Rhetre, or at least stood distinguished by some 
peculiar sanctity from all others (Plutarch, Queest. Roman. c. 87. Agesilaus, 
6. 26). 

These three were (Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 13; comp. Apophth. Lacon. p. 
227): 1. Not to resort to written laws. 2. Not to employ in house-building 
any other tools than the axe and the saw. 3. Not to undertake military 
expeditions often against the same enemies. 

I agree with Nitzsch (Histor. Homer. pp. 61-65) that these Rhetrae, though 
doubtless not actually Lykurgean, are, nevertheless, ancient (that is, probably 
dating somewhere between 650-550 B. C.) and not the mere fictions of recent 
writers, as Schémann (Ant. Jur. Pub. iv. 1; xiv. p. 132) and Urlichs (p. 241) 
seem to believe. And though Plutarch specifies the number three, yet there 
seems to have been still more, as the language of Tyrtwus must be held to 
indicate: out of which, from causes which we do not now understand, the 
three which Plutarch distinguishes excited particular notice. 

These maxims or precepts of state were probably preserved along with the 
dicta of the Delphian oracle, from which authority, doubtless, many of them 
may have emanated, —such as the famous ancient prophecy ‘A φιλοχρηματί: 


856 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


erroneously coanccted with Lykurgus himself, but at any rate 
ancient. On certain occasions of peculiar moment, they take 
the sense of the senate and the public assembly,! — such seems 
to have been the habit on questions of war and peace. It ap- 
pears, however, that persons charged with homicide, treason, or 


capital offences generally, were tried before the senate. We 


read of several instances in which the kings were tried and 
severely fined, and in which their houses were condemned to be 
razed to the ground, probably by the senate, on the proposition 
of the ephors: in one instance, it seems that the ephors inflicted 
by their own authority a fine even upon Agesilaus.? 

War and peace appear to have been submitted, on most, if not 
on all oceasions, to the senate and the public assembly ; no matter 
could reach the latter until it had passed through the former. 
And we find some few occasions on which the decision of the 
public assembly was a real expression of opinion, and operative 
as to the result, —as, for example, the assembly which immedi 


Σπάρταν ὁλεῖ, ἄλλο δὲ οὐδὲν (Krebs, Lectiones Diodorew, p. 140. Aristotel. 
Περὶ Πολιτειῶν, ap. Schol. ad Eurip. Andromach. 446 SchOmann, Comm 
ad Plutarch. Ag. et Cleomen. p. 123). 

Nitzsch has good remarks in explanation of the prohibition against “ using 
written laws.” This prohibition was probably called forth by the circumstance 
that other Grecian states were employing lawgivers like Zaleukus, Drako, 
Charondas, or Solon, —to present them, at once, with a series of written 
enactments, or provisions. Some Spartans may have proposed that an anal- 
ovous lawgiver should be nominated for Sparta: upon which proposition a 
negative was putin the most solemn manner possible, by a formal Rhetra, per- 
haps passed after advice fre“. Delphi. ‘There is no such contradiction, there- 
fore, (when we thus conceive the event,) as some authors represent, in forbid- 
ding the use of written laws by a Rhetra itself, put into writing. ‘To employ 
a phrase in greater analogy with modern controversies —“ The Spartans, on 
the direction of the oracle, resolve to retain their unwritten common law. and 
not to codify.” 

i*EécSe τοῖς ᾿Εφόροις καὶ τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ (Xen. Hellen. iii. 2, 23). 

3 The case of Leotychides, Herod. vi. 72; of Pleistounar, Thucyd. ii. 21-v. 
16; Agis the Second, Thucyd. v. 63; Agis the Third, Plutarch, Agis, c. 19: see 
Plutarch, Agesilaus, ο. 5. ᾿ 

Respecting the ephors generally, see Wachsmuth, Hellen. Alterthum 
skundée, v. 4, 42, vol. i. p. 223; Cragius, Pep. Lac. ii. 4, p. 121. 

Aristotl: distinctly marks the ephors xs ἀνυπεύϑυνοι: so that the story 
alluded to briefly in the Rhetoric (iii. 18) is not easy to be undersiood. 


SENATE AND PUBLIC ASSEMBLY. 857 


ately preceded and resolved upon the Peloponnesian war. Here, 
nm addition to the serious hazard of the case, and the general 
caution of a Spartan temperament, there was the great personal 
weight and experience of king Archidamus opposed to the war, 
though the ephors were favorable to 1.1} The public assembly, 
under such peculiar circumstances, really manifested an opinion 
and came to a division. But, for the most part, it seems to have 
been little better than an inoperative formality. The general 
rule permitted no open discussion, nor could any private citizen 
speak except by special leave from the magistrates. Perhaps 
even the general liberty to discuss, if given, might have been of 
no avail, for not only was there no power of public speaking, but 
no habit of canvassing public measures, at Sparta; nothing was 
more characteristic of the government than the extreme secrecy 
of its proceedings.? The propositions brought forward by the 
magistrates were either accepted or rejected, without any license 
of amending. There could be no attraction to invite the citizen 
to be present at such an assembly: and we may gather from the 
language of Xenezhon that, in his time, it consisted only of a 
certain number of notables specially summoned in addition to 
the senate, which latter body is itself called “the lesser Ekkle- 
sia3” Indeed, the constant and formidable diminution in the 
number of qualified citizens was alone sufficient to thin the attend- 
ance of the assembly, as well as to break down any imposing 
force which it might once have possessed. 


1! Thueyd. i. 67, 80, 87. ξύλλογον σφῶν αὐτῶν τὸν εἰωϑότα. 

2 Thucyd. iv. 68. τῆς πολιτείας τὸ κρυπτόν : compare iv. 74; also, his 
remarkable expression about so distinguished a man as Brasrdas, hv δὲ οὐκ 
ἀδύνατος, ὡς Λακεδαιμόνιος, ἐιπεῖν. and iv. 24, about the Lacedsemonian 
envoys to Athens. Compare Schémann, Antiq. Jur. Pub. Gree. iv. 1, 10 
p. 122. Aristotel. Polit. ii. 8, 3. 

3 Τὴν μικρὰν καλουμένην ἐκκλησίαν (Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 3, 8), which 
means the γέροντες, or senate, and none besides, except the ephors, who con- 
voked it. (See Lachmann, Spart. Verfass. sect. 12, p. 216.) What is still 
more to be noted, is the expression οἱ ἔκκλητοι as the equivalent of ἡ ἐκκλη- 
σία (compare Hellen. v. 2, 11; vi. 3, 3), evidently showing 8 special and 
jimited number of persons convened : see, also, ii. 4, 38; iv. 6,3; v. 2, 33, 
Thueyd. v. 77. 

The expression οἱ ἔκκλητοι could rever have got into use as an equivalent 
for the Athenian ecclesia. 


858 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


An assembly thus cireumstanced, — though always retained as 
a formality, and though its consent on considerable matters and 
for the passing of laws (which, however, seems to have been a 
rare occurrence at Sparta) was indispensable,— could be very 
little of a practical check upon the administration of the ephors. 
The senate, a permanent body, with the kings included in it, was 
the only real check upon them, and must have been to 4 certain 
ex‘ent a concurrent body in the government, — though the large 
and imposing language in which its political supremacy is spoken 
of by Demosthenés and Isokratés exceeds greatly the reality of 
the case. Its most important function was that of a court of 
criminal justice, before whom every man put on trial for his life 
was arraigned.! But both in this and in their other duties, we 
find the senators as well as the kings and the ephors charged 
with corruption and venality.2. As they were not appointed 
until sixty years of age, and then held their offices for life, we 
may readily believe that some of them continued to act afier the 
period of extreme and disqualifying senility, — which, though the 
extraordinary respect of the Lacedawmonians for old age would 
doubtless tolerate it, could not fail to impair the influence of the 
body as a concurrent element of government. 
The brief sketch here given of the Spartan government will 
show that, though Greek theorists found a difficulty in determin- 
ing under what class they should arrange 11,3 it was in substance 


' Xenoph. Republ. Laced. 10; Aristot. Polit. ii. 6,17; i. 1,7; Demosthen. 
cont. Leptin. c. 23, p. 489; Isokratés, Or. xii. (Panathenaic.) p. 266. The 
language of Demosthenés seems particularly inaccurate. 

Plutarch (Agesilaus, ο. 32), on occasion of some suspected conspirators, 
who were put to death by Agesilaus and the ephors, when Sparta was in 
imminent danger from the attack of Epameinondas, asserts, that this was the 
first time that any Spartan had ever been put to death without trial. 

? Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 18. Compare, also, Thucydid. i. 131, about the guilty 
Pausanias, — πιστεύων χρήμασι διαλύσειν τὴν διαβολῆν : Herodot. v. 72; 
Thucyd. v. 10, --- about the kings Leotychides and Pleistoanax ; the brave 
and able Gylippus, — Plutarch, Lysand. c. 16. 

3 The ephors are sometimes considered as a democratical element, because 
every Spartan citizen had a chance of becoming ephor; sometimes as a 
despotical element, because in the exercise of their power they were subjece 
to little res‘raint and no responsibility : see Plato, Legg. iv. p 712; Aristot 
Voiit, i. 3, 10; iv. 7, 4,5 


SPARTAN CONSTITUTION OLIGARCHICAL 359 


a close, unscrupulous, and well-obeyed oligarchy, — including 
within it, as subordinate, those portions which had once been 
dominant, the kings and the senate, and softening the odium, 
withouteabating the mischief, of the system, by its annual change 
of the ruling ephors. We must at the same time distinguish the 
sovernment from the Lykurgean discipline and education, which 
doubtless tended much to equalize rich and poor, in respect to 
practical life, habits, and enjoyments. Herodotus (and seem- 
ingly, also, Xenophon) thought that the form just described was 
that which the government had originally received from the hand 
of Lykurgus. Now, though there is good reason for supposing 
otherwise, and for believing the ephors to be a subsequent addi- 
tion, — yet, the mere fact that Herodotus was so informed at 
Sparta, points our attention to one important attrit aco οἱ the 
Spartan polity, which it is proper to bring into view. Chis attri- 
bute is, its unparalleled steadiness, for four or five suceessive 
centuries, in the midst of governments like the Grey tan, all of 
which had undergone more or less of fluctuation. Nv cons*dera- 
ble revolution — not even any palpable or formal change - -- oc- 
curred in it, from the days of the Messenian war, down to those 
of Agis the Third: in spite of the irreparable blow which the 
power and territory of the state sustained from Epameinondas 
and the Thebans, the form of government, nevertheless, remained 
unchanged. It was the only government in Greece which cowd 
trace an unbroken, peaceable descent from a high antiquity, and 
from its real or supposed founder. Now this was one of the 
main cirecurastances (among others which will her safter be men- 
tioned) of the astonishing ascendency which the Spartans ac- 
quired over the Hellenic mind, and which they will not be 
found at all to deserve by any superior ability in the conduct of 
affairs. The steadiness of their political sympathies, — exhibited 
at one time, by putting down the tyrants, or despots, at another, 
by overthrowing the democracies,— stood in the place of ability ; 
and even the recognized failings of their government were often 
covered by the sentiment of respect for its early commencement 
and uninterrupted continuance. If such a feeling acted on the 
Greeks generaliy,! much more powerful was its action upon the 


' A specimen of tne way in which this antiquity was lauded, may be seen 
in Isokratés, Or. xii. (Panathenaic.) p. 288 


360 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Spartans themselves, in inflaming that haughty exclusiveness for 
which they stood distinguished. And it is to be observed tnat 
the Spartan mind continued to be cast on the old-fashioned scale, 
and unsusceptible of modernizing influences, longer tlen that 
of most other people of Greece. The ancient legendary faith, 
and devoted submission to the Delphian oracle, remained among 
them unabated, at a time wken various influences had consider- 
ably undermined if among their fellow-[Hellens and neighbors. 
But though the unchanged title and forms of the government 
thus contributed to its imposing effect, both at home and abroad, 
the causes of internal degeneracy were not the less really at work, 
in undermining its efficiency. It has been already stated, that 
the number of qualified citizens went on continually diminishing, 
and even of this diminished number a larger proportion than be- 
fore were needy, since the landed property tended constantly to 
concentrate itself in fewer hands. There grew up inthis way a 
body of discontent, which had not originally existed, both among 
the poorer citizens, and among those who had lost their fran 
chise as citizens; thus aggravating the danger arising from 
Periceki and Helots, who will be presently noticed. 

We pass from the political constitution of Sparta to the civil 
ranks and distribution, economical relations, and lastly, the pe- 
culiar system of habits, education, and discipline, said to have 
been established among the Lacedzemonians by Lykurgus. Here, 
again, we shall find ourselves imperfectly informed as to the ex- 
isting institutions, and surrounded by confusion when we try to 
explain how those institutions arose. 

It seems, however, ascertained that the Dorians, in all their 
settlements, were divided in‘o three tribes,—the Hylleis, the 


Pamphyli, and the Dymanes: in all Dorian cities, moreover, 
there were distinguished Herakleid families, from whom cekists 
were chosen when new colonies were formed. These three tribes 
can be traced at Argos, Sikyon, Epidaurus, Troezén, Megara, 
Korkyra, and seemingly, also, at Sparta! The Hylleis recog- 
nized, as their eponym and progenitor, Hyllus, the son of Héra- 


' Herodot. v. 68; Stephan. Byz. Ὑλλέες and Δυμᾶν; O. Miiller, Dorians, 
bi. 5, 2; Boeckh ad Corp. Inscrip. No. 1123. 
Thucyd. i. 24, about Phalias, the Herakleid, at Corinth. 


SPARTAN TRIBES. $61 


klés, and were therefore, in their own belief, descended from 
Héraklés himself: we may suppose the Herakleids, specially so 
alled, comprising the two regal families, to have been the elder 
brethren of the tribe of Hylleis, the whole of whom are some- 
times spoken of as Herakleids, or descendants of Héraklés.! 
But there seem to have been also at Sparta, as in other Dorian 
towns, non-Dorian inhabitants, apart from these three tribes, and 
embodied in tribes of their own. One of these, the A®geids, 
said to have come from Thebes as allies of the Dorian invaders, 
is named by Aristotle, Pindar, and Herodotus,? — while the 
Mgialeis at Sikydn, the tribe Hyrnéthia at Argos and Epidaurus, 
and others, whose titles we do not know, at Corinth, represent, in 
like manner, the non-Dorian portions of their respective commu 
nities. At Corinth, the total nuraber of tribes is said to have 
heen eight.4 But at Sparta, though we seem to make out the 
existence of the three Dorian tribes, we do not know how many 
tribes there were in all: still less de we know what relation the 
Ob, or Obes, another subordinate distribution of the people, 
bore to the tribes. In the ancient Rhetra of Lykurgus, the 
Tribes and Obés are directed to be maintained unaltered: but 
the statement of O. Miller and Boeckh® — that there were thirty 


1 See Tyrtwus, Fragm. 8, 1, ed. Schneidewin, and Pindar, Pyth. i. 61, v. 
71. where the expressions “descendants of Hérakleés ἢ plainly comprehend 
more than the two kingly families. Plutarch, Lysand. c. 22; Diodor. xi. 58. 

2 Herodot. iv. 149; Pindar, Pyth. v. 67; Aristot. λακων. TIoAcr. p. 127, 
Fragm. ed. Neuman. The Talthybiade, or heralds, at Sparta, formed a 
family or caste apart (Herod. vii. 134). 

Q. Miller supposes, without any proof, that the Ageids must have been 
adopted into one of the three Dorian tribes; this is one of the corollaries 
from his fundamental supposition. that Sparta is the type of pure Dorism 
(vol ii. p. 78). Kopstadt thinks ( Dissertat. p. 67) that I have done injustice 
t> Ὁ. Maller, in not assenting to his proof: but, on studying the point over 
again, I can see no reason for modifying what is here stated in the text. The 
Section of Schdmann’s work (Antiq. Jur. Publ. Grae. iv. 1, 6, p. 115) on 
this subject asserts a great deal more than can be proved. 

3 Herod. vy. 68-92; Boeckh, Corp. Inscrip. Nos. 1130, 1131 ; Stephan. Byz 
v. Ὑρνίϑιον ; Pausan. ii. 28, 3. 

4 Photius Πάντα ὀκτώ ; also, Proverb. Vatic. Suidas, xi. 64; compare 
Hesychius, v. Κυνόφαλοι. 

5 Miller, Dorians, iii. 5, 3-7; Boeckh. ad Corp. Inscription. part iv. sect 
3, p. 609. 

VOL. 11. 16 


862 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Obés in aii, ten to each tribe — rests up-n 50 other evidence than 
a peculiar punctyation of this Rhetra, which various other critics 
reject ; and seemingly, with good reason. We are thus left with- 
out any information respecting the Obé, though we know that it 
was an old, peculiar, and lasting division among the Spartan 
people, since it occurs in the oldest Rhetra of Lykurgus, as well 


as in late inscriptions of the date of the Roman empire. In 
similar inscriptions, and in the account of Pausanias, there 13, 
however, recognized a classification of Spartans distinct from and 
independent of the three old Dorian tribes, and founded upon 
the different quarters of the city, — Limnz, Mesoa, Pitané, and 
Kynosura ;' from one of these four was derived the usual de- 
scription of a Spartan in the days of Herodotus. ‘There is 
reason to suppose that the old Dorian tribes became antiquated 
at Sparta, (as the four old Ionian tribes did at Athens,) and that 
the topical classification derived from the quarters of the city 
superseded it, — these quarters having been originally the sepa- 
rate villages, of the aggregate of which Sparta was composed.” 
That the number of the old senators, thirty, was connected with 
the three Dorian tribes, deriving ten members from each, is 
probable enough, though there is no proof of it. 

Of the population of Laconia, three main divisions are recog- 
nized, — Spartans, Pericekt, and Helots. ‘The first of the three 
were the full qualified citizens, who lived in Sparta itself, fulfilled 
all the exigences of the Lykurgean discipline, paid their quota tu 
the Syssitia, or public mess, and were alone eligible to honors? or 


1 Pausan. iii. 16, 6; Herodot. iii. 55; Boeckh, Corp. Inscript. Nos. 1241 
1338, 1347, 1425; Steph. Byz v. Mecoa; Strabo, viii. p. 364; Hesych. v. 
Πιτώνη. 

There is much confusion and discrepancy of opinion about the Spartan 
tribes. Cragius adits six (De Republ. Lacon. i. 6); Meursius, eight (Rep 
Lacon. i. 7): Barthélemy (Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis, iv. p. 185) makes 
them five. Manso has discussed the subject at large, but I think not very 
satisfactorily, in the eighth Beilage to the first book of his History of Sparta 
(vol. ii. p. 125); and Dr. Thirlwall’s second Appendix (vol. i. p. 517) both 
notices all the different modern opinions on this obscure topic, and adds 
several useful criticisms. Our scanty stock of original evidence leaves 
much room for divergent hypotheses, and little chance of any certain 
cenclusion. 5 Thucyd. :. 10. 

2 One or two Pericekic officers appear in military command tcwards the 


POPULATION OF LACONIA. 3638 


public offices. These men had neither time, nor taste even, for 
cultivation of the land, still less for trade or handicraft: such 
occupations were inconsistent with the prescribed training, even if 
‘hey had not been positively interdicted. ‘They were maintained 
from the lands round the city, and from the large proportion of 
Laconia which belonged to them ; the land being tilled for them 
by Helots, who seem to have paid over to them a fixed propor- 
tion of the produce; in some cases, at least, as much as one- 
nalf.t Each Spartan retained his qualification, and transmil- 
ted it to his children, on two conditions, — first, that of sub- 
mitting to the prescribed discipline ; next, that of paying, 
each, his stipulated quota to the public mess, which was only 
maintained by these individual contributions. The multiplication 
of children in the poorer families, after acquisitions of new terri- 
tory ceased, continually augmented both the number and the 
proportion of citizens who were unable to fulfil the second of 
these conditions, and who therefore lost their franchise: so that 
there arose towards the close of the Peloponnesian war, a dis- 
tinction, among the Spartans themselves, unknown to the earlier 
times, —the reduced number of fully qualified citizens being 
called The Equals, or Peers, — the disfranchised poor, The Infe- 
riors. ‘The latter, disfranchised as they were, nevertheless, did 
not become Periceki: it was probably still competent to them 
to resume their qualification, should any favorable accident 
enable them to make their contributions to the public mess. 
The Pericekus was also a freeman and a citizen, not of Sparta, 
but of some one of the hundred townships of Laconia.2 Both he 


end of the Peloponnesian war (Thucyd. viii. 6, 22), but these seem rare 
exceptions, even as to foreign service by sea or land, while a Periekus, as 


magistrate at Sparta, was unheard of. 

' One half was paid by the enslaved Messenians (Tyrtseus, Frag. 4, 
Bergk): ἥμισυ πᾶν, ὕσσον τάρπον ἄρουρα φέρει. 

2 Strabo, viii. p. 362. Stephanus Byz. alludes to this total of one hundred 
townships in his notice of several different items among them,— ᾿Ανϑάνα --- 
πόλις Λακωνικὴ pia τῶν ἕκατον ; also, v. ᾿Αφροδισιὰς, Βοῖαι, Δυῤῥάχιον, ete: 
but he probably copied Strabo, and, therefore, cannot pass for a distinct 
authority. The total of one hundred townships belongs to the maximum 
of Spartan power, after the conquest and before the severance of Messe- 
nia; for Aulon, Bois, and Methéné (the extreme places) are included among 


them. 


364 HIST RY OF GREECE. 


and the community to which he belonged received their orders 
only from Sparta, having no political sphere of their own, and ne 
share in determining the movements of the Spartan authorities. 
In the island of Kythéra,' which formed one of the Perickic 
townships, a Spartan bailiff resided as administrator. But whether 
the same was the case with others, we cannot affirm: nor is it 
safe to reason from one of these townships to all,— there may 
lave been considerable differences in the mode of dealing with 
one and another. For they were spread through the whole of 
Laconia, some near and some distant from Sparta: the free inhabi- 
tants of Amyklw must have been Periceki, as well as those of Ky- 
théra, Thuria, A¢theia, or Aulon: nor can we presume that the 
feeling on the part of the Spartan authorities towards all of them 
was the same. Between the Spartans and their neighbors, the 
numerous Periceki of Amyklz, there must have subsisted a degree 
of intercourse and mutual relation in which the more distant 
Periceki did not partake,— besides, that both the religious edifices 
and the festivals of Amyklze were most reverentially adopted by 
the Spartans and exalted into a national dignity : and we seem to 
perceive, on some occasions, a degree of consideration manifested 
for the Amyklaan hoplites,? such as perhaps other Periceki 
might not have obtained. ‘The class-name, Periceki,3— circum- 


Mr. Clinton (Fast. Hellen. ii. p. 401) has collected the names of abeve 
sixty out of the one hundred. 

’ Thucyd. iv. 53. 

* Xenophon, Hellen. iv. 5, 11; Herod.ix. 7; Thucyd. v. 18-23. The Amyk- 
lxan festival of the Hyacinthia, and the Amyklezan temple of Apollo, seem 
to stand foremost in the mind of the Spartan authorities. Αὐτοὶ καὶ ol 
ἐγγύτατα τῶν περιοίκων (Thucyd. iv. 8), who are ready before the rest, and 
march against the Athenians at Pylus, probably include the Amyklzans. 

Laconia generally is called by Thucydidés (iii. 16) as the περιοικὶς of 
Sparta. 

3 The word περίοικοι is sometimes used to signify simply “ surrounding 
neighbor states,” in its natural geographical sense: see Thucyd. i. 17, and 
Aristot. Polit. ¥. 7, 1. Ι 

But the more usual employment of it is, to mean, the unprivileged or less 
privileged members of the same political aggregate living without the city 
in contrast with the full-privileged burghers who lived within it. Aristotle 
uses it to signify, in Kréte, the class corresponding to the Lacedgmonian 
Helots (Pol. ii. 7,3): there did not exist in Kréte any class corresponding 
to the Lacedemonian Periwki. In Kréte, there were not two stages of ἐπῆν 


PERIEKL. 865 


residents, or dwellers around the city, — usually denoted native 
inhabitants of inferior political condition as contrasted with the 


riority, —there was only one, and that one is marked by the word περίοικοι; 
while the Lacedzmonian Pericekus had the Helot below him. To an Athen- 
ian the word conveyed the idea of undefined degradation. 

Ty understand better the status of the Perieekus, we may contrast him 
with the Metcekns, or Metic. The latter resides in the city, but he is an 
alien resident on sufferance, not a native: he pays a special tax, stands 
excluded from all political functions, and cannot even approach the magis- 
trate except through a friendly citizen, or Prostatés) ἐπὶ προστάτου οἰκεῖν --- 
Lycurgus cont. Leocrat. c. 21-53): he bears arms for the defence of the 
state. The situation of a Metic was, however, very different in different cities 
of Greece. At Athens, that class were well-protected in person and prop- 
erty, numerous and domiciliated: at Sparta, there were at first none, — the 


Xenélasy excluded them; but this must have been relaxed long before the 


days of Agis the Third. 

The Perickus differs from the Metic, in being a native of the soil, subject 
by birth to the city law. 

Μ. Kopstadt (in his Dissertation above cited, on Lacedsmonian affairs, 
sect. 7, p. 60) expresses much surprise at that which I advance in this note 
respecting Kréte and Lacedemon,;— that in Kréte there was no class of men 
analogous to the Lacedwmonian Periceki, but only two classes, —i.-e. free 
citizens and Helots. He thinks that this position is “ prorsus flsum ” 

But I advance nothing more here than what is distinctly stated by Aristo 
tle, as Kopstadt himself admits (pp. 60, 71 ). Aristotle calls the subject class 
in Kréte by the name of Περίοικοι. And in this case, the general presump- 
tions go far to sustain the authority of Aristotle. For Sparta was a domi- 
nant or capital city, including in its dependence not only a considerable 
territory, but a considerable number of inferior, distinct, organized townships. 
In Kréte, on the contrary, each autonomous state included only a town with 
its circumjacent territory, but without any annexed townships. ‘There was, 
therefore, no basis for the intermediate class called, in Laconia, Periceki: 
just as Kopstadt himself remarks (p. 78) about the Dorian city of Megara 
There were only the two classes of free Krétan citizens, and serf-cultiva- 
tors in various modifications and subdivisions. 

Kopstadt (following Hoeck, Kreta, Ὁ. iii. vol. iii. p. 23) says that the 
authority of Aristotle on this point is overborne by that of Dosiadas and 
Sosikratés, — authors who wrote specially on Krétan affairs. Now if we 
were driven to make a choice, I confess that I should prefer the testimony 
of Aristotle, — considering that we know little or nothing respecting the other 
two. But in this case I do not think that we are driven to make a choice: 
Dosiadas (ap. Athene. xiv. p. 143) is not cited in terms, so that we cannot 
affirm him to contradict Aristotle: and Sosikratés (upon whom Hoeck and 
Kopstadt rely) says something which dees not neeessarily contradict him, 


$66 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


full-privileged bu.ghers who lived in the city, but it did not mark 
any precise or uniform degree of inferiority. It is sometimes 
so used by Aristotle as to imply a condition no better than that 
of the Helots, so that, in a large sense, all the inhabitants of 
Laconia (Helots as well as the rest) might have been included in 
it. But when used in reference to Laconia, it bears a technical 
sense, whereby it is placed in contraposition with the Spartan on 
one side, and with the Helot on the other: it means, native free- 
men and proprietors, grouped in subordinate communities ! with 
more or less power of local management, but (like the subject 
towns belonging to Bern, Zurich, and most of the old thirteen 
cantons of Switzerland) embodied in the Lacedemonian aggre- 
gate, which was governed exclusively by the kings, senate, and 
citizens of Sparta. 

When we come to describe the democracy of Athens after the 
revolution of Kleisthenes, we shall find the demes, or local town- 
ships and villages of Attica, incorporated as equal and constituent 
fractions of the integer called The Deme (or The City) of 
Athens, so that a demot of Acharne or Sphéttus is at the same 
time a full Athenian citizen. But the relation of the P erickic 
townships to Sparta is one of inequality and obedience, though 
both belong to the same political aggregate, and make up together 
the free Lacedemonian community. In like manner, Ornex and 
other places were townships of men personally free, but politically 
dependent on Argos, — Akrephiz on Thebes, — Cheroneia on 
Orchomenus, — and various Thessalian towns on Pharsalus and 
Larissa.2. Such, moreover, was, in the main, the state into which 


but admits of being explained so as to place the two witnesses in harmony 
with each other. 

Sosikratés says (ap. Athene. vi. p. 263), Τὴν μὲν κοινὴν δουλείαν οἱ Κρῆτες 
καλοῦσι μνοίαν. τὴν Jt ἰδίαν ἀφαμίωτας, τοὺς δὲ περιοίκους ὑπηκόους, Now 
the word περιοίκους seems to be here used just as Aristotle would have used 
Ἔ, to comprehend the Krétan serfs universally: it is not distinguished from 
«νώιται and ἀφαμιῶται, but comprehends both of them as different species 
under a generic term ‘The authority of Aristotle affords a reason for pre- 
ferring to construe the passage in this manner, and the words appear to mé 
to admit of it fairly. 

' The πόλεις of the Lacedemonian Periceki are often noticed: see Xeno 
phon ( Agesilaus, ii. 24; Laced. Repub. xv. 3; Hellenic. vi 5, 21). 

2 Herod. viii. 73-135 ; Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 1,8; Thucyd. iv. 76-94. 


SUPPOSED ORIGIN OF THE PERIGKL. 367 


Athens would have brought her allies, and Thebes the free Boo- 
tian communities,! if the policy of either of these cities had 
permanently prospered. This condition carried with it a sentiment 
of degradation, and a painful negation of that autonomy for which 
every Grecian community thirsted; while being maintained 
through superior force, it had a natural tendency, perhaps without 
the deliberate wish of the reigning city, to degenerate into prac- 
tical oppression. But in addition to this general tendency, the 
peculiar education of a Spartan, while it imparted force, fortitude, 
and regimental precision, was at the same time so rigorously 
peculiar, that it rendered him harsh, unaccommodating, and 
incapable of sympathizing with the ordinary march of Grecian 
feeling, — not to mention the rapacity and love of money, which 
is attested, by good evidence, as belonging to the Spartan charac- 
ter,2 and which we should hardly have expected to find in the 
pupils of Lykurgus. As Harmosts out of their native city,3 and 
in relations with inferiors, the Spartans seem to have been more 
unpopular than other Greeks, and we may presume that a similar 
haughty roughness pervaded their dealings with their own 
Periceki; who were bound to them certainly by no tie of affection, 
and who for the most part revolted after the battle of Leuktra, as 
soon as the invasion of Laconia by Epameinondas enabled them 
to do so with safety. 

Isokratés, taking his point of departure from the old Herakleid 
legend, with its instantaneous conquest and triple partition of 
41} Dorian Peloponnesus, among the three Herakleid brethren, 
deduces the first origin of the Pericekic townships from internal 
seditions among the conquerors of Sparta. According to him, 
the period immediately succeeding the conquest was one of fierce 


' Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 3, 5, 9, 19. és, writing in the days of The- 
ban power, after the battle of Leuktra, characterizes the Boeotian towns as 
περίοικοι οἵ ‘Thebes (Or. viii. De Pace, p. 182); compare Orat. xiv. Plataia 
pp. 299-303. Xenophon holds the same language, Hellen. y. 4,46: com 
pare Plutarch, Agesilaus, 28. 

? Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 23. 

3 Thucyl. i. 77-95; vi. 105. Isokratés (Panathenaic. Or. xii. p. 333), 
Σπαρτιάτας dé ὑπεροπτικοὺς Kai πολεμικοὺς Kai πλεονέκτας, οἵους TEP αὐτοὺς 
εἶναι πάντες ὑπειλήφασι. Compare his Oratio de Pace (Or. viii. pp. 180- 
181); Oratio Panegyr. (Or. iv. pp. 64-67). 


868 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


intestine wartare in newly-conquered Sparta, between the Few 
and the Many,—-the oligarchy and the demus. The former 
being victorious, two important measur?s were the consequences 
of their victory. They banished th2 defeated Many from Sparta 
into Laconia, retaining the residence in Sparta exclusively for 
themselves ; they assigned to them the smallest and least fertile 
half of Laconia, monopolizing the larger and better for them- 
selves; and they disseminated them into many very small town- 
ships, or subordinate little communities, while they concentrated 
themselves entirely at Sparta. To these precautions for insuring 
dominion, they added another not less important. ‘They estab- 
lished among their own Spartan citizens equality of legal privi- 
lege and democratical government, so as to take the greatest 
securities for internal harmony; which harmony, according tc 
the judgment of Isokratés, had been but too effectually perpetu- 
ated, enabling the Spartans to achieve their dominion over 
oppressed Greece, — like the accord of pirates! for the spolia- 
tion of the peaceful. The Periokic townships, he tells us, 
while deprived of all the privileges of freemen, were exposed to 
all the toils, as well as to an unfair share of the dangers, of war. 
The Spartan authorities put them in situations and upon enter- 
prises which they deemed too dangerous for their own citizens ; 
and, what was still worse, the ephors possessed the power of 
putting to death, without any form of preliminary trial, as many 
Perieki as they pleased.* 

The statement here delivered by Isokratés, respecting the 
first origin of the distinction of Spartans and Periceki, is nothing 
better than a conjecture, nor is it even a probable conjecture, 
since it is based on the historical truth of the old Herakleid 


legend, and transports the disputes of his own time, between the 


oligarchy and the demus, into an early period, to which such dis- 


‘ Isokratés. Panathenaic Or. xii. p 280. ὥστε οὐδεὶς dv αὐτοὺς διά ye 
ris ὑμύνοιαν δικαίως ἐπαινέσειεν, οὐδὲν μᾶλλον ἢ τοὺς καταποντιστὰς καὶ 
λήστας καὶ τοὺς περὲ τὰς ἄλλας ἀδικίας ὄντας" καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι σφίσιν αὐτοῖς 
δωονοῦντες τοὺς ἄλλους ἀπολλύουσι. 

2 Isokratés, Orat. xii. (Panathenaic.) pp. 270-271. ‘The statement in the 
same oration (p. 246), that the Lacedzmonians “ had put to death without 
trial more Greeks (πλείους τῶν Ελλήνων) than had ever been tric 4 at Athens 
since Athens was a city. refers to their allies or dependents out »f Laconia 


TREATMENT OF THE PERIG,K®. 269 


putes do not belong. Nor is there anything, so far as our knowl- 
edge of Grecian history extends, to bear out his assertion, that 
the Spartans took to themselves the least dangerous post in the 
field, and threw undue peril upon their Periceki. Such dastardly 
temper was not among the sins of Sparta; but it is undoubtedly 
true that, as the number of citizens continually diminished, so the 
Periceki came to constitute, in the later times, a larger and larger 
proportion of the Spartan force. Yet the power which Isokratés 
represents to have been vested in the ephors, of putting to death 
Perieki without preliminary trial, we may fully believe to be 
real, and to have been exercised as often as the occasion seemed 
to call for it. We shall notice, presently, the way in which these 
magistrates dealt with the Helots, and shall see ample reason 
from thence to draw the conclusion that, whenever the ephors 
believed any man to be dangerous to the public peace, — whether 
an inferior Spartan, a Perickus, or a Helot,—the most sum- 
mary mode of getting rid of him would be considered as the 
best. ‘Towards Spartans of rank and consideration, they were 
doubtless careful and measured in their epplication of punish- 
ment, but the same necessity for circumspection did not exist 
with regard to the inferior classes : moreover, the feeling that the 
exigences of justice required a fair trial before punishment was 
inflicted, belongs to Athenian associations much more than to 
Spartan. How often any such summary executions may have 
taken place, we have no information. 

We may remark that the account which Isokratés has here 
civen of the origin of the Laconian Pericki is not essentially 
irreconcilable with that of Ephorus,' who recounted that Eurys- 
thenés and Proklés, on first conquering Laconia, had granted to 
the preéxisting population equal rights with the Dorians, — but 
that Agis, son of Eurysthenés, had deprived them of this equal 
position, and degraded them into dependent subjects of the latter. 
At least, the two narratives both agree in presuming that the 
Periceki had once enjoyed a better position, from which they had 
beer. extruded by violence. And the policy which Isokratés 
ascribes to the victorious Spartan oligarchs, —of driving out the 
demus from concentrated residence in the city to disseminated 


1 Ephorus, Fragm. 18 ed. Marx; ap. Strabo, viii. p. 365. 
VOL. 11. 16* 2400. 


370 HISTORY OF GREKCE. 


residence in many separate and insignificant townships, — seema 
to be the expression of that proceeding which in his time was 
numbered among the most efficient precautions against refractory 
subjects, —the Dicekisis, or breaking up of a town-aggregat 
into villages. We cannot assign to the statement any historical 
authority.| Moreover, the division of Laconia into six districts, 
together with its distribution into townships (or the distribution 
of settlers into preéxisting townships), which Ephorus ascribed 
to the first Dorian kings, are all deductions from the primitive 
legendary account, which described the Dorian conquest as 
achieved by one stroke, and must all be dismissed, if we sup- 
pose it to have been achieved gradually. ‘This gradual conquest 
is admitted by O. Miller, and by many of the ablest subsequent 
inquirers, — who, nevertheless, seem to have the contrary suppo- 
sition involuntarily present to their minds when they criticize 
the early Spartan history, and always unconsciously imagine the 
Spartans as masters of all Laconia. We cannot even assert that 
Laconia was ever under one government before the consumma- 
tion of the successive conquests of Sparta. 

Of the assertion of O. Miller —repeated by Schomann? — 
“that the difference of races was strictly preserved, and that 


' Dr. Arnold (in his Dissertation on the Spartan Constitution, appended 
to the first volume of his Thucydidés, p. 643) places greater confidence in 
the historical value of this narrative of Isokratés than I am inclined to do. 
On the other hand, Mr. G. C. Lewis, in his Review of Dr. Arnold’s Disser- 
tation (Philological Museum, vol. ii. p. 45), considers the “ account of Iso- 
kratés as completely inconsistent with that of Ephorus ;” which is saying 
rather more, perhaps, than the tenor of the two strictly warrants. In Mr. 
Lewis’s excellent article, most of the difficult points respecting the Spartan 
constitution will be found raised and discussed in a manner highly instruc 
tive. 

Another point in the statement of Isokratés is, that the Dorians, at the 
time of the original conquest of Laconia, were only two thousand in number 
(Or. xii. Panath. p. 286). Mr. Clinton rejects this estimate as too small, 
and observes, “I suspect that Isokratés, in describing the numbers of the 
Dorians at the original conquest, has adapted to the description the actual 
numbers of the Spartans in his own time.” (Fast. Hellen. ii. p. 408.) 

This seems to me a probable conjectare, and it illustrates as well the 
absence of data under which Isokratés or his informants labored, as the 
method which they took to supply the deficiency 

® Schémann, Antiq. Jurisp. Grecorum, iv. 1, 5, p. 112. 


Vol. 3 12 


DISTINCTIONS OF RAVE IN LACONIA. 871 


the Pericki were always considered as Acheans,”— I find no 
proof, and 1 believe it to be erroneous. Respecting Pharis, 
Geronthre, and Amykle, three Perickic towns, Pausanias gives 
us to understand that the preéxisting inhabitants either retired 
or were expelled on the Dorian conquest, and that a Dorian pop- 
ulation replaced them.! Without placing great faith in this 
statement, for which Pausanias could hardly have any good 
authority, we may yet accept it as representing the probabilities 
of-the case, and as counterbalancing the unsupported hypothesis 
of Miller. The Perickic townships were probably composed 
either of Dorians entirely, or of Dorians incorporated in greater 
or less proportion with the preéxisting inhabitants. But what- 
ever difference of race there may once have been, it was effaced 
before the historical times,? during which we find no proof of 


1 Pausan. iii. 2, 6; ili. 22, 5. The statement of Miiller is to be found 
(History of the Dorians, iii. 2, 1): he quotes a passage of Pausanias, which 
is noway to the point. 

Mr. G. C. Lewis (Philolog. Mus. ut. sup. p. 41) is of the same opinion as 
Miiller. 

2M. Kopstadt (in the learned Dissertation which I have before alluded to, 
De Rerum Laconicarum Constitutionis Lycurgex Origine et Indole, cap. ii 
p. 31) controverts this position respecting the Periceki. He appears to un- 
derstand it in a sense which my words hardly present, —at least, a sense 
which I did not intend them to present: as if the majority of inhabitants 
in each of the hundred Pericekic towns were Dorians, — “ ut per centum 
Laconis oppida distributi ubique majorem incolarum numerum efficerent,” (Pp 
32.) I meant only to affirm that some of the Pericekic towns, such as Amyk- 
lw, were wholly, or almost wholly, Dorian; many others of them partially 
Dorian. But what may have been the comparative numbers (probably dif- 
ferent τὰ each town) of Dorian and non-Dorian inhabitants, — there are no 
means of determining. M. Kopstadt (p. 35) admits that Amyklx, Pharis, 
and Geronthre, were Pericekic towns peopled by Dorians; and if this be 
true, it negatives the general maxim on the faith of which he contradicts 
what I affirm: his maxim is —“ nunquam Dorienses ἃ Doriensibus nist 
bello victi erant, civitate equoque jure privati sunt,” (p. 31.) It is very un- 
safe to lay down such large positions respecting a supposed uniformity of 
Dorian rules and practice. The high authority of O. Miiller has been ex- 
tremely misleading in this respect. 

It is plain that Herodotus (compare his expression, viii. 73 and i. 145) 
conceived all the free inhabitants of Laconia not as Acheans, but as Dorians 
He believes in the story of the legend, that the Achzans, driven out of Laco- 
aia by the invading Dorians and Herakleide, occupied the territory in the 


872 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Acheans, known as such, in Laconia. ‘The Herakleids, the 
JEgeids, and the Talthybiads, all of whom belong tc Sparta, 
seem to be the only exampies of separate races, partially dise 
tinguishable from Dorians, known after the beginning of au- 
thentic history. The Spartans and the Pericki constitute one 
political aggregate, and that too so completely melted together in 
the general opinion (speaking of the times before the battle of 
Leuktra), that the peace of Antalkidas, which guaranteed au- 
tonomy to every separate Grecian city, was never so construed 
as to divorce the Periekic towns from Sparta. Both are known 
as Laconians, or Lacedemonians, and Sparta is regarded by 
Herodotus only as the first and bravest among the ‘many and 
brave Lacedemonian cities.! The victors at Olympia are pro- 
claimed, not as Spartans, but as Laconians, — a title alike borne 
by the Periceki, And many of the numerous winners, whose 
names we read in the Olympic lists as Laconians, may proba- 
"ee to Amyklez or other Perickic towns. 

‘he Pericekie hoplites constituted always a large —in late 
times a preponderant — numerical snnaiiiae of the Pat ese 
nian army, and must undoubtedly have been trained, more or less 
perfectly, in the peculiar military tactics of Sparta; since they 
were called upon to obey the same orders as the Spartans in the 
field,? and to perform the same evolutions. Some cases appear 
though rare, in which a Pericekus has high command ina foreign 
expedition. In the time of Aristotle, the larger proportion of 
Laconia (then meaning only the country eastward of [aygetus, 


north west of Peloponnesus which was afterwards called Acha.a, — expel 
ling from it the Ionians. Whatever may be the truth about ec Ni 8 , 
statement, — and whatever may have been the original proportions of aed 
and Achwans in Laconia, — these two races had (in the fifth century a 
become confounded in one undistinguishable ethnical and sudidieal aise: 
gate called Laconian, or Lacedeemonian, — comprising botn Spartans and Pe- 
niki, though with very unequal political franchises, and very material differ 
ences in individual training and habits. The case was different in Thess: ] 
where the Thessalians held in dependence Magnétes, Perrheebi, and βυυεσσνα 
6 separate nationality of these latter was never lost. | 

' Herod. vii. 234. 

2 ὧν : 
Fe alge tape nepaprico pela 
mere ween i ἐκ τῆς χώρας παῖδες, as contrasted 

ς ἀγωγὴ s ap. Atheng. xv. p. 674). 


HELOTS IN HE VILLAGES. 878 


since the foundation of Messéné by Epameinondas had been con 
summated) belonged to Spartan citizens,! but the remaining 
smaller half must have been the property of the Peri eki, who 
must besides have carried on mcst of the commerce of export 
and import, — the metallurgic enterprise, and the distribution of 
internal produce, — which the territory exhibited ; since no Spar- 
‘an ever meddled in such occupations. And thus the peculiar 
training of Lykurgus, by throwing all these employments into 
the hands of the Periceki, opened to them a new source of im- 
portance, which the dependent townships of Argos, of ‘Thebes, 


or of Orchomenus, would not enjoy. 

The Helots of Laconia were Coloni, or serfs, bound to the soil, 
who tilled it for the benefit of the Spartan proprietors certainly, 
— probably, of Pericekic proprietors also. They were the rustic 
population of the country, who dwelt, not in towns, but either in 
small villages? or in detached farms, both in the district imme- 


ι Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 23. διὰ yap τὸ τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν εἶναι τὴν 'πλείστην 
γῆν, οὐκ ἐξετάζουσιν ἀλλήλων τὰς εἰσφοράς. . 
Mr. G. C. Lewis, in the article above alluded to (Philolog. Mus. ii. p. 54), 
says, about the Periceki: “ They lived in the country or in small towns of 
the Laconian territory, and cultivated the land, which they did not hold of 
any individual citizen, but paid for it a tribute or rent to the state ; being 
exactly in the same condition as the possessores of the Roman domain, or the 
Ryots, in Hindostan, before the ‘ntroduction of the Permanent Settlement.” 
It may be doubted, I think, whether the Perieki paid any such rent or 
tribute as that which Mr. Lewis here supposes. The passage just cited from 
Aristotle seems to show that they paid direct taxation individually, and just 
upon the same principle as the Spartan citizens, who are distinguished only 
by being larger landed-proprietors. But though the principle of taxation be 
the same, there was practical injustice (according to Aristotle) in the mode 
of assessing it. “The Spartan citizens (he observes) being the largest 
landed- proprietors, take care not to canvass strictly each other’s payment of 
property-tax,” —1. e. they wink mutually at each other’s evasions. If the 
Spartans had been the only persons who paid εἰσφορὰ, or property-tax, this 
observation of Aristotle would have had no meaning. In principle, the tax 
was assessed, both on their larger properties and on the smaller properties 
of the Periceki: in practice, the Spartans helped each other to evade the due 

proportion. 

2 The village-character of the Helots is distinctly marked by Livy, xxxi¥ 
97, in describing the inflictions of the despot Nabis: “ Ilotarum quidam (hi 
sant jam inde antiquitus castellani, agriste genus) transfugere voluisse insima: 
lati, per omnes vicos sub verberibus acti necantur.” 


874 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


diately surround. ng Sparta, and round the Perickic Laconian 
towns also. Of course, there were also Helots who lived in Sparta 
and other towns, and did the work of domestic slaves, — but such 
was not the general character of the class. We cannot doubt 
that the Dorian conquest from Sparta found this class in the 
condition of villagers and detached rustics; but whether they 
were dependent upon preéxisting Achwan proprietors, or inde- 
pendent, like much of the Arcadian village population, is a ques- 
tion which we cannot answer. In either case, however, it is 
easy to conceive that the village lands (with the cultivators upon 
them) were the most easy to appropriate for the benefit of masters 
resident at Sparta; while the towns, with the district immediate- 
ly around them, furnished both dwelling and maintenance to the 
outgoing detachments of Dorians. If the Spartans had succeeded 
in their attempt to enlarge their territory by the conquest of 
Arcadia,' they might very probably have eonverted Tegea and 
Mantineia into Periockic towns, with a diminished territory inhab- 
ited (either wholly or in part) by Dorian settlers, — while they 
would have made over to proprietors in Sparta much of the 
village lands of the Mznalii, Azanes, and Parrhasii, Helotizing 
the inhabitants. ‘The distinction between a town and a village 
population seems the main ground of the different treatment of 
Helots and Perieki in Laconia. A considerable proportion of 
the Helots were of genuine Dorian race, being the Dorian Messe- 
nians west of Mount Taygetus, subsequently conquered and ag- 
gregated to this class of dependent cultivators, who, as a class, 
must have begun to exist from the very first establishment of the 
invading Dorians in the district round Sparta. From whence 
the name of Helots arose, we do not clearly make out: Ephorus 
deduced it from the town of Helus, on the southern coast, which 
the Spartans are said to have taken after a resistance so obstinate 
as to provoke them to deal very rigorously with the captives. 
There are many reasons for rejecting this story, and another 
etymology has been proposed, according to which Helot is synon- 
ymous with captive: this is more plausible, yet still not convine- 
ing.2 The Helots lived in the rural villages, as adscripti gleba, 


i Herodot. i. 66. ἐχρηστηριάζοντο ἐν Δέλφοισι ἐπὶ πάσῃ TH ᾿Αρκάδων χωρῃ. 
ν See O. Miller, Dorians, iii. 3,1; Hphorus ap. Strabo, viii. p 965: Har 
pocration, Vv. Εἵλωτες. 


HELOTS IN THE VILLAGES. 375 


cultivating their lands and paying over their rent to the master 
at Sparta, but enjoying their homes, wives, families, and mutual 
neighborly feelings, apart from the master’s view. ‘They were 
never sold out of the country, and probably never sold at all; 
belonging, not so much to the master as to the state, which con- 
stantly called upon them for military service, and recompensed 
their bravery or activity with a grant of freedom. Meno, the 
Thessalian of Pharsalus, took out three hundred Penestz of his 
own, to aid the Athenians against Amphipolis: these Thessalian 
Penestz were in many points analogous to the Helots, but no 
individual Spartan possessed the like power over the latter. ‘The 
Helots were thus a part of the state, having their domestic and 
social sympathies developed, a certain power of acquiring prop- 
erty,! and the consciousness of Grecian lineage and dialect,— 
points of marked superiority over the foreigners who formed the 
slave population of Athens or Chios. They seem to have been 
noway inferior to any village population of Greece; while the 
Grecian observer sympathized with them more strongly than with 
the bought slaves of other states,— not to mention that their 
homogeneous aspect, their numbers, and their employment in 
military service, rendered them more conspicuous to the eye. 
The service in the Spartan house was all performed by mem- 
bers of the Helot class; for there seem to have been few, if any, 
other slaves in the country. The various anecdotes which are 
told respecting their treatment at Sparta, betoken less of cruelty 
than of ostentatious scorn,2 —a sentiment which we are noway 
surprised to discover among the citizens at the mess-table. But 
the great mass of the Helots, who dwelt in the country, were 
objects of a very different sentiment on the part of the Spartan 
ephors, who knew their bravery, energy, and standing discontent, 


1 Kleomenes the Third, offered manumission to every Helot, who could pay 
down five Attic minz: he was in great immediate want of money, and he 
raised, by this means, five hundred talents. Six thousand Helots must thus 
have been in a condition to find five minz each, which was a very consider- 
able sum (Plutarch, Kleomenes, c. 23). 

2 Such is the statement, that Helots were compelled to appear in a sta*e 
of drunkenness, in order to excite in the youths a sentiment of repugnance 
against intoxication (Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 28; also, Adversus Stoicos de 
Commun. Notit. c. 19, p. 1067). 


376 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


and yet were forced to employ them as an essential portion of 
the state army. The Helots commonly served as light-armed, in 
which capacity the Spartan hoplites could not dispense with their 
attendance. At the battle of Platwea, every Spartan hoplite had 
seven Helots,! and every Perickie hoplite one Helot, to attend 
him :2 but, even in camp, the Spartan arrangements were framed 
to guard against any sudden mutiny of these light-armed compan- 
ions, while, at home, the citizen habitually kept his shield dis- 
joined from its holding-ring, to prevent the possibility of its being 
snatched for the like purpose. Sometimes, select Helots were 
clothed in heavy armor, and thus served in the ranks, receiving 
manumission from the state as the reward of distinguished bravery. 

But Sparta, even at the maximum of her power, was more 
than once endangered by the reality, and always beset with the 
apprehension, οἵ Helotic revolt. To prevent or suppress it, the 
ephors submitted to insert express stipulations for aid in their 
treaties with Athens, — to invite Athenian treops into the heart 
of Laconia, — and to practice combinations of cunning and atrocity 
which even yet stand without parallel in the long list of precau- 
tions for fortifying unjust dominion. Jt was in the eighth year 
of the Peloponnesian war, after the Helots had been called upor 
for signal military efforts in various ways, and when the Athen- 
ians and Messenians were in possession of Pylus, that the ephors 
felt especially apprehensive of an outbreak. Anxious to single 


1 Herod. ix. 29. The Spartans, at Thermopyla, seem to have been 
attended each by only one Helot (vii. 229). 

O. Maller seems to consider that the light-armed, who attended the Peri- 
ekic hoplites at Platsa, were not Helots (Dor. iii. 3, 6). Herodotus does no 
distinctly say that they were so, but I see no reason for admitting two differ 
ent classes of light-armed in the Spartan military force. 

The calculation which Miiller gives of the number of Periwki and Helots 
altogether, proceeds upon very untrustworthy data. Among them is to be 
noticed his supposition that πολιτικὴ χώρα means the district of Sparta as 
distinguished from Laconia, which is contrary to the passage in Polybiaa 
(vi. 45): πολιτικὴ χώρα, in Polybius, means the territory of the state gene- 
rally. 

3 Xenophon, Rep. Lac. c. 12,4; Kritias, De Lacedem. Repub. ap. Libs 
nium, Orat. de Servitute, t. ii. p. 85, Reisk. ὡς dw oricg civexa τῆς πρὸς τοὺς 
Εἴλωτας ἐξαιρεῖ μὲν Σπαρτιατὴς οἶκοι τῆς ἄσπιδος τὴν TOITGKG, etc. 

3 Thacyd. i. 101; iv. 80- v. 14-23. 


SPARTAN CRUELTY. 377 


out the most forward and daring Helots, as the men from whom 
they had most to dread, they issued proclamation that every 
member of that class who had rendered distinguished services 
should make his claims known at Sparta, promising liberty to 
the most deserving. A large number of Heluts came forward 
to claim the boon: not less than two thousand of them were 
approved, formally manumitted, and led in solemn procession round 
the temples, with garlands on their heads, as an inauguration to 
their coming life of freedom. But the treacherous garland only 
marked them out as victims for the sacrifice: every man of them 
fort].with disappeared, — the manner of their death was an un- 
told mystery. 

For this dark and bloody deed, Thucydidés is our witness,! 
and Thueydidés describing a contemporary matter into which he 
had inquired. Upon any less evidence we should have hesitated 
to believe the statement; but standing as it thus does above all 
suspicion, it speaks volumes as to the inhuman character of the 
Lacedemonian government, while it lays open to us at the same 
time the intensity of their fears from the Helots. In the assassi- 
nation o this fated regiment of brave men, a large number of 
auxiliaries and instruments must have been concerned: yet ‘Thu- 
eydidés, with all his inquiries, could not find out how any of them 
perished : he tells us, that no man knew. We see here a fact 
which demonstrates unequivocally the impenetrable mystery in 
which the proceedings of the Spartan governmentwere wrapped, 
the absence not only ef public discussion, but of public curio- 
sity, — and the perfection with which theephors reigned over 
the will, the hands, and the tongues, of their Spartan subjects. 
The Venetian Council of Ten, with all the facilities for nocturnal 
drowning which their city presented, could hardly have accom- 
plished so vast a coup-d’état with such invisible means. And 
we may judge from hence, even if we had no other evidence, 
how little the habits of a public assembly could have suited either 
the temper of mind or the march of government at Sparta. 

Other proceedings, ascribed to the ephors against the Helots, 
are conceived in the same spirit as the incident just recounted 


1 Thucyd. iv. 80. of dé οὐ πολλῷ ὕσ' €20v Aoavioay τε αὐτοὺς al οὐδε, 
ὕσϑετο ὅτῳ τρόπῳ ἕκαστος διεφϑώρη. 


878 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


from Thucydides, though they do not carry with them the same 
certain attestation. It was a part of the institutions of Lykurgus 
qaccording to a statement which Plutarch professes to aire τὴ 
rowed from Aristotle) that the ephors should every “ἕω pan 
war against the Helots, in order that the murder of them ai 
be rendered innocent; and that active young Spartans diekit be 
armed with daggers and sent about Laconia, in order that they 
might, either in solitude or at night, assassinate such of ἐν" Ha 
as were considered formidable.!. This last measure passes ‘i 
the name of the Krypteia, yet we find some difficulty in deter- 
mining to what extent it was ever realized. That the ephors 
indeed, would not be restrained by any scruples of “are “ 
humanity, is plainly shown by the murder of the two thousand 
Helots above noticed; but this latter incident really eine its 
purpose, while a standing practice, such as that of the Kryptei: 
and a formal notice of war given beforehand, would se οὶ a 
reaction of despair rather than enforce tranquillity. There see ; 
indeed, good evidence that the Krypteia was a real ebdigh 
that the ephors kept up a system of police or in μον 
out Laconia, by the employment of active young slikebinn is 
lived a hard and solitary life, and suffered their nniienn te b , ἢ 
little detected as possible. The ephors might “μνῶν ek 
take this method of keeping watch both over the Perickic 1 i , 
ships and the Helot villages, and the assassination of individ al 
Helots by these police-men, or Krypts, would probably p: a 
noticed. But it is impossible to believe in any st: din aac 
, , any standing murder. 
ous order, or deliberate annual assassination of Helots for tl 
purpose of intimidation, as Aristotle is alleged to have ie ant 
ed, — for we may well doubt whether he really did aki ak 
representation, when we see that he takes no notice of this " aa 
sure in his Politics, where he speaks at some length both of ‘tie 
Spartan constitution and of the Helots. The ie a hatr : 
and fear, entertained by the Spartans towards > Hel ΓΣ 
, Spartans towards their Helots, has 
probably colored Plutarch’s description of the Krypteia, so as to 


lp mae 
saab Lycurg. c. 28; Heraclides Pontic. p. 504, ed. Crag 
“lato, p ; . , rie 
Mi Legg. i. p. 633: the words of the Lacedemonian Megillus desig 
" . n existing Spartan custom. Compare the same treatise, vi. p. 768, where 
. ' 
st suspects, without reason, the genuineness of the word κρυπτοί 


MANUMITTED HELOTS. 379 


exaggerate those unpunished murders which occasivnally hap 
pened into a constant phenomenon with express design. A sim 
lar deduction is to be made from the statement of Myron of 
Priéné,! who alleged that they were beaten every year without 
any special fault, in order to put them ‘in mind of their slavery, 
—and that those Helots, whose superior beauty or stature placed 
them above the visible stamp of thei: condition, were put to 
death ; while such masters as neglected to keep down the spirit 
of their vigorous Helots were punished. That secrecy, for which 
the ephors were 50 remarkable, seems enough of itself to refute 
the assertion that they publicly proclaimed war against the Helots; 
though we may well believe that this unhappy class of men may 
have been noticed as objects for jealous observation in the annual 
ephoric oath of office. Whatever may have been the treatment 
ot the Helots in later times, it 18 at all events hardly to be 


supposed that any regulation hostile to them can have emanated 


from Lykurgus. Tor the dangers arising from that source did 


serious until after the Messenian war, — nor, indeed, 


not become 
number of Spartan citi- 


until after the gradual diminution of the 
zens had made itself felt. 


The manumitted Helots did not pass into th 
of the freedom of some 


e class of Pericki, 


__for this purpose ἃ special grant, 
Periekie township, would probably be required, —__ but consti- 


tuted a class apart, known at the time of the Peloponnesian war 


by the name of Neodamodes. Being 
they were of course regarded by 
1d, if possible, employed 


persons who had earned 


their liberty by signal bravery, 
the ephors with peculiar apprehension, al 
planted on some foreign soil as settlers. 
In what manner these freedmen employed themselves, we find 
no distinct ‘nformation; but we can hardly doubt that they 
quitted the Helot village and field, together with the rural cos- 
tume (the leather cap and sheepskin) which the Helot com- 
monly wore, and the change of which exposed him to suspicion, 
if not to punishment, from his jealous masters. Probably they, 
es well as the disfranchised Spartan citizens (called Hypomeiones, 


on foreign service,” or 


1 Myron. ap. Athenz. xiv. p- 657. ἐπικόπτειν τοὺς Gdoovpevos does net 


swictly mean “to put to death.” 
ὁ Thucyd. v. 34. 


¥80 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


or Inferiors), became greg 
i iid Ἣν ——— at Sparta, and found employ 
“yp soph rades or in the service of the governme::t. 
as ecessar ΟἿΥ is Β ς ti 
of men who inhabited Sue τ cc igi aie πα 
Aen tg gu . er to enable us to under- 
. 1e statements given about the legislation of Lykurgus 
The arrangements ascribed to that hawwuteer in the i a Ων 
Plutarch describes them, presuppose and a ; ; ΤΣ 
three orders of Spartans, Periceki al Η | ἢ γ tec Ma 
τονμβορραθθα Ν sl, ¢ elots. We are told by 
7 ΜΌΝ that the disorders which Lykurgus found existing in 
the νι arose in ἃ great measure from the gross inequality of 
property, and from the luxurious indulgence and unprin ip d 
rapacity ot the rich, — who had drawn to themselves κα μανόν 
proportion of the lands in the country, leaving a aha ongae 
poor, without any lot of land, in hopeless misery a ‘oa , 
tion. To this inequality (according to Plutarch) the refor jin 
legislator applied at once a stringent remedy. He sbiatiniaies 
the whole territory belonging to Sparta, as well as the ων nd ; 
of Laconia ; the former, in nine thousand equal lots one aaah 
inane citizen § the latter, in thirty thousand eae lots sins ω 
<— Pericekus: of this alleged distribution, I shall onl ne 
presently. Moreover, he banished the use of gold and sie 1 
money, tolerating nothing in the shape of dieouduting sili 
but pieces of iron, heavy and scarcely portable ; and he bei! 
to the Spartan citizen every species of industrious te ane 
seeking occupation, agriculture included. He farther constit “ 
— though not without strenuous opposition, dnving the ω " ᾿ f 
which his eye is said to have been knocked ont by a vio ᾿ 
youth, named Alkander, — the Syssitia, or public ni Pies 
tain number of joint tables were provided, and eveny aati 5 a 
required to belong to some one of them, and habitually sata μὲ 
meals - i aah yd new member being admissible without ie 
unanimous ballot in his favor by the previous occupants. E: μ 
»ἡρῃμνῃ from his lot of land a specified see bathe ne 
wine, cheese, and figs, and a small contribution of wie i 
Maeda: κῶν Wik ae α ine of money for con- 
game was obtained in addition by hunting in the 


_—- 


ΠΝ 
Xenophon, Rep. Lae. c. 7. 


3 Plutarch, LLykurg. ὁ. 15; substanti 
Lac. c. 1, 5. “ 5; substantially confirmed by Xenophon, Rep 


LYKURGEAN DISCIPLINE. 81 


public forests of the state, while every one who sacrificed to the 


vods,! sent to his mess-table a part of the victim killed. From 
boyhood to old age, every Spartan citizen took his sober meals 
at this public mess, where all shared alike; nor was distinction 
of any kind allowed, except on signal occasions of service ren- 
dered by an individual to the state. 

These public Syssitia, under the management of the Pole- 
marchs, were connected with the military distribution, the con- 
stant gymnastic training, and the rigorous discipline of detail, 
enforced by Lykurgus. From the early age of seven years, 
as youth and man no less than as boy, 

habitually in public, always either 
istic and military, or ἃ critic and 


throughout his whole life, 
the Spartan citizen lived 
himself under drill, gym: 
spectator of others, 
of a rule partly military, partly monastic, — ¢ 
independence of a separate home, — seeing his wife, during the 
first years after marriage, only by stealth, and maintaining little 
peculiar relation with his children. The supervision, not only of 


his fellow-citizens, but also of authorized censors, OF captains 


nominated by the state, was perpetually acting upon him: his 
day was passed in public exercises and meals, his nights in the 
public barrack to which he belonged. Besides the particular 


military drill, whereby the complicated movements required 


from a body of Lacedzemonian hoplites in the field, were made 
th,—he also became subject to 


familiar to him from his you 
severe bodily discipline of other kinds, caleulated to impart 


strength, activity, and endurance. To manifest a daring and 
ain the greatest bodily torture une 
moved, — to endure hunger and thirst, heat, cold, and fatigue, - ~ 
to tread the worst ground barefoot, — to wear the same garment 
winter and summer, — to suppress external manifestations of 
feeling, and to exhibit in public, when action was not called for, 
a bearing shy, silent, and motionless as a statue, — all these were 
the virtues of the accomplished Spartan youth. Two squadrons 


— always under the fetters and observances 


stranged from the 


pugnacious spirit, — to sust 


— —— = .-.-..-.ς. ...  ς-ς-.- ....ᾧἷᾧ.ς-ς ila 


Ne 


1 See the authors quoted in Athenzeus, iv. p. 141. 
? Xenoph. Rep. Lac. 2-3, 3-5,4-6. The extreme pains taken to eniorce 


καρτερία (fortitude and endurance) in the Spartan system is especially dwelt 
apen by Aristotle (Politica, ii. 6, 5-16); compare Plato, De Legibus, ip 


882 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


were often matched against each other to contend (witLout arms) 
τ the little insular circumscription called the Platanistus, and 
these contests were carried on, under the eye of the authorities, 
with the utmost extremity of fury. Nor was the competition 
among them less obstinate, to bear without murmuring the cruel 
scourgings inflicted before the altar of Artemis Orthia, supposed 
to be highly acceptable to the goddess, though they sometimes 
terminated even in the death of the uncomplaining sufferer. 


Besides the various descriptions of gymnastic contests, the youths 
were instructed in the choric dances employed in festivals of the 


3; Xenophon, De Laced. Repub. ii. 9, with the references in Schneider’s 
note. — likewise Cragius, De Republica Laced. iii. 8, p. 325. 

1 It is remarkable that these violent contentions of the youth, wherein 
kicking, biting, gouging out each other's eyes, was resorted to, — as well as 
the διαμαστίγωσις, or scourging-match, before the altar of Artemis, — lasted 
down to the closing days of Sparta, and were actually seen by Cicero, 
Plutarch, and even Pausanias. Plutarch had seen several persons die under 
the suffering (Plutarch, Lykurg. c. 16, 18-30; and Instituta Laconica, p 
239; Pausan. iii. 14, 9, 16, 7; Cicero, Tuscul. Disp. ii. 15). 

The voluntary tortures, undergone by the young men among the Mandan 
tribe of Indians, at their annual religious festival, in the presence of the elders 
of the tribe, — afford a striking illustration of the same principles and ten- 
dencies as this Spartan διαμαστίγωσις. They are endured partly under the 
influence of religious feelings, as an acceptable offering to the Great Spirit, 
— partly as a point of emulation and glory on the part of the young men, to 
show themselves worthy and unconquerable in the eyes of their seniors. The 
intensity of these tortures is, indeed, frightful to read, and far surpasses in that 
respect anything ever witnessed at Sparta. It would be incredible, were it 
not attested by a trustworthy eye-witness. 

See Mr. Catlin’s Letters on the North American Indians, Letter 22, vol. i. 
p. 157, seq. 

“ These religious ceremonies are held, in part, for the purpose of conduct- 
ing all the young men of the tribe, as they annually arrive at manhood, 
throuch an ordeal of privation and torture ; which, while it is supposed to 
harden their muscles and prepare them for extreme endurance, — enables 
the chiefs who are spectators of the scene, to decide upon their comparative 
bodily strenyth and ability, to endure the extreme privations and sufferings 
that often fall to the lot of Indian warriors ; and that they may decide whe 
is the most hardy and best able to lead a war-party in case of emergency.” 
— Again, p. 173, ete. 

The καρτερία or power of endurance ( Aristot. Pol. ii. 6, 5-16) which formed 
one of the prominent objects of the Lycurgean training, dwindles into nothing 
compared to that of the Mandan Indians. 


SPARTAN WOMEN. 888 


gods, which contributed to impart to them methodized and har 
monious movements. Hunting in the woods and mountains of 
Laconia was encouraged, as a means of inuring them to fatigue 
and privation. The nourishment supplied to the youthful Spar- 
tans was purposely kept insufficient, but they were allowed to 
make up the deficiency not only by hunting, but even by stealing 
whatever they could lay hands upon, provided they could do so 
without being detected in the fact ; in which latter case they 
were severely chastised.!' In reference simply to bodily results,? 
the training at Sparta was excellent, combining strength and 
agility with universal aptitude and endurance, and steering clear 
of that mistake by which Thebes and other cities impaired the 
effect of their gymnastics, — the attempt to create an athletic 
habit, suited for the games, but suited for nothing else. 

Of all the attributes of this remarkable community, there is 
none more difficult to make out clearly than the condition and 
character of the Spartan women. Aristotle asserts that, in his 
time, they were imperious and unruly, without being really so 
brave and useful in moments of danger as other Grecian females ;4 
that they possessed great influence over the men, and even ex- 
ercised much ascendency over the course of public affairs ; and 


1 Xenophon, Anab. iv. 6, 14; and De Repub. Lac. ὁ. 2, 6; Isokratés, Or. 
xii. (Panath.) p. 277. It is these licensed expeditions for thieving, I pres 
sume, to which Isokratés aliudes, ~vhen he speaks of τῆς παίδων αὐτονομίας 
at Sparta, which, in its natural sense, would be the reverse of the truth 
(p. 277). 

2 Aristot. Polit. viii. 3, 3, — the remark is curious, — νῦν μὲν οὖν al μάλιστα 
δοκοῦσαι τῶν πόλεων ἐπιμελεῖσϑαι τῶν παίδων αἱ μὲν ἀϑλητικὴν ἕξιν ἐμποι- 
οὔσι, λωβώμεναι τά τ’ εἴδη καὶ τὴν αὔξησιν τῶν σωμάτων " οἱ δὲ Λάκωνες 
ταύτην μὲν οὐχ ἥμαρτον τὴν ἁμαρτίαν, etc. Compare the remark in Plato, 
Protagor. p. 342. 

3 Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 5; Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 31. Aristotle alludes to 
the conduct of the Spartan women on the occasion of the invasion of Laco- 
nia by the Thebans, as an evidence of his opinion respecting their want of 
courage. His judgment in this respect seems hard upon them, and he prob- 
ably had formed to himself exaggerated notions of what their courage under 
such circumstances ought to have been, as the result of their peculiar train 
ing. We may add that their violent demonstrations on that trying occasion 
may well have arisen quite as much from the agony of wou.ided honor as 
from fear, when we consider what an event the appearance of 8 corguering 


army in Sparta was. 


384 LISTORY OF GREECE. 


that nearly half the landed property of Laconia had come & 
belong to them. The exemption of the women from all control, 
formed, in his eye, a pointed contrast with the rigorous discipline 
imposed upon the men,—and a contrast hardly less pointed 
with the condition of women in other Grecian cities, where 
they were habitually confined to the interior of the house, and 
seldom appeared in public. While the Spartan husband went 
through the hard details of his ascetic life, and dined on the 
plainest fare at the Pheidition, or mess, the wife (it appears) 
maintained an ample and luxurious establishment at home; and 
the desire to provide for such outlay was one of the causes of that 
love of money which prevailed among men forbidden to enjoy it 
in the ordinary ways. To explain this antithesis between the 
treatment of the two sexes at Sparta, Aristotle was informed 
that Lykurgus had tried to bring the women no less than the 
men under a system of discipline, but that they made so obsti 
nate a resistance as to compel him to desist.! 

The view here given by the philosopher, and deserving of 
course careful attention, is not easy to reconcile with that of 
Xenophon and Plutarch, who look upon the Spartan women 
from a different side, and represent them as worthy and homo- 
geneous companions to the men. The Lykurgean system (a> 
these authors describe it) considering the women as a part of 
the state, and not asa part of the house, placed them under 
training hardly less than the men. Its grand purpose, the main- 
tenance of a vigorous breed of citizens, determined both the 
treatment of the younger women, and the regulations as to the 
intercourse of the sexes. “Female slaves are good enough 
(Lykurgus thought) to sit at home spinning and weaving, — but 
who ean expect a splendid offspring, the appropriate mission and 
duty of afree Spartan woman towards her country, from mothers 
brought up in such occupations”? Pursuant to these views, the 
Spartan damsels underwent a bodily training analogous to that 
of the Spartan youth, — being formally exercised, and contend 
ing with each other in running, wrestling, and boxing, agreeably 
to the forms of the Grecian agénes. They seem to have worn a 


1 Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 5, 8, 11. 
* Xenoph. Rep. Lac. i. 3-4; Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 13-i¢. 


SUCIAL REGULATIONS AT SPARTA. 888 


ligii sanic, cut open at the skirts, so as to leave the limbs both 
free and exposed to view, —hence Plutarch speaks of them as 
comp «tely uncovered, while other critics, in different quarters of 
Greeve, heaped similar reproach upon the practice, as if it had 
been nerfect nakedness.! The presence of the Spartan youths, 
and even of the kings and the body of citizens, at these exercises, 
lent animation to the scene. In like manner, the young wo 
men marched in the religious processions, sung and dancea at 
particular festivals, and witnessed as spectators the exercises and 
contentions of the youths; so that the two sexes were perpetually 
intermingled with each other in public, in a way foreign to the 
habits, as well as repugnant to the feelings, of other Grecian 
states. We may well conceive that such an education imparted 
to the women both a demonstrative character and an eager inter- 
est in masculine accomplishments, so that the expression of their 
praise was the strongest stimulus, and that of their reproach the 
bitterest humiliation, to the youthful troop who heard it. 

The age of marriage (which in some of the unrestricted cities 
of Greece was so early as to deteriorate visibly the breed of 
citizens)? was deferred by the Spartan law, both in women and 
men, until the period supposed to be most consistent with the 
perfection of the offspring. And when we read the restriction 
which Spartan custom imposed upon the intercourse even 
between married persons, we shall conclude without hesitation 
that the public intermixture of the sexes, in the way just de- 
scribed, led to no such liberties, between persons not married, as 
might be likely to arise from it under other circumstances.’ 


! Eurip. Androm. 598 ; Cicero, Tuscul. Quest. ii, 15. The epithet φαινο- 
unpides, as old as the poet Ibykus, shows that the Spartan women were not 
uncovered (see Julius Pollux, vil. 55). 

It is scarcely worth while to notice the poetical allusions of Ovid and 
Propertius. 

How completely the practice of gymnastic and military training for young 
women, analogous to that of the other sex, was approved by Plato, may be 
seen from the injunctions in his Republic. 

3 Aristot. Polit. vii. 14, 4. 

3 “Jt is certain (observes Dr. Thirlwall, speaking of the Spartan unmarried 
women) that in this respect the Spartan morals were as pure as those of any 
ancient, perhaps of any modern, people.” (History of Greece, ch. viii. vol 


L p. 371.) “" ᾽ 
VOl.. IL 2700. 


386 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Marriage was almost universal among the citizens, enforced by 
general opinion at least, if not by law. The young Spartan 
carried away his bride by a simulated abduction, but she still 
seems, for some time at least, to have continued to reside with 
her family, visiting her husband in his barrack in the disguise of 
male attire, and on short and stolen occasions.'! ‘To some sareiell 
couples, according to Plutarch, it happened, that they had been 
married long enough to have two or three children, while they 
had scarcely seen each other apart by daylight. Secret intrigue 
on the part of married women was unknown at Sparta; but to 
bring together the finest couples was regarded by the citizens 
as desirable, and by the lawgiver as a duty. No personal fooling 
or jealousy on the part of the husband found sympathy from any 
one, — and he permitted without difficulty, sometimes actively en- 
couraged, compliances on the part of his wife, consistent with 
this generally acknowledged object. So far was such toleration 
arried, that there were some married women who were recog- 
nized mistresses of two houses,2 and mothers of two distinet 
families,— a sort of bigamy strictly forbidden to the men, and never 
permitted, except in the remarkable case of king Anaxandrides 
when the royal Herakleidan line of Eurysthenes was in denges 
of becoming extinct. The wife of Anaxandrides being childless 
the ephors strongly urged him, on grounds of public necessity, ‘s 
repudiate her and marry another. But he refused to dismiss a 
wife who had given him no cause of complaint; upon which 
when they found him inexorable, they desired him to retain hee, 
but to marry another wifebesides, in order that at any rate there 
might be issue to the Eurystheneid line. “ He ‘thus (says 


! Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 15; Xenoph. Rep. Lac. i.5. Xenophon does not 
make any allusion to the abduction as a general custom. There occurred 
cases in which it was real and violent: see Herod. v. 65. Demaratus carried 
off and married the betrothed bride of Leotychides. si 

7 Xenoph. Rep. Lac. i. 9. Ei dé rig abd γυναικὶ μὲν συνοικεῖν μὴ βούλοιτυ 
τέκνων δὲ ἀξιολόγων ἐπιϑυμοίη, καὶ τούτῳ νόμον ἐποίησεν, ἥντινα ἂν rue 
μον καὶ γενναίαν ὁρῴη, πείσαντα τὸν ἔχοντα, ἐκ ταύτης τεκνοποιεῖσθϑαι. Καὶ 
πολλὰ μὲν τοιαῦτα συνεχώρει. Altre γὰρ γυναῖκες δίττους oixove 
ϑούλον ree υνγέχεεν,: i re ἄνδρες ἀδελφοὺς τοῖς παισὶ TpocAauGavery, 
οἱ τοῦ μὲν γέντ"ς: val τὴς δυνώμεως κοινωνοῦσ!, τῶν δὲ χρημάτων οὐκ ἀντιίποι 
οὖν“ α-. 


GYMNASTIC TRAINING. 387 


Herodotus) married two wives, and inhabited two fan ily-heartha 
a proceeding unknown at Sparta ;”! yet the same privilege which, 
according to Xenophon, some Spartan women enjoyed without 
reproach from any one, and with perfect harmony between the 
‘nmates of both their houses. ©. Miller? remarks — and the 
evidence, as far as we know it, bears him out — that love-mar- 
ringes and genuine affection towards a wife were more familiar 
to Sparta than to Athens; though in the former, marital 
jealousy was a sentiment neither indulged nor recognized, — 
while in the latter, it was intense and universal. 

To reconcile the careful gymnastic training, which Xenophon 
and Plutarch mention, with that uncontrolled luxury and relaxa- 
tion which Aristotle condemns in the Spartan women, we may 
perhaps suppose that, in the time of the latter, the women of high 
position and wealth had contrived to emancipate themselves from 
the general obligation, and that it is of such particular cases that 
he chiefly speaks. He dwells especially upon the increasing 
tendency to accumulate property in the hands of the women,‘ 
which seems to have been still more conspicuous a century after- 
wards, in the reign of Agis the Third. And we may readily 
imagine that one of the employments of wealth thus acquired 
would be to purchase exemption from laborious training, — an 
object more easy to accomplish in their case than in that of the 
men, whose services were required by the state as soldiers. By 
what steps so large a proportion as two-fifths of the landed prop- 
erty of the state came to be possessed by women, he partially 
explains to us. There were (he says) many sole heiresses, — 
the dowries given by fathers to their daughters were very large, 
—and the father had unlimited power of testamentary bequest, 


1 Herodot. v. 39-40. Mera δὲ ταῦτα, γυναῖκας ἔχων δύο, διξὰς ἱστίας οἴκεε, 
ποιέων οὐδαμὰ Σπαρτιητικά. 

 Miiller, Hist. of Dorians, iv. 4, 1. The stories recounted by Plutarch, 
(Agis, c. 20; Kleomenés, ο. 37-38,) of the conduct of Agesistrata and Kra- 
tesikleia, the wives of Agis and Kleomenés, and of the wife of Panteus 
(whom he does not name) on occasion of the deaths of their respective hus- 
pands, illustrate powerfully the strong conjugal affection of a Spartan 
woman, and her devoted adherence and fortitude in sharing with her husband 


the last extremities of suffering. 
3 See the Oration of Lysias, De Cede Eratosthenis, (rat. i. p. 94. 860 


4 Plutarch, Agis, c. 4. 


885 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


which he was disposed to use to the advantage ot his daughter 
over his son. In conjunction with this last cincumnatance, we 
sling or heen aa νὰ 
: , which Aristotle alse 
speaks,' and which he ascribes to the warlike temper both of the 
citizen and the state,— Arés bearing the yoke of Aphrodité 
But, apart from such a consideration, if we suppose, on the sant 
of a wealthy Spartan father, the simple disposition to treat sons 
and daughters alike as to bequest, — nearly one half of the i 
herited mass of property would naturally be found in the hands 
of the daughters, since on an average of families the number of 
the two sexes born is nearly equal. In most societies, it is the 
men who make new acquisitions: but this seldom or never hap- 
pened with Spartan men, who disdained all money-getting occu- 
pations. ith ἢ 
Xenophon, a warm panegyrist of Spartan manners, points with 
some pride to the tall and vigorous breed of citizens which the 
Lykurgic institutions had produced. The beauty of the Lacedx- 
monian women was notorious throughout Greece, and Lampitd, 
the Lacedzmonian woman introduced in the Lysistrata of Aris- 
tophanés, is made to receive from the Athenian women the loud- 
est compliments upon her fine shape and masculine vigor.2 We 
may remark that, on this as well as on the other points, Xeno- 
phon emphatically insists on the peculiarity of Spartan institu- 
tions, contradicting thus the views of those who regard them 
merely as something a little Hyper-Dorian. Indeed, such peca- 
liarity seems never to have been questioned in antiquity, either 
by the enemies or by the admirers of Sparta. And those 
who censured the public masculine exercises of the Spartan 
maidens, as well as the liberty tolerated in married women, al- 
lowed at the same time that the feelings of both were actively 
identified with the state to a degree hardly known in Greece ; 
that the patriotism of the men greatly depended upon the sym- 
pathy of the other sex, which manifested itself publicly, in a 


] ΠΝ * "Ἔν. " γ . ~ 
Aristot Polit. ii. 6,6; Plutarch, Agis, c. 4. τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους κατηκό 
ove ὄντας ἀεὶ τῶν γυναικῶν, καὶ πλεῖ ἐκείνα: « i 5 Hi 
ue ὃ ‘ γυναικῶν, κα elov ἐκείναις τῶν δημοσίων, ἢ τῶν ἰδίων 
@' οἷς, πολυπραγμονεῖν didovTac. 
5 Aristophan Lysistr. 80. 


LAWS AND DISCIPLINE OF LYKURGUS ΑἹ SPARTA. 389 


manner not compatible with the recluse life of Grecian women 
generally, to the exaltation of the brave as well as to the abase- 
ment of the recreant ; and that the dignified bearing uf the Spar- 
tan matrons under private family loss seriously assisted the state 
in the task of bearing up against public reverses. “ Return 
either with your shield or upon it,” was their exhortation to their 
sons when departing for foreign service: and after the fatal day 
of Leuktra, those mothers who had to welcome home their sur- 
viving sons in dishonor and defeat, were the bitter sufferers; 
while those whose sons had perished, maintained a bearing com- 
paratively cheerful.! 

Such were the leading points of the memorable Spartan disci: 
pline, strengthened in its effect on the mind by the absence of 
communication with strangers. For no Spartan could go abroad 
without leave, nor were strangers permitted to stay at Sparta 
they came thither, it seems, by a sort of sufferance, but the un 
courteous process called xenélasy? was always available to re 
move them, nor could there arise in Sparta that class of resident 
meties or aliens who constituted a large part of the population of 
Athens, and seem to have been found in most other Grecian 
towns. It is in this universal schooling, training, and drilling, 
imposed alike upon boys and men, youths and virgins, rich and 
poor, that the distinctive attribute of Sparta is to be sought, — 
not in her laws or political constitution. 

Lykurgus (or the individual to whom this system is owing, 
whoever he was) is the founder of a warlike brotherhood rather 
nity; his brethren live 


than the lawgiver of a political commu 
simile from Plutarch), 


together like bees in a hive (to borrow a 


ι See the remarkable account in Xenophon, Hellen. iv. 16; Plutarch, 
one of the most striking incidents in Grecian history. 
ibed to Lacedemonian women, in 


Agesilaus, c. 29; 
Compare, also, the string of sayings ascr 
Piutarch, Lac. Apophth. p. 241, seq. 

2 How offensive the Lacedemonian xenélasy or expulsion of strangers 
appeared in Greece, we may see from the speeches of Periklés in Thucydi- 
dés (i. 144; ii. 39). Compare Xenophon, Rep. Lac. xiv. 4; Plutarch, Agis, 
c.10 lLykurgus, c. 27; Plato, Protagoras, p. 348. 

No Spartan left the country without permission : 
(Busiris), p. 225; Xenoph. ut sup. 

Both these regulations became much relax 
ponnesian war. 


Isokratés, Orat. xi 


οὖ after the close of the Pela 


890 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


with all their feelings implicated in the commonwealth, and di 
vorced from house and home.! Far from contemplating the 
society as a whole, with its multifarious wants and liabilities, 
he interdicts beforehand, by one of the three primitive Rhetre, 
all written laws, that is to say, all formal and premeditated enact- 
ments on any special subject. When disputes are to be settled 
or judicial interference is required, the magistrate is to decide 
from his own sense of equity; that the magistrate will not de- 
part from the established customs and recognized purposes of 
the city, is presumed from the personal discipline which he and 
the select body to whom he belongs, have undergone. It is this 
select body, maintained by the labor of others, over whom Lykur- 
gus exclusively watches, with the provident eye of a trainer, for 
the purpose of disciplining them into a state of regimental prep- 
aration,? single-minded obedience, and bodily efficiency and 
endurance, so that they may be always fit and ready for defence, 
for conquest and for dominion. The parallel of the Lykurgean 
institutions is to be found in the Republic of Plato, who approves 
the Spartan principle of select guardians carefully trained and 
administering the community at discretion; with this momentous 
difference, indeed, that the Spartan character? formed by Lykur- 


' Plutarch, Lykurg. ὁ. 25 

? Plutarch observes justly about Sparta, under the discipline of Lykurgus, 
that it was “not the polity of a city, but the life of a trained and skilful 
man,” — οὐ πόλεως ἡ Σπάρτη πολιτείαν, GAA’ ἀνδρὸς ἀσκητοῦ καὶ σοφοῦ βίον 
ἔχουσα (Plutarch, Lyk. ec. 80). 

About the perfect habit of obedience at Sparta, see Xenophon, Memorab. 
iii. 5, 9, 15-iv. 4. 15, the grand attributes of Sparta in the eyes of its ad- 
mirers (Isokratés, Panathen. Or. xii. pp. 256-278), πειϑαρχία ---- σωφροσύνη 
-- τὰ γυμνάσια τἄκει καϑεστῶτα καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἄσκησιν τῆς ἀνδρίας καὶ πρὸς 
τὴν ὁμόνοιαν καὶ συνύλως τὴν περὶ τὸν πόλεμον ἐμπειρίαν. 

? Aristot. Polit. viii 3,3. Ol Λάκωνες ϑηριώδεις ἀπεργάζονται τοῖς 
“νοις. 

That the Spartans were absolutely ignorant of letters, and could not read, 
ts expressly stated by Isokratés (Panathen. Or. xii. p. 277). οὗτοι δὲ τοσοῦ- 
Tov ἀπολελειμμένοι τῆς κοινῆς παιδείας Kai φιλοσοφίας εἰσὶν, ὥστ᾽ οὐδὲ 
γράμματα μανϑώνουσιν, ete. 

The preference of rhetoric to accuracy, is so manifest in Isokratés, that we 
eught to understand his expressions with some reserve; but in this ease it is 
evident that he means literally what he says, for in another part of the same 
discourse, there is an expression dropped, almost unconsciously, which con 


“LAWS AND DISCIPLINE OF LYKURGUS AT SPARTA. 891 


s is of a low type, rendered savage and fierce by exclusive and 
overdone bodily discipline, — destitute even of the elements 
of letters, — immersed in their own narrow specialities, and 
taught to despise all that lay beyond,— possessing all the quali- 
ties requisite to procure dominion, but none of those calculated 
to render dominion popular or salutary to the subject; while the 
habits and attributes of the guardians, as shadowed forth by 
Plato, are enlarged as well as philanthropic, qualifying them not 
simply to govern, but to govern for purposes protective, concilia- 
tory, and exalted. Both Plato and Aristotle conceive as the per 
fection of society something of the Spartan type, — ἃ select body 
of equally privileged citizens, disengaged from industrious pur- 
suits, and subjected to public and uniform training. Both admit 
(with Lykurgus) that the citizen belongs neither to himself nor 
to his family, but to his city; both at the same time note with 
regret, that the Spartan training was turned only to one portion 
of human virtue, — that which is called forth in a state of war εἰ 
the citizens being converted into a sort of garrison, always under 
drill, and always ready to be called forth either against Helots at 
home or against enemies abroad. Such exclusive tendency will 
appear less astonishing if we consider the very varly and inse- 
cure period at which the Lykurgean institutions arose, when 
none of those guarantees which afterwards maintained the peace 
of the Hellenic world had as yet become effective, — no constant 
habits of intercourse, no custom of meeting in Amphiktyony 
from the distant parts of Greece, no common or largely fre- 
quented festivals, no multiplication of proxenies (or standing 
tickets of hospitality) between the important cities, no pacific or 
industrious habits anywhere. When we contemplate the gene ral 
insecurity of Grecian life in the ninth or eighth century before the 
Christian era, and especially the precarious condition of a small 
band of Dorian conquerors in Sparta and its district, with sub- 
dued Helots on their own lands and Achzans unsubdued all 
around them, — we shall not be surprised that the language 


“The most rational Spartans (he says) will appreciate this 


firms it. ys) Ἢ prec . 
— ἣν λάθωσι τὸν ἀναγνωσόο. 


discourse, if they πα any one to read it to them,” 


μενον (p. 285). ‘a By 
1 Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 22; vii. 13, 11; viii. 1, 85 vill. 8, 8. Plato, Legg. i 
pp. 626-629. Plutarch, Soldn, c. 22. 


892 HISTORY OF GREECE 


which Brasidas in the Peloponnesian war addresses tu his army 
in reference to the original Spartan settlement, was still more 
powerfully present to the mind of Lykurgus four centuries 
earlier —“ We are a few in the midst of many enemies; we 
can only maintain ourselves by fighting and conquering.”! 

Under such circumstances, the exclusive aim which Lykurgus 
proposed to himself is easily understood; but what is truly sur- 
prising, is the violence of his means and the success of the 
result. He realized his project of creating, in the eight thousand 
or nine thousand Spartan citizens, unrivalled habits of obedience, 
hardihood, self-denial, and military aptitude, — complete subjec- 
tion on the part of each individual to the local public opinion, 
and preference of death to the abandonment of Spartan maxims, 
intense ambition on the part of every one to distinguish himself 
within the prescribed sphere of duties, with little ambition for 
anything else. In what manner so rigorous a system of indi- 
vidual training can have been first brought to bear upon any 
community, mastering the course of the thoughts and actions 
from boyhood to old age, —a work far more difficult than any 
political revolution, — we are not permitted to discover. Nor 
does the influence of an earnest and energetic Herakleidman, — 
seconded by the still more powerful working of the Delphian 
god behind, upon the strong pious susceptibilities of the Spartan 
mind, — sufficiently explain a phenomenon so remarkable in the 
history of mankind, unless we suppose them aided by some com- 
bination of coéperating circumstances which history has not 
transmitted to us,2 and preceded by disorders so exaggerated as 
to render the citizens glad to escape from them at any price. 

Respecting the ante-Lykurgean Sparta we possess no positive 
information whatever. But although this unfortunate gap cannot 
be filled up, we may yet master the negative probabilities of the 


' Thueyd. iv. 126. Οἱ ye μηδὲ ἀπὸ πολιτειῶν τοιούτων ἥκετε, ἐν αἷς οὐ 
πολλοὶ ὀλίγων ἄρχουσι, ἀλλὰ πλειόνων μᾶλλον ἐλάσσους" οὐκ ἄλλῳ τιν 
κτησάμενοι τὴν δυναστείαν ἢ τῷ μαχόμενοι κρατεῖν. 

‘The most remarkable circumstance is, that these words are addressed by 
Brasidas to an army composed, in large proportion, of manumitted Helots 
(Thucyd. iv. 81). 

3 Plato treats of the system of Lykurgus, as emanating from the NDelphies 
Apollo and Lykurgus as his missionary (Legg. i. p. 632) 


PARTITION OF LANDS. 393 


case sufficiently to see that, in what Plutarch has told us (and 
from Plutarch the modern views have, until lately, been de 
rived), there is indeed a basis of reality, but there is also a large 
superstructure of romance, — in not a few particulars essentially 
misleading. For example, Plutarch treats Lykurgus as intro- 
ducing his reforms at a time when Sparta was mistress of La- 
conia, and distributing the whole of that territory among the 
Perieki. Now we know that Laconia was not then in possession 
of Sparta, and that the partition of Lykurgus (assuming it to be 
real) could only have been applied to the land in the immediate 
vicinity of the latter. For even Amykle, Pharis, and Geron 
thre, were not conquered until the reign of Teleklus, posterior 
to any period which we can reasonably assign to Lykurgus: nor 
can any such distribution of Laconia have really occurred. 
Farther, we are told that Lykurgus banished from Sparta coined 
cold and silver, useless professions and frivolities, eager pursuit 
of gain, and ostentatious display. Without dwelling upon the 
improbability that any one of these anti-Spartan characteristics 
should have existed at so early a period as the ninth century 
before the Christian era, we may at least be certain that coined 
silver was not then to be found, since it was first introduced into 
Greece by Pheidon of Argos in the succeeding century, as has 
been stated in the preceding section. 

But amongst all the points stated by Plutarch, the most sus- 
picious by far, and the most misleading, because endless calcula- 
tions have been built upon it, is the alleged redivision of landed 
property. He tells us that Lykurgus found fearful inequality in 
the landed possessions of the Spartans; nearly all the land in 
the hands of a few, and a great multitude without any land; 
that he rectified this evil by a redivision of the Spartan district 
into nine thousand equal lots, and the rest of Laconia into thirty 
thousand, giving to each citizen as much as would produce a 
given quota of barley, etc.; and that he wished, moreover, to 
have divided the movable property upon similar principles of 
equality, but was deterred by the difficulties of carrying bis 
design into execution. 

Now we shall find on consideration that this new and equal 
partition c” lands by Lykurgus is still more at variance with 

17* 


494 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


fact and probability than the two former alleged proceedings 
All the historical evidences exhibit decided inequalities of prop. 
erty among the Spartans, — inequalities which tended constazitly 


to increase; moreover, the earlier authors do not conceive this 
evil as having grown up by way of abuse out of a primeval 
system of perfect equality, nor do they know anything of the 
original equal redivision by Lykurgus. Even as early as the 
poet Alkzus (3B. C. 600-580) we find bitter complaints of the 
oppressive ascendency of wealth, and the degradation of the 
poor man, cited as having been pronounced by Aristodémus at 
Sparta: “ Wealth (said he) makes the man, — no poor person is 
either accounted good or honored.”! Next, the historian Hella- 
nikus certainly knew nothing of the Lykurgean redivision,— for 
he ascribed the whole Spartan polity to Eurysthenés and Pro- 
klés, the original founders, and hardly noticed Lykurgus at all. 
Again, in the brief, but impressive description of the Spartan 
lawgiver by Herodotus, several other institutions are alluded to, 
but nothing is said about a redivision of the lands; and this 
latter point is in itself of such transcendent moment, and was so 
recognized among all Grecian thinkers, that the omission is 
almost a demonstration of ignorance. Thucydidés certainly 
could not have believed that equality of property was an origi- 
nal feature in the Lykurgean system ; for he says that, at Lace- 
demon, “the rich men assimilated themselves greatly in respect 
of clothing and general habits of life to the simplicity of the 
poor, and thus set an example which was partially followed in 
the rest of Greece :” a remark which both implies the existence 
of unequal property, and gives a Just appreciation of the real 
working of Lykurgic institutions. The like is the sentiment of 
Xenophon 33 he observes that the rich at Sparta gained little by 


ἘΠΕ ΝΒΘΟΙΝΝΙ niin τ 


Alexi Fragment. 41, p. 279, ed. Schneidewin : — 

Ὡς yap δήποτ' ᾿Αριστόδαμον φαισ᾽ οὐκ ἀπάλαμνον ἐν Σπάρτᾳ λόγον 

Εἰπὴν --ς Χρή μα τ᾽ ἀνηρ᾽ πενιχρὸς δ' οὐδεὶς πέλετ᾽ ἐσϑλὸς οὐδὲ τίμιος. 
Compare the Schol. ad Pindar. Isthm. ii. 17, and Diogen. Laért. 1. 31. 

3 Thucydid.i. 6. μετρίᾳ δ' αὖ ἐσθῆτι καὶ ἐς τὸν νῦν τρόπον πρῶτοι Λατεδαι 
μόνιοι ἐχρήσαντο, καὶ ἐς τὰ ἀλλα πρὸς τοὺς πολλοὺς οἱ Ta μείζω κεκτημένο 
ἰσοδίαιτοι μάλιστα κατέστησαν. See, also, Plutarch, Apophthegm. Lacon. f 
810, A.— F. 

3 Xenoph. Republ. Laced. c. 7. 


PARTITION OF LANDs. 395 


their wealth in point of superior comfort; but he never glances 
at any original measure carried into effect by Lykurgus for 
equalizing possessions. Plato too,! while he touches upon the 
great advantage possessed by the Dorians, immediately after 
their conquest of Peloponnesus, in being able to apportion land 
suitably to all,— never hints that this original distribution had 
degenerated into an abuse, and that an entire subsequent redi- 
vision had been resorted to by Lykurgus: moreover, he is him. 
self deeply sensible of the hazards of that formidable proceeding. 
Lastly, Aristotle clearly did not believe that Lykurgus had re- 
divided the soil. For he informs us first, that, “both in Laced- 
mon and in Krete,2 the legislator had rendered the enjoyment 
of property common through the establishment of the Syssitia, 
or public mess.” Now this remark (if read in the chapter of 
which it forms a part, a refutation of the scheme of Communism 
for the select guardians in the Platonic Republic) will be seen 
to tell little for its point, if we assume that Lykurgus at the 
same time equalized all individual possessions. Had Aristotle 
known that fact, he could not have failed to notice it: nor could 
he have assimilaied the legislators in Lacedemon and Krete, 
seeing that in the latte: no one pretends that any such equaliza- 
tion was ever brought about. Next, not only does Aristotle 
dwell upon the actual inequality of property at Sparta as a 
serious public evil, but he nowhere treats this as having grown 
out of a system of absolute quality once enacted by the law- 
giver as a part of the primitive constitution: he expressly notices 
inequality of property so far back as the second Messenian war. 
Moreover, in that valuable chapter of his Politics, where the 
scheme of equality of possessions is discussed, Phaleas of Chal- 
ked6n is expressly mentioned as the first author of it, thus indi- 
rectly excluding Lykurgus.3 The mere silence of Aristotle is in 


' Plato, Legg. iii. p. 684. 

2 Aristotel. Politic. ii. 2,10. ὦσπερ τὰ περὶ τὰς κτήσεις ἐν Λακεδαίμονι καὶ 
Κρήτῃ τοῖς συσσιτίοις ὁ νομοϑέτης ἐκοίνωσε. 

3 Aristot. Politic. ii. 4, 1, about Phaleas; and about Sparta and Krete, 
generally, the whole sixth and seventh chapters of the second book ; also, 
v. 6, 2-7. 

Theophrastus ‘apud Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 10) makes a similar observation, 
that the public mess, and the general simplicity of habits, tended to render 


896 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


this discussion a negative argument of the greatest weight. Ise 
kratés,! too, speaks much about Sparta for good and for evil, — 
mentions Lykurgus as having established a political constitution 
much like that of the earliest days of Athens, — praises the 
gymnasia and the discipline, and compliments the Spartans upon 
the many centuries which they have gone through with t 
violent sedition, extinction of debts, and redivision of the land, 
— those “monstrous evils,” as he terms them. MHad he con- 
ceived Lykurgus as being himself the author of a complete 
redivision of land, he could hardly have avoided some allusion 
to it. 

It appears, then, that nene of the authors down to Aristotle 
ascribe to Lykurgus a redivision of the lands, either of Sparta or 
of Laconia. ‘The statement to this effect in Plutarch, given in 
great detail and with precise specification of number and produce, 
must have been borrowed from some author later than Aristotle; 
and I think we may trace the source of it, when we study Plu- 
tarch’s biography of Lykurgus in conjunction with that of Agis and 
Kleomenés. ‘The statement is taken from authors of the century 
after Aristotle, either in, or shortly before, the age when both 
those kings tried extreme measures to renovate the sinking state: 
the former by a thorough change of system and property, yet 
proposed and accepted according to constitutional forms; the 
latter by projects substantially similar, with violence to enforce 
them. The accumulation of landed property in few hands, the 
multiplication of poor, and the decline in the number of citizens; 
which are depicted as grave mischiefs by Aristotle, had become 


wealth of little service to the possessor: τὸν πλοῦτον drAovTov ἀπεργάσασ- 
ϑαι τῇ κοινότητι τῶν δείπνων, καὶ τῇ περὶ τὴν δίαιταν εὐτελείᾳ. Compare 
Plutarch. Apophthegm. Lacon. p. 226 E. The wealth, therefore, was not 
formally done away with in the opinion of Theophrastus : there was no 
positive equality of possessions. 

Both the Spartan kings dined at the public mess at the same pheidition 
(Plutarch, Agesilaus, c. 30). 

Herakleidés Ponticus mentions nothing, either about equality of Spartan 
lots or fresh partition of lands, by Lykurgus (ad calcem Cragii, De Sparta- 
aorum Repub. p. 504), though he speaks about the Spartan lots and law of 
succession as well as about Lykurgus. 

'‘ Isokratés, Panathen. Or. xii. pp. 266, 270, 278: οὐδὲ χτεῶν ἀποκοτπὰξ 
οὐδὲ γῆς ἀναδασμὸν οὐδ᾽ GAA’ οὐδὲν τῶν ἀνηκέστων κακῶν 


PARTITION OF LANDS. 397 


greatly aggravated during the century between him and Agis. 
The number of citizens, reckoned by Herodotus in the time of the 
Persian invasion at eight thousand, had dwindled down in the 
time of Aristotle to one thousand, and in that of Agis to seven 
hundred, out of which latter number one hundred alone possessed 
most of the landed property of the state.| Now, by the ancient 
rule of Lykurgus, the qualification for citizenship was the ability 
to furnish the prescribed quota, incumbent on each individual, at 
the public mess: so soon as a citizen became too poor to answer 
to this requisition, he lost his franchise and his eligibility to 
oftices.2, The smaller lots of land, though it was held discredit- 
able either to buy or sell them,? and though some have asserted 


1 Plutarch, Agis, c. iv. 

2 Aristot. Polit. ii. 6,21. Παρὰ δὲ τοῖς Λωκῶσιν ἕκαστον dei φέρειν, καὶ 
σφόδρα πενήτων ἐνίων ὄντων, καὶ τοῦτο τὸ ἀνάλωμα οὐ δυναμένων δαπανᾷν. 

.Ὅρος δὲ τῆς πολιτείας οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ πάτριος, τὸν 
μὴ δυνάμενον τοῦτο τὸ τέλος φέρειν, μὴ μετέχειν αὐτῆς. 
So also Xenophon, Rep. Lac. c. vii. joa μὲν φέρειν εἰς τὰ ἐπιτήδεια, ὁμοίως 
δὲ διαιτᾶσϑαι rasac. 

The existence of this rate-paying qualification, is the capital fact in the 
history of the Spartan constitution ; especially when we couple it with tha 
other fact, that no Spartan acquired anything by any kind of industry. 

3 Herakleidés Ponticus, ad caleem.Cragii De Repub. Laced. p. 504. Com- 
pare Cragius, iii. 2, p. 196. 

Aristotle (ii. 6, 10) states that it was discreditable to buy or sell a lot of 
land, but that the lot might be either given or bequeathed at pleasure. He 
mentions nothing about the prohibition to divide, and even states what con- 
tradicts it,— that it was the practice to give a large dowry when a rich 
man’s daughter married (ii. 6,11). The sister of Agesilaus, Kyniska, was 
a person of large property, which apparently implies the division of his 
father’s estate (Plutarch, Agesilaus, 30). 

Whether there was ever any law prohibiting a father from dividing his 
lot among his children, may well be doubted. The Rhetra of the ephor 
Epitadeus (Plutarch, Agis, 5), granted unlimited power of testamentary 
disposition.to the possessor, so that he might give away or bequeathe his land 
to a stranger if he chose. To this law great effects are ascribed: but it is 
evident that the tendency to accumulate property in few hands, and the 
tendency to diminution in the number of qualified citizens, were powerfully 
manifested before the time of Epitadeus, who came after Lysander. Plutarch, 
in another place, notices Hesiod, Xenokrates, and Lykurgus, as having con- 
curred wita Plato. in thinking that it was proper to leave only one single 
heir (va μόνον κληρόνομον καταλιπεῖνν (Ὑ πομνήματα εἰς Ἡσίοδον, Fragm 
vol. vy. p. 777, Wyttenb.). But Hesiod does not lay down this as ἃ neeessity 


398 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


(without ground, I think, that it was forbidden to divide them, — 
became insuflicient for numerous families, and seem to have been 
alienated in some indirect manner to the rich; while every indus- 
trious occupation being both interdicted to a Spartan citizen and 


really inconsistent with his rigorous personal discipline, no other 


means of furnishing his quota, except the lot of land, was open to 
him. The difficulty felt with regard to these smaller lots of land 
may be judge d of from the fact stated by Polybius,! that three or 
four Spartan brothers had often one and the same wife, the 
paternal land being just sufficient to furnish contributions for all 
to the public mess, and thus to keep alive the citizen-rights of all 
the sons. The tendency to diminution in the number of Spartan 
citizens seems to have gone on uninterruptedly from the time of 
the Persian war, and must have been aggravated by the founda 
tion of Messéné, with its independent territory around, after the 
battle of Leuktra, an event which robbed the Spartans of a large 
portion of their property. Apart from these special causes, more- 
over, it has been observed often as a statistical fact, that a close 
corporation of citizens, or any small number of families, inter- 


or as a universal rule; he only says, that a man is better off who has only 
one son (Opp. Di. 374). And if Plato had been able to cite Lykurgus as 
an authority for that system of an invariable number of separate κλῆροι, or 
lots, which he sets forth in his treatise De Legibus (p. 740), it is highly 
probable that he would have done so. Still less can Aristotle have supposed 
that Lykurgus or the Spartan system either insured, or intended to insure, 
the maintenance of an unalterable number of distinct proprietary lots ; for 
he expressly notices that scheme as a peculiarity of Philolaus the Corinthian. 
in his laws for the Thebans (Polit. ii. 9, 7). 

' Polybius, Fragm. ap. Maii. Collect. Vett. Scrip. vol. ii. p. 384. 

Perhaps, as OQ. Miiller remarks, this may mean only, that none except the 
eldest brother could afford to marry; but the feelings of the Spartans in 
respect to marriage were, in many other points, so different from ours, that we 
are hardly authorized to reject the literal statement (History of the Dorians, iti. 
10, 2), — which, indeed, is both illustrated and rendered credible by the per- 
inission granted in the laws of Solén to an ἐπίκληρος who had been claimed 
in marriage by a relative in his old age, — dv ὁ κρατῶν καὶ κύριος γεγονὼς 
κατὰ τὸν νόμον αὐτὸς μὴ δυνατὸς ἢ πλησιάζειν ὑπὸ τῶν ἔγγιστα τοῦ avd we 
ὀπνυΐεσϑαι (Plutarch, Sélon, c. 30). 

I may observe that of O. Miiller’s statements, respecting the lots of land 
at Sparta, several are unsupported and some incorrect. 


DECLINE OF SPARTAN INS11TUTIONS. 8993 


marrying habitually among one another, and not reinforced from 
without, have usually a tendency to diminish. 

The present is not the occasion to enter at length into that 
combination of causes which partly sapped, partly overthrew, both 
the institutions of Lykurgus and the power of Sparta. But taking 
the condition of that city as it stood in the time of Agis the Third 
(say about 250 Β. c.), we know that its citizens had become few 
in number, the bulk of them miserably poor, and all the land in 
a small number of hands. The old discipline and the publie 
mess (as far as the rich were concerned) had degenerated inte 
mere forms, —a numerous body of strangers or non-citizens (the 
old xenélasy, or prohibition of resident strangers, being long dis 
continued) were domiciled in the town, forming a powerful 
moneyed interest ; and lastly, the dignity and ascendency of the 
state amongst its neighbors were altogether ruined. It was 
insupportable to a young enthusiast like king Agis, as well as te 
many ardent spirits among his contemporaries, to contrast this 
degradation with the previous glories of their country: nor did 
they see any other way of reconstructing the old Sparta except 
by again admitting the disfranchised poor citizens, redividing the 
lands, cancelling all debts, and restoring the public mess and 
military training in all their strictness. Agis endeavored tc 
carry through these subversive measures, (such as no demagogue 
in the extreme democracy of Athens would ever have ventured 
to glance at,) with the consent of the senate and public assembly, 
and the acquiescence of the rich. His sincerity is attested by 
the fact, that his own property, and that of his female relatives, 
among the largest in the state, was cast as the first sacrifice into 
the common stock. But he became the dupe of unprincipled 
coadjutors, and perished in the unavailing attempt to realize his 
scheme by persuasion. His successor, Kleomeues, afterwards 
accomplished by violence a change substantially similar, though 
the intervention of foreign arms speedily overthrew both himself 
and his institutions. 

Now it was under the state of public feeling which gave birth 
to these projects of Agis and Kleoménes at Sparta, that the his- 
toric fancy, unknown to Aristotle and his predecessors, first gain- 
ed ground, of the absolute equality of property as a primitive 
institution of Lykurgus. How much such a belief would favor 


400 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the schemes of innovation is too obvious to require notice ; and 
any deliberate imposture, we cannot be aston- 


without supposing : : 
ished that the predispositions of enthusiastic patriots interpreted, 


according to their own partialities, an old unrecorded legislation 


trom which they were separated by more than five cnmaten. 
The Lykurgean discipline tended forcibly to suggest to men's 
minds the idea of equality among the citizens, — that 15, the nega- 
tion of all inequality not founded on seme personal attribute, — 
fnasmuch as it assimilated the habits, enjoyments, and capacities 
of the rich to those of the poor; and-the equality thus existing 
inn idea and tendency, which seemed to proclaim the wish of the 
founder, was strained by the later reformers into a positive msti- 
tution which he had at first realized, but from which his degene- 
rate followers had receded. It was thus that the fancies, longings, 
aud indirect suggestions of the present assumed the character of 
recollections out of the early, obscure, and extinct historical past. 
Perhaps the philosopher Sphzrus of Borysthenés (friend and 
companion of Kleomenés,! disciple of Zeno ihe Stoic, and author 
of works now lost, both on Lykurgus and Socrates, and on the 
constitution of Sparta) may have been one of those who gave 
eurrency to such an hypothesis. And we shall readily believe 
that, if advanced, it would find easy and sincere credence, when 
we recollect how many similar delusions have obtained vogue in 


oA ae 
[9] 


Kleomenés, cap. 2-11, with the note of Schomann, p. 175; 


' Plutarch, 
also, Lyeurg. cap. 8; Athene. iv. p. 141. 

Phylarchus, also, described the proceedings of Kleomenés, seemingly with 
favor ( Athene. ib.); compare Plutarch, Agis, c. 9. 

Polybius believed, that Lykurgus had introduced equality of landed pos- 
sexsion. both in the district of Sparta, and throaghout Laconia : his opinion 
is. probably, borrowed from these same authors, of the third century haere 
the Christian era. For he expresses his great surprise, how the best-infor med 
ancient authors (of λογεώτατοι τῶν ἀρχαίων συ) γραφέων), Plato, Xenophon, 
Ephorus, Kallisthenés, can compare the Kretan polity to the old Lacedemo- 
nian, the main features of the two being (as he says) 80 ditterent, — equality 
of property at Sparta, great inequality of property in Krete, among other 
differences (Polyb. vi. 45-48). 


This remark of Polybius, exhibits the difference of opinion of the earliet 


writers, as compared with those during the third century before the Christian 


era. The former compared Sparten and Kretan institutions, because they 
did not conceive equality of landed property as a feature in old Sparta. 


HYPOTHESIS REGARDING LYKURGUs 401 


modern times, far more favorable to historical accuracy, — how 
much false coloring has been attached by the political feeling of 
recent days to matters of ancient history, such as the Saxon 
Witenagemote, the Great Charter, the rise and growth of the 
Kinglish House of Commons, or even the Poor Law of Elizabeth. 
When we read the division of lands really proposed by king 
Agis, it is found to be a very close copy of the original division 
ascribed to Lykurgus. He parcels the lands bounded by the 
four limits of Pelléné, Sellasia, Malea, and Taygetus, into four 
thousand five hundred lots, one to every Spartan; and the lands 
beyond these limits into fifteen thousand lots, one to each Peri- 
eekus ; and he proposes to constitute in Sparta fifteen pheiditia, 
or public mess-tables, some including four hundred individuals, 
others two hundred, — thus providing a place for each of his four 
thousand five hundred Spartans. With respect to the division 
originally ascribed to Lykurgus, different accounts were given. 
Some considered it to have set out nine thousand lots for the 
district of Sparta, and thirty thousand for the rest of Laconia; ἢ 
others affirmed that six thousand lots had been given by Lykur- 
gus, and three thousand added afterwards by king Polydorus; a 
third tale was, that Lykurgus had assigned four thousand five 
hundred lots, and king Polydorus as many more. This last 
scheme is much the same as what was really proposed by Agis. 
In the preceding argument respecting the redivision of land 
ascribed to Lykurgus, I have taken that measure as it is described 
by Piutarch. But there has been a tendency, in some able 
modern writers, while admitting the general fact of such redivi- 
sion, to reject the account given by Plutarch in some of its main 
circumstances. ‘That, for instance, which is the capital feature 
in Plutarch’s narrative, and which gives soul and meaning to his 
picture of the lawgiver—the equality of partition —is now re- 
iected by many as incorrect, and it is supposed that Lykurgus 
made some new agrarian regulations tending towards a general 
equality of landed property, but not an entirely new partition; 
that he may have resumed from the wealthy men lands which 
they had unjustly taken from the conquered Achzans, and thus 


—— = see _ " 


Respecting Spherus, see Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 8; Kleomen.c.2; Athens 
v. p. 141; Diogen. Laért. vii. sect. 137 


VOL. I. 260c. 


402 HISTORY OF GREFCE. 


provided alfotments both for the poorer citizens and for the sub 
ject Laconi ins. Such is the opinion of Dr. Thirlwall, who at 
the same time admits that the exact proportion of the Lykurgean 
distribution can hardly be ascertained. ' 
I cannot but take a different view of 
Plutarch. The moment that we depart from that rule of equality, 
1 in his biography of Lykur- 


the statement made by 


wich stands so prominently marke¢ 


ι Hist. of Greece, ch. viii.vol. i. pp- 344-347. 

C. F. Hermann, on the contrary, considers the equal partition of Laconia 
into lots indivisible and inalienable, as “ an essential condition” (eine wesent 
liche Bedingung) of the whole Lykurgean system (Lehrbuch der Griechis 
chen Staatsalterthiimer, sect. 28). 

Tittmann (Griechische Staatsverfassungen, pp- 
to admit the equal partition as a fact, without any commentary. 

Wachsmuth (Hellenisch. Alterthumskunde, v. 4, 42, p. 217) supposes 
“that the best land was already parcelled, before the time of Lykurgus, into 
to the number of Spartans, which 
” For this assertion, 1 know 


588-596) states and 560 18 


lots of equal magnitude, corresponding 
number afterwards increased to nine thousand 
without substituting anything better 


no evidence: it departs from Plutarch, 
h notices the partition of Laconia 


authenticated or more plausible. Wachsmut 
among the Periceki in thirty thousand equal lots, without any comment, and 
seemingly as if there were no doubt of it (p. 218). 

ses that there had once been an equal division of land 


Manso, also, supp 
rated into abuse, — and that Lykur- 


prior to Lykurgus, ~~ that it had degene 
ει. ΝΜ storing, not absolute equality, but something near to 


gus corrected it, 
equality (Manso, Sparta, vol. i. pp. 110-121). This is the same gratuitous 


supposition as that of Wachsmuth. 
©. Maller admits the division as st 
the whole number of nine thousand lots cannot h 
Messenian war; and he adheres to the idea of equality as contained in 
Plutarch; but he says that the equality consisted in “equal estimate of 
—-not in equal acreable dimensions. 
Spartans, which supported twice as many men 
have been twice as exten- 


ated by Plutarch, though he says that 
ave been set out before the 


average produce,” He goes so far as to 
tell us that “the lots of the 
as the lots of the Periceki, must, upon the whole, 
sive (i. 6. in the aggregate) : each lot must, therefore, have been seven times 
greater,” (compare History of the Dorians, iii. 3, 6; iii. 10,2.) Healso sup- 
poses, that “ similar partitions of land had been made from the time of the 
first occupation of Laconia by the Dorians.” Whoever compares his various 
positions with the evidence brought to support them, will find a painful 
disproportion between the basis and the superstructure. 

The views of Schémann, as far as I collect from expressions somewhat 
vague, seem to coincide with those of Dr. Thirlwall. He admits, however 
that the alleged Lykurgean equalization is at ~ariance with the representa 


tions of Plato (Schémann, Antiq. Jur. Pub. iv 1, 7, note 4 p- 116) 
Vol. 2 13 


STATEMENT OF PLUIARCH, 403 


gus, we step into a boundless field of possibility, in which there is 
nothing to determine us to one point more than to another. The 
surmise started by Dr. Thirlwall, of lands unjustly taken from the 
conquered Achzans by wealthy Spartan proprietors, is altogether 
gratuitous ; and granting it to be correct, we have still to <aplaie 
how it happened that this correction of a partial injustice came 
to be transformed into the comprehensive and systematic measure 
which Plutarch describes; and to explain, farther, from οἰῶν 
it arose that none of the authors earlier than Plutarch take any 
notice of Lykurgus as an agrarian equalizer. ‘These two difficul- 
ties will still remain, even if we overlook the gratuitous nature 
of Dr. Thirlwall’s supposition, or of any other supposition which 
can be proposed respecting the real Lykurgean measure which 
Plutarch is affirmed to have misrepresented. ; 

It appears to me that these difficulties are best obviated by 
adopting a different canon of historical interpretation. We can- 
not accept as real the Lykurgean land division described in the 
life of the lawgiver; but treating this account as a fiction, two 
modes of proceeding are open to us. We may either consider 
the fiction, as it now stands, to be the exaggeration and distortion 
of some small fact, and then try to guess, without any assistance, 
what the small fact was. Or we may regard it as fiction from 
first to last, the expression of some large idea and sentiment so 
powerful in its action on men’s minds at a given time, as 10 
induce them to make a place for it among the realities of the 
past. Now the latter supposition, applied to the times of Agis 
the Third, best meets the case before us. The eighth Siapter 
of the life of Lykurgus by Plutarch, in recounting the partition 
of land, describes the dream of king Agis, whose mind is full of 
two sentiments, — grief and shame for the actual condition of iis 
country,— together with reverence for its past glories, as well as 
for the lawgiver from whose institutions those glories had eman- 
ated. Absorbed with this double feeling, the reveries of Agis go 
back to the old ante-Lykurgean Sparta, as it stood more than 
five centuries before. He sees, in the spirit, the same mischiefs 
and disorders as those which afflict his waking eye,— gross in 
equalities of property, with a few insolent and luxurious rich, 8 
crowd of mutinous and suffering poor, and nothing but fierce 
antipathy reigning between the two. Into the midst of this fro 


404 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ward, lawless, aad distempered community, steps the venerable 
missionary from Delphi,— breathes into men’s minds new im- 
pulses, and an impatience to shake off the old social and political 
Adam, —and persuades the rich, voluntarily abnegating their 
temporal advantages, to welcome with satisfaction a new system, 
wherein no distinction shall be recognized, except that of good 
or evil desert.’ Having thus regenerated the national mind, he 
parcels out the territory of Laconia into equal lots, leaving no 
superiority to amy one. Fraternal harmony becomes the reign- 
ing sentiment, while the coming harvests present the gratifying 
spectacle of a paternal inheritance recently distributed, with the 
brotherhood contented, modest, and docile. Such is the picture 
with which “ mischievous Oneirus” cheats the fancy of the pa- 
triotic Agis, whispering the treacherous message that the gods 
have promised jvm success in a similar attempt, and thus seduc- 
ing him into that fatal revolutionary course, which is destined to 
bring himself, his wife, and his aged mother, to the dungeon and 
the hangman’s rope.” 

That the golden dream just described was dreamed by some 
Sp.ctan patriots is certain, because it stands recorded in Plu- 
turch; that it was not dreamed by the authors of centuries 
preceding Agis, I have already endeavored to show; that the 


ir 
Θ 


earnest feelings, of sickness of the present and yearning fcr a 
better future under the colors of a restored past, which filled the 
soul of this king and his brother-reformers, — combined with the 
levelling tendency between rich and poor which really was inhe- 
rent in the Lykurgean discipline, — were amply sufficient to beget 
such a dream, and to procure for it a place among the great deeds 
of the old lawgiver, so much venerated and so little known, — 
this too I hold to be unquestionable. Had there been any evi- 
dence that Lykurgus had interfered with private property, to the 
limited extent which Dr. Thirlwall and other able critics imag- 
ine, —that he had resumed certain lands unjustly taken by the 


* Plutarch, Lykurg. c. 8. συνέπεισε τὴν χώραν ἅπασαν εἰς μέσον ϑέντας, ἐξ 
ἀρχὴς ἀναδάσασϑαι, καὶ ζῇν μετ᾽ ἀλλήλων ἅπαντας, ὁωαλεῖς καὶ ἰσοκλήμους 
τοῖς βίοις γενομένους, τὸ δὲ πρωτεῖον ἀρετῇ μετιόντας ὡς ἄλλης ἑτέρῳ πρὸς 
ἕτερον οὐκ οὔσης διαφορᾶς, οὐδ᾽ ἀνισότητος. πλὴν ὅσην αἰσχρῶν ψόγος ὁμιζει 
καὶ καλῶν ἔπαινος. ᾿Επάγων δὲ τῷ λόγῳ τὸ ἔργον, διένειμε, οἷς 

* Plutarch, Agis, c. 19--20. 


PLUTARCH’S STORY OF cPITADELs. 405 


rich from the Achzans,—I should have been glad to record it; 
but, finding no such evidence, 1 cannot think it necessary te 
presume the fact, simply in order to account for the story im 
Plutarch.! 

The various items in that story all hang together, and must be 
understood as forming parts of the same comprehensive fact, or 
comprehensive fancy. ‘The fixed total of nime thousand Spartan, 
and thirty thousand Laconian lots,? the equality between them, 


‘Tread with much satisfaction, in M. Kopstadt’s Dissertation, that the gen 
eral conclusion which I have endeavored to establish respecting the alleged 
Lykurgean redivision of property, appears to him successfully proved. 
(Dissert. De Rerum Laconic. Const. sect. 18, p. 188.) 

He supposes. with perfect truth, that, at the time when the first edition of 
these volumes was published, I was ignorant of the fact, that Lachmann and 
Kortttm had both called in question the reality of the Lykurgean redivision 
In regard to Professor Kortitm, the fact was first brought to my knowledge, 
by his notice of these two volumes, in the Heidelberger Jahrbiicher, 1846, 
No. 41, p. 649 

Since the first edition, I have read the treatise of Lachmann (Die Spar 
tanische Staats Verfassung in ihrer Entwicklung und ihrem Verfalle, sect. 
10, p. 170) wherein the redivision ascribed to Lykurgus is canvassed. He, 
too, attributes the origin of the tale. as a portion of history, to the social and po- 
litical feclixgs current in the days of Avis the Third, and Kleomenés the Third. 
He notices, also, that it is in contradiction with Plato and Isokratés. Buta 
large proportion of the arguments which he brings to disprove dt, are con- 
nected with ideas of his own respecting the social and political constitution 
vf Sparta, which I think either untrue or uncertified. Moreover, he believes 
in the inalienability as well as the indivisibility of the separate lots of land, 

— which I believe to be just as little correct as their supposed equality. 

Kopstadt (p. 139) thinks that I have gone too far in rejecting every middle 
opinion. He thinks that Lykungms must have done something, though 
much less than what is affirmed, tending to realize equality of individual 
property. 

I shall not say that this is impossible. If we had ampler evidence, per- 
haps such facts might appear. But as the evidence stands now, there is 
nothing whatever to show it. Nor «re we entitled (in my judgment) to 
presume that it was so, in the absence of evidence, simply in order to make 
out that the Lykurgean mythe is only an exaggeration, and not entire 
fiction. 

? Aristotle (Polit. ii. 6,11) remarks that the territory of the Spartans 
would maintain fifteen hundred horsemen and thirty thousand hoplites, while 
the number of citizens was, in point of fact, less than one thousand. Dr. 
Thirlwall seems to prefer the reading of Gottling, — three thousand instead 


406 HISTORY OF GREFCE. 


and the rent accruing from each, represented by a given quantity 
of moist and dry produce, —all these particulars are alike true 
or ahke uncertified. Upon the various numbers here given, many 
authors have raised calculations as to the population and produce 
of Laconia, which appear to me destitute of any trustworthy 
foundation. Those who accept the history, that Lykurgus con- 
stituted the above-mentioned numbers both of citizens and of lots 
of land, and that he contemplated the maintenance of both num- 
bers in unchangeable proportion, — are perplexed to assign the 
means whereby this adjustment was kept undisturbed. Nor are 
they much assisted in the solution of this embarrassing problem 
by the statement of Plutarch, who tells us that the number re- 
mained fixed of itself, and that the succession ran on from father 
to son, without either consolidation or multiplication -of parcels, 
down to the period when foreign wealth flowed into Sparta, as a 
consequence of the successful conelusion of the Peloponnesian 
war. Shortly after that period (he tells us) a citizen named 
Epitadeus became ephor, —a vindictive and malignant man, who, 
having had a quarrel with his son, and wishing to oust him from 
the succession, introduced and obtained sanction to a new Rhetra, 
whereby power was granted to every father of a family either to 
make over during life, or to bequeathe after death, his house and 
his estate to any one whom he chose.! But it is plain that this 
story (whatever be the truth about the family quarrel of Epita- 
deus) does not help us out of the difficulty. From the time of 
Lykurgus to that of this disinheriting ephor, more than four 
centuries must be reckoned: now, had there been real causes at 
work sufficient to maintain inviolate the identical number of lots 
and families during this long period, we see no reason why his 
new law, simply permissive and nothing more, should have over- 
thrown it. We are not told by Plutarch what was the law of 
succession prior to Epitadeus. If the whole estate went by law 
to one son in the family, what became of the other sons, to whom 
industrious acquisition in any shape was repulsive as well as 
interdicted? If, on the other hand, the estate was divided be- 


of thirty thousand; but the latter seems better supported by MSS, and 
most suitable. 
* Platarch, Agia, c. 5. 


INEQUALITY OF LANDED PROPERTY. 407 


tween the sons equally (as it was by the law of succession at 
Athens), how can we defend the maintenance of an unchanged 


ageregate number of parcels? 

Dr. Thirlwall, after having admitted a modified interference 
with private property by Lykurgus, so as to exact from the 
wealthy a certain sacrifice in order to create lots for the poor, and 
to bring about something approaching to equi-producing lots for 
all, observes: “The average amount of the rent, paid by the cul- 
tivating Helots from each lot, seems to have been no more than 
was required for the frugal maintenance of a family with six 
persons. The right of transfer was as strictly confined as that 
of enjoyment; the patrimony was indivisible, inalienable, and 
descended to the eldest son; in default of a male heir, to the 
eldest daughter. The object seems to have been, after the number 
of the allotments became fixed, that each should be constantly 
represented by one head of a household. But the nature of tue 
means employed for this end is one of the most obscure points of 
the Spartan system... .In the better times of the commonwealth, 
this seems to have been principally effected by adoptions and 
marriages with heiresses, which provided for the marriages of 
younger sons in families too numerous to be supported on their 
own hereditary property. It was then probably seldom necessary 
for the state to interfere, in order to direct the childless owner of 
an estate, or the father of a rich heiress, to a proper choice. But 
as all adoption required the sanction of the kings, and they had 
also the disposal of the hand of orphan heiresses, there can be 
little doubt that the magistrate had the power of interposing on 
such occasions, even in opposition to the wishes of individuals, to 
relieve poverty and check the accumulation of wealth.” (Hist 
Gr. ch. 8, vol. i. p. 367). 

I cannot concur in the view which Dr. Thirlwall here takes 
of the state of property, or the arrangements respecting its trans 
mission, in ancient Sparta. Neither the equal modesty of pos 
session which he supposes, nor the precautions for perpetuating 
xt, can be shown to have ever existed among the pupils of Ly- 
kurgus. Our earliest information intimates the existence of rich 
men at Sparta: the story of king Aristo and Agétus, in Herodo 
tus, exhibits to us the latter as a man who cannot be supposed to 
have had only just “ enough to maintain six persons frugally,” — 


aa .- «. 


40» HISTORY OF GREEcr. 


while his beautiful wife, whom Aristo coveted and entrapped 
from him, is expressly described as the daughter of opulext parents, 
Sperthiés and Bulis, the Talthybiads, are designated as belonging 
to a distinguished race, and among the wealthiest men in Seat! 
Demaratus was the only king of Sparta, in the days of Herodo- 
tus, who had ever gained a chariot-victory in the Olympic games ; 
but we know by the case of Lichas, during the Pilaponnadan 
war, Evagoras, and others, that private Spartans were equally 
successful ;2 and for one Spartan who won the prize, there must 
of course have been many who bred their horses and started 
their chariots unsuccessfully. It need hardly be remarked, that 
chariot-competition at Olympia was one of the most significant 
evidences of a wealthy house: nor were there wanting Spartans 
who kept horses and dogs without any exclusive view to the 
games. We know from Xenophon that, at the time of the battle 
of Leuktra, “ the very rich Spartans” provided the horses to be 
mounted for the state-cavalry.3 These and other proofs, of the 
existence of rich men at Sparta, are inconsistent with the idea of 
a body of citizens each possessing what was about enough for the 
frugal maintenance of six persons, and no more. 

As we do not find that such was in practice the state of prop- 
erty in the Spartan community, so neither can we discover that 
the lawgiver ever tried either to make or to keep it so. What 
be did was to impose a rigorous public discipline, with simple 
clothing and fare, incumbent alike upon the rich and the poor 
{this was his special present to Greece, according to Thucydidés,4 
and his great poimt of contact with democracy, according to pwd 
totle) ; but he took no pains either to restrain the enrichment of 
the former, or to prevent the impoverishment of the latter. He 
meddled little with the distribution of property, and such neglect 
is one of the capital deficiences for which Aristotle censures him 
That philosopher tells us, indeed, that the Spartan law had made 
it dishonorable (he does not say, peremptorily forbidden) to buy 
cr sell landed property, but that there was the fullest liberty beth 


* Herod. vi. 61. ofa ἀνϑρώπων re ὀλβίων Ovyarépa, ete : vil 134, 
* Herod. vi. 70-103 ; Thucyd. v. 50. 
? Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 4, 11; Kenoph. de i 
᾿ . vi 4,11; ph. de Rep. Lac. v. 3; Mol A 
825. iv. p. 141; Aristot. Polit. ii. 2, 5. en 
4 ‘Thucyd. i. 6; Aristot. Polit. iv. 7, 4,5; viii. 1, 8. 


FANCY RESPECTING SPARTAN PROPERTY. 4u9 


of donation and bequest: and the same results, he justly observes, 
ensued from the practice tolerated as would have ensued from 
the practice discountenanced, — since it was easy to disguise a 
real sale under an ostensible donation. He notices pointedly the 
tendency of property at Sparta to concentrate itself in fewer 
hands, unopposed by any legal hindrances : the fathers married 
their daughters to whomsoever they chose. and gave dowries 
according to their own discretion, generally very large: the rich 
families, moreover, intermarried among one another habitually, 
and without restriction. Now all these are indicated by Aristotle 
as cases in which the law might have interfered, and ought to 
have interfered, but did not, —for the great purpose of dissemi- 
nating the benefits of landed property as much as possible among 
the mass of the citizens. Again, he tells us that the law en- 
couraged the multiplication of progeny, and granted exemptions 
to such citizens as had three or four children, — but took no 
thought hew the numerous families of poorer citizens were to 
live, or to maintain their qualification at the public tables, most 
ot’ the lands of the state being in the hands of the rich.! His 
notice, and condemnation, of that law, which made the franchise 
of the Spartan citizen dependent upon his continuing to furnish 
his quota to the public table, — has been already adverted to;, as 
well as the potent love of money 2. which he notes in the Spartan 
character, and which must have tended continually to keep together 
the richer families among themselves: while amongst a commu- 
nity where industry was unknown, no poor citizen could ever 
become rich. 

If we duly weigh these evidences, we shall see that equality 
of possessions neither existed in fact, nor ever entered into the 
scheme and tendencies of the lawgiver at Sparta. And the pic- 
ture which Dr. Thirlwall® has drawn of a body of citizens each 


1 Ariscot.. Polit. ii. 6, 10-bd ; v. 6, 7. 

? The panegyrist Xenophon acknowledges much the same respecting the 
Sparta which he witnessed; but he maintains that it had been better in 
former times (Repub. Lac. c. 14). 

3 The view of Dr. Thirlwall agrees, in the main, with that of Manso and 
2. Maller (Manso, Sparta, vol. i. pp. 118-128 ; and vol. ii. Beilage, 9, p. 129; 
and Miiller, History of the Dorians. vol. ii. Ὁ. iii. c. 10, sect. 2, 3). 

Both these authors maintain the proposition stated by Plutarch (Agis ὁ 


GOL. 1]. 18 


419 HISTORY OF GREECER. 


possessing a lot of land about adequate to the frugal maintenance 
of six persons, — of adoptions and marriages of heiresses arranged 


5, in his reference to the ephor Epitadeus, and the new law carried by t 
ephor), that the number of Spartan lots, nearly equal and rigorously indi- 
visible, remained with little or no change from the time of the original 
division, down to the return of Lysander, after his victorious close of the 
Peloponnesian war. Both acknowledge that they cannot understand by 
what regulations this Jong unalterability, so improbable in itself, was main 
tained : but both affirm the fact positively. The period will be more than 
four hundred years if the original division be referred to Lykurgus: moro 
than three hundred years, if the nine thousand lots are understood to date 
from the Messenian war. 

If this alleged fact be really a fact, it is something almost without a 
parallel in the history of mankind: and before we consent to believe it, we 
ought at least to be satisfied that there is considerable show of positive evi- 
dence in its favor, and not much against it. But on examining Manso and 
Miiller, it will be seen that not only is there very slender evidence in its 
favor, — there is a decided balance of evidence against it. 

The evidence produced to prove the indivisibility of the Spartan lot, is a 
passage of Herakleidés Ponticus, c. 2 (ad. cale. Cragii, p. 504). πωλεῖν δὲ 
γῆν Λακεδαιμονίοις αἰσχρὸν νενόμισται, ---- τῆς ἀρχαίας μοίρας ἀνανε.τσϑαι (or 
νενεμῆσϑαι) οὐδὲν ἔξεστι. The first portion of this assertion is confirmed 
by, and probably borrowed from, Aristotle, who says the same thing, nearly 
in the same words: the second portion of the sentence ought, according to 
all reasonable rules of construction, to ‘e understood with reference to the 
first part; that is, to the sale of the original lot. “To sell land, is held 
disgraceful among the Lacedsmonians, nor is it permitted to sever off any 
portion of the original lot,” i. 6. for sale. Herakleidés is not here speaking 
of the law of succession to property at Lacedemon, nor can we infer from 
his words that the whole lot was transmitted entire to one son. No evidence 

except this very irrelevant sentence is produced by Miiller and Manso to 
Justify their positive assertion, that the Spartan lot of land was indivisible 
in respect to inheritance. 

Having thus determined the indivisible transmission of lots to one son of 
a family, Manso and Miiller presume, without any proof, that that son must 
be the eldest: and Miiller proceeds to state something equally unsupported 
by proof: “The extent of his rights, however, was perhaps no farther than 
that he was considered master of the house and property ; while the other 
members of the family had an equal right to the enjoyment of it...,..The 
master of the family was, therefore, obliged to contribute for all these to the 
syssitia, without which contribution no one was admitted.” — pp. 199, 200. 

AL this is completely gratuitous, and will be found to produce as many 
difficulties in one way as it removes in another. 

The next law as to the transmission of property, which Manso states to 
save prevailed, is, that al/ daughters were to marry without receiving any 


LYKURGEAN REGULATIONS ABOUT PROPERTY. 41} 


with a deliberate view of providing for the younger children of 
numerous families, — of interference on the part of the kings te 


dowry, — the case of a sole daughter is here excepted. For this proposition 
he cites Plutarch, Apophtheg. Laconic. p. 227 ; Justin, i. 3; Elian. Vv. H. 
vi. 6. These authors do certainly affirm, that there was such a reguiatiam, 
and both Plutarch and Justin assign reasons for it, real or supposed. Ly- 
kurgus, being asked why he directed that maidens should be married without 
dowry, answered, — In order that maidens of poor families might not remain 
unmarried, and that character and virtue might be exclusively attended to 
in the choice of a wife.” The same general reason is given by Justin. Now 
the reason here given for the prohibition of dowry, goes, indirectly, to prove 
that there existed no such law of general succession, as that which had been 
before stated, namely, the sacred indivisibility of the primitive lot. For had 
this latter been recognized, the reason would have been obvious why daughters 
could receive no dowry ; the father’s whole landed property (and a Spartan 
could have little of any other property, since he never acquired anything Py 
industry) was under the strictest entail to his eldest son. fren = 
Justin, therefore, while in their statement as to the matter of act, t “ 
warrant Manso in affirming the prohibition of dowry (about this ὍΣ 
fact, more presently), do, by the reason which they give, eee, 8 
former supposition as to the indivisibility of the primitive family lots. " 
Thirdly, Manso understands Aristotle (Polit. ii. 6, 11), by the use ὁ t 6 
adverb νῦν, to affirm something respecting his own time specially, τ" to nih 
ply at the same time that the ancient custom had been the reverse. sone 
think that the adverb, as Aristotle uses it in that passage, bears out ἜΣ ς 
construction: νῦν δὲ, there, does not signify present time as opposed to past, bu 
the antithesis between the actual custom and that which Aristotle Spt 
to be expedient. Aristotle gives no indication of being aware ἐγ 3 
material change had taken place in the laws of succession at Sparta : ΠΝ 
one circumstance, for which both Manso and Miiller, who both believe = : 
extraordinary revolution caused by the permissive law of the ephor Epita- 
s, censure him. 
gta are laid down by Manso about the laws of property 
1. A man might give away or bequeathe his land to whomsoever 
9, But none except childless persons could do this. 8. They 
could only give or bequeathe it to citizens who had no aia = 
Of these three regulations, the first 1s distinctly affirmed y ris 6, 
the second is a restriction not noticed by Aristotle, and 


xcept that which arises out of the story of the ephor 
son without 


at Sparta. 
he pleased. 


miay be relied upon: 


£ > 

supported by no proo. € οἱ ι ; 

Epitadeus who is said to have been unable to disinherit his 
? 


causing a new law to be passed: the third is a pure fancy. aaa 
So much for the positive evidence, on the faith of whic i 
Moller affirm the startling fact, that the lots of land in Sparta eorsrens* -- 
tinct, indivisible, and unchanged in number, down to the sae the od 
ponnesian war. I venture to say that such positive evidence is far too w 


41 WISTORY OF GREEUVE. 


insure this object, — of a fixed number of lots of land, each repre 
sented by one head of a household, — this picture is one, of which 


to sustain an affirmation in itself so improbable, even if there were no evi 
dence on the other side for contradiction. But in this case there is powerful 
contradictory evidence. 

First, the assertions of these authors are distinctly ing, teeth of Aristotle, 
whose authority they try to invalidate, by saying that he s}oxe altogether 
with reference to his own time at Sparta, and that he misconceived the prim- 
itive Lykurgean constitution. Now this might form a reasonable vround of 
presumption against the competency of Aristotle, if the witnesses produced 
on the other side were older than he. But it so happens, that every one of 
the witnesses produced by Manso and Miller, are younger than Aristotle: 
Herakleidés Ponticus, Plutarch, Justin, lian, ete. Nor is it shown that 
these authors copied from any source earlier than Aristotle, — for his testi- 
mony cannot be contradicted by any inferences drawn from Herodotns, 
Thucydidés, Xenophon, Plato, Isokratés, or Ephorus. None of these writers, 
anterior to, or contemporary with, Aristotle, countenance the fancy of equal, 
indivisible, perpetual lots, or prohibition of dowry. 

The fact is, that Aristotle is not only our best witness, but also our oldest 
Witness, respecting the laws of property in the Spartan commonwealth. 1 
could have wished, indeed, that earlier testimonies had existed, and I admit 
that even the most sagacious observer of 340-330 B. c. is liable to mistake 
when he speaks of one or two centuries before. But if Aristotle is to be 
discredited on the ground of late date, what are we to say to Plutarch ? 
To insist on the intellectual eminence of Aristotle would be superfluous: 
and on this subject he is a witness the more valuable, as he had made care- 
ful, laborious, and personal inquiries into the Grecian governments generally, 
and that of Sparta among them,— the great point de mire for ancient specu 
lative politicians. 

Now the statements of Aristotle, distinctly exclude the idea of equal, 
indivisible, inalienable, perpetual lots, — and prohibition of dowry. He par- 
ticrlarly notices the habit of giving very large dowries, and the constant 
tendency of the lots of land to become consolidated in fewer and fewer 
hands. He tells us nothing upon the subject which is not perfectly consist 
ent, intelligible, and uncontradicted by any known statements belonging to 
his own, or to earlier times. But the reason why men refuse to believe him. 
and either set aside or explain away his evidence, is, that they sit down to 
the study with their minds full of the division of landed property ascribed 
to Lykurgus by Plutarch. I willingly concede that, on this occasion. we 
have to choose between Plutarch and Aristotle. We cannot reconcile them 
except by arbitrary suppositions, every one of which breaks up the simplicity, 
peauty, and symmetry of Plutarch’s agrarian idea, — and every one of which 
still leaves the perpetuity o° the original lots unexplained. And I have no 
aesitation in preferring the authority of Aristotle (which is in perfect conso- 
wance with what we indirectly gather from other authors, his contemporaries 


LYKURGEAN REGULATIONS ABOUT PROPERTY. 413 


the reality must not be sought on the banks of the Eurotas 
The “ better times of the commonwealth,” to which he refers, 


and predecessors) as a better witness on every ground; rejecting the state- 
ment of Plutarch, and rejecting it altogether, with all its consequences. 

But the authority of Aristotle is not the only δἰ zument which may be 
urged to refute this supposition that the distinct Spartan lots remained 
unaltered in number down to the time of Lysander. For if the number of 
distinct lots remained undiminished, the number of citizens cannot have 
greatly diminished. Now the conspiracy of Kinadoén falls during the life of 
Lysander, within the first ten years after the close of the Peloponnesian 
war: and in the account which Xenophon gives of that conspiracy, the 
paucity of the number of citizens is brought out in the clearest and most 
emphatic manner. And this must be before the time when the new law of 
Epitadeus is said to have passed, at least before that law can have had room 
to produce any sensible effects. If, then, the ancient nine thousand lots 
still remained all separate, without either consolidation or subdivision, how 
are we to account for the small number of citizens at the time of the con- 
spiracy of Kinadén ? 

This examination of the evidence, for the purpose of which I have been 
compelled to prolong the present note, shows—1. That the hypothesis of 
indivisible, inalienable lots, maintained for a long period in undiminished 
number at Sparta, is not only sustained by the very minimum of affirmative 
evidence, but is contradicted by very good negative evidence. 2. That the 
hypothesis which represents dowries to daughters as being prohibited by 
law, is, indeed, affirmed by Plutarch, lian, and Justin, but is contradicted 
by the better authority of Aristotle. 

The recent edition of Herakleidés Ponticus, published by Schneidewin, in 
1847, since my first edition, presents an amended text, which completely 
bears out my interpretation. His text, derived from a fuller comparison of 
existing MSS., as well as from better critical judgment (see his Prolegg, c. 
ii. p. liv.), stands — Πωλεῖν δὲ γὴν Λακεδαιμονίοις αἰσχρὸν νενόμισται" τῆς 
δὲ ἀρχαίας μοίρας οὐδὲ ἔξεστιν (ρ. 7). It is plain that all this passage relates 
to sale of land, and not to testation, or succession, or division. Thus much 
negatively is certain, and Schneidewin remarks in his note (p. 53) thet it contra- 
dicts Maller, Hermann, and Schémann, — adding, that the distinction drawn 
is, between land inherited from the original family lots, and land otherwise 
acquired, by donation, bequest, etc. Sale of the former was absolutely 
illegal: sale of the latter was discreditable, yet not absolutely illegal. Aris- 
totle in the Politics (ii. 6, 10) takes no notice of any such distinction, between 
land inherited from the primitive lots, and land otherwise acquired. Nor 
was there, perhaps, any well-defined line of distinction, in a country of 
ynwritten customs, like Sparta, between what was simply disgraceful and 
what was positively illegal. Schneidewin, in his note, howe~tr, assumes the 
original equality of the lots as certain in itself, and as being jhe cause of tas 
prohibition : neither of which appears to me true. 


414 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


may have existed in the glowing retrospect of Agis, but are not 
acknowledged in the sober appreciation of Aristotle. That the 
titizens were far more numerous in early times, the philosopher 
tells us, and that the community had in his day greatly declined 
in power, we also know: in this sense, the times of Sparta had 
doubtless once been better. We may even concede that during 
the three centuries succeeding Lykurgus, when they were con- 
tinually acquiring new territory, and when Aristotle had been 
told that they had occasionally admitted new citizens, so that the 
aggregate number of citizens had once been ten thousand, — we 
may concede that in these previous centuries the distribution of 
land had been less unequal, so that the disproportion between 
the great size of the territory ana the small number of citizens 
was not so marked as it had become at the period which the 
philosopher personally witnessed; for the causes tending to aug- 
mented inequality were constant and uninterrupted in their work- 
ing. But this admission will still leave us far removed from the 
sketch drawn by Dr. Thirlwall, which depicts the Lykurgean 
Sparta as starting from a new agrarian scheme not far removed 
from equality of landed property, — the citizens as spontaneously 
disposed to uphold this equality, by giving to unprovided men 
the benefit of adoptions and heiress-marriages, — and the magis- 
trate as interfering to enforce this latter purpose, even in cases 
where the citizens were themselves unwilling. All our evidence 
exhibits to us both decided inequality of possessions and inclina- 
tions on the part of rich men, the reverse of those which Dr 
Thirlwall indicates ; nor will the powers of interference which he 


I speak of this confused compilation still under the name of Herakleidés 
Ponticus, by which it is commonly known: though Schneidewin, in the 
second chapter of his Prolegomena, has shown sufficient reason for believing 
that there is no authority for connecting it with the name of Herakleidés. 
He tries to establish the work as consisting of Excerpta from the lost treatise 
of Aristotle’s reo? Πολετειῶν : which is well made out with regard to some 
parts, but not enough to justify his inference as to the whole. The article 
wherein Welcker vindicates the ascribing of the work to an Excerptor of 
Herakleidés, is unsatisfactory (Kleine Schriften, p. 451). 

Beyond this irrelevant passage of Herakleidés Ponticus, no farther evidence 
ts produced by Miiller and Manso to justify their positive assertion, that the 
Spartan lot of land®was indivisible in respect to inheritance. 


LYKURGEAN REGULAT) JNS ABOUT PROPERTY 413 


mecribes to the magistrate be found sustained by the chapter of 
Herodotus on which he seems to rest them.! 


' Herod. vi. 57, in enumerating the privileges and perquisites of the kings 
— δικάζειν δὲ μούνους τοὺς βασιλῆας τόσαδε μοῦνα" πατρούχου τε παρϑένου 


πέρι, ἐς τὸν ἱκνέεται ἔχειν, ἣν μῆπερ ὁ πατὴρ αὐτὴν ἐγγυήσῃ" καὶ ὁδῶν 
δημοσιέων Teor’ καὶ ἢν τις ϑετὸν παῖδα ποιέεσϑαι ἐϑέλῃ, βασιλήων ἐνάντιον 
ποιέεσθαι. 

It seems curious that πατροῦχος πάρϑενος should mean a damsel who has 
wo father (literally, /ucus a non lucendo): but I suppose that we must accept this 
apon the authority of Julius Pollux and Timeus. Proceeding on this int. 
pretation, Valvkenaer gives the meaning of the passage very justly: “ Orb= 
4uptias, necdum a patre desponsate, si plures sibi vindicarent, fieretque ἣ 
‘wixAnpoc, ut Athenis loquebantur, ἐπίδικος, Sparte lis ista dirimebatur ἃ 
tégibus solis.” 

Wow the judicial function here described, is something very different from 
the language of Dr. Thirlwall, that “the kings had the disposal of the hand 
of orphan heiresses in cases where the father had not signified his will.” 
Such aisposal would approach somewhat to that omnipotence which Aristo- 
phanes ( Vesp. 585) makes old Philokleon claim for the Athenian dikasts (an 
exaggeration well calculated to serve the poet’s purpose of making the 
dikasts appear monsters of caprice and injustice), and would be analogous 
to the power wuich English kings enjoyed three centuries ago as feudal 
guardians over wards. But the language of Herodotus is inconsistent with 
the idea that the kings chose a husband for the orphan heiress. She was 
claimed, as of right, by persons in certain degrees of relationship to he. 
Whether the luw about ἀγχίστεια, affinity carrying legal rights, was the 
same as at Atheus, we cannot tell; but the question submitted for adjudication 
at Sparta, to the kings, and at Athens to the dikasteries, was vertainly the 
same, agreeably tu the above note of Valckenaer, — namely, to whom, among 
the various clarmants for the marriage, the best legal title really belonged. 
It is, indeed, probuble enough, that the two royal descendants of Héraklés 
might abuse their judicial function, as there are various instances known in 
which they take bribes; but they were not likely to abuse it in favor of an 
unprovided youth. 

Next, as to adojnion: Herodotus tells us that the ceremony of adoption 
was performed betore the kings: probably enough, there was some fee paid 
with it. But this affurds no ground for presuming that they had any hand 
in determining whom whe childless father was to adopt. According to the 
Attic law about adoptiun, there were conditions to be fulfilled, consents to 
be obtained, the absence of disqualifying circumstances verified, ete; and 
some authority before which this was to be done was indispensable (see 
Meier und Schémann, Attisch. Prozess, b. iii. ch. ii. p. 436). At Sparta, 
such authority was vested by ancient custom in the king: but we are not 
told, nor is it proj able, “ that he could interpose, in opposition to the wishes 
of individuals. to relieve poverty,” as Dr. Thirlwall supposes 


416 HISLORY OF GREEcr. 


To evaceive correctly, then, the Lykurgean system, as far as 
obscurity and want of evidence will permit, it seems to me that 
there are two current misconceptions which it is essential to dis- 
ecard. One of these is, that the system included a repartition of 
landed property, upon principles of exact or approximative 
equality (distinct from that appropriation which belong2d to the 
Dorian conquest and settlement), and provisions for perpetuating 
the number of distinct and equal lots. The other is, that it was 
first brought to bear when the Spartans were masters of all 
Laconia. The llusions created by the old legend, — which 
depicts Laconia. as all one country, and all conquered at one 
stroke, — yet survive after the legend itself has been set aside as 
bad evidence: we cannot conceive Sparta as subsisting by itself 
without dominion over Laconia; nor Amykle, Pharis, and 
Geronthre, as really and truly independent of Sparta. Yet, 
if these towns were independent in the time of Lykurgus, much 
more confidently may the same independence be affirmed of the 
portions of Laconia which lie lower than Amyklz down the 
valley of the Eurotas, as well as of the eastern coast, which 
Herodotus expressly states to have been originally connected 
with Argos. ' 

Discarding, then, these two suppositions, we have to consider 
the Lykurgean system as brought to bear upon Sparta and 
its immediate circumjacent district, apart from the rest of Laco- 
nia, and as not meddling systematically with the partition of 
property, whatever that may have been, which the Dorian con- 
querors established at their original settlement. Lykurgus does 
not try to make the poor rich, nor the rich poor ; but he imposes 
upon both the same subjugating drill,! — the same habits of life, 
gentlemanlike idleness, and unlettered strength, — the same fare, 
clothing, labors, privations, endurance, punishments, and subordi- 
nation. It is a lesson instructive at least, however unsatisfactory, 
to political students, — that, with all this equality of dealing, he 
ends in creating a community in whom not merely the love of 
preéminence, but even the love of money, stands powerfully and 


specially developed.” 


\ Σπάρτα δαμασίμβροτος, Simonidés, apud Plutarch. Agesilaus, c. 1 
4 Aristotel. Polit. ii. 6, 9, 19, 23. τὸ φιλότιμον --- τὰ φιλοχρήματον 


GRADUAL CONQUESTS OF ΒΡΑΞΒΊΑ. 417 


How far the peculiar of the primitive Sparta extended we 
have no means of determining; but its limits down the valley of 
the Eurotas were certainly narrow, inasmuch as it did not reach 
so faras Amykle. Nor can we tell what principles the Dorian 
conquerors may have followed in the original allotment of lands 
within the limits of that peculiar. Equal apportionment is not 
probable, because all the individuals of a conquering band are 
seldom regarded as possessing equal claims; but whatever the 
original apportionment may have been, it remained without any 
general or avowed disturbance until the days of Agis the Third, 
and Kleomenés the Third. Here, then, we have the primitive 
Sparta, including Dorian warriors with their Helot subjects, but 
no Perieki. And it is upon these Spartans separately, perhaps 
after the period of aggravated disorder and lawlessness noticed 
by Herodotus and Thucydidés, that the painful but invigorating 
discipline, above sketched, must have been originally brought 
to bear. 

The gradual conquest of Laconia, with the acquisition of 
additional lands and new Helots, and the formation of the order 
of Periceki, both of which were a consequence of it, —#is to be 
considered as posterior to the introduction of the Lykurgean 
system at Sparta, and as resulting partly from the increased 
force which that system imparted. The career of conquest went 
on, beginning from Téleklus, for nearly three centuries, — with 
some interruptions, indeed, and in the case of the Messenian 
war, with a desperate and even precarious struggle, — so that in 
the time of Thucydidés, and for some time previously, the Spar- 
tans possessed two-fifths of Peloponnesus. And this series of 
new acquisitions and victories disguised the really weak point 
of the Spartan system, by rendering it possible either to plant 
the povrer citizens as Periwki in a conquered township, or te 
sapply them with lots of land, of which they could receive the 
produce without leaving the city,—so that their numbers and 
their military strength were prevented froin declining. It is 
even affirmed by Aristotle,! that during these early times they 
augmented the numbers of their citizens by fresh admissions, 
which of course implies the acquisition of additional lots of 


1 Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 12. 
VOL. τ, 185 27oc. 


418 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


land. But successful war, to use an expression substantially 
horrewed from the same philosopher, was necessary ‘0 their 
salvation: the establishment of their ascendency, and of their 
maximum of territory, was followed, after no very long interval, 
by symptoms of decline.! It will her ῬΑ ΠΟΥ be seen that, at the 
period of the conspiracy of Kinadén (395 Β. c.), the full citizens 
(called Homoioi, or Peers) were considerably inferior in number 
to the Hypomeiénes, or Spartans, who could no longer furnish 
their qualifi ‘ation, and had become disfranchised. And the 
loss thus sustained was very imperfectly repaired by the ad- 
mitted practice, sometimes resorted to by rich men, of AS8O- 
ciating with their own children the children of poorer citizens, 
and paying the contribution for these latter to the public 
tables, so as to enable them to go through the prescribed course 
of education and discipline, — whereby they became (under the 
title or sobriquet of Mothikes*) citizens, with a certain taint 
of inferiority, yet were sometimes appointed to honorable 


commands. 

Laconia, the state and territory of the Lacedwemonians, was 
affirmed, at the time of its greatest extension, to have compre- 
hended a hundred cities,? — this after the conquest of Messenia; 


ι Aristot. Polit. ii. 6, 22. Τοιγαροῦν ἐσώζοντο πολεμοῦντες, ἀπώλοντο Ob 
ἄρξαντες, ete. Compare also vii. 13, 15. 

2 Plutarch, Kleomen. c. 8; Phylarch. ap. Athene. vi. p. 271. 

The strangers called Τρόφιμοι, and the illegitimate sons of Spartans, whom 
Xenophon mentions with eulogy, as © having partaken in the honorable 
training of the city,” must probably have been introduced in this same way, 
by private support from the rich (Xenoph. Hellen. v. 3,9). The xenélasy 
must have then become practically much relaxed, if not extinct. 

3 Strabo, viii. p. 362; Steph. Byz. Adveca. 

Construing the word πόλεις extensively, so as to include townships small 
as well as considerable, this estimate is probably inferior to the truth ; since, 
even during the depressed times of modern Greece, a fraction of the ancient 
Laconia (including in that term Messenia) exhibited much more than one 
hundred bourgs. 

In reference merely to the territory called La Magne, between Calamata 
in the Messenian gulf and Capo di Magna, the lower part of the peninsula 
of Tesenarus, see a curious letter, addressed to the Duc de Nevers, in 1618, 
(on occasion of a projected movement to liberate the Morea from the ‘Turks, 
and to insure to him the sovereignty of it, as descer.lant of the Palsolog),) 
by a coutidential agent whom he despatched thither — M.Chateaurenaud, — 


DISTRIBU.1ON OF LACONIA. 419 


so tha, it would include all the southern portion of Peloponne- 
sus, tram Thyrea, on the Argolic gulf, to the southern bank of 
the river Nedon, in its course into the Ionian sea. But Laconia, 
more strictly so called, was distinguished from Messenia, and 
ras understood to designate the portion of the above-mentioned 
territory which lay to the east of Mount Taygetus. The con- 
quest of Messenia by the Spartans we shall presently touch 
upon; but that of Laconia proper is very imperfectly narrated 
to us. Down to the reign of Teleklus, as has been before re- 
marked, Amykle, Pharis, and Geronthre, were still Achzan: 
in the reign of that prince they were first conquered, and the 
Achzans either expelled or subjugated. It cannot be doubted 
that Amykle had been previously a place of consequence: in 
point of heroic antiquity and memorials, this city, as well as 
Tl:erapne, seems to have surpassed Sparta. And the war of 
the Spartans against it is represented as a struggle of some mo- 
ment, — indeed, in those times, the capture of any walled city 
was tedious and difficult. Timomachus, an Ageid from Thebes,’ 


who sends to him “ une sorte de tableau statistique du Magne, ou sont énu- 
merés 125 bourgs ou villages renfermans 4,913 feux, et pouvans fournir 10,- 
000 combattans, dont 4,000 armés, et 6,000 sans armes (between Calamata 
and Capo di Magna).” (Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xv. 
1842, p. 329. Mémoire de M. Berger Xivrey.) 

This estimate is not far removed from that of Colonel Leake, towards the 
bezinning of the present century, who considers that there were then in 
Mani (the same territory) one hundred and thirty towns and villages; and 
this too in a state of society exceedingly disturbed and insecure, — where 
private feuds and private towers, or pyrghi, for defence, were universal, 
and in parts of which, Colonel Leake says, “ I see men preparing the ground 
for cotton, with a dagger and pistols at their girdles. This, it seems, is the 
ordinary armor of the cultivator when there is no particular suspicion of 
danger: the shepherd is almost always armed with a musket.”......“ The 
Maniotes reckon their population at thirty thousand, and their muskets at 
ten thousand.” (Leake, Travels in Morea, vol. i. ch. vii. pp. 243, 263-266.) 

Now, under the dominion of Sparta, all Laconia doubtless enjoyed com- 
plete internal security, so that the idea of the cultivator tilling his land in 
arms would be unheard of. Reasoning upon the basis of what has just been 
stated about the Maniote population and number of townships, one hundred 
κόλεις, for all Laconia, is a very moderate computation. 

' Aristot. Aaxwy. Πολιτεία, ap. Schol. Pindar. Isthm. vii. 18. 

I agree with M. Boeckh, that Pindar himself identifies this march of the 


420 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


at the head of a body of his countrymen, is said to aave rem 
dered essential service to the Spartans in the conquest of the 
Achzans of Amykle ; and the brave resistance of the latter was 
commemorated by a monument erected to Zeus Tropzus, at 
Sparta, which was still to be seen in the time of Pausanias.! 
The Achzans of Pharis and Geronthre, alarmed by the fate of 
Amykla, are said to have surrendered their towns with little or 
3.) resistance: after which the inhabitants of all the three cities, 
either wholly or in part, went into exile beyond sea, giving place 
to colunists from Sparta.2 From this time forward, according to 
Pausanias, Amykl continued as a village. But as the Amy- 
klean hoplites constituted a valuable portion of the Spartan 
army, it must have been numbered among the cities of the 
Pericki, as one of the hundred; the distinction between a 
dependent city and a village not being very strictly drawn. 
The festival of the Hyacinthia, celebrated at the great temple 
of the Amyklean Apollo, was among the most solemn and 
venerated in the Spartan calendar. 

It was in the time of Alkamenés, the son of Téleklus, that 
the Spartans conquered Helus, a maritime town on the left bank 
of the Eurotas, and reduced its inhabitants to bondage, — from 
whose name, according to various authors, the general title 
Helots, belonging to all the serfs of Laconia, was derived. But 
of the conquest of the other towns of Laconia, — Gytheium, 
Akriw, Therapnx, ete.,— or of the eastern land on the coast 
of the Argoliec gulf, including Brasi# and Epidaurus Liméra, or 
the island of Kythéra, all which at one time belonged to the 
Argeian confederacy, we have no accounts. 

Scanty as our information is, it just enables us to make out a 
progressive increase of force and dominion on the part of the 
Spartans, resulting from the organization of Lykurgus. Of this 


#geids to Amykle with the original Herakleid conquest of Peloponnesus 
(Notz Criticw ad Pindar. Pyth. v. 74, p. 479.) 

' Pausan. iii. 2, 6; iii. 12, 7. 2 Pausan. iii. 22, 5. 

3 Pausan. iii. 19, 5. * Xenoph. Hellen. iv. 5, 11. 

® Pausan. iii. 2, 7; iii. 20,6. Strabo, viii. p. 363. 

If it be true, as Pausanias states, that the Argeians aide@ Helus to resist, 
their assistance must probably have been given by sea; perhaps from Epé- 
daurns Liméra, or Prasi#, when they formed part of the Argeian federation 


‘FIRST AND SECOND MESSENIAN WARS. 421 


progress, a farther manifestation is found, besides the conquest 
of the Achzans in the south by Téleklus and Alkamenés, in 
their successful upposition to the great power of Pheidén the 
Argeian, related in a previous chapter. We now approach the 
long and arduous efforts by which they accomplished the sub 
jugation of their brethren the Messenian Dorians. 


CHAPTER VII. 
FIRST AND SECOND MESSENIAN WARS. 


Tuat there were two long contests between the Lacedemo- 
mans and Messenians, and that in both the former were com- 
pletely victorious, is a fact sufficiently attested. And if we could 
trust the statements in Pausanias, — our chief and almost only 
authority on the subject, — we should be in a situation to recount 
the history of both these wars in considerable detail. But unfor- 
tunately, the incidents narrated in that writer have been gathered 
from sources which are, even by his own admission, undeserving 
of credit, —from Rhianus, the poet of Béné in Krete, who had 
composed an epic poem on Aristomenés and the second Messe- 
nian war, about B. c. 220,— and from Myron of Priéné, a prose 
author whose date is not exactly known, but belonging to the 
Alexandrine age, and not earlier than the third century before 
the Christian era. From Rhianus, we have no right to expect 
trustworthy information, while the accuracy of Myron is much 
depreciated by Pausanias himself, — on some points even too 
much, as will presently be shown. But apart from the mental 
habits either of the prose writer or the poet, it does not seem that 
any good means of knowledge were open to either of them, ex- 
cept the poems of Tyrtzus, which we are by no means sure that 
they ever consulted. The account of the two wars, extracted frem 
these two authors by Pausanias, is a string of tableaux, several 
of them, indeed, highly poetical, but destitute of historical ecker 


492 HISTOKY OF GREECE. 


ence or sufficiency: and Ὁ. Miller has justly observed, that 
« absolut2ly no reason is given in them for the subjection of Mes- 
senia.”! They are accounts unworthy of being transcribed in 
detail into the pages of genuine history, nor can we pretend to 
do anything more than verify a few leading facts of the war. 

The poet Tyrteus was himself engaged on the side of the 
Spartans in the second war, and it is from him that we learn the 
few indisputable facts respecting both the first and the second. 
If the Messenians had never been reéstablished in Peloponnesus, 
we should probably never have heard any farther details respect- 
That reéstablishment, together with 


ing these early contests. 
the first foundation of the city called Messené on Mount Ithome, 
was among the capital wounds inflicted on Sparta by Epamei- 
nondas, in the year B.C. 369, — between three hundred and two 
hundred and fifty years after the conclusion of the second Messe- 
nian war. ‘The descendants of the old Messenians, who had 
remained for so long a period without any fixed position in Greece, 
were incorporated in the new city, together with various Helots 
and miscellaneous settlers who had no claim to a similar geneal 
ogy. The gods and heroes of the Messenian race were reveren- 


tially invoked at this great ceremony, especially the great Hero 
Aristomenés ;2 and the site of Mount Ithome, the ardor of the 
newly established citizens, the hatred and apprehension of Sparta, 
a powerful stimulus to the creation and multiplica- 
are called traditions, sufficed to expand the few facts 
known respecting the struggles of the old Messenians into a varie- 
In almost all these stories we discover a coloring 


operating as 
tion of what 


ty of details. 
unfavorable to Sparta, contrasting forcibly with the account given 
by Isokratés, in his Discourse called Archidamus, wherein we 


1 History of the Dorians, i. 7, 10 (note). It seems that Diodorus had 
given a history of the Messenian wars in considerable detail, if we may 
ὁ from a fragment of the last seventh book, containing the debate be- 
Very probably it was taken from Ephorus, 


judg 
tween Kleonnis and Aristomenés. 
—though this we do not know. : 

For the statements of Pausanias respecting Myrén and Rhianus, see iv. 6 
Besides Myrén and Rhianus, however, he seems to have received oral state- 
ments from contemporary Messenians and Lacedemonians ; at least on some 


eccasions he states and contrasts the two contradictory stories (iv. 4, 4; IV 


5, 1). 
® Pausan. iy. 27, 2-3; Diodor. xv. 77. 


FIRST AND SECOND MESSENIAN WARS. 423 


read the view which a Spartan might take of the ancient con- 
quests of his forefathers. But a clear proof that these Messe. 
nian stories had no real basis of tradition, is shown in the contra- 
dictory statements respecting the principal Hero Aristomenés ; 
for some place him in the first, others in the second, of the two 
wars. Diodérus and Myron both placed him in the first; Rhia- 
nus, in the second. ‘Though Pausanias gives it as his opinion 
that the account of the latter is preferable, and that Aristomenés 
really belongs to the second Messenian war, it appears to me 
that the one statement is as much worthy of belief as the other, 
and that there is no sufficient evidence for deciding between 
them,—a conclusion which is substantially the same with that 
of Wesseling, who thinks that there were two persons named 
Aristomenés, one in the first and one in the second war.' This 
inextricable confusion respecting the greatest name in Messenian 
antiquity, shows how little any genuine stream of tradition can 
here be recognized. 

Pausanias states the first Messenian war as beginning in B. Cc. 
745 and lasting till B. c. 724, — the second, as beginning in B. Ὁ. 
685 and lasting till B. c. 668. Neither of these dates rest upon 


' See Diodor. Fragm. lib. viii. vol. iv. p. 30: in his brief summary of 
Messenian events (xv. 66), he represents it as a matter on which authors 
differed, whether Aristomenes belonged to the first or second war. Clemens 
Alexand. (Prot. p36) places him in the jirst, the same as Myron, by men- 
tioning him as having killed Theopompus. 

Wesseling observes (ad Diod. 1 c.), “ Duo fuerunt Aristomenes, uterque 
‘in Messeniorum contra Spartanos bello illustrissimus, alter posteriore, priore 
alter bello.” 

Unless this duplication of homonymous persons can be shown to be 
probable, by some collateral evidence, I consider it only as tantamount to 
a confession, that the difficulty is insoluble. 

Pausanias is reserved in his manner of giving judgment, — ὁ μέντοι ’Apio- 
τομένης δόξῃ ye ἐμῇ γέγονεν ἐπὶ τοῦ πολέηου τοῦ ὑστέμου (iv.6). Miil- 
ler (Dorians, i. 7, 9) goes much too far when he affirms that the statement 
of Myron was “ in the teeth of all tradition.” Miiller states incorrectly the 
citation from Plutarch, Agis, c. 21 (see his Note A). Plutarch there says 
noting about Tyrteus: he says that the Messenians affirmed that their here 
Aristomenés had Killed the Spartan king Theopompus, whereas the Lacedee- 
monians said, that he had only wounded the king. According to both ac 
counts, then, it would appear that Aristomenés belonged to the first Messe 
nian war, not to the second. 


424 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


any assignable positive authority ; but the time assigned to the 
first war seems probable, while that of the second is apparently 


too early. Tyrtzus authenticates both the duration of the first 


war, twenty years, and the eminent services rendered in it by 
the Spartan king Theopompus.' Hé says, moreover, speaking 


during the second war, “ the fathers of our fathers conquered 


Messéné ;” thus loosely indicating the relative dates of the two. 
The Spartans (as we learn from Isokratés, whose words date 
from a time when the city of Messéné was only a recent founda- 
tion) professed to have seized the territory, partly in revenge for 
the impiety of the Messenians in killing their own king, the Hera- 
kleid Kresphontés, whose relative had appealed to Sparta for aid, 
—partly by sentence of the Delphian oracle. Such were the 
which had induced them first to invade the country, and 


The 


USES 
they had conquered it after a struggle of twenty years. 
Lacedzmonian explanations, as given in Pausanias, seem for the 
wrt to be counter-statements arranged after the time when 


most pi 
and popular 


the Messenian version, evidently the interesting 
account, had become circulated. 

It has already been stated that the Lacedemonians and Mes- 
senians had a joint border temple and sacrifice in honor of Arte- 
mis Limnatis, dating from the earliest times of their establish- 
ment in Peloponnesus. The site of this temple, near the upper 
course of the river Nedon, in the mountainous territory north-east 
of Kalamata, but west of the highest ridge of Taygetus, has 


recently been exactly verified, — and it seems in these early days 


| ‘T'yrtzeus, Fragm. 6, Gaisford. But Tyrtzeus ought not to be understood 
to affirm distinctly (as Pausanias, Mr. Clinton, and Miiller, all think) that 
Theopompus survived and put a close to the war: his language might 
consist with the supposition that ‘Theopompus had been slain in the way > 
Ὃν dia (Theopompus). Μεσσῆνην εἵλομεν εὐρύχορον. 

For we surely might be authorized in saying —“ It was througu Kpa- 
meinondas that the Spartans were conquered and humbled ; or it was through 
Lord Nelson that the French fleet was destroyed in the last war,” though 
both of them perished in the accomplishment. 

Tyrtzus, therefore, does not contradict the assertion, that Theopompus 
was slain by Aristomenés, nor can he be cited as a witness to prove thai 
Aristomenés did not live during the first Messenian war ; which is the pur 

for which Pausanias quotes him (iv. 6). 
4 Isokratés (Archidamus), Or. vi. pp. 121-122. 


HOSTILITIES COMMENCED BY THE SPARTANS. 128 


to have belonged to Sparta. That the quarrel began at one of 
these border sacrifices was the statement of both parties, Lacedw- 
monians and Messenians. According to the latter, the Lacedex- 
monian king Téleklus laid a snare for the Messenians, by dressing 
up some youthful Spartans as virgins, and giving them daggers; 
whereupon a contest ensued, in which the Spartans were menial 
and Téleklus slain. That Téleklus was slain at the temple b 

the Messenians, was also the account of the Spartans, — “ie nae 
aifirmed that he was slain in attempting to defend ne aaa 
Lacedemonian maidens, who were sacrificing at the temple Baste 
outrageous violence from the Messenian youth.! In soit of the 
death of this king, however, the war did not actually break out 


’ Strabo (vi. p. 257) gives a similar account of the sacrilege and murder- 
ous conduct of the Messenian youth at the temple of Artemis Limnatis 
His version, substantially agreeing with that of the Lacedsemonians seems 
to be borrowed from Antiochus, the contemporary of Thucydidés ‘and is 
therefore earlier than the foundation of Messéné by Kuespcinaaden from 
which event the philo-Messenian statements take their rise. Antiochus writ- 
ing during the plenitude of Lacedemonian power, would naturall look 
upon the Messenians as irretrievably prostrate, and the impiety “sed nar- 
rated would in his mind be the natural cause why the divine judgments 
overtook them. Ephorus gives a similar account (ap. Strabo. vi. p 280) 

Compare Herakleidés Ponticus (ad caleem Cragii De Rep. Laced 528 
and Justin, iii. 4. fer 

The possession of this temple of Artemis Limnatis,—and of the Ager 
Dentheliates, the district in which it was situated,— was a subject of on 
stant dispute between the Lacedzemonians and Messenians after the founda- 
tion of the city of Messéné, even down to the time of the Roman emperor 
iberius (Tacit. Annal. iv. 43). See Stephan. Byz. v. Δελϑάνιοι ; ti 
iii. 2, 6; iv. 4,2; iv. 381; 8. Strabo, viii. p. 362. 

‘A rom the situation of the temple of Artemis Limnatis, and the description 
of the Ager Dentheliates, see Professor Ross, Reisen im Pelaponnes. i. σ- 
11. He discovered two boundary-stones with inscriptions, dating from the 
time of the early Roman emperors, marking the confines of Lacedsemon and 
Messéné; both on the line of the highest ridge of Taygetus, where the waters 
separate east and west, and considerably to the eastward of the temple of 
Artemis Limnatis, so that at that time the Ager Dentheliates was considered 
a part of Messenia. 

I now find that Colonel Leake (Peloponnesiaca, p. 181) regards these 
Inseriptions, discovered by Professor Ross, as nut proving that the temple of 
Artemis Limnatis was situated near the spot where they were thee His 
authority weighs much with me on such a point though the arguments whieh 
he here employs do not seem to me cunclusive 


426 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


until some little tine after, when Alkamenés and Theopompus 
were kings at Sparta, and Antiochus and Androklés, sons of Phin- 
tas, kings of Messenia. The immediate cause of it was a private 
altercation between the Messenian Polycharés (victor at the fourth 
Olympiad, Β. c. 764) and the Spartan Euzphnus. Polycharés, 
having been grossly injured by Euephnus, and his claim for 
redress having been rejected at Sparta, took revenge by aggres- 
sions upon other Lacedemonians ; the Messenians refused to give 
him up, though one of the two kings, Androklés, strongly insisted 
upon doing so, and maintained his opinion so earnestly against 
the opposite sense of the majority and of his brother Antiochus, 
that a tumult arose, and he was slain. The Lacede#monians, 
now resolving upon war, struck the first blow without any formal 
declaration, by surprising the border town of Ampheia, and put- 
ting its defenders to the sword. They farther overran the Messe- 
nian territory, and attacked some other towns, but without success. 
Euphaés, who had now succeeded his father Antiochus as king 
of Messenia, summoned the forces of the country and carried on 
the war against them with energy and boldness. For the first 
four years of the war, the Lacedwmonians made no progress, and 
even incurred the ridicule of the old men of their nation as faint- 
hearted warriors: in the fifth year, however, they undertook a 
more vigorous invasion, under their two kings, ‘Theopompus and 
Polydérus, who were met by Euphaés with the full force of the 
Messenians. A desperate battle ensued, in which it does not 
seem that either side gained much advantage: nevertheless, the 
Messenians found themselves so much enfeebled by it, that they 
were forced to take refuge on the fortified mountain of Ithomé, 
abandoning the rest of the country. In their distress, they sent 
to solicit counsel and protection from Delphi, but their messenger 
brought back the appalling answer that a virgin, of the royal 
race of AEpytus, must be sacrificed for their salvation: in the 
tragic scene which ensues, Aristodémus puts to death his own 
daughter, yet without satisfying the exigencies of the oracle. The 
war still continued, and in the thirteenth year of it another hard- 
fought battle took place, in which the brave Euphaé= was slain, 
but the result was again indecisive. Aristodémus, being elected 
king in his place, prosecuted the war strenuously: the fifth year 
ef his reign is signalized by a third general battle, wherein the 


END OF THE FIRST WAR. 427 


Corinthians assist the Spartans, and the Arcadians and Sikyon- 
lans are on the side of Messenia; the victory is here cine 
on the side of Aristodémus, and the Lacedwemonians are ΕΘΝ 
back into their own territory.!_ It was now their turn to send 
envoys and ask advice from the Delphian oracle; while the re- 
mining eens ofthe rar exit ἃ sre pay of igen 
ὧν njt - priestess, — partly of prodigies in 
which the divine wrath is manifested against the Mesconians 
The king Aristodémus, agonized with the thought that he hind 
slain his own daughter without saving his country puts an “πὴ 
to his own life.2 In the twentieth year of the war the Messe- 
nians abandoned Ithémé, which the Lacedsemonians ate ip the 
ground : the rest of the country being speedily conquered stich 
of the inhabitants as did not flee either to Arcadia or to Eleusis 
were reduced to complete submission. ir 
Such is the abridgment of what Pausanias? gives as the nar- 
rative of the first Messenian war. Most of his details bear the 
evident stamp of mere late romance; and it will easily be seen 
that the sequence of events presents no plausible explanation of 
that which is really indubitable, — the result. The twas rear ᾽ 
war, and the final abandonment of Ithdmé, is attested by Ἷ ee 
beyond all doubt, as well as the harsh treatment of τὰ as 
quered. “Like asses, worn down by heavy burdens,”4 says the 


‘Ss * 5 is asi 

ὡ " perhaps, to this occasion that the story of the Epeunakti, in 
eopompus, referred (ap. Athene. vi. p. 271), — Helots adopted into the 
sleeping-place of their masters, who had been slain in the war, and who were 
subsequently enfranchised. | 

The story of the Parthenix, obscure and unintelligible as it is, belongs to 
σ΄ foundation of the colony of Taras, or Tarentum (Strabo, vi. p 279) 

See Plutarch, De Superstitione, p. 168. 

3. See Pausan. iv. 6-14. 

An e:aborate discussion is to be seen in Manso’s Sparta, on the authorities 
whom Pausanias has followed in his History of the Messenian Wars, 18te 
Beilage, tom. ii. p. 264. ' 

sa 

It would evidently be folly (he observes, p. 270), to supp»se that in the 
history of the Messenian wars, as Pausanias lays them before us, we possesg 
the true history of these events.” 

μ : sae 

Tyrteus, Fragm. 5, 6 (Schneidewir). 

C. F. Hermann conceives the treatment of the Messenians after the first 

war, as mild, in comparison with what it became after the second {Lehrbuch 


428 HISTORY OF GREECE. 

SECOND MESSENIAN WAR. 
Spartan poet, “they were compelled to make over to their mas 429 
ters an entire half of the produce of their fields, and to come in 
he garb of woe to Sparta, themselves and their wives, as mourns 
ers at the decease of the kings and principal persons.” The 
revolt of their descendants, against a yoke so oppressive, goes 


aid! was not withheld from him. While the fift Messeni 
who shared his punishment, were all killed b the ἀρὰ ἐν 
= pe _ — by the gods so as to naan a ῥερονόξα 
" urt, and enab ed to find an unexpected acai of escap 
pe am sepa bt "ἊΝ he had wrapped himself up in his 
red a fox creeping : 
pegs ; we? until the animal sk Pi ta decane as 
ail, etending umself from its bites as well as ye 
nef νῷ py “we being thus enabled to hei 
ch the iox had entered, enlarged j icie or τ I 
ing out himself. To the surprise both of aoe ePaper 
ed Rei — των; and vigorous, at Eira. That foatified 
ntain on the banks of the river Nedon, an ar the 
sea, had been occupied by the Miseneniene peers — 
which they had been bw:rayed by Azistokrathe the Arcadi ‘ it 
was there that they had concentrated their sill force, as "Α i 
former war at Ithémé, abandoning the rest of the 6 i 
Under the conduct of Aristomenés, assisted by the proph Tl =i 
klus, they maintained this strong position for ἰὸς Sas ae 
length, they were compelled to abandon it; but, as in ad τ 
Ithémé, the final determining circumstances πὸ re ee ai μὴ 
have been, not any superiority of bravery or Pit nS PK 


by the name of the second Messenian war. 

Had we possessed the account of the first Messenian war as 
yiven by Myron and Diodorus, it would evidently have been 
very different from the above, because they included Aristome- 
n it, and to him the leading parts would be assigned. As 
the narrative now stands in Pausanias, we are not introduced to 
that great Messenian hero, — the Achilles of the epic of Rhi- 
anus, !— until the second war, in which his gigantic proportions 
stand prominently forward. He is the great champion of his 
country in the three battles which are represented as taking 
rar: the first, with indecisive result, at Der ; 


nés i 


place during this 
the second, a signal victory on the part of the Messenians, at the 


Boar’s Grave; the third, an equally signal defeat, in consequence 
of the traitorous flight of Aristokratés, king of the Arcadian 
Orchomenus, who, ostensibly embracing the alliance of the Mes- 
senians, had received bribes from Sparta. Thrice did Aris- 
tomenés sacrifice to Zeus Ithomatés the sacrifice called Heka- 


tomphonia,? reserved for those who had slain with their own 
hands a hundred enemies in battle. At the head of a chosen 
band, he carried his incursions more than once into the heart of 
the Lacedzemonian territory, surprised Amykle and Pharis, and 
even penetrated by night into the unfortified precinct of Sparta 
itself, where he suspended his shield, as a token of defiance, in 
the temple of Athéné Chalkicekus. Thrice was he taken pris- 
oner, but on two occasions marvellously escaped before he eculd 
he conveyed to Sparta: the third occasion was more fatal, and 
he was cast by order of the Spartans into the Keadas, a deep, 
rocky cavity in Mount Taygetus, inte which it was their habit to 
But even in this emergency the divine 


precipitate criminals. 


der Griech. StaatsalterthOmer, sect. 31), a supposition which the emphau¢ 


words of Tyrtzus render inadmissible. 
' This is the express comparison introduced bv Pausanias, iv. 5. 2. 


Plutarch, Sept. Sapient. Convivium, p. 159. 


part of the Laced#monians, but treacherous betrayal and st 
gem, seconding the fatal decree of the rods. Unaiile to ze 
tain Eira longer, Aristomenés, with his sons and a bod te 
countrymen, forced his way through the seuntheista mE itt a 
the country, —some of them retiring to Arcadia jan Elis, ne 
finally migrating to Rhegium. He himself passed the τ sin 
der of his days in Rhodes, where ‘he dwelt -alone-with enna 
law, Damagétus, the ancestor of the noble Rhodia family, 
called the Diagorids, celebrated for its nume ἐδ τον Ἧι 
wise erous Olympic 


' Pausan. iv. 18, 4. A ; : 

san. iv. . ᾿Ἀριστομένη» δὲ ἕ ὼὲ ἃ - ὶ i τό 

ease 5 ; τε τὰ ἄλλα ϑεῶν τις, καὶ δὴ καὶ τότε 
PI ἢ (De He ignitas 5 

Pai (De Herodot. Maligvita » p. 856) states that Herodotus had men- 

t ristumenés as having been made prisoner by the Lacedsemonians 


but Plutarch must bere have been d ; : 
᾿ Ὁ eceived 
does uct mention Avistemenés. ived by his memory, for Herodotus 


430 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Such are the main features of what Pausanias calls! the 


second Messenian war, or of what ought rather to be called 


the Aristomeneis of the poet Rhianus. That after the founda- 


tion of Messéné, and the recall of the exiles by Epameinondas, 
favor and credence was found for many tales respecting the 
prowess of the ancient hero whom they invoked? in their liba- 
tions, — tales well calculated to interest the fancy, to vivify the 
patriotism, and to inflame the anti-Spartan antipathies, of the new 
inhabitants, —there can be little doubt. And the Messenian 
maidens of that day may well have sung, in their public proces- 
sional sacrifices,? how “ Artstomenés pursued the flying Laceda 
monians down to the mid-plain of Stenyklérus, and up to the 


very summit of the mountain.” From such stories, traditions 


they ought not to be denominated, Rhianus may doubtless have 
borrowed; but if proof were wanting to show how completely 
he looked at his materials from the point of view of the poet, 


and not from that of the historian, we should find it in the re- 


markable fact noticed by Pausanias. Rhianus represented Leo- 


tychides as having been king of Sparta during the second Mes- 
senian war; now Leotychides, as Pausanias observes, did not 


reign until near a century and a half afterwards, during the 


Persian invasion.‘ 

| The narrative in Pausanias, iv. 15-24. 

According to an incidental notice in Herodotus, the Samians affirmed that 
they had aided Lacedzmon in war against Messéneé, — at what period we do 


not know (Herodot. iii. 56). 

2 Τοὺς δὲ Μεσσηνίους oida αὐτὸς ἐπὶ ταῖς σπονδαῖς ᾿Αριστομένην Νικομη: 
dove καλοῦντας (Pausan. ii. 14,5). The practice still continued in his time. 

Compare, also, Pausan. iv. 27, 3; iv. 32, 3-4. 

2 Pausanias heard the song himself (iv. 16, 4) —’EméAeyov dopa τὸ καὶ εἰ 
ἡμᾶς ἔτι Gdomevor ; — 

"Ec te μέσον πέδιον Στενυκλήριον ἔς τ᾽ ὄρος ἄκρον 
Eimer’ ᾿Αριστομένης τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις. 

According to one story, the Lacedemonians were said to have got posses- 
sion of the person of Aristomenés, and killed him: they found in him 8 
hairy heart (Steph. Byz. v. ᾿Ανδανία). 


4 Pausan. iv. 15, 1. 
Perhaps Leotychides was king during the last revolt of the Helots, or Mes- 
genians. in 464 B. ¢., which is called the third Messenian war. He seems to 
have been then in exile, in consequence of his venality during the Thessalian 
expedition, -— but not yet dead (Herodot. vi. 72). Of the reality of what 


1 ©RTEUS. 
431 


To the great champion of Messenia, durine this w 
Ippose, on the side of Sparta, another ae BS co 
striking as a character of romance bt ᾿ ΓΝ - 
κῶν ἂς aed it more interesting, in 

ny ays, to the historian, —I mean, the poet Ty 
native of Aphidne in Attica, an inestimable ally of the ” ie ; 
caine ne =_— part of this second struggle. Anette 

story, which, however, has the air partly of a boas Ε 

the later Attic orators, — the Spartans, disheartened at esi 
successes of the Messenians, consulted the Delphian o 7 set ἫΝ 
were directed to ask for a leader from Athens. The pees i 
— “a sending Tyrteus, whom Pausanias and hana 
ΠΥ eR man and a schoolmaster, despatched wer 
é ( ‘ r τὰ 
real easton a ας ἐκ pg ΔῸΣ yet rendering no 
a ee De a coloring put upon the 

y by ater writers, but the intervention of the Athenians j 
the matter, in any way, deserves little credit.2 It see ano τὸς 
probable that the legendary connection of the Dinas τ 
Fe i celebrated at or near that time by the we Alk = 
jodie ae ὁ the αἰ ὧν oracle, the presence yr 

aE +t at Sparta. Respecting ameness of T 

(88, we can say nothing: but rh was Ren tag 
are constrained to employ an unsuitable term) is hi ; 
—for in that day, minstrels, who went ee 
were the only persons from whom the youth sacckval au 


Mr. Clinton calls hi 
Mr. calls the third Messenian war. j 
| | Mes: an war, in 490 8. c. Ὁ “¢ 
proof (see Fast. Hell. vol. i. p. 257). Sa " 
The poem of Rhi 
uanus was entitled Μεσσηνιακά. H 
oo ρω =e 5 : 1 : e also composed Θεσ- 
; (Kd, bomen, "Ayaixa. See the Fragments, — they are ver τ ‘a 
Diintzer’s Collection, pp. 67-77. | ἐν 
He seems to hay vi 
ave mentioned Nikoteleia, the i 
_ Hes } ‘leia, mother of és (F 
u. p. 73): compare Pausan. iy. 14, 5. εν 
Ι may remark, that Pausanias, throughout his account of the second M 
seni: cl Με : 
: san war, names king Anaxander as leading the Lacedemonian t ᾿ 
" a , . : ἡ j 
= e has no authority for so doing, as we see by iv. 15,1. Iti fate 
ἊΝ i of his own, from the πατέρων πατέρες of Piece a 
ausan. iv. 15, 3; stin, iii ν : 
Ps an : 15, 3; Justin, iii. 5, 4, Compare Plato, Legg. ii. p. 636 
ag xv. 66; Lycurg. cont. Leokrat. p. 162. Philochorus and Kallisth 
aiso represented him as a nativ i a 
as ative cf Aphidne in Atti i 
i μα , g ica, which 
os and gee slender grounds (viii, p. 362); Philochor Fr 56 Son 
iutarch, Theseus, c. 33: P ΑΙ a 
' ae ausan i. : 
ai . . nm 1.41,5; Welcker, Alkman. Fragm 


482 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


tal training. Moreover, his sway over the youthful mind is par 


ticularly noted in the compliment paid to him, in after-days, by 
king Leonidas: “ Tyrtzus was an adept in tickling the souls of 
youth.”! We see enough to satisfy us that he was by birth a 
stranger, though he became a Spartan by the subsequent recom- 

nse of citizenshi, conferred upon him,—that he was sent 
through the Delphian oracle, — that he was an impressive and 
efficacious minstrel, and that he had, moreover, sagacity enough 


to employ his talents for present purposes and diverse needs ; 
te the languishing courage of 


being able, not merely to reanima 
soothe the discontents of the 


the bafiled warrior, but also to 
mutinous. That his strains, which long maintained undiminished 
5.3 contributed much to determine 


popularity among the Spartan 
the ultimate issue of this war, there is no reason to doubt ; nor is 
his name the only one to attest the susceptibility of the Spartan 
mind in that day towards music and poetry. ‘The first establish- 
ment of the Karneian festival, with its musical competition, at 
Sparta, falls during the period assigned by Pausanias to the 
second Messenian war: the Lesbian harper, Terpander, who 
at this solemnity, is affirmed to 
rsuant to a mandate from 
and to have been the means of appeasing 
Kretan Thalétas was invited 
_ as it is pretended, con- 
Alkman, Xenokritus, 
by birth, found favora- 


gained the first recorded prize 
have been sent for by the Spartans pu 


the Delphian oracle, 
a sedition. In like manner, the 
thither during a pestilence, which his art 
tributed to heal (about 620 B. c.); and 
Polymnastus, and Sakadas, all foreigners 
ble reception, and acquired popularity, by their music and poetry. 
With the exception of Sakadas, who is a little later, all these 
names fall in the same century as Tyrtzus, between 660 8. Ο. - 


610 5.5. The fashion which the Spartan music continued for 
a long time to maintain, is ascribed chiefly to the genius of 


Terpander. 

The training in which a Spartan passed his life consisted of 
exercises warlike, social, and religious, blended together. While 
the individual, strengthened by gymnastics, wept through his 


᾿Αγαϑὸς νέων ψυχὰς αἰκάλλειν. 


Lycargus cont. Leokrat. p. 193. 


--»»..............»Ἅ»»»..»...... 


i Plutarch, Kleomen. c. 2. 
2 Philochorus, Frag. 56, ed. Didot ; 
3 See Plutarch, De Mus ed, pp. 1134, 1142, 1146 


st ART AN MI SICAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 433 


janfal lessons of fatione 
κῶν collectively ee endurance, and aggressior,-— the citi 
and regulated Beeler in the constant habit of sisal eed 
Felt ον aka rm τ the warlike march, in the εἰραμ θήν 
stantly employed os ac a Music and song Se ous 
of thes seatbelts ct the measure and keep μος the es —_ 
most powerful feelings movements, became associated ka. 
Gparten pereatited rial a the habitual oil siibiae casing = 
i ἀβηθημαρο γκρκιδηρδμρδοροηρ: and especially with those ine eit a 
the musician and the * a once to an assembled crowd ; in re 
eddressed themselves t ro eh the only persons ar —_ 
Moreover, the sled 9 ue feelings of a Lacedemonian plier 
of artistical merit : es of that early day, though dest; bly. 
i Hi sag “a superseded afterwards by sian itute 
acter: it asin ste nevertheless, a pronounced elaine 
resolutions of aaa — υδδ ιν ον powerfully on the Nisiahane. nen 
Ὡν νὼ, on though it tickled the ear “gi beng 
each particular ike ea compositions of after-days. F vat 
effect, —the Phrygian ee its own appropriate meas 
stimulus; the Dorian aa imparted a wild and maddeni a 
resolution, exempt prvllee € created a settled and pike 
~— sentiments? Web an ἀκ τεος and from the Bi 
© in reality the ὁ ai S called the Dorian mode, seems 
ΩΣ α so μῶν — mode, as inntaindittineeishaa 
sine δῶ, i aoe pe ian, — these being the ἥδ 
whieh the first serine “ον παρὰ only in later times, wit] 
hil sisal tens τα ng became conversant. ‘satay 
Sparta and Argos, during tl rian from the musical celebrity of 
the Christian om ‘ but be re Seventh and sixth centuries befor 
Rete ae : ᾿ slonged as much to the Pilon aia ane 
ethical effects, prod aS ee and Argeians. And the τς > 
modes ὡ ee athe th ον μὴν weap and the δος τὰ 
iftic bint acts pertectly well-attes 
iflicult they may be to explain ion any ἐβορουφικρκνρν δώραι 
, : u sic. 


᾿ w . = ΒΕ — - 

3 Ὁ τ: te ; Xenoph. Rep. ων. « a a a A 
ete; 33, p. heaped Plutarch, De Musica, passim especial! 

| ip ickel re ato, oe iii. p. 399; Aristot. Polit y he Ρ. 1136, 

mie ἢ reatise De Metris 5 ᾧ i . viii. 6, 5-8. 
edition of Pi ; : ris Pindari, prefi : 
points reese s full of instruction upon this ἊΝ ed M. Boeckh to his 

unnected with the Grecian music (see lib ‘ie : as upon all other 
ὶ - I. C. 8, p. 238). 


VOL. II. 
19 
280c 


HISTORY OF GREECE. 
434 


That the impression produced by Tyrteus ath "ΠῚ 
fore, with his martial music, and emphatic exhortations ni che 
in the field, as well as union at home, should have 0 ἰν : -" 
able, is perfectly consistent with the character bot Jy | Ν "δ 
is represented to have ap- 


side! a : 

Ὶ ople ; especially, as he 
and of the people ; j | ! Ἄς 
6 injunction of the Delphian oracle. From 


peared pursuant, to th 


the scanty fragments re ow aa ae 

rer, We Οἱ sotisfy ourselves only of two facts: st, 

however, we can Satisly ' ! Js 
‘az lone. obstinately contested, and dange-cus to Sparta 

the war was long, obstinate!) 

” s . " . ) Mm 

next, that other parties in Pelo 


maining to us of his elegies and anapzsts, 


as well as to the Messenians ; | Angie 
on both sides, especially on the side of the 


55 took part 
eee > 4 the aggressions Of 


Messenians. So frequent and harassing were a οΝ 
the latter upon the Spartan territory, that a wind! si nm es 
border land was left uncultivated: scarcity ensued, ἈΠῸ © I : 
rted farms, driven to despair, pressed for a re- 
It was in appeasing 
ealled Eunomia, 


prietors of the dese : | 
division of the landed property in the state. 
these discontents that the poem of Tyrteus, avast: 
ἃ sionally beneficial.' It seems certain 
ion of the Arcadians, together with the 
took part with the Messenians ; 


« Legal order,” was foun 
that a considerable port 
Pisate and the Triphylians, ! dapat 
atements numbering the Eleians _ 
i sbable. The state of the 
their allies, but this appears not probable. ‘The state 
r seems to have been, that the old quarrel between the 
“th to preside at the 


there are also some st 


ease rathe “cht 
᾽ » "1cr 
Eleians and the Pisate, respecting the righ ; ; 
: already burst forth during the pre- 
Olympic games, which had already ian Pheidén, still con 
ceding century, in the reign of the Argeian I heic on, Stl 
5 


i ; of Elis , Pisatee and Triphy- 
tinued. Unwilling dependents of Elis, the Pisatw a phy 


art with the subject Messenians, while the masters 


jans ok ) 
cg Mage ause. as they had before done 


at Elis and Sparta made common ὁ | Se 
Pantale6on, king of Pisa, revolting from Elis, 


ains *heidon. 
>. us in cooperation with the 


acted as commander of his countrymen ! psig bpd ον 
Messenians ; and he is farther noted for having, ee μα | an 
of the 34th Olympiad (644 B. C.), marched a pany =. 
Olympia, and thus dispossessed the or τ πὴ Ν 
of the presidency : that particular festival, — as weil as 


-- 


' Aris lit. v. 7, 1; Pausan. iv. 18, 2. 

ues γ᾿ Ἢ Strabo viii. p. 355, where the Νέστορος atoyove 
. . ~ 9 = 

mean the Pylians of Tryphylit 


Vol. 2 14 


DATE OF THE SECOND WAR. 435 


Olyimpiad, in which Pheidén interfered, — and the 104th Olym- 
piad, in which the Arcadians marched in, — were always marked 
on the Eleian register as non-Olympiads, or informal celebra- 
tions. We may reasonably connect this tempo ‘ary triumph of 
the Pisatans with the Messenian war, inasmuch as they were no 
match for the Eleians single-handed, while the fraternity of 
Sparta with Elis is in perfect harmony with the scheme of 
Peloponnesian politics which we have observed as prevalent 
sven before and during the days of Pheidén.! The second 


' Respecting the position of the Eleians and Pisate during the second 
Messenian war, there is confusion in the different statements: as they can 
not all be reconciled, we are compelled to make a choice. 
That the Eleians were allies of Sparta, and the Pisatans of Messenia, and 
that the contests of Sparta and Messenia were mixed up with those of Elis 
and Pisa about the agonothesia of the Olympic games, is conformable to one 
distinct statement of Strabo (viii. pp. 355, 358), and to the passage in Phavori- 
nus v. Avyecac, and is, moreover, indirectly sustained by the view given in 
Pausanias respecting the relations between Elis and Pisa (vi. 22, 2), whereby 
it clearly appears that the agonothesia was a matter of standing dispute 
between the two, until the Pisatans were finally crushed by the Eleians ir. 
the time of Pyrrhus, son of Pantaleén. Farther, this same view is really 
conformable to another passage in Strabo, which, as now printed, appears 
to contradict it, but which is recognized by M@ller and others as needing 
‘orrection, though the correction which they propose seems to me not the 
pest. The passage (viii. p. 362) stands thus: Πλεονάκις δ᾽ ἐπολέμησαν 
(Messenians and Lacedemonians) διὰ τὰς ἀποστάσεις τῶν Μεσσηνίων. Τὴν 
μὲν οὖν πρώτην κατάκτησιν αὐτῶν φησὶ Τυρταῖος ἐν τοῖς ποιήμασι κατὰ τοὺς 
γῶν πατέρων πατέρας yevéodat τὴν δὲ δευτέραν, kad’ ἣν ἑλόμενοι συμμάχους 
Ηλείους καὶ ᾿Αργείους καὶ Πισατὰς ἀπέστησαν, ᾿Αρκάδων μὲν ᾿Αριστοκρά- 
ἣν τὸν ᾿Ορχομένου βασιλέα παρεχομένων στρατηγὸν, Πισατῶν δὲ Παντα- 
ἱεόντα τὸν ᾿Ομφαλίωνος" ἡνίκα φησιν αὐτὸς στρατηγῆσαι τὸν πόλεμον τοῖς 
ἰακεδαιμονίοις, ete. Here it is obvious that, in the enumeration of allies, 
he Arcadians ought to have been included; accordingly, both O. Miiller 
ind Mr. Clinton (ad annum 672 B.C.) agree in altering the passage thus: 
hey insert the words καὶ "Apxadac after the word ᾽Η λείους, so the. 
both Eleians and Pisatans appear as allies of Messenia at once. I submit 
that this is improbable in itself, and inconsistent with the passage of Strabo 
prvviously noticed: the proper way of altering the passage is, in my judg- 
mei‘t, to substitute the word Apxadag in place of the word ᾽Η λεΐους, 
which makes the two passages of Strabo consistent with each other, and 
hardi7 does greater violence to the text. 

As  .pposed to the view here adopted, there is, undoubtedly, the passage 
of Paus anias (iv. 15, 4) which numbers the Eleians among the allies of Mes 


436 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Messenian war will thus stand as beginning somewhere abvout 
the 33d Olympiad, or 648 &. c., between sev enty and cighty 
years after the close of — first, and lasting, ac cording to VPan- 
sanias, seventeen years; according to Plutarch, more than 
twenty years.! 


A A inet npe 


écnia, and takes no notice of the Pisate. The affirmation of Julius Africanus 
{ap. Eusebium Chronic. j. p. 145, that the Visate revolted from Elis in the 
39th Olympiad, and celebrated the Olympic games themselves until ΟἹ. 52 
for twe nty-two successive coremonic 4) is in contradic Thon, —first, with Pau- 
ganias (vi. 22, 2), which appears to me a clear and valuable stateme nt, from 
its particular reference to the three non- Olympiads, — secondly, with Pausa- 
nias (ν. 9,4), when the Eleians in the 50th Olympiad det ermine the number 
of Hellanodikee. I agree with Corsini (Fasti Attici, t . p. 47) in setting 
aside the passage of Julius Africanus: Mr. Clinton (F. H. p. 253) is dis. 
pleased with Corsini for this suspicion, but he himself virtual lly does the 
same thing; for, in order to reconcile Jul. Africanus with Pausanias. he 
introduces a supposition quite different from what is asserted by either of 
them; 2%. 6. a joint agonothesia ‘by Eleians and Pisatans together. This 
hypothesis of Mr. Clinton appears to me gratuitous and inadmissible: A fri- 
“eatnus himself meant to state something quite different, and I imagine him 
to have been misled by an erroneous authority. See Mr. Clinton, Ε. Η. ad. 
ann. 660 B.C. to 580 B. c. 


i > ᾿ » » Soe T re ~ +) ᾿ mh iN 
Plutarch, De Sera Num. Vind. p. 548; Pausan. iv. 15. 1 ; iv. 17,3; iv. 23, 2 


>~* 


The date of the second Messcnian war, and the tuterval between the 
second and the first, are points respecting which also there js irreconcilzlte 
discrepancy of staiement; we can only choose the most probable: sce the 
passages collected and canvassed in Ὁ. Miiller (Dorians, i, 7, 11, and in Mr 
Clinton, Fast. Hellen. vol. i. Appendix 2, p. 257). mn 
According to Pausanias, the second war lasted from B.C. 685-668, and 
there was an interval between the first and the second war of thirty-nine soni 
Justin (iii. 5) reckons an interval of ei: ehty years; Eusebius, an interval of 
ninety years. The main evidence is the passage of ‘Tyrtseus, wherein that 
poet. speaking during the second war, says, “ The fathers of our fathers 
conquered Messéné.” : 7 

Mr. Clinton adheres very nearly to the view of Pausanias; he supposes 
that the real date is only six years lower (679-662), But 1 agree with 
Cluvier (Histoire des Premicrs Temps de la Grece, t ii. p. 233) and O. 
Mfiller (1. ¢.) in thinking that an interval of thirty-nine years is too short to 
suit the phrase of fathers’ fathers. Speaking in the present year (1846), it 
would not be held proper to say, “ The fathers of our fathers carried on the war 
between 1793 and the peace of Amicns:” we should rather say, “The rathaey 
of onr fathers carricd on the American wur and the Seven Years’ war.’ An 
age is marked by its mature and even elde rly members, — by those between 
th'ity-five and fifty-five years ef age 


-: 
ἘΣ 


᾿ 
ΕΓ 


SUBJUGATION OF ΤῊΣ MESSENIARs. 437 


Many of the Messrnians who abandoned their country after 
this second conquest are said to have found shelter and sympathy 
among the Arcadians, who admitted them to a new home and 
gave them their daughters in marriage; and who, moreover, 
punished severely the treason of Aristolratés, king of Orcho- 
inenus, in abandoning the Messenians at the battle of the Trench. 
That perfidious leader was put to death, and his race dethroned, 
while the crime as well as the punishment was farther com- 
memorated by an inscription, which was to be seen near the 
altar of Zeus Lykmus, in Areadia. The inseription doubtless 
existed in the days of Kallisthenés, in the generation after the 
restoration of Messéné. But whether it had any existence prior 
to that event, or what degree of truth there may be in the story 
of Aristokratés, we are unable to determine :! the son of Aristo- 
kratés, named Aristodémus, is alleged in another authority to 
have reigned afterwards at Orchomenus.2. That which stands 
strongly marked is, the sympathy of Arcadians and Messenians 


against Sparta, — a sentiment which was in its full vigor at the 


time of the restoration of Messéné. 

The second Messenian war was thus terminated by the complete 
subjugation of the Messenians. Such of them as remained in 
the country were reduced to a servitude probably not less hard 
than that which Tyrteus described them as having endured be 
tween the first war and the second. In after-times, the whole 


Rachels as I do ers with O. Maller, against Mr. Clinton, I also agree 
with him in thinking that the best mark which we possess of the date of the 
second Messenian war is the statemen) respecting Pantaleén: the 34th Olym- 
piad, which Pantaleén celebrated, probably fell within the time of the war; 
which would thus be brought down much later than the time assigned by 
‘Pausanias, yet not so far down as that named by Eusebius and Justin: the 
taact year of its commencement, however, we have no means of fixing. 

Krebs, in his discussions on the Fragments of the lost Books of Diodorus, 
thinks that that historian placed the beginning of the second Messenian war 
m the 35th Olympiad (1. c. 640) (Krebs, Lectiones Diodorex, pp. 254-260). 

? Diodor. xv 66; Polyb. iv. 33, who quotes Kallisthenés; Pans. viii. δ, 8. 
Neither the Inscription, as cited by Polybius, nor the allusion in Plutarch 
(De SerA Numin. Vindicta, p. 548), appear to fit the narrative of Pausanias, 
for both of them imply secret and long-concealed treason, tardily brought to 
light by the interposition of the gods; whereas, Pausanias describes the 
treason of Aristokratés, at the battle of the Trench, as palpable and flagrant. 


* Herakleid. Ponti>. ap Diog. Laért. i. 94. 


δἰ το τῷ 6 πόδια ΤΡ r μ 
γι 4,964 240 + ts +e ett stetat τ tele} “t! + fers oie) ἐν ΤᾺ τὶ ‘+ i" "s eee ὶ tytete 


. 


438 {ISTORY OF GREECE. 


territory which figures on -he map as Messenia,— south of the 
river Nedon, and westward of the summit of Tay getus, — ap- 
pears as subject to Sparta, and as forming the western portion ot’ 
Laconia ; distributed, in what proportion we know not, between 
Perieekic towns and Helot villages. By what steps, or after 
what degree of farther resistance, the Spartans conquered this 
country, we have no information; but we are told that they made 
over Asiné to the expelled Dryopes from the Argolic peninsula 
and Mothoné to the fugitives from Nauplia.!- Nor do we hear 
of any serious revolt from Sparta in this territory until one hun- 
dred and fifty years afterwards,? subsequent to the Persian inva- 
sion, — a revolt which Sparta, after serious efforts, succeeded in 
crushing. So that the territory remained in her power until her 
defeat at Leuktra, which led to the foundation of Messéné by 
Kpameinondas. ‘The fertility of the plains, — especially of the 
central portion near the river Pamisus, so much extolled by ob- 
servers, modern as well as ancient, — rendered it an acquisition 
highly valuable. At some time or other, it must of course have 
been formally partitioned among the Spartans, but it is probable 
that different and successive allotments were made, according as 
the various portions of territory, both to the east and to the west 
of ‘Taygetus, were conquered. Of all this we have no in- 
formation.* 

Imperfectly as these two Messenian wars are known to us, we 
may see enough to warrant us in making two remarks. Both 
were tedious, protracted, and painful, showing how slowly the 
results of war were then gathered, and adding one additional 
illustration to prove how much the rapid and instantaneous con- 
quest of Laconia and Messenia by the Dorians, which the Hera- 
kleid legend sets forth, is contradicted by historical analogy. 
Both were characterized by a similar defensive proceeding on 


δ Pausan. iv. 24, 2; iv. 34,6; iv. 35, 2. ? Thucyd. i. 101. 

* Pausanias says, τὴν μὲν ἄλλην Μεσσηνίαν, πλὴν τῆς ᾿Ασιναίων, αὐτοὶ 
διελάγχανον, ete. (iv. 24, 2.) 

In an apophthegm ascribed to king Polydorus, leader of the Spartans 
during the first Messenian war, he is asked, whether he is really taking arma 
against his brethren, to which he replies, “No; I am only marching to the 
unallotted portion of the territory.” (Plutarch, Apophthegm Lakonic p 
431.) -- ἐπὶ τὴν ἀκλήρωτον χώραν. 


ἜΣΕΙ 


A 
᾽ 


PISA AND ELIS. 439 


the part of the Messenians, — the occupation ce mountaim 
difficult of access, and the fortification of it for the special pure 
pose and resistance, — Ithémé (which is said to have had already 
a small town upon it) in the first war, Eira in the second. 
It is reasonable to infer from hence, that neither their principal 
town Sienyklérus, nor any other town in their country, was 
strongly fortified, so as to be calculated to stand a siege; that 
there were no walled towns among them analogous to Myken» 
and ‘Liryns on the eastern portion of Peloponnesus ; and that, per- 
haps, what were called towns were, like Sparta itself, clusters: 
of unfortified villages. ‘The subsequent state of Helotism into 
which they were reduced is in consistency with this dispersed 
village residence during their period of freedom. 

The relations of Pisa and Elis form a suitable counterpart 
and sequel to those of Messenia and Sparta. Unwilling sube 
jects ‘nemselves, the Visatans had lent their aid to the Messe- 
nians, —and their king, Pantaleén, one of the leaders of this 
combined force, had gained so great a temporary success, as 
to dispossess the Eleians of the agonothesia or administration 
of the games for one Olympic ceremony, in the 34th Olym- 
piad. Though again reduced to their condition of subjects, 
they manifested dispositions to renew their revolt at the 
48th Olympiad, under Damophdn, the son of Pantaledn, and 
the Eleians marched into their country to put them down, but 
were persuaded to retire by protestations of submission. At 
length, shortly afterwards, under Pyrrhus, the brother of Damo- 
phon, a serious revolt broke out. The inhabitants of Dyspon- 
tium, and the other villages in the Pisatid, assisted by those of 
Makistus, Skillus, and the other towns in Triphylia, took up 
arms to throw off the yoke of Elis; but their strength was in- 
adequate to the undertaking. They were completely conquered 5 
Dyspontium was dismantled, and the inhabitants of it obliged to 
flee the country, from whence most of them emigrated to the 
colonies of Epidamnus and Apollonia, in Epirus. The inhabi- 
tants of Makistus and Skillus were also chased from their abodes, 
while the territory became more thoroughly subject to Elis than 
it had been before. ‘These incidents seem to have occurred 
about the 50th Olympiad, or B. Cc. 080; and the dominion of 
Elis over her Perickic territory was thus as well assured as that 


es a = ΕΝ — 

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ee a - ᾿ τα gs 2", 

a4 τὰν - 7 — 
Ὅν ni ae bier νι Sng! nm . 


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440 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


of Sparta’ The separate denominations both of Pisaand Tri- 
phylia became more and more merged in the sovercien name of 
Elis: the town of Lepreum alene, in Lriphylia, seems to have 
maintained a scparate name and a sort of half-autonomy down 
to the time of the Peloponnesian war, not without perpetual 
struggles against. the Eleians.2 But towards the period of the 
Peloponnesian war, the political interests of Laced:-mon hid be- 
come considerably changes, and it was to her advantage to main- 
Ain the independence of the subordinate states against the 
superior: accordingly, we find her at that time upholding the 
autonomy of Lepreum. [rom what cause the devastation of 
the Triphylian towns by 1115, which Herodotus mentions as hav- 
ing happened in his time, arose, we do not know 3 the fact seems 
to indicate a continual yearning for their original independence, 
which was still commemorated, down to a much Jater period, by 
the ancient Amphiktyony, at Sumikum, in ‘Tt iplivlia, in honor of 
Poseidon, — a common religious festival frequented by all the 
Triphylian towns and celebrated by the inhabitants of Makistus, 
who sent round proclamation of 2 formal truce fur the holy period! 
The Lacedxwmonians, afier the close of the Peloponnesian war, 
had left them undisputed heads of Greece, formally upheld the 
independence of the Triphylian towns against Elis, and secm to 
have countenanced their endeavors to attach them-elves to the 
Arcadian aggregate, which, however, was never fully 2ecom- 
plished. Their dependence on Elis became loose and uncertain, 
but was never wholly shaken off.4 


' Pausan. vi. =>, 25 V.6,3; v.10, 2; Strnbo, viii. pp. 355-357. 

The temple in honor of Zeus at Olympia, was first erected by the Kleiang, 
out of the spoils of this expedition (I’ausan. y. 10, 2). 

* Thucyd. v. 81. Even Lepreum is characterized as Eleian, however (Aris- 
toph. Aves, 149): compare also Steph. Byz. νυ. Τριου}ία, ἡ H2uc. 

Even in the 6th Olympiad, an inhabitant of Dyspontiam is procluimed 
as victor at the stadium, under the denomination of “an Lk ian from Dyspon- 
aum;” proclaimed by the Eleians of course, —the like in the 27th Olym- 
piad : see Stephan. Byz. v. Δυστόντιον, which shows that the inhabitants of 
the Pisatid cannot have rendered the:nselves independent of Elis in the 26th 
Olympiad, as Strabo alleges (viii. p. 355). 

* Herodot. iv. 149; Strabo, viii. p. 3.43. 

* Diodor. xiv. 17; xv. 77; Xenoph. Hellen. ini. 2, 23, 26. 

It was about this period, probably, that the idea of the local eponymus 
Triphylus, son of Arkas. was first intreduced (Polyb. iv. 77). 


ARCADIA. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


CONQUESTS OF SPARTA TOWARDS ARCADIA AND ARGOLIS. 


l HAVE described in the last two chapters, as far as our im- 
perfect evidence permits, how Sparta came into possession both 
of the southern portion of Laconia along the coast of the as 
tas down to its mouth, and of the Messenian territory ress 
Uer progress towards Arcadia and Argolis is now to be ed, 
so as to conduct her to that position which she μα ραν ῥοβν uring 
the reign of Peisistratus at Athens, or about 560-540 eh 
time when she had reached the maximum of her territori pas- 
sessions, and when she was confessedly the commanding state 


in Hellas. yale . 
The central region of Peloponnesus, called Arcadia, had never 


received any emigrants from without. Its indigenous inhabitants, 
.--ἢ strong and hardy race of mountaineers, the most gpa 
Hellenic tribe in the peninsula, and the constant hive oF ree 
nary troops,! — were among the rudest and aaaaeon to Gree 5 
retaining for the longest period their original perp tinge or ; 
a number of petty hill-villages, each independent of the ot se 
while the union of all who bore the Arcadian name, — though 
they had some common sacrifices, such as the testival of the Ly- 


kwan Zeus, of Despoina, daughter of Poseidén and Demeter, 
Ne "δ alin, ὲ ᾿ « 


and of Artemis Hymmnia2— was more loose and ineffective than 
τὸ "» -"᾿ = - ,. » ue ω 
that of Greeks generally, cither in or out of Peloponnesus, 
an villagers were usually denominated by the names 


a 


The Arcadi 


—— "ἐκ Φρυγίας, ἀπὸ δ' '᾿Αρκαδίας 
ΐ nae top. Za Ay pumas ta Vanylag, ara ὃ Af 
' Hermippus ap. Athena i yp. 20. ἡ: ‘sew 
' +. «ye igh ph ‘ ἣν 4 ‘ yp 172. - 

ἐπικούρους. Also, Xenoph. Icilen. vin. 1, 23. πλείστοι δὲ φῦλον τῶ ῃ 
vixay τὸ ᾿Δλρκαδικὸν εἴη, ete. a , 

© Pausan. viii. 6, 7; viii. 37, 6; viii. 38, 2. Xenias, one of the cama ye 

= i Je . " , ᾽ . ; 5 ᾿ ᾿ 
Cireck mercenaries in the service of Cyrus the younger, ἃ ng μη 
: . ‘ : : 
Parrhasian district in Arcadia, celebrates with great solemnity, during 


march upward. the festival and games of tne Lyksea (Xenoph. Anabas. & 3 


10; compare Pindar, Olymp. ix. 142). 


Many of the forests in Arcadia contained not only wild boars, but bear, 


ε ‘as (viii, 23, 4) 
im the days of Pavsanias (vill. 23, 
F 195 


eee 


4, ‘ " of 5 
ΦΠΈΣΣΗΕ, er-ece Μ ae 
x “" tints, ΩΣ “ιν 4 ὁ. 9 ἴ; ate 4 strictest 


449 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


of regions, cvincident with certain ethnical subdivisions, — the 
Azi — se ats u ' oe al * 
dines, the Parrha: li, the Manalii (adjoining Mount Mznalus), 
the Eutrésii, the /igytx, the Skiritz, οἴ. Some considerable 
towns, however, there were, — aggregations of villages or demes 
which had been once autonomous. Of these, the principal were 
γεν " , ᾿ ἷ ᾿ Ι 
Tegea and Mantineia, bordering on Laconia and Argolis, —Or- 
Ν ) . 2 . ᾿ Ἵ " ᾿ ἣν Ι 
chomenus, Pheneus, and Stymphalus, towards the north-east. 
sy ᾿ 4 Pye a ‘ , Η ’ x shin 
bordering on Achaia and Phlius,— Kleitér and Herzwa, west- 
ward, where the country is divided from Elis and Triphylia by 
the woody mountains of Pholoé and Erymanthus, — and Phiga- 
leia, or rs -wester χων» ‘ . ’ μῇ 
a, on the south-western border near to Messenia. The most 
powerful of all were Tegea and Mantineia,2 — conterminous 
towns, nearly equal in force, dividi 
srheoga ea ¥ by il in force, dividing between them the cold and 
y ‘ ν y « Ἶ ἐγ yr« Ὶ awn 
igh plain οἱ ripolitza, and separated by one of those capricious 
torrents which only escapes through katabothra. To regulate 
the efflux of this water was a diffic ᾿ «ον len 
3 ; this water was a difficult task, requiring friendly 
cooperation of both the towns: and when their frequent jealousies 
brought on a quarrel, the more aggressive of the two inundated 


the territory of its neighbor as one means of annoyance. The 


power of Tegea, which had grown up out of nine constituent 
townships, originally separate,’ appears to have been more an- 
cient than that of its rival; as we may judge from its splendid 
heroic pretensions connected with the name of Echemus, and 
from the post conceded to its hoplites in joint Peloponnesian 


' Pausan. vill. 26, 5; Strabo, viii. p. 388 
Some geographers distributed the Arcadians into three subdivisions 
Azanes, Parrhasii, and Trapezuntii. Azan passed for the son of Arcas at 
his lot in the division of the paternal inheritance was said to ᾿μβροδαριλεμ 
seventeen towns (ὡς ἔλαχεν ᾿Αζῆν). Stephan. Byz. v. ’ACavia — Napsacia 
Kleitor seems the chief place in Azania, as far as we can infer from ait al. 
ogy (Pausan. viii. 4, 2,3). Pzeus, or Paos, from whence the ἡ τὰ 
of the daughter of Kleisthenés presented h mself, was between. Kleitor : , 
Ps6phis (Herod. vi. 127; Paus. viii. 23, 6. A Delphian oracle τρόνη 
reckons the inhabitants of Phigaleia, in the south-western corner of i i ; 
among the Azanes (Pans. viii. 42, 3). τ 
_The burial-place of Arcas was supposed to be on Mount Menalas (Faus 
viii. 9, 2). ini 
* Thucyd. v. 65. Compare the description ¢f the ground in Protesso? 
Ross (Reisen im Peloponnes. iv. 7). 
* Strabo, viii. p. 337. 


TEGEA AND MANTINEIA. ᾿ 448 


arinaments, which was second in distinction only to that of the 
{Lacedzemonians.! If it be correct, as Strabo asserts,2 that the 
incorporation of the town of Mantineia, out of its five separate 
demes, was brought about by the Argeians, we may conjecture 
that the latter adopted this proceeding as a means of providing 
some check upon their powerful neighbors of Tegea. The plain 
common to Tegea and Mantineia was bounded to the west by 
the wintry heights of Menalus,? beyond which, as far as the 
boundaries of Laconia, Messenia, and Triphylia, there was noth- 
ing in Arcadia but small and unimportant townships, or villages, 
— without any considerable town, before the important step taken 
by Epameinondas in founding Megalopolis, a short time after the 
battle of Leuktra. The mountaineers of these regions, who 
joined Epameinondas before the battle of Mantineia, at a time 
when Mantineia and most of the towns of Arcadia were opposed 
to him. were so inferior to the other Greeks in equipment, that 
they still carried as their chief weapon, in place of the spear, 


« 


nothing better than the ancient club.4 


' Herodot. ix. 27. 
2 Strabo. 1. ec. Mantineia is reckoned among the oldest cities of Arcadia 


(Polyb. ii. 54). Both Mantineia and Orchomenus had originally occupied 


verv lofty hill-sites, and had been rebuilt on a larger scale, lower down, 


nearer to the plain (Pausan. vill. 8,3; ἃ: 13. 3), 

In regard to the relations, during he early historical period, between 
Sparta, Argos, and Areadia, there is : » fravment of Diodorus (among 
those recently published by Didot out of the Excerpta in the Escurial library, 
agement. Historic. Grwcor vol. ii. Ὁ viil.). The Argeians had espoused 
the cause of the Arcadians against Sparta ; and at the expense of consider- 
able loss and suffering. had regained such portions of Arcadia as she had 
conquered. The kine of Argos restored this recovered territory to the 
Arcadians: but the Argeians gen rally were angry that he did not retain it 
them as a reward for their losses in the contest. 


end distribute it among 
who was forced to flee, and take 


They rose in insurrection against the king, 
refuce at Tegea. 

We have nothing to illustrate this fragment, nor de we know to what king, 
date. or events, it relates 

3 Mawadin δυσχείμερος (Delphian Oracle, ap Paus. viii. 9, 2). 


4 Xenophon, in describing the ardor with which Epameinondas inspired 


hia soldiers before this final battle, says (vil. 5, 20), προϑύμως μὲν ἐλευκοῦντε 
οἱ ἱππεῖς τὰ Kpuvy, KEAEVOVTOC ἐκείνου" ἐπε γρ ά QOoVTO δὲ καὶ τῶν ᾿Αρκά- 
ἄδων ὁπλῖται. ῥόπα λα ἔ γόοντες, ὡς Θηβαιοι OvTrec’ πάντες δὲ 


ἠκονῶντο καὶ λύγχας καὶ μαχαίρας, καί ἐλαμπρύνοντο τὰς ἀσπίδας. 


444 MWISTORY OF GREECE 


Both Tegea and Mantineia held several of these smaller Arca- 
dian townships near them in a sort of dependence, and were 
anxious to extend this empire over others: during the Pelopon 
nesian war, we find the Mantineians enteblishion and suesinneiing 
a fortress at Kypsela arnong the Parrhasii, near the site in which 
Megalopolis was afterwards built.! But at this period, Sparta 
as the political chief of Hellas, —having a sirens ἀνῆκον in 
keeping all the Grecian towns, small and or eat, as rain baclated 
from pach other as possible, and in checking all schemes for the 
formation of local confederacies, — stood forward as the pro- 
tectress of the autonomy of these smaller Arcadians “τὰ 
back the Mantineians within their own limits.2 At : neonesvhat 
later period, during the acmé of her power, a few years before 
the battle of Leuktra, she even proceeded to the extreme length 
of breaking up the unity of Mantineia itself, causing the walls to 
be razed, and the inhabitants to be again parcelled into their five 
original demes,—a violent arrangement, which the turn of 0- 
litical events very soon reversed.? It was not until after che 
battle of Leuktra and the depression of Sparta that any mea- 
sures were taken for the formation of an Arcadian political 
confederacy 54 and even then, the jealousies of the se ei 
cites rendered it incomplete and short-lived. The meen κοὐβαμᾳ 
nent change, the establishment οἵ Megalopolis, was πον ἀν 


μα ἐν μων, ᾿ 
γε ἢ ΜΙ conceivable that these Arcadian clubmen should have pos 
sessed a shie ‘ ‘ i ‘ i ‘ Γ ᾿ ξ 
: 836 t shield and a full panoply. The language of Xenophon in calling 
vem hoplites, and the term ἐπεγράφοντο, properly referring to the inscription 
on the shield, appe: i irit of 1 ᾿ 
Υ he d, appear to be conceived in a spirit of contemptuous sneering. 
TOC CRE r Le i i itt 
Ρ eceding from Xenophon’s miso-Theban tendencies: “ The Arcadian hop 
ites, with their clubs, put tl elves fi ‘Th 
IS, vemselves forwar > as : 
co αμάρν I + th elves forward to be as good as the Thebans.” 
: the endencies of Xenophon show themselves in expressions very 
un “Crap? inner 1 i) Trait r of ; be 
becoming to the dignity of history (though curious as evidences of the 
ig may be seen by vii. 5,12, where he says of the Thebans, — ἐντᾶυϑα 
On ot πῦρ πνεοντες i pey ὦ Se ag } 
i τὸς, οἱ νενικηκότες τοὺς Aaxedats Ι τῷ 
«τλεονες. etc. ] ͵ μονιοῦυς, OL τῷ παντὶ 
i - 
Thocyd. v. 33, 47, 81. 
2 niin: ᾿ ’ . . 
, Thacyd. |. ο. Compare the instructive speech of Kleigenés, the envoy 
r¢ scp ᾿ ; in ms 
mm Akanthus, addressed to the Lacedwmonians, Β. c. 382 (Xen. Hellen 
γ. 2, 15-16). | 
3x 
Xenoph. Hellen. v. 2, 1-6 ; Diodor. xy. 19 
4 " * ] 
Xenovh. Hellen. vi. 5, 10-11; vii. 1, 23-25. 


MEGALOP )LIS 445 


by the ascendency of Epameinondas. Forty petty Arcadian 
townships, among those situated to the west of Mount Mznalus, 
were aggregated into the new city: the jealousies of Tegea, 
Mantineia, and Kleitér, were for a while suspended; and eekists 


came from all of them, as well as from the districts of the Mx- 


nalii and Parrhasii, in order to impart to the new establishment 
a genuine Pan-Arcadian character.! It was thus there arose for 


owerful city on the borders of Laconia and Mes- 


the first time a 1} 
adian townships from their dependence on 


senia, rescuing the Are 
Sparta, and imparting to them political interests of their own, 
which rendered them, both a check upon their former chief 
and a support to the reéstablished Messenians. 

It has been necessary thus to bring the attention of the reader 
for one moment to events long posterior in the order of time 
(Megalopolis was founded in 370 8B. c.), in order that he may 
understand, by contrast, the general course of those incidents of 


the earlier time, 
ern boundary of the Spartan territory was formed by some of 


the many small Arcadian townships or districts, several of which 
were successively conquered by the Spartans and incorporated 
with their dominion, though at what precise time we are unable 
to say. Weare told that Charilaus, the reputed nephew and 
ward of Lykurgus, took JEgys, and that he also invaded the 
territory of Tegea, but with singular ill-success, for he was de- 
feated and taken prisoner 2 we also hear that the Spartans took 
Phigaleia by surprise in the 30th Olympiad, but were driven out 
the neighboring Arcadian Oresthasians.° During the 
ar, the Arcadians are represented as cor- 
Messenians: and it may seem perhaps 
‘ther Mantineia nor Tegea are mentioned 


where direct accounts are wanting. The north- 


again by 
second Messenian Ww 
dially seconding the 
singular that, while ne 


i Pausan. viii. 27,5. No cekist is mentioned from Orchomenus, though 
three of the petty townships contributing (συντελοῦντα) to Orchomenus were 
embodied in the new city. The feud between the neighboring cities of 
Orchomenus and Mantineia was bitter (Xen. Hellen. vi. 5, 11-22). Orcho- 
τοῦ both opposed the political confederation of Arcadia. 


Μεγαλοπολιτῶν, strongly attests tne 
ϑῶσι καὶ διοικισϑῶ. 


menus and Hé 

The oration of Demosthenés, ὑπὲρ 
importance of this city, especially c. 10, — ἐὰν μὲν ἀναιρε 
οεν, ἰσχυροῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις εὐϑύς ἐστιν εἶναι, ete. 


2 Pausan. iii. 2, 6; iii. 7, 8: viii. 48, 8. 3 Pausan. viii. 89. 2 


446 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


in this war, the more distant town of Orchomenus. with its kin 
Aristokratés, takes the lead. But the facts of td contest eit 
before as with so poetical a coloring, that we cannot venture to 
draw any positive inference as to the times to which they are 
referred. 

Cénus! and Karystus seem to have belonged to the Spartans 
in the days of Alkman: moreover, the district called Skiritis 
bordering on the territory of Tegea,—as well as Belemina Rie 
Maleatis to the westward, and Kary to the eastward and south- 
eastward, of Skiritis,—- forming altogether the entire northern 
frontier of Sparta, and all occupied by Arcadian inhabitants, — 
had been conquered and made part of the Spartan territory? be- 
fore 600 B. c. And Herodotus tells us, that at this period the 
Spartan kings Leon and Hegesiklés contemplated nothing less 
than the conquest of entire Arcadia, and sent to ask fica the 
Delphian oracle a blessing on their enterprise.2 ‘The priestess 
dismissed their wishes as extravagant, in reference to the whole 
of Arcadia, but encouraged them, though with the usual eceive- 
‘ations of language, to try their fortune against Tegea. Flushed 
with their course of previous success, not less than ὧν the Sevens: 
ble construction which they put upon the words of the ober 
the Lacedwmonians marched against σθαι with such entire oot 
fidence of success, as to carry with them chains for the purpose 


1 Alkman, Fr. 15, Welcker; Strabo, x. p. 446. 

That the Skirite were Arcadians is well known (Thuc. v. 47; Steph. 
Byz. v. Σκίρος) ; the possession of Belemina was disputed with Sparta, in 
the days of her comparative humiliation, by the Arcadians: see Plutarch 
Kleomenés, 4; Pausan. viii. 35, 4. 

Respecting Kary (the border town of Sparta, where the d:a3arzpia were 
sacrificed, Thuc. v. 55), see Photius Kapvateta—éoprh ᾿Αρτέμ δυ : δ 
δὲ Καρύας ᾿Αρκάδων οὖσας ἀπετέμοντο Λακεδαιμόνιοι. | 

The readiness with which Karyz and the Maleates revolted against Sparta 
after the battie of Leuktra, even before the invasion of Laconia by the The: 
hans, exhibits them apparently as conquered foreign dependencies of Sparta 
without any kindred of race (Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 5, 24-26; vii. 1, 28} 
Leuktron, in the Maleatis, seems to have formed a part of the territory of 
Megalopolis in the days of Kleomenés the Third (Plutarch, Kleomenés, 6); 
in the Peloponnesian war it was the frontier town of Sparta towards Mount 
Lykzxum (Thue. v. 53). 

8 Herod. i. 66. καταφρονήσαντες ᾿Αρκάδων κρέσσονες εἶναι, ἐχρηστηριᾶζοντφ 
by Δέλφοισι Evi πάσῃ τῇ ‘'Apkudurv xopr. 


BUNES OF ORESTES. 447 


of binding tkeir expected prisoners. But the result was disap 
pointment and defeat. They were repulsed with loss, and the 
prisoners whom they left behind, bound in the very chains which 
their own army had brought, were constrained to servile labor 
on the plain of Tegea, — the words of the oracle being thus 
literally fulfilled, though in a sense different from that in which 
the Lacedemonians had first understood them.! 

or one whole generation, we are told, they were constantly 
unsuecessful in their campaigns against the Tegeans, and this 
strenuous resistance probably prevented them from extending 
their conquests farther among the petty states of Ar radia. 

At length, in the reign of Anaxandridés and Aristé, the suc- 
cessors of Leon and Hegesiklés (about 560 B. C.), the Delphian 
oracle, in reply to a question from the Spartans, — which of the 
gods they ought to propitiate in order to become victorious, — 
enjoined them to find and carry to Sparta the bones of Orestes, 
son of Agamemnén. After a vain search, since they did not 
know where the body of Orestés was to be found, they applied 
to the oracle for more specific directions, and were told that 
the son of Agamemnon was buried at Tegea itself, in a place 
“where two blasts were blowing under powertul const “aint, — 
where there was stroke and counter-stroke, and destruction upon 
destruction.” These mysterious words were elucidated by a lucky 
accident. During a truce with Tegea, Lichas, one of the chiefs 
of the three hundred Spa:.an chosen youth, who acted as the 
movable police of the country under the ephors, visited the place, 
and entered the forge of a blacksmith, — who mentioned to him, 
in the course of conversation, that, in sinking a well in his outer 
court, he had recently discovered a coffin containing a body 
seven cubits long; astounded at the sight, he had left it there 
undisturbed. It struck Lichas that the gigantic relic of afore- 
time could be nothing else but the corpse of Orestés, and he felt 
assured of this, when he reflected how accurately the indications 
of the oracle were verified ; for there were the “two blasts blow- 
‘in the two bellows of the blacksmith: there 


ing by constraint,’ 


! Herod. i. 67; Pausan. iii. 3, 5; viii. 45, 2. 
Herodotus saw the identical chains suspended in the temple of Athén€ 


Alea at Tegea. 


442 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ῳῷ 


was the “stroke and counter-stroke,” in his hammer and anvil, 
as well as the “destruction upon -destruction,” in the murderous 
weapons which he was forging. Lichas said nothing, but re- 
turned to Sparta with his discovery, whick he communicated to 
the authorities, who, by a concerted scheme, banished him under 
a pretended criminal accusation. He then returned again to 
Tegea, under the guise of an exile, prevailed upon the black- 
smith to let to him the premises, and when he found himself in 
possession, dug up and earried off to Sparta the bones of the 
venerated hero.! 

From and after this fortunate acquisition, the character of the 
contest was changed ; the Spartans found themselves constantly 
victorious over the Tegeans. But it does not seem that these 
victories led to any positive result, though they might perhaps 
serve to enforce the practical conviction of Spartan superiority ; 
for the territory of Tegea remained unimpaired, and its auto- 
nomy noway restrained. During the Persian invasion, Tegea 
appears as the willing ally of Lacedxmon, and as the second 
military power in the Peloponnesus ;? and we may fairly pre- 
sume that it was chiefly the strenuous resistance of the Tegeans 
which prevented the Lacedemonians from extending their em- 
pire over the larger portion of the Arcadian communities. These 
latter always maintained their independence, though acknowledg- 
ing Sparta as the presiding power in Peloponnesus, and obeying 
her orders implicitly as to the disposal of their military force. 
And the influence which Sparta thus possessed over all Arcadia 
was one main item in her power, never seriously shaken until the 
battle of Leuktra; which took away her previous means of 
insuring success and plunder to her minor followers.® 

Having thus related the extension of the power of Sparta on 
her northern or Arcadian frontier, it remains to mention her 
acquisitions on the eastern and north-eastern side, towards Argos. 
Originally, as has been before stated, not merely the province of 
Kynuria and the Thyreatis, but also the whole coast down to the 


4 Herod. i. 69-70. 3. Herod. ix. 26. 

3 Xenoph. Hellen. v. 2, 19. "Ὥσπερ ᾿Αρκάδες, ὅταν ued’ ὑμῶν ἴωσι, τά Te 
αὐτῶν σώζουσι καὶ τὰ ἀλλότρια ἁρπάζουσι, etc. 

This was said to the Lacedwmonians about ten years before the battle of 
Σ euktra. 


COMBAT AT THYREA 449 


promontory of Malea, had either been part of the territory of 
Aros or belonged to the Argeian confederacy. We learn fron 
Herodotus,! that before the time when the embassy from Croesus, 
king of Lydia, came to solicit aid in Greece (about 547 B. C.), 
the whole of this territory had fallen into the power of Sparta; 
but how long before, or at what precise epoch, we have no ite 
formation. A considerable victory is said to have been gained 
by the Argeians over the Spartans in the 27th Olympiad or 66% 
5. ον, at Hysie, on the road between Argos and Tegea.? At 
that time it does not seem probable that Kynuria could have 
been in the possession of the Spartans, — so that we must refer 
the acquisition to some period in the following century; though 
Pausanias places it much earlier, during the reign of Theopom 
)us,3 —and Eusebius connects it with the first establishment of 
the festival called Gymnopedia, at Sparta, in 678 B. Ο. 

About the year 547 B.c., the Argeians made an effort te 
-econquer Thyrea from Sparta, which led to a combat long 
memorable in the annals of Grecian heroism. It was agreed 


he two powers that the possession of this territor} 


between t 


should be determined by a combat of three hundred seled 
champions on each side; the armies of both retiring, in ordes 


to leave the field clear. So undaunted and so equal was the 
valor of these two chosen companies, that the battle terminated 
by leaving only three of them alive, — Alkénér and Chromiug 
among the Argeians, Othryadés among the Spartans. The twe 
Areeians warriors hastened home to report their victory, bu 
Othryadés remained on the field, carried off the arms of the 
enemy’s dead into the Spartan camp, and kept his position until 
he was joined by his countrymen the next morning. Botk 
Argos and Sparta claimed the victory for their respective cham- 
pions, and the dispute after all was decided by a general conflict 
in which the Spartans were the conquerors, though not without 
much slaughter on both sides. The brave Othryadés, ashamef 
to return home as the single survivor of the three hundred, fel 
upon his own sword on the field of battle.4 

This defeat decided the possession of Thyrea, which did ne 


—_—_ — .- .--.--- -- - τ ---. ὕ.- 


1 Herod. i. 82. 3 Pausan. ii. 25, 1. * Pausan. iii. 7, 5. 
4 Herod. i. 82, Strab... vill. p. 376. 
VOL. U. 29oc. 


450 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


again pass, until a very late period of Grecian history, under the 
power of Argos. The preliminary duel of three hundred, with 
its uncertain issue, though well established as to the general fact, 
was represented by the Argeians in a manner totally different 
from the above story, which seems to have been current among 
the Lacedemonians.! But the most remarkable circumstance is, 
that more than a century afterwards, — when the two powers 
were negotiating for a renewal of the then expiring truce, the 
Argeians, still hankering after this their ancient territory, de- 
sired the Lacedzemonians to submit the question to arbitration ; 
which being refused, they next stipulated for the privilege of 
trying the point in dispute by a duel similar to the former, at 
any time except during the prevalence of war or of epidemic 
disease. The historian tells us that the Lacedw#emonians ac- 
quiesced in this proposition, though they thought it absurd, in 
consequence of their anxiety to keep their relations with Argos 
at that time smooth and pacific. but there is no reason to 
imagine that the real duel, in which Othryadés contended, was 
considered as absurd at the time when it took place, or during 
the age immediately succeeding. It fell in with a sort of chival- 


'' The Argeians showed at Argos a statue of Perilaus, son of Alkénér, 
killing Othryadés (Pausan. ii. 20,6; 11. 38, 5: compare x. 9, 6, and the 
references in Larcher ad Herodot. i. 82). The narrative of Chrysermus, ἐν 
τρίτῳ Πελοποννησιακῶὼν (as given in Plutarch, Parallel. ellenic. p. 306), is 
different in many respects. 

Pausanias found the Thyreatis in possession of the Argeians (ii. 38, 5). 
They told him that they had recovered it by adjudication; when or by 
whom we do not know: it seems to have passed hack to Argos before the 
close of the reign of Kleomenés the Third, at sparta (220 B. C.), Polyb. 
iv. 36. 

Strabo even reckons Prasie as Argeian, to the south of Kynuria (viii. p 
368), though in his other passage (p. 374) -cemingly cited from Ephorus, it 
is treated as Lacedewmonian. Compare Aanso, Sparta, vol. ii. Beilage 1. 
Ρ. 48. 

Eusebius, placing this duel at a much earlier period (Ol. 27, 3, 678 B. c.), 
ascribes the first foundation of the Gymnopedia at Sparta to the desire of 
commemorating the event. Pausanias (iii. 7,3) places it still farther back 
in the reign of Theopom-us. 

3 Thucyd. v. 41. Τοῖς δὲ Λακεδαιμονίφις τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἐδόκει μωρία εἶναι 
rabre, ἔπειτα (ἐπεϑύμουν γὰρ πάντως τὸ ΓΆργος φίλιον ἔχειν) ξυνεχώρησαν 
hy οἷς ὑξευν, κεὶ ξυνεγρᾶς ἄντο. 


PROPOSITION OF A SIMILAR COMBAT. 451 


rous pugnacity which is noticed among the attributes of the early 
Greeks,! and also with various legendary exploits, such as the 
single combat of Echemus and Hyllus, of Melanthus and Xan- 
thus, of Menelaus and Paris, etc. Moreover, the heroism of 
Othryadés and his countrymen was a popular theme for poets, 
not only at the Spartan gymnopzedia,2 but also elsewhere, and 
appears to have been frequently celebrated. The absurdity at- 
tached to this proposition, then, during the Peloponnesian war, —~ 
in the minds even of the Spartans, the most old-fashioned and 
unchanging people in Greece, — is to be ascribed to a change in 
the Grecian political mind, at and after the Persian war. The 
habit of political calculation had made such decided progress 
umong them, that the leading states especially had become 
familiarized with something like a statesmanlike view of their 
resources, their dangers, and their obligations. How lamentably 
deficient this sort of sagacity was during the Persian invasion, 
will appear when we come to describe that imminent crisis of 
Grecian independence: but the events of those days were 
well calculated to sharpen it for the future, and the Greeks of 
‘he Peloponnesian war had become far more refined political 
schemers than their forefathers. And thus it happened that the 
proposition to settle a territorial dispute by a duel of chosen 
champions, admissible and even becoming a century before, came 
afterwards to be derided as childish. 

The inhabitants of Kynuria are stated by Herodotus to have 
been Ionians, but completely Dorized through their long sub- 
jection to Argos, by whom they were governed as Periccki. 
Pausanias gives a different account of their race, which he traces 
to the eponymous hero Kynirus, son of Perseus: but he does 
not connect them with the Kynurians whom he mentions in 
another place as a portion of the inhabitants of Arcadia It is 
evident that. even in the time of Herodotus, the traces of their 
primitive descent were nearly effaced. He says they were 
“Orneates and Periceki” to Argos; and it appears that the 


1 Herodot. vii. 9. Compare the challenge which Herodotus alleges to have 
been proclaimed to the Spartans by Mardonius, through a herald, just before 
the battle of Platea (ix. 48). 


3 Athens. xv. p. 678. 
ὃ Herod. viii. 73; Pausan. iii. 2, 2; viii. 27,3 


Sei ESOT i 


SA i as te emi gag age 


ἀν HISTORY OF GREECE. 


inhabitants of Ornez also, whom Argos had reduced te the same 
dependent condition, traced their eponymous hero to an lonie 
stock, — Orneus was the son of the Attic Erechtheus.! Strabo 
seems to have conceived the Kynurians as occupying originally, 
not only the frontier district of Argolis and Laconia, wherein 
Thyrea is situated, but also the northwestern portion of Argolis, 
under the ridge called Lyrkeium, which separates the latter from 
the Arcadian territory of Stimphalus.2 ‘This ridge was near the 
town of Ornex, which lay on the border of Argolis near the con- 
fines of Phlius ; so that Strabo thus helps to confirm the state- 
ment of Herodotus, that the Orneates were a portion of Kynu- 
rians, held by Argos along with the other Kynurians in the 
condition of dependent allies and Periceki, and very probably 
also of Ionian origin. 

The conquest of Thyrea (a district valuable to the Lacedzemo- 


nians, as we may presume from the large booty which the Arge- 


1 
| + 


ll 
Was Clie Last 


ians got from it during the Peloponnesian war) * 
territorial acquisition made by Sparta. She was now possesseo 


Hern porion 


of a continuous dominion, comprising the whole soutl 


of the Peloponnesus, from the southern bank ef the river Nedon 
t Thyreatis 


on the western coast, to the northern boundary of 

the eastern coast. ‘The area of her territory, including as it did 

both Laconia and Messenia, was equal to two-tifths of the enttu 
ἱ 

ΧΟ Ὶ 1" 


peninsula, all coverned from the single city, and for the ¢ 


sive purpose and benefit of the citizens ot Sparta. Within 
this wide area there was not a single community pretending to 


independent agency. The townships of the Periceki, and the 


villaces of the Helots, were each individually unimportant; no1 
ΜΝ h | 


do we hear of any one of them presuming to treat w ith a foreign 


ι Pausan. ii. 25, 5. Mannert (Geographie der Griechen und Romer 
Griechenland, book ii. ch. xix. p. 618) connects the Kynurians of Arcadia 
and Argolis, though Herodotus tells us that the latter were Ionians: he gives 
to this name much greater importance and extension than the evidence bears 
put. 


πηγὰς ἐκ Λυρκειυυ "7D κατὰ 
 ω i 


Κυνουρίαν ὄρους τῆς ᾿Αρκαδίας. 
the conjectural reading of ’Apyetac 
Lyrkeium ran between the two, and might, therefore 5 
without impropriety 
8 Thucvd. vi 95. 


STRONG POSITION OF SPARTA. 4538 


late: both consider themselves as nothing else but subjects of 
.he Spartan ephors and their subordinate officers. They are 
indeed discontented subjects, hating as well as fearing their mas- 
ters, and not to be trusted if a favorable opportunity for secure 
revolt presents itself. But no individual township or district is 
strong enough to stand up for itself, while combinations among 
them are prevented by the habitual watchfulness and onscrape- 
lous precautions of the ephors, especially by that jealous secret 
police called the Krypteia, to which allusion has already been 
made. 

Not only, therefore, was the Spartan territory larger and its 
population more numerous than that of any other state in Hellas, 
but its government was also more completely centralized and 
more strictly obeyed. Its source of weakness was the discontent 
of its Perieki and Helots, the latter of whom were not —like 
the slaves of other states——imported barbarians from different 
countries, and speaking a broken Greek, but genuine Hellens, — 
of one dialect and lineage, sympathizing with each other, and as 
much entitled to the protection of Zeus Hellanius as their mas- 
ters, — from whom, indeed, they stood distinguished by no other 
line except the perfect training, individual and collective, which 
was peculiar to the Spartans. During the period on which we 
are at present dwelling, it does not seem that this discontent 
comes sensibly into operation; but we shall observe its manifes- 
tations very unequivocally after the Persian and during the Pelo- 
ponnesian war. 

To such auxiliary causes of Spartan predominance we must 
add another, — the excellent military position of Sparta, and the 
unassailable character of Laconia generally. On three sides that 
territory is washed by the sea,! with a coast remarkably danger- 
ous and destitute of harbors; hence Sparta hau mothing to ap- 
prehend from this quarter until the Persian invasion and its 
consequences, — one of the most remarkable of which was, the 
astonishing development of the Athenian naval force. The city 
of Sparta, far removed from the sea, was admirably defended by 
an almost impassable northern frontier, composed of those districts 
which we have observed above to have been conquered from 


' Xencphon, Hellen iv. 8, 7: φοβούμενος τὴν ἀλιμενότητα τῆς χώρας 


<== ~~ - SE Eg EE 


454 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Arcadia, — Karyatis, Skiritis, Maleatis, and Beleminatis. The 
difficulty as well as danger of marching into Laconia by ihe 
mountain passes, noticed by Euripides, was keenly fet by i ry 
enemy of the Lacedwmonians, and has been powerfull) pate? ἊΣ 
a first-rate modern observer, Colonel Leake.! No site cou | 6 
better chosen for holding the key of all the penetrable panne 
than that of Sparta. This well-protected frontier was αὐνμρόμον 
tute more than sufficient for fortifications to Sparta aye ri ; 
always maintained, down to the times of the despot Nabis, its 


1 Xenoph. Hellen. v. 5, 10; Eurip. ap. Strabo, vill. p. 366 ; Leake, Travels 
1 . νὰ ὦ erat os. 
in Morea, vol. ill. 6. ΧΧΊΙ. p. = ee 
“Tt is to the strength of the frontiers, and the comparatively large extent 
: . = i ee \ ᾿ ary οἱ ce οἱ 
of country inclosed within them, that we must trac the primary caus 
I edgmonian power. ‘These enabled the people, when strengthened 
the Lacedx ἱ ΒΥ. Ι 
by a rigid military discipline, an 
to triumph over their weaker neig 
; “ἀν ἢ ρω 
strength to overawe the disunited repubiic 
᾿ elie | | litur 
centuries to hold an acknowledged military 
state in Greece. “ "νων | VIS into ] ACOA lead to One 
“It is remarkable that all the principal pa in 
, ic] Ὃν » how well the posi- 
a tact which shows at once \ 


1 put in motion by an ambitious spirit, first 
hbors of Messenia, by this additional 
of Arcadia, and at length for 


superiority over every other 
δ Ψ Ψ 


point : this point is Sparta ; 

tion of that city was chosen for the | | ve ᾿ bail 

lapte d especially as lone as it continued to be unwalled, to maintain ¢ 

γυκρμναθρις tel ΟΝ ἡ . eo) t il ans of 

or - hich are the surest means ὁ 

perpetual vigilance and readiness for defence, which are tl urest 
¥ 4 — 


defence of the province, and how well it 


offensive success. " | 
ii f i i the plain οἱ 

“ The natural openings Into , dows 
ἧς ᾿ 4 iver above Sparta may be termed: the 


‘ Sparta are only two; one by the 


upper Eurotas, as the course Οἱ oo rhich, as I have 
other by its only large branch (πα. now the Kelefina, which, as ἃ 
pe ate lai he Eurotas opposit 
already stated, joins t | sie υνεβρ ἀραὶ 
ii All the natural approaches to sparta from tne northw ard lead to 
: | On the side of Messenia, the northerly 


e to the north-eastern extremity of 


Sparta. : 
᾿ \ » wh i ‘these two Vial evs. 
one or the other of t ; onde a abit 
olongation of Mount Taygetum, which joins Mount Lyceum at the pass 
7) " . ͵ i i . lh . " Ὁ " Ὁ ὦ" ' δὴ " 
εἰν dani - the pass of Makryplai, furnishes a continued barrier οἵ the 
of Andania, now the pa vy} 


ti i itting lv of routes 
est kind, admitting onl at é 
ae Arcadia to the south-westward of the modern 


easily defensible; and which, — 
" fr » Cromitis of 
whether from the Crom adia ssi one Maeda 
Londari, from the Steny kleric plain, from the plain of the Pamisu: " r from 
πω ; > valley of the ver Eurotas. 
- Kalamata — all descend into the valley of the up} 
Phere, now Kalamata a 4 ΝΙΝ οὐ ἂν ee πλοῦοι 
nd conduct to Sparta by Pellana. There was, indeed, a branch of the last 
a » ve ‘ i i 
- ntioned route, which descended into the Spartan plain at the modern 
5 ᾿ . * τ . J 
Mistra, and which must have been a very frequent communication between 
Mistra, er) ee ee 
Sparta and the lower part of Messenia ; but, like the other direct — 
ep . Δὲν ᾿ = ᾿ se whi 
Me er Taygetum, it was much more difficult and defensible than those 
ἀμ ᾿ i 4 Ἧ Ὦ =“ Γ] 
¥ have called the natural entrances of the province. 


ACQUIRED ASCENDENCY OF SPARTA. 455 


primitive aspect of a group of adjacent hill-villages rather than a 
regular city. 

When, along with such territorial advantages, we contemplate 
the personal training peculiar to the Spartan citizens, as yet 
undiminished in their numbers,— combined with the effect of 
that training upon Grecian sentiment, in inspiring awe and ad- 
miration,— we shall not be surprised to find that, during the 
half-century which elapsed between the year 600 B.c. and the 
final conquest of ‘Thyreatis from Argos, Sparta had acquired and 
begun to exercise a recognized ascendency over all the Grecian 
states. Her military force was at that time superior to that of 
any of the rest, in a degree much greater than it afterwards came 
to be; for other states had not yet attained their maximum, and 
Athens in particular was far short of the height which she after- 
wards reached. In respect to discipline as well as number, the 
Spartan military foree had even at this early period reached a 
point which it did not subsequently surpass; while in Athens, 
Thebes, Argos, Arcadia, and even Elis (as will be hereafter 
shown), the military training in later days received greater at- 
tention, and improved considerably. The Spartans (observes 
Aristotle)! brought to perfection their gymnastic training and 
their military discipline, at a time when other Greeks neglected 
both the one and the other: their early superiority was that of 
the trained men over the untrained, and ceased in after-days, 
when other states came to subject their citizens to systematic 
exercises of analogous character or tendency. This fact,-—the 
arly period at which Sparta attained her maximum of discipline, 
power, and territory, —is important to bear in mind, when we 


are explaining the general acquiescence which her ascendency 


met with in Greece, and which her subsequent acts would cer- 
tainly not have enabled her to earn. That acquiescence first 
began, and became a habit of the Grecian mind, at a time when 
Sparta had no rival to come near her, — when she had complete 


1 Aristot. Polit. viii. 3.4. Ἔτι δὲ αὐτοὺς τοὺς Λάκωνας ἴσμεν, ἕως μὲν 


αὐτοὶ προσήδρευον ταῖς φιλοπονίαις, ὑπερέχοντας τῶν ἄλλων" νῦν δὲ, καὶ τοῖς 


γυμνασίοις καὶ τοῖς πολεμικοῖς ἀγῶσι, λειπομένους ἑτέρων " οὐ γὰρ τ 


τῷ τοὺς 
»ἔους yupvase ἐν τὸν τρόπον τοῦτον διέφερον, ἀλλὰ ᾿ᾧ μόνον μὴ πρὸς ἀσκουν- 


no Shey sigan ᾿Ανταγωνιστὰ" γὰρ τῆς παιδείας viv ἔχουσι" πρότεκρ» δὲ 
οὐκ εἶχον. 


456 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ly shot ahead of Argos, — and when the vigor of the — 
discipline had been manifested in a long series ν μα aS = 
during the stationary period of other states, and ending a oy 
use the somewha. exaggerated phrase of Herodotus, when s 


' Pela nesus.! 
had subdued the greater part οἱ Peloponnesus. " 
« ἣν - al ξ- Μ e i i ll * ‘ ‘ is 
Our accounts of the memorable military organization ΟἹ Sparta 
« — 


᾿ ἀμ. ΜΌΝ 
are scanty, and insufficient to place the details of it clearly θεῖο 
c me 7} 


Ι ypartans, : aterial points, were 
The arms of the Spartans, as to all ma 


us. But one crand 


not different from those of other Greek hoplites. | — 
observable from the beginning, as an item 1ἢ the 


veculiarity 15 ἡ κυ... ὦ. 
: ' That lawgiver established military divi 


Lykureean institutions. | 7 
3 . . ‘ee 5 ὙΠ] ᾿ yther 

οἰκο quite distinct from the civil divisions, whereas 1n the ¢ 

5 5 ; | 

ἣν » , " " i ; : we 

tates of Greece, until a period much later than that which we 

states ( xreece, 


rere: ὁ | ed, —the ho lites or 
have now reached, the two were conto uinded, 


Γ * BE » tribe 

horsemen of the same t | = 

the field ot battle Every Lacediemonian was bound to mili 
on the ne ‘ ; y ἱ 


or ward being marshalled together 


service from the age of twenty to sixty, and the ephors, 
service ine ag i | 
lition, called to arms all the men 
Herodotus tells us that Lykur- 


tary 
when they sent forth an expe 
within some given limit of age. 4 | 
cus established both the sy ssitia, or public mess, and the enomo 
singe cr TKS OR PONE. λων sparta.2 
tie ; and triakads, or the military subdivisions peculiar to Sparta 
λῷ ξ « c ω ΓῚ ι ὶ i ἢ ἡ τ Ἷ 
The triakads are not mentioned elsewhere, nor can we distin 
make out what they were; but the endmoty was the spec ia 
characteristic of the system, and the pivot upon which all its 
arrangements turned. It was a small company of men, the num- 
€ poy : ’ ἧς a iy ᾧ bens 
ber of whom was variable, being given differently at twenty-five, 
eT P 4“: ξ ‘ ι ν ' 
thirty-two, or thirty-six men, — drilled and practised together in 
: ᾿ ἢ other by a common oath.3 


military evolutions, and bound to ¢ 


αν 1 ἣν κατεστραμ- 
"μὰ ἃ Me chs κα TOAS τῆς ᾿Ἰελοποννήσου ἣν κατέστρα; 
1 Herodot. i. 68. 7d δὲ σφι κα ἀμ, ‘iy 
UEVI) I } ' 
* we ᾿ — gre YS DOL. 
3 Herodot. 1.67: compare Larener: d , ΡΝ μιὰ , 
Concerning the obscure and difficult subject of the military gga 
S “ ὼ , ᾿ ‘ mi rile cre 
of Sparta, see Cragius, Repub. Laced. iv. 4; Manso, Sparta, i. Beilage 18, 
<a, ἃ , - 


' ‘jans, ii. 1: - Arnold’s note on Thucydides, 
p. 224; O. Miiller, Hist. Dorians, iii. 12, Dr. Arnold’s 1 ) 


iG ὃ Γ Ϊ ? IX ¢ , Sau 
Vv 68 μ᾿ and Dr. T hirlw all, History of (areece, vol. ἃ, A Ppe ndix 3, μ )} δ 
Poll i } Id 4 Ol Τῶν A axedatuov Wi’, ἐνωμοτία, καί μόρα. 
᾿ Pollux, 1, 10, 199, if LG μει ͵ ἰ id ‘ 4 Ἷ } 


Ἐνωμοτία ; Xenc tep. Lacon. c. 11; 
compare Suidas and Hesych. v. "Eyaporia; Xenoph. Rep. Lacon ; 


7 - Xenoy ‘Hlen. vi. 4, 12 
Thucyd. v. 67-68; Xenoph. Hellen. 1 — " ι 
Suidas states the endmoty at twenty-five men: in the Lacedemoman 


> which foncht at the first battle of Mantineia (418 B.C.), It seems [9 
army which fonght | 


SPARTAN DRILLING. 457 


Each enémoty had a separate captain, or enomotarch, the strong- 
est and ablest soldier of the company, who always occupied the 
front rank, and led the enodmoty when it marched in single file, 
giving the order of march, as well as setting the example. If 
the endmoty was drawn up in three, or four, or six files, the 
enomotarch usually occupied the front post on the left, and care 
was taken that both the front-rank men and the rear-rank men, 
of each file, should be soldiers of particular merit.! 

It was upon these small companies that the constant and se- 
vere Lacedemonian drilling was brought to act. They were 
taught to march in concert, to change rapidly from line to file, to 
wheel right or left in such manner as that the enomotarch and 
the other protostates, or front-rank men, should always be the 
persons immediately opposed to the enemy.” Their step was 


have consisted of about thirty-two men (Thue. ὦ. c.): at the battle of Leuktra 
of thirty-six men (Xen. Hellen. /.c.). But the language of Xenophon and 
Thucydidés does not imply that the number of each enOmoty was equal. 

' O. Miiller states that the enomotarch, after a παραγωγῇ, or deployment 
into phalanx, stood on the right hand, which is contrary to Xenoph. Rep. Lac. 
11, 9.— "Ore dé ὁ ἄρχων εὐώνυμος γίγνεται, οὐδ᾽ ἐν τούτῳ μειονεκτεῖν 
ἡγοῦνται ἀλλ᾽ ἔστιν ὅτε καὶ πλεονεκτεῖν, --το [6 ἄρχων was the first enomo- 
tarch of the lochus, the πρωτοστάτης (as appears from 11, 5), when the 
endmoty marched in single file. To put the ἡγεμὼν on the right flank, was 
done occasionally for special reason, —}v dé ποτε ἕνεκα Tivo ς δοκῇ ξυμ- 
φέρειν, τὸν ἡγεμόνα δέξιον κέρας ἔχειν, ete. I understand Xenophon’s de- 
scription of the παραγωγὴ, or deployment, differently from Miiller, — it rather 
seems that the endmoties which stood first made a side-movement to the 
left, so that the first enomotarch still maintained his place on the left, at the 
same time that the opportunity was created for the endmoties in the rear to 
come up and form equal front, τῷ ἐνωμοτάρχῇ παρεγγυᾶται εἰς μέτωπον παρ᾽ 
ἀσπίδα καϑίστασϑαι, --- ἴῃ. words παρ᾽ ἀσπίδα have reference, as J ima- 
gine, to the proceeding of the first enomotarch, who set the example of 
side-movement to the left-hand, as it is shown by the words which follow, — 
καὶ διὰ παντὸς οὗτος ἐστ᾽ ἂν ἡ φάλαγξ ἐναντία καταστῇ. The pha- 
lanx was constituted when all the Jochi formed an equal and continuous 
front, whether the sixteen endmoties, of which each lochus was com posed, 
might be each in one file, in three files, or in six files. 

* See Xenoph. Anab. iv. 8, 10, upon the advantage of attacking the enemy 
With ὄρϑιοι λόχοι, in which case the strongest and best soldiers all came first 
into conflict. It is to be recollected, however, that the practice of the Cyre- 
ian troops cannot be safely quoted as authority for the practice at Sparta. 
Xenophon and his colleagues established lochi, pentekosties, and endmotics 

VOL. 11. 20 


58 HISTORY OF GREECE. 
regulated by the fife, which played in martial measures peculiar 
as employed in actual battle as well as in mili- 


to Sparta, and w 
habituated to the move- 


tary practice ; and so perfectly were they 
of the endmoty, that, if their order was deranged by any 
adverse accident, scattered soldiers could spontaneously form them- 
selves into the same order, each man knowing perfectly the du- 
ie place into which chance had thrown him.! 
ger divisions, — the pente- 


ments 


ties belonging to tl 
Above the endmoty were several lar 
kostys, the lochus, and the mora.2 of which latter there seem to 


in the Cyreian army: the lochus consisted of one hundred men, but the 
3, 26: 


numbers of the other two divisions are not stated (Anab. 111. 4, 21; IV. 3 
compare Arrian, Tactic. cap. 6). 

1 The words of Thucydidés indicate the peculiar marshalling of the Lace 
ished both from their enemies and from their allies 


dzxmonians, as disting 
¢ καϑίσταντο ἐς κῦύσμον 


at the battle of Mantineia, — καὶ εὐϑὺς ὑπὸ σπουδὴ 
τὸν ἑαυτῶν, Αγιδὸς τοῦ βασιλέως ἕκαστα ἐξηγουμένου κατὰ vouoy: again, 


σ, 68. 
About the music of the flute or fife, Thucyd. v. 69; Xen Rep Lac )3, 9, 


Plutarch, Lycurg. c. 22. 


2 Meursius, Dr. Arnold, and Rachetti (Della Milizia dei Grechi Antichi, 
Milan, 1807, p. 166) all think that lochus and mora were different names 


for the same division ; but if this is to be reconciled with the statement of 


Xenophon in Repub. Lace. c. 
Peloponnesian war, which appears to be Dr. Arnold’s 


11, we must suppose an actual change of 


nomenclature after the 
opinion, — yet it is not easy to account for. 

There is one point in Dr. Thirlwall’s Appendix which is of some impor 
and in which I cannot but dissent from his opinion. He says, after 


tance, } 
he Spartan military force as 


stating the nomenclature and classification of t 
given by Xenophon, “ Xenophon speaks only of Spartans, as appears by the 
epithet πολιτικῶν," p, 521: the words of Xenophon are, 'Exaory dé τῶν πο- 
λιτικῶν μορῶν ἔχει πολέμαρχον ἕνα, etc. (Rep. Lac. 11.) 

me that Xenophon is here speaking of the aggregate Lace- 


It appears to gat 
including both Spartans and Periccki, — not 


dzmonian heavy-armed force, 
of Spartans alone The word πολιτικῶν does not mean Spartans as distin- 
enished from Perieeki, but Lacedzmonians as distinguished from allies. Thus 
when *hlius, Xenopt all 
aus returns home from the blockade of Phlius, Xenophon tells 


when Agesil i 
To Oo πολιτικὸν οἴκαδε 


us that ταῦτα 
ἀπήγαγε (Hellen. v. 3, 25). 

O Miiller, also, thinks that the whole number of five thousand seven hun- 
dred and forty men, who foucht at the first battle of Mantineia, in the thir- 
Γ the Peloponnesian war, were furnished by the city of Sparta 
ἯΙ. 12. 2): and to prove this, he refers to the very 
tenica of Xenophon, which, as far as it proves 


ποιῦσας τοὺς μὲν συμμώχους UPIKE, 


teenth vear of 
itself ( Hist. of Dorians, lil. 
#91 age just cited from the Hel 


SYSTEMATIC DRILLING RARE [i GREECE. 459 


have been six in all. Respecting the number of each division, 
and the proportion of the larger to the smaller, we find state- 
ments altogether different, yet each resting upon good authority, 
—so that we are driven to suppose that there was no peremp- 
tory standard, and that the endmoty comprised twenty-five, thirty- 
two, or thirty-six men; the pentekostys, two or four endmoties ; 
the lochus. two or four pentekosties, and the mora, four hundred, 
five hundred, six hundred, or nine hundred men, — at different 
times, or according to the limits of age which the ephors might 
prescribe for the men whom they called into the field.' 

What remains fixed in the system is, first, the small number, 
though varying within certain limits, of the elementary company 
ealled endmoty, trained to act together, and composed of men 
nearly of the same age,2 in which every man knew his place ; 
secondly, the scale of divisions and the hierarchy of officers, each 
tising above the other,—the endmotarch, the pentekonteér, the 
lochage, and the polemarch, or commander of the mora, — each 
having the charge of their respective divisions. Orders were 


anything, proves the contrary of his position. He gives no other evidence 
to support it, and I think it in the highest degree improbable. I have al- 
ree 4y remarked that he understands the expression πολιτικὴ χώρα (in Poly- 
bias, vi. 45) to mean the district of Sparta itself as contradistinguished from 
Laconia, — a construction which seems to me not warranted by the passage 
in Polybius. 

1 Aristotle, Λακώνων Πολιτεία, Fragm. 5-6, ed. Neumann: Photius v. 
Aéyoc. Harpokration, Mopa. Etymologic. Mag. Mopa. The statement of 
Aristotle is transmitted so imperfectly that we cannot make out clearly what 
it was. Xenophon says that there were six more in all, comprehending all 
the citizens of military age (Rep. Lac. 11,3). But Ephorus stated the mora 
at five hundred men, Kallisthenes at seven hundred, and Polybius at nine 
hundred (Plutarch, Pelopid. 17; Diodor. xv. 32). If all the citizens compe- 
tent to bear arms were comprised in six mors, the numbers of each mora 
must of course have varied. At the battle of Mantineia, there were seven 
Lacedemonian lochi, each lochus containing four pentekosties, and each 
pentekosty containing four endmoties: Thucydidés seems, as I before 
remarked, to make each enémoty thirty-two men. But Xenophon tells us 
that each mora had four lochi, each lochus two pentekosties, and each pen- 
tekosty two endmoties (Rep. Lac. 11, 4). The names of these divisions 
remained the same, but the numbers varied. 

2 This is implied in the fact, that the men under thirty or under thirty- 
five years of age, were often detached in a battle to pwrsue the light troops 
af the enemy (Xen. Hellen. iv. 5, 15-16). 


41) HISTORY OF GREECR 


transmitted from the king, as: commander-in-chiel, through the 
polemarchs to the lochages,— from the lochages to the pente 
konters, and then from the latter to the enédmotarchs, each of 
whom caused them to be executed by his endmoty. As all these 
men had been previously trained to the duties of their respective 
stations, the Spartan infantry possessed the arrangements and 
aptitudes of a standing army. Originally, they seem to have 
had no cavalry at all,! and when cavalry was at length introduced 
into their system, it was of a very inferior character, no provi- 
sion having been made for it in the Lykurgean training. But 
the military force of the other cities of Greece, even down to the 
close of the Peloponnesian war, enjoyed little or no special train- 
ing, having neither any small compar like the endmoty, consist- 
ing of particular men drilled to act together,—no fixed and 
disciplined officers,-— nor triple scale of subordination and sub- 
division. Gymnastics, and the use of arms, made a part of 
education everywhere, and it is to be presumed that no Grecian 
hoplite was entirely without some practice of marching in line 
and military evolutions, inasmuch as the obligation to serve was 
universal and often enforced. But such practice was casual and 
unequal, nor had any individual of Argos or Athens a fixed mili- 
tary place and duty. The citizen took arms among his tribe, 
under a taxiarch, chosen from it for the occasion, and was placed 
in a rank or line wherein neither his place nor his immediate 
neighbors were predetermined. The tribe appears to have been 
the only military classification known to Athens,? and the taxi- 


' Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 4, 12. 

3 Herodot. vi. 111; Thucyd. vi. 98; Xenoph. Hellen. iv. 2, 19. 

The same marshalling of hoplites, according to the civil tribes *o which 
they belonged, is seen in the inhabitants of Messéné in Sicily as well as of 
Syrakuse (Thucyd. iii. 90; vi. 100). 

At Argos, there was a body of one thousand hoplites, who, during the 
Peloponnesian war, received training in military manceuvres at the cost of 
the city (Thueyd. v. 67), but there is reason to believe that this arrangement 
‘vas not introduced until about the period of the peace of Nikias in the tenth or 
eleventh year of the Peloponnesian war, when the truce between Argos and 
Sparta was just expiring, and when the former began to entertain schemes 
of ambition. The Epariti in Arcadia began at a much later time, after the 
battle of Leuktra (Xenoph. Hellen. vii. 4, 33). 

About the Athenian taxiarchs, one to each tribe, see Adschines de Fale 


{NCREASING TENDENCY TJ COOPERATION. 461 


arch the only tribe officer for infantry, as the phylarch was for 
cavalry, under the general-in-chief. Moreover, orders {rom the 
general were proclaimed to the line collectively by a herald of 
loud voice, not communicated to the taxiarch so as to make him 
responsible for the proper execution of them by his division. 
With an arrangement thus perfunctory and unsystematized, we 
shall be surprised to find how well the military duties were often 
performed: but every Greek who contrasted it with the symmet- 
rical structure of the Lacedsemonian armed force, and with the 
laborious preparation of every Spartan for his appropriate duty, 
felt an internal sentiment of inferiority, which made him willing- 
ly accept the headship of “ these professional artists in the busi- 
ness of war,”! as they are often denominated. 

It was through the concurrence of these various circumstancer 
that the willing acknowledgment of Sparta as the leading state 
of Hellas became a part of Grecian habitual sentiment, during 
the interval between about 600 B. c. and 547 B. c. During this 
period too, chiefly, Greece and her colonies were ripening inte 
a sort of recognized and active partnership. The common 
religious assemblies, which bound the parts together, not only 
acquired greater formality and more extended development, but 
also became more numerous and frequent, — while the Pythian, 
Isthmian, and Nemean games were exalted into a national im- 
portance, approaching to that of the Olympic. The recognized 
superiority of Sparta thus fermed part and parcel of the first his- 
torical aggregation of the Grecian states. It was about the 
year 047 B. c., that Croesus of Lydia, when pressed by Cyrus 
and the Persians, solicited aid from Greece, addressing himself 


Leg. ο. 58, p. 300 R.; Lysias, pro Mantitheo, Or. xvi. p. 147; Demosth. adv, 
Beotum pro nomine, p. 999 R. Philippic. i. p. 47. 

See the advice given hy Xenophon (in his Treatise De Officio Magistri 
Equitum) for the remodelling of the Athenian cavalry, and for the introdue- 
tion of small divisions, each with its special commander. The division inte 
tribes is all that he finds recognized (Off. M. E. C. ii. 2-iv. 9); he strongly 
recommends giving orders, — δεὰ παραγγέλσεως, and not ἀπὸ κήρυκος. 

* Plutarch, Pelopid. c. 23. Πάντων ἄκροι τεχνῖται καὶ σοφισταὶ τῶν mode 
“κῶν ὄντες of Σπαρτιᾶται, ete. ( Xenoph. Rep. Lace. c. 14) ἡγησαῖο ἂν, τοὺς 
δὲν ἄλλους αὐτοσχεδιαστὰς εἶναι τῶν στρατιωτικῶν, Λακεδαιμονίους δὲ μόνουξ 
τῷ ὄντι τεχνίτας τῶν πολεμικῶν “Ὥστε τὼν δεομένων γίγνεπϑει οὐδὲν 
ἀπορεῖται - οὐδὲν γὰρ ὀπρόσκεπτόν ἐστιν. 


462 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


to the Spartans as confessed presidents of the whole Hellenic 
body.! And the tendencies then at work, towards a certain de- 
gree of increased intercourse and cooperation among the dis- 
persed members of the Hellenic name, were doubtless assisted 
by the existence of a state recognized by all as the first, —a 
state whose superiority was the more readily acquiesced in, be- 
cause it was earned by a painful and laborious discipline, which 
all admired, but none chose to copy.? 

Whether it be true, as O. Miller and other learned men con- 
ceive, that the Homeric mode of fighting was the general prac- 
tice in Peloponnesus and the rest of Greece anterior to the 
invasion of the Dorians, and that the latter first introduced the 
habit of fighting with close ranks and protended spears, is a 
point which cannot be determined. Throughout all our histori 
cal knowledge of Greece, a close rank among the hoplites, charg 
ing with spears always in hand, is the prevailing practice; though 
there are cases of exception, in which the spear is hurled, when 
troops seem afraid of coming to close quarters.’ Noris it by any 
means certain, that the Homeric manner of fighting ever really 
prevailed in Peloponnesus, which is a country eminently incon- 
venient for the use of war-chariots. ‘The descriptions of the bard 
may perhaps have been founded chiefly upon what he and his 
auditors witnessed on the coast of Asia Minor, where chariots 


''Ynéac γὰρ πυνϑάνομαι προέσταναι τῆς Ἑλλάδος (Herodot. i. 69): com 
pare i. 152; v. 49; vi. 84, about Spartan hegemony. | a 3 

? Xenoph. Repub. Lac. 10, 8. ἐπαινοῦσι μὲν πάντες τὰ τοιαῦτα ἐπιτηδεύ 
ματα, μιμεῖσϑαι δὲ αὐτὼ οὐδεμία πόλις ἐϑέλει. 

The magnificent funeral discourse, pronounced by Periklés in the early 
part of the Peloponnesian war over the deceased Athenian warriors, includes 
a remarkable contrast of the unconstrained patriotism and bravery of the 
Athenians, with the austere, repuluive. and ostentatious drilling to which the 
Spartans were subject from their earliest youth ; at the same time, it attests 
the powerful effect which that drilling produced upon the mind of Greece 
(Thucyd. ii. 37-39). πιστεύοντε; ob ταῖς παρασκευαῖς τὸ πλέον καὶ ἀπάταις, 
ἣ τῷ ἀφ᾽ ἡμῶν αὐτῶν ἐς τὰ ἔργα εὐψύχῳ" καὶ ἐν ταῖς παιδείαις οἱ μὲν (the 
Spartans) ἐπιπόνῳ ἀσκήσει εὐϑὺς νέοι ὄντες τὸ ἀνδρεῖον μετέρχονται, ete. 

The impression of the light troops, when they first began to attack the 
Lacedwmonian hoplites in the island of Sphakteria, is strongly expressed by 
Thucydidés (iv. 854), --τῇ γνώμῃ δεδουλωμένο. ὡς ἐπὶ Aankedacuom 


ους, ete. ᾿ 
* Xenoph. Hellen v. 4 52: compare iii. 5, 20 


SPARTA AND ARGOS. 463 


were more employed, and where the country was much more 
favorable to them.! We have no historical knowledge of any 
military practice in Peloponnesus anterior to the hoplites witk 
lose ranks and protendeéd spears. 

One Peloponnesian state there was, and one alone, which 
disdained to acknowledge the superiority or headship of Lace- 
damon. Argos never forgot that she had once been the chief 
power in the peninsula, and her feeling towards Sparta was that 
of a jealous, but impotent, competitor. By what steps the de- 
cline of her power had taken place, we are unable to make out, 
nor can we trace the succession of her kings subsequent to Phei- 
dén. It has been already stated that, about 669 B. c., the Ar- 
geians gained a victory over the Spartans at Hysiae, and that 
they expelled from the port of Nauplia its preéxisting inhabi- 
tants, who found shelter, by favor of the Lacedemonians, at the 
port of Mothéné, in Messenia 9 Damokratidas was then king of 
Argos. Pausanias tells us that Meltas, the son of Lakidés, was 
the last descendant of Temenus who succeeded to this dignity ; 
he being condemned and deposed by the people. Plutarch, 
however, states that the family of the Herakleids died out, and 
that another king, named /2gdn, was chosen by the people at 
the indication of the Delphian oracle.3 Of this story, Pausanias 
appears to have known nothing. His language implies that the 
kingly dignity ceased with Meltas, — wherein he is undoubtedly 
mistaken, since the title existed*though probably with very lim- 
ited functions, at the time of the Persian war. Moreover, there 
is some ground for presuming that the king of Argos was even 
at that time a Herakleid, — since the Spartans offered to him a 
third part of the command of the Hellenic force, conjointly with 


' Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 4, 19. * Pausan. iv. 94, 2; iv. 35, 2. 

* Pausan. ii. 19, 2; Plutarch (Cur Pythia nune non reddat oracula, ete. c. 
5, Ρ. 396; De Fortuna Alexandri, c. 8, p. 340). Lakidés, king of Argos, is 
8180 named by Plutarch as luxurious and effeminate (De capienda ab hosti- 
bus utilitate, c. 6, p. 89). 

O. Miiller (Hist. of Dorians, iii. 6, 10) identifies Lakidés, son of Meltas, 
named by Pausanias, with Ledkédés son of Pheidén, named hy Herodotus 
as one of the suitors for the daughter o1 Kleisthenés the Sikyonian (vi 
127); and he thus infers that Meltas must have been deposed and succceded 
by ‘gon, about 560 8. c. This conjecture see:ns to me not much to he 
trusted. 


464 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


their own two xings.' The conquest of Thyreatis by the Spar 

tans deprived the Argeians of a valuable portion of their Peric- 
kis, or dependent territory; but Ornex, and the remaining 
portion of Kynuria,? still continued to belong to them; the plain 
round their city was very productive; and except Sparta, there 
was no other power in Peloponnesus superior to them. Mykenex 
and Tiryns, nevertheless, seem both to have been independent 
states at the time of the Persian war, since both sent contingents 
to the battle of Platza, at a time when Argos held aloof and 
rather favored the Persians. At what time Kleénz became the 
ally, or dependent, of Argos, we cannot distinctly make out. 
During the Peloponnesian war, it is numbered in that character 
along with Orne ;} but it seems not to have lost its autonomy 
about the year 470 B. c., at which period Pindar represents the 
Kleonzans as presiding and distributing prizes at the Ne- 
mean games.4 The grove of Nemea was less than two miles 
from their town, and they were the original presidents of 
this great festival,-—a function of which they were subsequently 
robbed by the Argeians, in the same manner as the Pisatans had 
been treated by the Eleians with reference to the Olympic Agon. 
The extinction of the autonomy of Kleénz and the acquisition 
of the presidency of the Nemean festival by Argos, were doubt- 
less simultaneous, but we are unable to mark the exact time; for 
the statement of Eusebius, that the Argeians celebrated the 
Nemean festival as early as the 53d Olympiad, or 568 Β. c., is 
contradicted by the more valuable evidence of Pindar. 


1 Herodot. vii. 149. 

3 Herodot. viii. 73. 

Strabo distinguishes two places called Ornex ;. one a village in the Argeian 
territory, the other a town between Corinth and Siky6n: but I doubt whether 
there ever were two places so called: the town or village dependent on Argos 
seerus the only place (Strabo, viii. p. 376). 

3 Thucyd. v. 67—vi. 95. 

The Kleénzans are also said to have aided the Argeians in the destruction 
of Mykenz, conjointly with the Tegeatans: from hence, however, we cannot 
mfer anything as to their dependence at that time (Strabo, viii. p. 377). 

4 Pindar, Nem. x. 42. Κλεωνα wv πρὸς ἀνδρῶν τετρώκις (compare Nem. iv. 
i7). KAewvaiov τ᾽ ἀπ᾽ ἀγῶνος, ete. 

δ See Corsini Dissertation. Agonistica, iii. 2. 
whe tenth Nemean Ode of Pindar is on this point peculiarly good evi 


CONQUESTS CF SPARTA FROM ARGOS. 465 


Of Corinth and Sikyén it will be more convenient to speak 
when we survey what is called the Age of the Tyrants, or Des- 
pots ; and of the inhabitants of Achaia (who occupied the south- 
ern coast of the Corinthian gulf, westward of Sikyén, as far as 
Cape Araxus, the north-western point of Peloponnesus), a few 
words exhaust our whole knowledge, down to the time at which 
we are arrived. These Achzans are given to us as representing 
the ante-Dorian inhabitants of Laconia, whom the legend affirms 
to have retired under Tisamenus to the northern parts of Pelo- 
ponnesus, from whence they expelled the preéxisting Jonians 
and occupied the country. The race of their kings is said to 
have lasted from Tisamenus down to Ogygus,! — how long, we 
do not know. After the death of the latter, the Achzan towns 
formed each a separate republic, but with periodical festivals and 
sacrifice at the temple of Zeus Homarius, affording opportunity 
of settling differences and arranging their common concerns. 
Of these towns, twelve are known from Herodotus and Strabo, 
— Pelléené, Agira, Age, Bura, Heliké, Agium, Rhypes, Pa- 
tre, Phare, Olenus, Dymé, Tritza.2 But there must originally 
have been some other autonomous towns besides these twelve 
for in the 23d Olympiad, Ikarus of Hyperésia was proclaimed 
as victor, and there seems good reason to believe that Hyperésia, 
an old town of the Homeric Catalogue, was in Achaia.3 It is 
affirmed that, before the Achzan occupation of the country, the 
Jonians had dwelt in independent villages, several of which were 


dence, inasmuch as it is composed for, and supposed to be sung by Theizus, 
a native of Argos. Had there been any jealousy then subsisting between 
Argos and Kleénz on the subject of the presidency of this festival, Pindar 
would never, on such an occasion, have mentioned expressly the Kleénzans 
as presidents. 

The statements of the Scholia on Pindar, that ihe Corinthians: a; one time 
celebrated the Nemean games, or that they were of old celebrated at Siky5n, 
seem unfounded (Schol. Pind. Arg. Nem., and Nem. x. 49). 

1 Polyb. ii. 41. * Herodot. i. 145: S:rabo, vii. p. 585, 

* Pausan. iv. 15,1; Strabo, viii. p. 385: Homer, Tiad, ii 573. Parsarias 
seems to have forgotten this statement, when he tells us that the name of 
Hyperésia was exchanged for that of Aigeiza, dcring <he time of the fonian 
occupation of the country (vii. 26,1; Steph. ΒΖ. copies, him, %. Aljecpa), 
It is doubtful whether the two names designate the sdmé place, no: Joes 
Strabo conceive that they did. 


VOL. Il. 20* 300c 


466 HISTORY OF GREECE 


subsequently aggregated into towns thus Patra was formed by 
a coalescence of seven villages, Dymé from eight (one of which 
was named Teuthea), and gium also from seven or eight. 
But all these towns were small, and some of them underwent a 
farther junction one with the other; thus A%gw was joined with 
Xgeira, and Olenus with Dymé.! All the authors seem disposed 
to recognize twelve cities, and no more, in Achaia ; for Polybius, 
still adhering to that number, substitutes Leontium and Keryneia 
in place of JE ge and Rhypes ; Pausanias gives Keryneia in 
place of Patra.2 We hear of no facts respecting these Achzan 
towns until a short time before the Peloponnesian war, and even 
then their part was inconsiderable. 

The greater portion of the territory comprised under the 
name of Achaia was mountain, forming the northern descent of 
those high ranges, passable only through very difficult gorges, 
which separate the country from Arcadia to the south, and which 
throw out various spurs approaching closely to the gulf of Co- 
rinth. A strip of flat land, with white clayey soil, often very 
fertile, between these mountains and the sea, formed the plain 
of each of the Achzwean towns, which were situated for the most 
part upon steep outlying eminences overhanging it. From the 
mountains between Achaia and Arcadia, numerous streams flow 
into the Corinthian gulf, but few of them are perennial, and the 
whole length of coast is represented as harborless.’ 


ee 


' Strabo, viii. pp. 337, 342, 386. 3 Polyb. ii. 41 


3 See Leake’s Travels in Morea. c. xxvii. and xxi 


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Columbia Gniversity 
in the City of New Bork 


LIBRARY 


GIVEN BY 


Robert S. Freed men Beqvest 


GREECE 


1. .LEGENDARY.GREECE 
Il. GRECIAN HISTORY TO THE REIGN 


‘GF.PEISISTRATUS AT ATHENS 


eh eae ᾿ BY. 
GEORGE GROTE, ESQ; 


REPRINTED FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION 


ILLUSTRATED 


VOLUME Ill 


= τ΄ Ξ τ NEW YORK 
AA) 


ΤΠ | ' PETER FENELON COLLIER & SON 


Front ispiec €, Greec @, vod, Aree’, M C M [ 


eG 


CONTENTS. 
VOL. ΤΙ. 


PART II. 


CONTINUATION OF HISTORICAL GREECK. 


CHAPTER IX. 


CORINTH, SIKYON, AND MEGARA. —AGE OF THE GRECIAN DESPOTS. 
ROBERT S&S. FREEDMAN BEQUEST 


Early commerce and enterprise of the Corinthians. — ἔκαναν of the 


Bacchiade. — Early condition of Megara. — Early eendition of Sikyén. 
- Rise of the despots. — Earliest changes of government in Greece. — 
Peculiarity of Sparta. — Discontinuance of kingship in Greeee generally. 
— Comparison with the Middle Ages of Europe. — Anti-monarechical 
sentiment of Greece — Mr. Mitford. — Causes which led to the growth of 
that sentiment. — Change to oligarchical government. — Such change 
indicates an advance in the Greek mind. — Dissatisfaction with the oli- 
rchies — modes by which the despots acquired power. — Examples. — 
endency towards a better organized citizenship. — Character and work- 
ing of the despots. — The demagogue-despot of the earlier times compared 
with the demagogue of later times. — Contrast between the despot and 
the early heroic king. — Position of the despot.— Good government 
impossible to him. — Conflict between oligarchy and despotism preceded 
that between oligarehy and democracy. — Early oligarchies included a 
multiplicity of different sections and associations. — Government of 
the Geomori—a elose order of present or past pro rietors. — Classes 
of the people.— Military foree of the early oligarchies consisted of 
eavalry.— Rise of the heavy-armed -songuaia ee of the free military 
marime—both unfavorable to oligarchy. — ian states — Dorian and 
non-Dorian inhabitants.— Dynasty of despots at Sikyén—the Ortha- 
goridx. — Violent proceedings of Kleisthenés. — Classes of the Sikyonian 
a = of the Orthagoride —state of Siky6n after it. — The 
ikyonian despots not put down by Sparta. — Despots at Corinth — Kyp- 
selus. — Periander. — Great power of Corinth under Periander. — Fall of 
the Kypselid dynasty. — Megara — Theagenés the despot. — Disturbed 
vernment at Megara. — The poet Theognis. — Analogy of ge 
pages 1-4 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER X 


IONIC PORTION OF HELLAS. — ATHENS BEFORE SOLON. 


listory of Athens before Drako — only a list of names. — No king after 
Kodrus. — Life archons. —- Decennial archons. — Annual archons, nine in 
number.— Archonship of Kreon, B. 6. 683—commencement of Attic 
chronology. — Obscurity of the civil condition of Attica before Solon. — 
Alleged duodecimal division of Attica in early times. — Four Ionic tribes 
- Geleontes, Hoplétes, Egikoreis, Argadeis. — These names are not 
names of castes or professions. — Component portions of the four tribes. 
—-The Trittys and the Naukrary. — The Phratry and the Gens. — What 
ronstituted the gens or gentile eommunion. — Artificial enlargement of the 

rimitive family association. Ideas of worship and ancestry coalesce. — 

elief in a common divine ancestor. — This ancestry fabulous, yet still 
accredited. — Analogies from other nations. — Roman and Grecian gentes. 
— Rights and obligations of the gentile and phratric brethren. — The gens 
and phratry after the revolution of Kleisthenés became extra-political. — 
Many distinct political communities originally in Athens. — Theseus. — 
Long continuance of the cantonal feeling. — What demes were originally 
independent of Athens. —- Eleusis. — Eupatride, Gedmori, and Demiurgi. 
— Eupatrid originally held all political power. — Senate of Areopagus. 
— The nine archons — their functions. — Drako and his laws. — Different 
tribunals for homicide at Athens. — Regulations of Drako about the 
Ephetx. — Local superstitions at Athens about trial of homicide. — 
Attempted usurpation by Kylon. — His failure, and massacre of his parti- 


sans by order of the Alkmeonids.— Trial and condemnation of the 
Alkmsonids.— Pestilence and suffering at Athens. — Mystic sects and 
brotherhoods in the sixth century B. C. — Epimenidés of Krete. — Epime 
nidés visits and purifies Athens. — His life and character. — Contrast of 


his age with that of Plato....--+++-- esters κυ 


CHAPTER XI. 


SOLONIAN LAWS AND CONSTITUTION. 


Life, character, and poems of Solon. — War between Athens and Megara 
about Salamis. — Acquisition of Salamis by Athens. — Settlement of the 
dispute by Spartan arbitration in favor of Athens. — State of Athens im 
mediately before the legislation of Solon.— Internal dissension — misery 
of the poorer population. — Slavery of the debtors —law of debtor and 
creditor. — Injustice and rapacity of the rich. — General mutiny, and ne- 
cessity for a large reform. — Solon made archon, and invested with full 
powers of legislation. -- He refuses to make himself despot. — His sei- 
sachtheia, or relief-law for the poorer debtors. — Debasing of the money 
standard. — General popularity of the measure after partial dissatisfac- 
tion. — Different statements afterwards as to the nature and extent of the 
seisachtheia. — Necessity of the measure — mischievous contracts tc 
which the previous law had given rise. — Solon’s law finally settled the 
question — no subsequent complaint as to private debts — respect for 


CONTENTS. vit 


eontracts unbroken under the democracy. — Distinction made in an early 
society between the principal and the interest of a loan — interest disap- 
age of in toto. — This opinion was retained by the philosophers after it 
rad ceased to prevail in the community generally. — Solonian seisachtheia 
never imitated at Athens — money-standard honestly maintained after- 
wards. — Solon is empowered to modify the political constitution. — His 
census — four scales of property. — Graduated liability to income-tax, of 
the three richest classes, one compared with the other. — Admeasurement 
of political rights and franchises according to this scale —a ‘Timocracy. 
— Fourth or poorest class — exercised powers only in assembly — chose 
magistrates and held them to accountability. — Pro-bouleutie or pre-con- 
sidering Senate of Four Hundred. — Senate of Areopagus — its powers 
enlarged. — Confusion frequently seen between Solonian and post-Solonian 
institutions. — Loose language of the Athenian orators on this point. — 
Solon never contemplated the future change or revision of his own 
laws. — Solon laid the foundation of the Athenian democracy, but his in- 
stitutions are not democratical. — The real Athenian democracy begins 
with Kleisthenés. — Athenian government after Solon still oligarchical 
but mitigated. — The archons still continue to be judges until after the 
time of Kleisthenés. — After-changes in the Athenian constitution over- 
looked by the orators, but understood by Aristotle, and strongly felt at 
Athens during the time of Periklés. — Ger.tes and Phratries under the 
Solonian constitution — status of persons nut included in them. — Laws 
of Solon. — The Drakonian laws about homicide retained ; the rest abro- 
gated. — Multifarious character of the laws of Solon: no appearance of 
classification. — He prohibits the export of landed produce from Attica, 
except oil. — The prohibition of little or no effect. — Encouragement to 
artisans and industry. — Power of testamentary bequest — first sanctioned 
by Solon. — Laws relating to women. — Regulations about funerals. — 
About evil-speaking and abusive language. — Rewards to the victors at 
the sacred games. — Theft. — Censure pronounced by Solon upon citizens 
neutral in a sedition. — Necessity, under the Grecian city-governments, of 
some positive sentiment on the part of the citizens. — Contrast in this re- 
spect between the age of Solon and the subsequent democracy. — The 
same idea followed out in the subsequent Ostracism. — Sentiment of So- 
lon towards the Homeric poems and the drama. — Difficulties of Solon 
after the enactment of the laws. — He retires from Attica. — Visits Egypt 
and Cyprus. — Alleged interview and conversation of Solon with Croesus 
at Sardis. — Moral lesson arising out of the narrative. — State of Attica 
after the Solonian legislation. — Return of Solon to Athens. — Rise of 
Peisistratus. — His memorable stratagem to procure a guard from the 
people. — Peisistratus seizes the Akropclis and becomes despot — courage- 
ous resistance of Solon. — Death of Solon — his character. — Appendix, 
on the procedure of the Roman law respecting principal and interest in 
a loan of money leaned deta ee oe eb) ae 


CHAPTER XII 


EUB@A. — CYCLADES. 


The islands called Cyclades. — Eubcea. — Its six or seven towns ~~ Chalkis 


Eretria, etc. — How peopled. — Early power of Chalkis, Eretria, Naxoa 


vii CONTENTS. CONTENTS. 


etc. — Early Ionic festival at — J enamel sat npr sg Its — | 

about 560 B.c.— causes thereof. — Homeric Hymn to the elian Apollo 

— evidence as to early Ionic life. — War between Chalkis and Eretria in CHAPTER XV 
early times — extensive alliances of each. — Commerce and colonies of 
Chalkis and Eretria — Euboic scale of money and weight. — Three differ- 


ent Grecian scales — Aiginean, Euboic, and Attic — their ratio to each | 
other.. a a Tm a A EF eeteereesereee ee 103-172 Asiatic Dorians — thei- Hexapolis. -- Other Dorians, not included in the 


Hexapolis. —- Exclusion of Halikarnassus from the Hexapolis. 201-208 


ABIATIC DORIANS. 


CHAPTER XIII. | CHAPTER XVL 


ASIATIC IONIANS. «ATIVES OF ASIA MINOR WITH WHOM THE GREEKS BECAME CONNECTED, 


Indigenous nations of Asia Minor — Homeric geography. — Features of the 


— Emigrants to these cities — diverse Greeks. — Great differences of | country. — Names and situations of the different people. — Not originally 
dialect among the twelve cities. — Ionic cities really founded by different aggregated into large kingdoms or cities. — River Halys — the ethno- 


migrations. — Consequences of the mixture of inhabitants in these colo- graphical boundary — Syro-Arabians eastward of that river. — Thracian 
nies — more activity — more instability. — Mobility ascribed to the Ionic race —in the north of Asia Minor. — Ethnical affinities and migrations. 


race as compared with the Doric — arises from this cause. — Ionic cities — Partial identity of legends. — Phrygians. — Their influence upon the 

in Asia — mixed with indigenous inhabitants. — Worship of Apollo and early Greek colonists. — Greek musical scale — partly borrowed from the 

Artemis — existed on the Asiatic coast prior to the Greek emigrants — Phrygians. — Phrygian music and worship amon the Greeks in Asia 

em. — Pan-lonic festival and Amphiktyony on the promon- Minor. — Character of Phrygians, Lydians, and Mysians. — Primitive 

ἧς Situation of Milétas —of the other Ionie cities. — _ Phrygian king or hero Gordius — Midas.........+-+- ‘ 203--218 

Asiatic villages. — Magnésia on the Mean- 

der — Magnés 3. — Ephesus — Androklus the CEkist— 

first settlement and distributio acquisitions ~ Ephesus.— 

Kolophén, its origin and history. larus, near : 

τρενι εν ανῶαι its οι -— Lebedus, .— Internal : CHAPTER XVII. 

distribution of the inhabitants of Teds. — E 


mense — Phoksea. — Smyrna....-++--eee rere ceees 


Twelve Ionic cities in Asia. — Legendary event called the Ionic migration. 


LYDIANS. — MEDES. — CIMMERIANS. — SCYTHIANS. 


Lydians — their music and instruments. — They and their capital Sardis un- 
known to Homer. — Early Lydian kings. — Kandaulés and Gygés. — The 
Mermnad dynasty succeeds to the Herakleid.— Legend of Gygés in 

CHAPTER XIV Plato. — Feminine influence running through the legends of Asia Minor. 

‘ : — Distribution of Lydia into two parts— Lydia and Torrhébia. — Pro- 
ceedings of Gygés. — His son and successor Ardys. — Assyrians and 

ZOLIC GREEKS IN ASIA. Medes. — First Median king — Détokés. — His history composed of Gre- 

cian materials, not Oriental. — Phraortés — Kyaxarés. — Siege of Nine- 

Twelve cities of Kolic Greeks. — Their situation — eleven near together on we amen “ bd aerate Cees oe ae 
the Elwitic gulf. — Legendary -Kolic migration. — Kymé — the earliest ao ee Se ae eee: — Deena a . = 
as well as the most powerful of the twelve. — Magnésia ad Sypilum. — pales Siege τὶ ΩΝ τ ξυυδδδδι, ὅδ gees λον ise 
Lesbos. — Early inhabitants of Lesbos before the Aolians. — Holic es- ὴ ᾿ς Ῥ y eT chef the Pales Mined en gy 
tablishments in the region of Mount Ida. — Continental settlements of Me is M rides vegans oo on ἐγυδόροχί αν is. ᾿ " iri in the Cri- 
Lesbos and Tenedos. — Ante-Hellenic inhabitants in the region of Mount Cim ; oy τ᾽ 89, : ΨΑ 0 es ᾿ ph pied es aia --- 
Ida — Mysians and Teukrians. — Teukrians of Gergis. — Mityléné — its Cimmerians driven out of their country Dy he Scythians. — Dilicuities 

Reta at : : Power and merit of Pittakus. --- Al- in the narrative of Herodotus. — Cimmerians in Asia Minor. ~ Scythians 
ΕΣ Ἂν πο δίς fight ἥν ».-- Bitter opposition of Pittakus and | = oe ἦν ον ΕΣ ἃ Ὧν ον ΒΝ a banned? Por 
Alkeus in internal politics. — Pittakus is created Aisymnete, or a inst eee’ ‘Aly A sons 8 og ἦα μὴ οὐδ ΝΜ ee a 
of Mitylén€........eeeeeeereeecess awn ‘in 2 ΟΝ epg ἡ eee aes, of Alaa Coen = ὁ 

attacks and conquers the Asiatic Greeks. — Want of codperation among 


CONTENTS. CONTENTS. Za 


the Ionic cities. — Unavailing suggestion of Thalés — to merge the twelve sass i ἱ 

Ionic cities into one Pan-Ionic city at Teds. — Capture of Ephesus. — ag Pah Berar ee Ὁ 
Croesus becomes king of all Asia westward of the Halys. — New and im- tian castes or _—Priests. — The military order. — 
portant era for the ellenic world —commencing with the conquests of arge town population of Egy; 
Crassus. — Action of the Lydian empire continued on a still larger scale a 
by the Persians... --- oe « - 219-263 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


PHENICIANS. interpreters. — 
commerce — G 


Phenicians and Assyrians --- members of the Semitic family of the human | active ope 
race. — Early presence of Phenician νὰν in the Grecian seas—in the Psammis, the so iés. — 
Homeric times. — Situation and cities of henicia. — Phenician commerce Ι means of the nativ e encourages Grecian commerce. — 
flourished more in the earlier than in the later times of Greece. — Pheni- Important factory and religious establishment for the Greeks at Naukra- 
cian colonies — Utica, Carthage, Gadés, etc. — Commerce of the Pheni- tis. — Prosperity of Egypt under Amasis. — Appendix, on the Egyptian 
cians of Gadés —towards Africa on one side and Britain on the other. --- chronology given by Manetho, as explained by M. Boeckh...... 308-342 
Productive region round Gadés, called Tartéssus. — Phenicians and | | ' Ἷ 
inians —the establishments of the latter combined views of em- | 
το with views of commerce. —Phenicians and Greeks in Sicily and 

rus — the latter partially supplant the former. — Iberia and Tartéssus CHAPTER XXI. 
— unvisited by the Greeks before about 630 B. c. — Memorable voyage of 
the Samian Koleus to T'artéssus. — Exploring voyages of the Phokeans, | 
between 630-570 B. c.—Important addition to recian geographical : ; 
knowledge, and stimulus to Grecian fancy, thus communicated. — Circum- Decline of the Phenicians — growth of Grecian marine and commerce. — 
mavigation of Africa by the Phenicians. — This circumnavigation was Effect of Phenicians, Assyrians, and Egyptians on the Greek mind. — 

— The scale of money and weight. — The gnomon — 


DECLINE OF THE PHENICIANS. — GROWTH OF CARTHAGE. 


really accomplished — doubts of critics, ancient and modern, examined. The alphabet. n- 
the division of the day. — Carthage. — Era of Carthage. — Dominion of 


— Caravan-trade by land carried on by the Phenicians......+-+. 264-289 | Ke “a 
ἢ Carthage. — Dido. — First known collision of Greeks and Carthaginians 
~ Massalia. — Amicable relations between Tyre and Carthage.. 342-348 


CHAPTER XIX. 
CHAPTER XXII. 


ASSYRIANS. — BABYLON. 


Assyrians — their name rests chiefly on Nineveh and Babylon. — Chaldeans | WESTERN COLONIES OF GREECE ~~ IN EPIRUS, ITALY, SICILY, AND GAUL 


at Babylon—order of priests. — Their astronomical observations. — | 
Babylonia — its laborious cultivation and fertility. — City of Babylon — " Early unauthenticated emigration from Greece. — Ante-Hellenic population 
its dimensions and walls. — Babylon — only known during the time of its | of Sicily — Sikels — Sikans — Elymi — Phenicians. — Enotria —I 
degradation — yet even then the first city in Western Asia. — Immense —Pelasgi in Italy.— Latins — notrians — Epirots ~ ethnically cog- 
command of human labor possessed by the Babylonian kings. — Collective nate. — Analogy of languages — Greek, Latin, and Oscan.— Grecian 
civilization in Asia, without individual freedom or development. — Gradu colonization of ascertained date in Sicily — commences in 735 B. C.— 
ated contrast between Egyptians, Assyrians, Phenicians, and Greeks. — Cume in Campania — earlier — date unknown. — Prosperity of Cums 
Deserts and predatory tribes surrounding the Babylonians. — Appendix, between 700-500 B. c.— Decline of Cumz from 500 B. c. — Revolution 
Nineveh and its Remains,” by Mr. Layard 290-307 — despotism of Aristodémus. — Invasion of Cumz by Tuscans and Sam- 
nites from the interior. — Rapid multiplication of Grecian colonies im 
Sicily and Italy, beginning with 735 B. C.—— Foundation of Naxos im 
CHAPTER XX. ia Sicily by Theoklés. — Spot where the Greeks first landed in Sicily — 
: memorable afterwards. — Ante-Hellenic — τέο of pre - — 
; ΙΝ tion of Syracuse. — egara in Sicily. — Gela.— 

ne | Zanklé, ‘fterwards colonies — Akra, Ka 


icians — i d Assyria. — mens, Kamarina, etc. — Agrig 
Phenicians — the link of commerce between Egypt and Assyria. — Herodo- nf the Sicilian Greck 


tus — earliest Grecian informant about Egypt. — The Nile in the time of ef the monetary an 


xil CONTENTS. 


adopte 

ment Ὁ 

— Rhégium, Zankle, 

tium. — Siris or Héraklei 

of its foundation. — The 

and territory of ‘Tarentum. 

the Italian Greeks between 

trian population. — Kroton and Sybaris — at their 

Β. c.— The Sybarites — their luxury —their organization, industry, and 
power. — Grecian world about δ Β. “ai te and on, ων ἣν" 
then the most prominent among Greeks. — Consequences of the fall o 

Sybaris. — Krotoniates — their salubrity, strength, tt in the Olympic LIST OF ILL USTR ATI ONS 
games, ete. — Massalia......++++++sesrreereerssseeeeeer ee 349-402 


GREECE 


VOL. III. 
GRECIAN COLONIES IN AND NEAR EPIRUS. ἢ Frontispiece—The Laocoon Group 


hurkyra.— Early foundation of Korkyra from Corinth. — Relations of : Venus of Milo . 5 ᾿ . 
Korkyra with Corinth. — Relations with Epirus. — Ambrakia founded by | Venus of Medici. : 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


Corinth. —Joint settlements by Corinth and Korkyra.—Leukas and The Wooden Horse of Troy. 
Anakto: ‘um. — Apollonia and Epidamnus. — Relations between these 
colonies — Commerce ...-  +++++e+: coccesess 09-410 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


AKARNANIANS. — EPIROTS. 


Akarnanians. — Their social and political condition. — Epirots — comprising 
different tribes, with little or no ethnical kindred. — Some of these tribes 
ethnically connected with those of southern Italy ;—others, with the 
Macedonians — impossible to mark the boundaries. — Territory distrib- 
ated into villages—no considerable cities. — Coast of Epirus discour- 

to Grecian colonization. — Some Epirotic tribes governed by kings, 
RR Se 59 ° 411-418 


HISTORY OF GREECE. 


PART Π. 


CONTINUATION OF HISTORICAL GREECE 


CHAPTER IX. 


ZORINTH, SIKYON, AND MEGARA.—AGE OF THE GRECIAN 
DESPOTS. 


Tue preceding volume brought down the history of Sparta to 
the period marked by the reign of Peisistratus at Athens; at 
which time she had attained her maximum of territory, was con- 
fessedly the most powerful state in Greece, and enjoyed a pro 
portionate degree of deference from the rest. 1 now proceed to 
touch upon the three Dorian cities on and near to the Isthmus, — 
Corinth, Sikyén, and Megara, as they existed at this same period. 

Even amidst the scanty information which has reached us, we 
trace the marks of considerable maritime energy and commerce 
among the Corinthians, as far back as the eighth century B. C. 
The foundation of Korkyra and Syracuse, in the 11th Olympiad, 
or 734 B. c. (of which I shall speak farther in connection with 
Grecian colonization generally), by expeditions from Corinth, 
affords a good proof that they knew how to turn to account the 
excellent situation which connected them with the sea on both 
sides of Peloponnesus: and Thucydides, ' while he notices them 
as the chief liberators of the sea, ir early times, from pirates, also 


' Thucyd. i, 13. 
VOL. Il. 1 loo 


9 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


tells us that the first great improvement in ship-b 1ilding, — - the 
construction of the trireme, or ship of war, with a full deck and 
triple banks for the rowers, — was the fruit of Corinthian inge- 
nuity. It wasin the year 703 B. 6., that the Corinthian Amei- 
noklés built four triremes for the Samians, the first which those 
‘slanders had ever possessed : the notice of this fact attests as 
well the importance attached to the new invention, as the humble 
<cale on which the naval force in those early days was equipped. 
And it is a fact of not less moment, in proof of the maritime 
vigor of Corinth in the seventh century B. C., that the earliest 
naval battle known to Thucydides was one which took place be- 
tween the Corinthians and the Korkyrzans, B. C. 664.! 

Tt has already been stated, in the preceding volume, that the 
line of Herakleid kings in Corinth subsides gradually, through a 
series of empty names, into the oligarchy denominated Bacchiade, 
or Bacchiads, under whom our first historical knowledge of the 
city begins. The persons se named were all accounted descend- 
ants of Héraklés, and formed the governing caste in the city ; 
intermarrying usually among themselves, and choosing from their 
own number an annual prytanis, or president, for the administra- 
tion of affairs. Of their internal government we have no ac- 
counts, except the tale respecting Archias the founder of Syra- 
euse,2 one of their number, who had made himself so detested 
by an act of brutal violence terminating in the death of the beau- 
tiful youth Akta6n, as to be forced to expatriate. That such a 
man should have been placed in the distinguished post of cekist 
of the colony of Syracuse, gives us no favorable idea of the Bac 
chiad oligarchy: we do not, however, know upon what original 
authority the story depends, nor can we be sure that it is accurately 
recounted. But Corinth, under their government, was already a 
powerful commercial and maritime city, as has already been 


stated. 
Megara, the last Dorian state in this direction eastward, and 


' Thucyd. i, 13. 

: Plutarch, Amator. Narrat. c. 2, Ρ. 772; Diodor. Fragm. lib. viii, p. 26. 
Alexander, Attolus (Fragm. i, 5, ed. Schneidewin), and the Scholiast ad 
Apollon. Bhod. iv, 1212, seem to connect this act of outrage with the ex- 
pulsion of the Bacchiads? from Corinth, which did not take place until long 
afterwards. 


SIKY ON. — MEGARA. 8 


tonterminous with Attica at the point where the mountains 
ealled Kerata descend to Eleusis and the Thracian plain, is af- 
firmed to have been originally settled by the Dorians of Corinth, 
and to have remained for some time a dependency of that city 
It is farther said to have been at first merely one of five separate 
villages, — Megara, Herza, Peirza, Kynosura, Tripodiskus, — in- 
habited by a kindred population, and generally on friendly terms, 
yet sometimes distracted by quarrels, and on those occasions 
carrying on war with a degree of lenity and chivalrous confi- 
dence which reverses the proverbial affirmation respecting the 
sanguinary character of enmities between kindred. Both these 
two statements are transmitted to us (we know not from what 
primitive source) as explanatory of certain current phrases: ! 
the author of the latter cannot have agreed with the author of 
the former in considering the Corinthians as masters of the Me- 
arid, because he represents them as fomenting wars among these 
five villages for the purpose of acquiring that territory. What- 
ever may be the truth respecting this alleged early subjection 
of Megara, we know it? in the historical age, and that too as 
early as the 14th Olympiad, only as an independent Dorian city, 


! The first account seems referred to Démén (an author of about 280 B c,, 
and a collector of Attic archeology, or what is called ᾿Ατϑιδόγραφος. See 
Phanodémi, Déménis, Clitodémi, atque Istri, ᾿Ατϑίδων, Fragmenta, ed. 
Siebelis, Preefatio, pp. viii-xi), and is given as the explanation of the locution 
— Διὸς Κόρινϑος. See Schol. ad Pindar. Nem. vii, ad finem; Schol. 
Aristophan. Ran. 440: the Corinthians seem to have represented their 
eponymous hero as son of Zeus, though other Greeks did not believe them 
(Pausan. ii, 1,1). ‘That the Megarians were compelled to come to Corinth 
for demonstration of mourning on occasion of the decease of any of the 
members of the Bacchiad oligarchy, is, perhaps, a story copied from the 
regulation at Sparta regarding the Perieki and Helots (Herod. vi, 57; 
Pansan. iv, 14,3; Tyrteus, Fragm.). Pausanias conceives the victory of 
the Megarians over the Corinthians, which he saw commemorated in 
the Megarian ϑησαυρὸς at Olympia, as having taken place before the Ist 
Olympiad, when Phorbas was life-archon at Athens: Phorbas is placed by 
chronologers fifth in the series from Medon, son of Codrus (Pausan. i, 39, 
4; vi, 19,9). The early enmity between Corinth and Megara is alluded to 
in Plutarch, De Malignitate Herodoti, p. 868, ο. 55. 

The second story noticed in the text is given by Plutarch, Question. 
Gree. c. 17, p. 295, in illustration of the meaning of the word Δορύξενος. 

3 Pausanias, i, 44, 1, and the epigram upon Orsippus in Boeckh, Corpus 
Inscnvt. Gr. No. 1050, with Boeckh’s commentary. 


4 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


maintaining the integrity of its territory under its leader 
Orsippus, the famous Olympic runner, against some powerfal en- 
emies, probably the Corinthians. It was of no mean consideration, 
possessing a territory which extended across Mount Geraneia 
to the Corinthian gulf, on which the fortified town and port of 
Pége, belonging to the Megarians, was situated ; it was mother 
of early and distant colonies, — and competent, during the time 
of Solon, to carry on ἃ protracted contest with the Athenians, 
for the possession of 5 Jamis, wherein, although the latter were 
at last victorious, it was not without an intermediate period of 
ill-suecess and despair 

Of the early history of Siky6n, from the period when it be- 
vame Dorian down to the seventh century B. C., We know nothing. 
Our first information respecting it, concerns the establishment of 
the despotism of Orthagoras, about 680-670 n.c. And it is 
a point deserving of notice, that all the three above-mentioned 
towns, — Corinth, Sikyon, and Megara, — underwent during the 
course of this same century ἃ similar change of government. In 
each of them a despot established himself; Orthagoras in Siky- 
én; Kypselus in Corinth; Theagenés in Megara. 

Unfortunately, we have too little evidence as to the state of 
things by which this change of government was preceded and 
brought about, to be able to appreciate fully its bearing. But 
what draws our attention to it more particularly is, that the like 
phenomenon seems to have occurred contemporaneously through 
out a large number of cities, continental, insular, and colonial, in 
many different parts of the Grecian world. The period between 


650 and 500 B. C., witnessed the rise and downfall of many des- 


pots and despotic dynasties, each in its own separate city. Dur- 
ing the succeeding ‘nterval between 500 and 3o0 B. C., new 
despots, though oceasionally springing up, become more rare ; 
political dispute takes another turn, and the question is raised 
directly and ostensibly between the many and the few, — the 
people and the oligarchy. But in the still later times which follow 
the battle of Cheroneia,in proportion as Greece, declining in 
civic not less than in military spirit, 4 driven to the constant em- 


ployment of mercenary troops, and humbled by the overruling 
‘nterference of foreigners, — the despot with his standing foreign 
body-guard becomes again a characteristic of πιο; a tendency 


EARLIEST GOVERNMENTS IN GREECE. 5 


partially counteracted, but never wholly subdued, by Aratus, 
and the Achean league of the third century B. C. 

It would have been instructive if we had possessed 8 faithful 
record of these changes of government in some of the more con- 
siderable of the Grecian towns; but in the absence of such evi- 
dence we can do little more than collect the brief sentences of 
Aristotle and others respecting the causes which produced them. 
for as the like change of government was common, near about 
the same time, to cities very different in locality, in race of in- 
habitants, in tastes and habits, and in wealth, it must partly have 
depended upon certain general causes which admit of being 
assigned and explained. 

In the preceding volume, I tried to elucidate the heroic govern- 
ment of Greece, so far as it could be known from the epic poems, 
—a government founded (if we may employ modern phraseolo- 
gy) upon divine right as opposed to the sovereignty of the people, 
but requiring, as an essential condition, that the king shall pos- 
sess force, both of body and mind, not unworthy of the exalted 
breed to which he belongs.! In this government, the authority 
which pervades the whole society, all resides in the king ; but on 
important occasions it is exercised through the forms of publi- 
city; he consults, and even discusses, with the council of chiefs or 
elders, —he communicates after such consultation with the as- 
sembled agora, — who hear and approve, perhaps hear and mur- 
mur, but are not understood to exercise an option or to reject. 
In giving an account of the Lykurgean system, I remarked that 
the old primitive Rhetrz, or charters of compact, indicated the 
existence of these same elements; a king of superhuman lineage 
(in this particular case two coordinate kings), — a senate of twen- 
ty-eight old men, besides the kings who sat in it, —and an ekkle- 
sia, or public assembly of citizens, convened for the purpose of 
approving or rejecting propositions submitted to them, with little 
or no liberty of discussion. The elements of the heroic govern- 
ment of Greece are thus found to be substantially the same 88 
those existing in the primitive Lykurgean constitution : in both 
cases the predominant force residing in the kings, — and the fune 


‘See a striking passage in Plutarch, Precept. Reipubl. Gerend. 6. & 
p- 801. 


5 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


tions of the senate, still more those of the public assercbly, bein, 
comparatively narrow and restricted; in both cases the regal 
authority being upheld by a certain religious sentiment, which 
tended to exclude rivalry and to insure submission in the people 
up to a certain point, in spite of misconduct or deficiency in the 
reigning individual. Among the principal Epirotic tribes, this 
government subsisted down to the third century B. c.', though some 
of them had passed out of it, and were in the habit of electing 
annually a president out of the gens to which the king belonged. 

Starting from these points, common to the Grecian heroic 
goverument, and to the original Lykurgean system, we find that 
in the Grecian cities generally, the king is replaced by an oli- 
garchy, consisting of a limited number of families, — while at 
Sparta, the kingly authority, though greatly curtailed, is never 
abolished. And the different turn of events at Sparta admits 
of being partially explained. It so happened that, for five 
centuries, neither of the two coordinate lines of Spartan kings 
was ever without some male representatives, so that the sentiment 
of divine right, upon which their preeminence was founded, 
always proceeded in an undeviating channel. ‘That sentiment 
never wholly died out in the tenacious mind of Sparta, but it 
became sufficiently enfeebled to occasion a demand for guarantees 
against abuse. If the senate had been a more numerous body, 
composed of a few principal families, and comprising men of all 
ages, it might, perhaps, have extended its powers so much as to 
absorb those of the king: but a council of twenty-eight very old 
men, chosen indiscriminately from all Spartan families, was 
essentially an adjunct and secondary force. It was insufficient 
even as a restraint upon the king, —still less was it competent to 
become his rival; and it served indirectly even as a support to 
him, by preventing the formation of any other privileged order 
powerful enough to be an overmatch for his authority. This 
insufficiency on the part of the senate was one of the causes 
which occasioned the formation of the annually-renewed Council 
of Fire, called the Ephors ; originally a defensive board, like the 
Roman Tribunes, intended as a restraint upon abuse of power 
in the kings, but afterwards expanding into a paramount and 


' Plutarch, Pyrrh.c. 5. Arisiot. Polit. v, 9,1 


GOVERNMENT OF SPARYrA. 7 


unresponsible Executive Directory. Assisted by endless dissen- 
sions between the two coordinate kings, the ephors encroached 
upon their power on every side, limited -them to certain speciai 
functions, and even rendered them accountable and liable to 
punishment, but never aspired to abolish the dignity. That 
which the regal authority lost in extent (to borrow the just 
remark of king Theopompus)! it gained in durability: the 
descendants of the twins Eurysthenés and Proklés continued in 
possession of their double sceptre from the earliest historical 
times down to the revolutions of Agis the Third, and Kleomenés 
the Third,— generals of the military force, growing richer and 
richer, and reverenced as well as influential in the state, though 
the directory of ephors were their superiors. And the ephors 
became, in time, quite as despotic, in reference to internal 
affairs, as the kings could ever have been before them; for the 
Spartan mind, deeply possessed with the feelings of command 
and obedience, remained comparatively insensible to the ideas of 
control and responsibility, and even averse to that open discussion 
and censure of public measures, or officers, which such ideas 
imply. We must recollect that the Spartan political constitution 
was both simplified in its character, and aided in its working, by 
the comprehensive range of the Lykurgean disciy“ne, with its 
rigorous equal pressure upon rich and poor, which averted many 
of the causes elsewhere productive of sedition, — habituating the 
proudest and most refractory citizen to a life of undeviating 
obedience, — satisfying such demand as existed for system and 
regularity, — rendering Spartan personal habits of life much 
more equal than even democratical Athens could parallel; but 
contributing, at the same time, to engender a contempt for 
talkers, and a dislike of methodica? and prolonged speech, which 
of itself sufficed to exclude all regular interference of the collective 
citizens, either in political or judicial affairs. 

Such were the facts at Sparta; but in the rest of Greece the 
primitive heroic government was modified in a very different 
manner: the people outgrew, mucn more decidedly, that feeling 
of divine right and personal reverence which originally gave 
wuthority to the king. Willing submission ceased on the par 


t Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 1 


8 HISTURY OF GREEUE 


of the people, and still more on the part of the inferior chieft, and 
with it ceased the heroic royalty. Something like a system or 
constitution came to be demanded. 

Of this discontinuance of kingship, so universal in the political 
march of Hellas, the prime cause is, doubtless, to be sought in 
the smallness and concentrated residence of each distinct 
Hellenic society. A single chief, perpetual and unresponsible, 
was noway essential for the maintenance of union. In modern 
Europe, for the most part, the different political societies which 
grew up out of the extinction of the Roman empire embraced 
each a considerable population and a wide extent of territory 
and the monarchical form presented itself as the only known 
means of union between the parts: the only visible and imposing 
.ymbol of a national identity. Both the military character of the 
Teutonic invaders, as well as the traditions of the Roman empire 
which they dismembered, tended towards the establishment of a 
monarchical chief, the abolition of whose dignity would have 
&-en looked apon as equivalent, and would really have been 
equivalent, to the breaking up of the nation, since the maintenance 
of a collective union by means of general assemblies was 80 
burdensome, that the kings themselves vainly tried to exact it by 
force, and representative government was then unknown. 

The history of the Middle Ages, though exhibiting constant 
resistance on the part of powerful subjects, frequent deposition 
of individual kings, and occasional changes of dynasty, contains 
few instances of any attempt to maintain a large political aggre- 
gate united without a king, either hereditary or elective. Even 
towards the close of the last century, at the period when the 
federal constitution of the United States of America was first 
formed, many reasoners regarded! as an impossibility the appli- 
cation of any other system than the monarchical to a territory 


of large size and pop ilation, so as to combine union of the whole 


See this subject discussed in the admirable collection of letters, called 
the Federalist, written in 1787, during the time when the federal constitution 
of the United States of America was under discussion. — Letters 9, 10, 14, 
by Mr. Madison. 

“Tl est de la nature d’une république (says Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, 
viii, 16) de n’avoir qu’an petit territoire: sans cela, elle ne peut guére 
subsister.” 


LARGE AND SMALL STATES. 5 


with equal privileges and securities to each of the parts. and it 
might, perhaps, be a real impossibility among any rude people, 
with strong local peculiarities, difficult means of communication, 
and habits of representative government not yet acquired. 
Hence, throughout all the larger nations of medieval and modern 
Europe, with few exceptions, the prevailing sentiment has been 
favorable to monarchy ; but wherever any single city, or district, 
or cluster of villages, whether in the plains of Lombardy, or in 
the mountains of Switzerland, has acquired independence, — 
wherever any small fraction has severed itself from the aggre- 
gate, — the opposite sentiment has been found, and the natural 
tendency has been towards some modification of republican 
government ;! out of which, indeed, as in Greece, a despot has 
often been engendered, but always through some unnatural mix- 
ture of force and fraud. The feudal system, evolved out of the 
disordered state of Europe between the eleventh and thirteenth 
centuries, always presumed a permanent suzerain, vested with 
large rights of a mixed personal and proprietary character over his 


1} David Hume, in his Essay xii (vol. i, p. 159, ed. 1760), after remarking 
“that all kinds of government, free and despotic, seem to have undergone 
in modern times (i. e. as compared with ancient) a great change for the better, 
with regard both to foreign and domestic management,” proceeds to say :— 

“But though all kinds of government be improved in modern times, yet 
monarchical government seems to have made the greatest advances towards 
perfection. It may now be affirmed of civilized monarchies, what was form- 
erly said in praise of republics alone, that they are a government of laws, 
not of men. They are found susceptible of order, method, and constancy 
to a surprising degree. Property is there secure; industry encouraged ; the 
arts flourish ; and the prince lives secure among his subjects, like a father 
among his children. There are, perhaps, and have been for two centuries, 
near two hundred absolute princes, great and small, in Europe ; and allow- 
ing twenty years to each reign, we may suppose that there have been " 
whole two thousand monarchs, or tyrants, as the Greeks would hav 
them ; yet of these there has not been one, not even Philip the Seco 
Spain, so bad as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, who were four in 
twelve amongst the Roman emperors. It must, however, be confessed, 
that though monarchical governments have approached nearer to popular 
ones in gentleness and stability, they are still much inferior. Our modern 
education and customs instil more humanity and moderation than the ancient, 
but have not as yet been able to overcome entirely the disadvantages of that 


form of government.” 
1* 


1 ‘ISTORY OF GREECE 


vassals, though subject, also, to certain obligations to wards them 

the immediate vassals of the king had subordinate vassals οἱ 

their own, to whom they stood in the same relation: and in this 
hierarchy! of power, property, and territory blended together, 
the rights of the chief, whether king, duke, or baron, were always 
conceived as constituting a status apart, and neither conferred 
originally by the grant, nor revocable at the pleasire, of those 
ever whom they were exercised. This view of the essential 
nature of political authority was a point in which the three great 
elements of modern European society, — the Teutonic, the Ro- 
man, and the Christian, — all coneurred, though each in a differ- 
ent way and with different modifications ; and the result was, a 
variety of attempts on the part of subjects to compromise with 
their chief, without any idea of substituting a delegated executive 
in his place. On particular points of these feudal monarchies 
there grew up, gradually, towns with a concentrated population, 
among whom was seen the remarkable combination of a republi- 
can feeling, demanding collective and responsible management in 
their own local affairs, with a necessity of union and subordina- 
tion towards the great monarchical whole ; and hence again arose 
a new force tending both to maintain the form, and to predeter 
mine the march, of kingly government.2 And it has been found in 


' See the Lectures of 


iii, p. 187, edit. 1829. | 
2M. Augustin Thierry observes, Lettres sur l’Histoire de France, Lettre 


M. Guizot, Cours d’Histoire Moderne, Legon 30, vol. 


xvi, p. 235: — 

“Sans aucun souvenir de l’histoire Grecque ou Romaine, les bourgeois 
des onzieme et douziéme siécles, soit que leur ville fut sous la seigneurie 
d’un roi, dun comte, d'un duc, d’une évéque ou d’une abbave, allaient droit 
ὰ la république: mais la réaction du pouvoir établi les rejetait souvent en 
arriere. Du balancement de ces deux forces opposées résultait pour la 
ville une sort de gouvernement mixte, et c’est ce qui arriva, en général, dans 
le nord de la France, comme le prouvent les chartes de commune.” 

Even among the Italian cities, which became practically self-governing, 
and produced despots as many in number and as unprincipled in character 
as the Grecian (I shall touch upon this comparison more largely hereafter) 
Mr. Hallam observes, that “the sovereignty of the emperors, though not 
very effective, was in theory always admitted : their name was used in pub- 
tic acts and appeared upon the coin.” — View of the Middle Ages, part i, ch 
3, p. 346, sixth edit. 

See also M. Raynouard, Histoire du Droit Municipal en France, book iii 


ANTI-MONARCHICAL SENTIMENT OF GREECE 1] 


practice possible to attain this latter object, — to comvine regal 
government with fixity of administration, equal law impartially 
executed, security to person and property, and freedom of dis- 
cussion under representative forms, —im a degree which the 
wisest ancient Grezx would have deemed hopeless.! Such an 
improvement in the practical working of this species of govern- 
ment, speaking always comparatively with the kings of anvient 
times in Syria, Egypt, Juda, the Grecian cities, and Rome, — 
coupled with the increased force of all established routine, and 
the greater durability of all institutions and creeds which have 
once obtained footing throughout any wide extent of territory 
and people, has caused the monarchical sentiment to remain pre- 
dominant in the European mind, though not without vigorous 
occasional dissent, throughout the increased knowledge and the 
enlarged political experience of the last two centuries. 

It is important to show that the monarchical institutions and 
monarchical tendencies prevalent throughout medixval and 
modern Europe have been both generated and perpetuated by 
causes peculiar to those societies, whilst in Hellenic societies such 
causes had no place, —in order that we may approach Hellenic 
phenomena in the proper spirit, and with an impartial estimate 
of the feeling universal among Greeks towards the idea of a king. 
The primitive sentiment entertained tewards the heroic king died 


ch. 12, vol. ii, p. 156: “ Cette séparation essentielle εἰ fondamentale entre 
les actes, les agens, du gouvernement — et les actes, les agens de |’adminis- 
tration locale pour les affaires locales — cette démarcation pclitique, dont 
Pempire Romain avoit donné |’exemple, et qui concilioit le gouvernement 
monarchique avec une administration populaire — continua plus ou moins 
expressément sous les trois dynasties.” 

M. Raynouard presses too far his theory of the continuous preservacion 
of the municipal powers in towns from the Roman empire down to the third 
French dynasty ; but into this question it is not necessary for my purpose 
to enter. 

! In reference to the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, M. Sismondi 
observes, speaking of Philip della Torre, denominated signor by the people of 
Como, Vercelli, and Bergamo, “Dans ces villes, non plus que dans celles 
que son frére s’était auparavant assujetties, le peuple ne croyoit point renon- 
cer ἃ sa liberté: il n’avoit point voulu choisir un maitre, mais seulement un 
protecteur contre les nobles, un capitaine des gens de guerre, et un chef de 
la justice. L’expérience lui apprit trop tard, que ces prérogatives réunies 
ronstituoient un souverain.” — Républiques Italiennes, vol. iii, ch. 20, p. 27% 


12 HISTORY OF GREECE 


out, passing first into ‘ndifference, next, — after experience of the 
despots, — into determined antipathy. 

To an historian like Mr. Mitford, full of English ideas respect- 
mg government, this anti-monarchical feeling appears of the 
nature of insanity, and the Grecian communities like madmen 
without a keeper: while the greatest of all benefactors is the 
hereditary king, who conquers them from without, —the second- 
best is the home-despot, who seizes the acropolis and puts his 
fellow-citizens under coercion. There cannot be a more certai: 
way of misinterpreting and distorting Grecian phenomena tha.. 
to read them in this spirit, which reverses the maxims both of 
prudence and morality current ἢ the ancient world. The hatred 
of kings as it stood among the Greeks, whatever may be thought 
about a similar feeling now, was ἃ preéminent virtue, flowing 
directly from the noblest and wisest part of their nature: it was 
a consequence of their deep conviction of the necessity of univer- 
sal legal restraint — it was a direct expression of that regulated 
d the control of individual passion from 
1 most of all from him to whom 


sociality which require 
every one without exception, an 
power was confided. The conception which the Greeks formed 


of an unresponsible One, or of a king who could do no wrong, 
may be expressed in the pregnant words of Herodotus :! “ He 
subverts the customs of the country: he violates women: he 
puts men to death without trial.” No other conception of the 
probable tendencies of kingship was justified either by a general 
knowledge of human nature, or by political experience as it stood 
from Solon downward: no other feeling than abhorrence could 
be entertained for the character so conceived: no other than a 
man of unprincipled ambition would ever seek to invest himself 
with it. 

Gur larger political experience has taught us to modify this 
opinion by showing ‘hat. under the conditions of monarchy in the 
best governments of modern Europe, the enormities described by 
Herodotus do not take place, — and that it is possible, by means 
of representative constitutions acting under a οἱ rtain force of 


manners, customs, and historical recollection, to obviate many of 


1 Herod. iii, 80. Νοριαέω re κινεὶ πάτρια, 


ἀκοίτους. 


καὶ βιᾶται γυναῖκας, κτείνει τά 


HATRED OF MONARCHS AMONG THE GREEKS. 13 


the mischiefs likely to flow from proclaiming the duty of perempfr 
tery obedience to an hereditary and unresponsible king, whe 
cannot be changed without extra-constitutional force. But such 
larger observation was not open to Aristotle, the wisest as well 
as the most cautious of ancient theorists; nor if it had been open, 
could he have applied with assurance its lessons to the govern- 
ments of the single cities of Greece. The theory of a somali 
tional king, especially as it exists in England, would hawe 
appeared to him impracticable: to establish a king who will reign 
without governing, —in whose name all government is carried 
on, yet whose personal will is in practice of little or no effect, — 
exempt from all responsibility, without making use of the scenes 
tion, — receiving from every one unmeasured demonstrations of 
homage, which are never translated into act except within the 
bounds of a known law, —surrounded with all the pa:apher- 
nalia of power, yet acting as a passive instrument in the hands 
of ministers marked out for his choice by indications which he is 
not at liberty to resist. This remarkable combination of the 
fiction of superhuman grandeur and license with the reality of an 
invisible strait-waistcoat, is what an Englishman has in his mind 
when he speaks of a constitutional king: the events of our history 
have brought it to pass in England, amidst an aristocracy the 
most powerful that the world has yet seen, — but we have still to 
learn whether it can be made to exist elsewhere, or whether the 
occurrence of a single king, at once able, aggressive, and resolute 
may not suffice to break it up. ‘To Aristotle, certainly, it nol 
not have appeared otherwise than unintelligible and impractica- 
ble: not likely even in a single case, — but altogether inconceiv- 
able as a permanent system and with all the diversities of temper 
ge in the successive members of an hereditary dynasty 
Then the Greeks thought of a man exempt from leg 28 si- 
bility, they conceived him as really and ree Hig ‘hake 
; 
well as in name, with a defenceless community exposed to his 
oppressions ;! and their fear and hatred of him was measured by 


: Euripides (Supplices, 429) states plainly the idee of a “ὕραννος, as 
received in Greece the antithesis to laws :— 
Οὐδὲν τυράννου δυσμενέστερον πόλει" 

Ὅπον, τὸ μὲν πρώτιστον, οὔκ εἰσιν νόμοι 

Κοινοὶ, κρατεὶ δ᾽ εἰς, τὸν νόμον κεκτημένος 

Αὐτὸς παρ᾽ αὐτῷς Compare Soph. Antigus. 737, 


14 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


their reverence for a government of equal law and free speech, 
with the ascendency of which their whole hopes of security were 
associated, — in the democracy of Athens more perhaps than in 
any other portion of Greece. And this feeling, as it was one of 
the best in the Greek mind, so it was also one of the most widely 
spread, — a point of unanimity highly valuable amidst so many 
points of dissension. We cannot construe or criticize it by 
reference to the feelings of modern Europe, still less to the very 
peculiar feelings of England, respecting kingship: and it is the 
application, sometimes explicit and sometimes tacit, of this un- 
suitable standard, which renders Mr. Mitford's appreciation of 
Greek polities so often incorrect and unfair. 

When we try to explain the course of Grecian affairs, not from 
the circumstances of other societies, but from those of the Greeks 
themselves, we shall see good reason for the discontinuance as 
well as for the dislike of kingship. Had the Greek mind been 
as stationary and unimproving as that of the Orientals, the dis- 
content with individual kings might have led to no other change 
than the deposition of a bad king in favor of one who promised 
to be better, without ever extending the views of the people to 
any higher conception than that of a personal government. But 
the Greek mind was of a progressive character, capable of 
conceiving and gradually of realizing amended social combina- 
tions. Moreover, it is in the nature of things that any govern- 
ment, — regal, oligarchical, or democratical, — which comprises 
only a single city, is far less stable than if it embraced a wider 
surface and a larger population: and when that semi-religious and 
mechanical submission, which made up for the personal deficiencies 


g, became too feeble to serve as 8 working 


0 and 11, in which the 


rule of the 

compare also iv, 8, 2-3. 

his judgment, no king at all: 

ἐστιν εἶδος καϑάπερ εἴπομεν βασιλείας (iii, 11, 1). 

Respecting lsovopin, ἰσηγορίη, παρρησία, --- equal laws and equal speech, 
—as opposed to monarchy, see Herodot. iii, 142, v. 78-92; Thucyd. iii, 62; 
Demosthen. ad Leptin. c. 6, p. 461 ; Eurip. Ion. 671. 

Of Timoleon it was stated, as a part of the grateful vote passed after his 
death by the Syracusan assembly, — ὅτε τοὺς τυράννους καταλύσας, --- ἀπέδωκε 
τοὺς νόμους τοῖς Σικελιώταις (Plutarch. Timoleon. c. 39). 

See Karl Fried. Hermann, Griech. Staats Alterthdmer, sect 61-65. 


ΓΠΕ HEROIC MONARCHY PASSES INTO AN OLIGARCHY. le 


principle, the petty prince was in too close contact with his 
people, and too humbly furnished out in every way, to get up 8 
prestige or delusion of any other kind: he had no means cf over- 
awing their imaginations by that combination of pomp, seclusion, 
and mystery, which Herodotus and Xenophon so well appreciate 
among the artifices of kiageraft.! As there was no new feeling upon 
which a perpetual chief could rest his power, so there was nothing 
in the circumstances of the community which rendered the main- 
tenance of such a dignity necessary for visible and effective 
union:2 in a single city, and a small circumjacent community, 
collective deliberation and general rules, with temporary and 
responsible magistrates, were practicable without difficulty. 

To maintain an umresponsible king, and then to contrive 
accompaniments which shall extract from him the benefits of 
responsible government, is im reality a highly complicated system, 
‘hough, as has been remarked, we have become familiar with it 
in modern Europe: the more simple and obvious change is, to 
substitute ene or more temporary and responsible magistrates in 
place of the king himself. Such was the eourse which afhairs 
teak in Greece. The inferier chiefs, whe had originally served 
as council to the king, found it possible te supersede him, and to 
alternate the functions of administratien among themselves; 
retaining probably the occasional eonveeation of the general 
assembly, as it had existed b«‘ore, aud with as little practical efii- 
cacy. Such was in substance the character of that mutation 
which occurred generally throughout the Grecian states, with the 
exception of Sparta: kingship was abolished, and an oligarchy 
took its place, — a council deliberating collectively, deciding gen- 
eral matters by the majority of γόϊοδα, and Addy some individ 
uals of their own body as temporary and accountable adminis- 


1 See the account of Deiokés, the first Median king, i: Herodota, ὦ. 
vidently an outline drawn by Grecian imagination : also, the Cyropedia 
of Xenophon, viii, 1, 40; viii, 3, 1-14; vii, 5, 37.... οὐ τούτῳ μόνῳ ἐνό- 
μιζε (Κῦρος) χρῆναι τοὺς ἄρχοντας τῶν ἀρχομένων διαφέρειν τῷ βελτίωνας 
αὐτῶν εἶναι, ἀλλὰ καὶ καταγοητεύειν ᾧετο χρῆναι αὐτοὺς, etc. 

3 David Hume, Essay xvii, On the Rise and Progress of the Arts and 
Sciences, p. 198, ed. 1760. The effects of the greater or less extent of ter- 
ritory, upon the nature of the government. are also well discussed in Destuté 
Tracy Commentaire sur I'Esprit des Loix de Montesquieu, ch. viil. 


18 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


trators. It was always an oligarchy which arose on the defeas 
ance of the heroic kingdom: the age of democratical movement 
was yet far distant, and the condition of the people — the general 
body of freemen — was not immediately altered, either for better 
or worse, by the revolution; the small number of privileged 
,ersons, among whom the kingly attributes were distributed and 
put in rotation, being those nearest in rank to the king himself, 
perhaps members of the same large gens with him, and pretend- 
ing to a common divine or heroic descent. As far as we can make 
out, this change seems to have taken place in the natural course 
of events and without violence. Sometimes the kingly lineage 
died out and was not replaced; sometimes, on the death of a 
king, his son and successor was acknowledged! only as archon, 
or perhaps set aside altogether to make room for a prytanis, or 
president, out of the men of rank around. 

At Athens, we are told that Kodrus was the last king, and 
that his descendants were recognized only as archons for life ; 
after some years, the archons for life were replaced by archons 
for ten years, taken from the body of Eupatride, or nobles ; sub- 
sequently, the duration of the archonship was farther shortened 
to one year. At Corinth, the ancient kings are said to have 
passed in like manner into the oligarchy of the Bacchiade, out 
of whom an annual prytanis was chosen. We are only able to 
make out the general fact of such a change, without knowing 
how it was brought about, — our first historical acquaintance with 
the Grecian cities beginning with these oligarchies. 


» 


' Aristot. Polit. iii, 9,7; ui, 10, 7-8. 

M. Augustin Thierry remarks, in a similar spirit, that the great political 
change, common to so large a portion of mediwval Europe in the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries, whereby the many different communes or city con 
stitutions were formed, was accomplished under great varieties of manner 
and circumstance; sometimes by violence, sometimes by harmonious accord. 

“ Mest une controvers¢ qui doit finir, que celle des franchises municipales 
obtenues par insurrection et des franchises municipales accordées. Quelque 
face du probléme qui on envisage, il reste bien entendu que les constitutions 
urbaines du xii et du xiii sitele, comme toute espéce d’institutions politiques 
dans tous les temps, ont pu s’établir ἃ force ouverte, s’octroyer de guerre lasse 
ou de plein gre, étre arrachées ou sollicitées, vendues ou données gratuite- 
ment : les grandes revolutions sociales s’'accomplissent par tous ces moyens 
ἃ la fois. — (Aug. Thierry, Réecits des Temps Merovingiens, Preface, p. 19 


Site slit. ) 


EARLY OLIGARCHIES IN GREECE 7 


Such oligarchical governments, varying in their details but 
analogous in general features, were common throughout the cities 
of Greece proper as well as of the lonies, throughout the seventh 
century Β. 6. Though they had little immediate tendency to 
benefit the mass of the freemen, yet when we compare them with 
the antecedent heroic government, they indicate an important ad- 
vance, — the first adoption of a deliberate and preconceived sys 
tem in the management of public affairs.!. They exhibit the first 
evidences of new andimportant political ideas in the Greek mind, 
— the separation of legislative and executive powers ; the former 
vested in a collective body, not merely deliberating but also final- 
ly deciding, — while the latter is confided to temporary individual 
magistrates, responsible to that body at the end of their period 
of office. We are first introduced to a community of citizens, 
according to the definition of Aristotle, — men qualified, and think- 
ing themselves qualified, to take turns in command and obedience: 
the collective sovereign, called The City, is thus constituted. It 
is true that this first community of citizens comprised only a small 
proportion of the men personally free, but the ideas upon which it 
was founded began gradually to dawn upon the minds of all. 
Political power had lost its heaven-appointed character, and had 
become an attribute legally communicable as well as determined 
to certain definite ends; and the ground was thus laid for those 
thousand questions which agitated so many of the Grecian cities 
during the ensuing three centuries, partly respecting its apportion- 
ment, partly respecting its employment, — questions sometimes 
raised among the members of the privileged oligarchy itself, 
sometimes between that order as a whole and the non-privileged 
Many. The seeds of those popular movements, which valled 
forth so much profound emotion, so much bitter antipathy, so 
much energy and talent, throughout the Grecian world, with 
different modifications in each particular city, may thus be traced 


1 ἦς 13 858 - ἢ" ᾿ ᾿ “ΠῚ "ΝΠ. 
Aristot. Polit. iii, 10,7, Ἐπεὶ dé (i.e. after the early kings had had 
their day) συνέβαινε γίγνεσϑι πολλοὺς ὁμοίους πρὸς ἀρετὴν, οὔκετι ὑπέμενον 


(τὴν βασίλειαν), ἀλλ᾽ ἐζήτευν κοινόν τι, καὶ πολίτειαν καϑίστασαν. 

Κοινὸν τε, a commune, the στοαὶ object for which the European towns in 
the Middle Ages, in the twelfth century, struggled with so much energy, 
and ultimately obtained : a charter of incorporation, and a qualified privilege 
uf internal self-government. 


VOL. IIL 


ig HISTORY OF GREECE 


tack to that early revolution which erected the primitive oligas 
ehy upon the ruins of the heroic kingdom. 

How these first oligarchies were administered we have nc direct 
information; but the narrow and anti-popular interests naturally 
belonging to a privileged few, together with the general violence 
ef private manners and passions, leave us no ground for presuming 
favorably respecting either their prudence or their good feeling ; 
and the facts which we learn respecting the condition of Attica 
prior to the Solonian legislation (to be recounted in the next chap- 
ter) raise inferences all of an untavorable character. 

The first shock which they received, and by which so many of 
them were subverted, arose from the usurpers called Despots, who 
employed the prevaleut discontents both as pretexts and as aids 
for their own personal ambition, while their very frequent success 
reems to imply that such discontents were wide-spread as well as 
serious. ‘These despots arose out of the bosom of the oligarchies, 
but not all in the same manner.! Sometimes the executive mag- 
‘strate, upon whom the oligarchy themselves had devolved im 
portant administrative powers for a certain temporary pericd, 
became unfaithful to his choosers, and acquired suflicient ascen- 
dency to retain his dignity permanently in spite of them, — per- 
haps even to transmit it to his son. In other places, and seem- 
‘ngly more often, there arose that noted character called the 

Vemagogue, of whom historians both ancient and modern com- 
wonly draw so repulsive a picture :° a man of energy and ambition, 
sometimes even a member of the oligarchy itself, who stood for- 
ward as champion of the grievances and sufferings of the non- 
nvivileged Many, acquired their favor, and employed their 


' The definition of a despot is given in Cornelius Nepos, Vit. Miltiadis, 
~. 8: “Omnes habentur et dicuntur tyranni, qui potestate sunt perpetua in 
*4 civitate, que libertate usa est: compare Cicero de Republic4, ii, 26, 27 ; 


i, 14. 

The word τύραννος was said by Hippias the sophist to have first found its 
way into the Greek language about the time of Archilochus (B. c. 660): 
Boeckh thinks that it came from the Lydians or Phyrgians (Comment. ad 
Corp. Inscrip. No. 3439). 

3 Aristot. Polit. v, 8,2, 3,4. Τύραννος -- ἐκ προστατίκης ῥίζης καὶ οὐκ 
ἄλλοϑεν ἐκβλαστάνει (Plato, Repub. viii, c. 17, p. 565). Οὐδενὶ γὰρ δὴ ἄδτ- 
λον, ὅτι πᾶς τύραννος ἐκ δημοκόλακος φύεται (Dionys. Halic. vi, 60): 2 
propesition decidedly too yeneral. 


JIFFERENT WAYS IN WHICH THE DESPOTS AROSE. 19 


strength so effectively as to put down the oligarchy by force, and 
constitute himself despot. A third form of despot, some pre- 
sumptuous wealthy man, like Kylon at Athens, without even the 
pretence of popularity, was occasionally emboldened by the suc- 
cess of similar adventures in other places to hire a troop of re- 
tainers and seize the acropolis ; and there were examples, though 
rare, of a fourth variety, — the lineal descendant of the ancient 
kings, — who, instead of suffering himself to be restricted or 
placed under control by the oligarchy, found means to subjugate 
them, and to extort by force an ascendency as great as that which 
his forefathers had enjoyed by consent. To these must be added, 
in several Grecian states, the /®symnéte, or Dictator, a citizen 
formally invested with supreme and unresponsible power, placed 
in command of the military force, and armed with a standing 
body-guard, but only for a time named, and in order to deal with 
some urgent peril or ruinous internal dissension.! The person 
thus exalted, always enjoying a large measure of vonfidence, and 
generally a man of ability, was sometimes so successful, or made 
himself so essential to the community, that the term of his office 
was prolonged, and he became practically despot for life; or, even 
if the community were not disposed to concede to him this per- 
— we he was often strong enough to keep it against 

Such were the different modes in which the numerous Greek 
jespots of the seventh and sixth centuries B. c. acquired their 
power. Though we know thus much in general terms from the 
brief statements of Aristotle, yet, unhappily, we have no contem- 
porary picture of any one of these communities, so as to give us 
the means of appreciating the change in detail. Of those per- 
sons who, possessing inherited kingly dignity, stretched their 
paternal power so far as to become despots, Aristotle gives us 
rheidén of Argos as an example, whose reign has been already 
nac~gied in the preceding volume: of those who made themselves 


iy Aristot. iii, 9, 5; iii, 10, 1-10; iv, 8, 2. Αἰσυμνῆται ---- αὐτοκράτορες 
ovapxot ἐν τοῖς ἀρχαίοις "Ἕλλησι --- αἱρετὴ τυραννίς : compare Theophrastus, 
“ragment. περὶ Βασιλείας, and Dionys. Hal. A. R. v, 73-74; Strabo, xiii, Ρ. 
e-7, amd Aristot. Fragment. Rerum Publicarum, ed. Neumann, p. 19%, 
hte oy Πολιτεία. 


ay HISTORY OF GREECE 


despots by means of official power previously held under an ol 


garchy, he names Phalaris, at Agrigentum, and the despots at 


Miletus and other cities of the Ionic Greeks: of those who raised 


becoming demagogues, he specifies Panztius in the 
lus at Corinth, and Peisistratus 
sen despots, Pittakus of Mity- 
The military and aggressive 
hy which had degraded and ill- 
spot for several years, and at 


themselves by 
Sicilian town of Leontini, Kypse 
at Athens;! of Ausymnetes, or cho 
léné is the prominent instance. 
demagogue, subverting an oligarc 
used him, governing as ἃ cruel de 
last dethroned and slain, is farther depicted by Dionysius of Hal- 
ikarnassus, in the history of Aristodémus of the Italian Cumez.2 
From the general statement of Thucydides as well as of Aris 
totle, we learn that the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. were 
centuries of progress for the Greek cities generally, in wealth, 
in power, and in population ; and the numerous colonies founded 
during this period, of which 1 shall speak in a future chapter, 
will furnish farther illustration of such progressive tendencies. 
Now the changes just mentioned in the Grecian governments, 
imperfectly as we know them, are on the whole decided evidences 
of advancing citizenship. For the heroic government, with 
which Grecian communities begin, is the rudest and most infan- 
tine of all governments ; destitute 6 
tem or security, incapable of being in any way foreknown, and 
depending only upon the accidental variations in the character of 
the reigning individual, who, in most cases, far from serving as ἃ 
gainst the rich and great, was likely to in- 
unrestrained way as the latter, and 


ven of the pretence of sys 


ceeded and supplanted 
governed on principles 
usually narrow l, “ taking 
no thought —— to use t 


for their own body and their 


» Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 2, 3,45 > 4, 5. Aristotle refers to one of the songs 
ef Alkus as his evidence respecting the elevation of Pittakus: a very suf- 
ficient proof doubtless, — but we may see that he had no other informants, 


except the pocts, about these early times. 
?Dionys. Hal. A R. vii, 2, 12. The reign of Aristecemus falls about 


610 B. Cc. 
1 Vol. 3 


CHARACTER AND WORKING OF THE DESPOTS. 21 


not strng enough to crush the Greek mind, imprinted upon it a 
painful but improving political lesson, and contributed much to 
enlarg+ the range of experience as well as to determine the sub- 
— cast of feeling.! They partly broke down the wall of 
distinction between the people — properly so called, the g 

mass of freemen — and the Paci i the pelea 
despots are interesting, as the first evidence of the erowinu ὧν 
portance of the people in political affairs. The demagogue stood 
forward as representing the feelings and interests of the people 
against the governing few, probably availing himself of some 
special cases of ill-usage, and taking pains to be conciliatory and 
generous in his own personal behavior ; and when the people, by 
their armed aid, had enabled him to overthrow the existing rulers, 
they had thus the satisfaction of seeing their own chief in pos- 
session οἱ the supreme power, but they acquired no political rights 
and no increased securities for themselves. What measure of 
positive advantage they may have reaped, beyond that of seeing 
their previous oppressors humiliated, we know too little to deter- 
mine ;2 but even the worst of despots was more formidable to the 
rich than to the poor, and the latter may perhaps have gained by 
the change, in comparative importance, notwithstanding their 
share in the rigors and exactions of a government which had no 
other permanent foundation than naked fear. 

A remark made by Aristotle deserves especial notice bere, as 
illustrating the political advance and education of the alec 
communities. He draws a marked distinction between the early 
demagogue of the seventh and sixth centuries, and the later 
demagogue, such as he himself and the generations immediately 
preceding had witnessed: the former was a military chief, daring 
and fall of resource, who took arms at the head of a body of pop- 


Ἱ Thueyd. i, 17. Τύραννοι δὲ ὅσοι ἦσαν ἐν ταῖς Ἑλληνικαῖς πόλεσι, τὸ 
ἐφ ἑαυτῶν μόνον προορώμενοι ἔς τε τὸ σῶμα καὶ ἐς τὸ τὸν ἴδιον οἶκον αὔξει. 
δι᾿ ἀσφαλείας ὅσον ἐδύναντο μάλιστα, τὰς πόλεις ῴκουν. 

ἢ Wachsmath (Hellenische Alterthumskunde, sect. 49-51) and Tittmann 
(Griechisch. Staatsverfassungen, pp. 527-533) both make too much of the 
supposed friendly connection and mutual good-will between the despot and 
che poorer freemen. Community of antipathy against the old oligarchy was 
sh bond essentially temporary, dissolved as soon as that oligarchy was put 

wn. ὶ 


22 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


olar insurgents, put down the government by force, and made 
himself the master both of those whom he deposed and of those 
by whose aid he deposed them; while the latter was a speaker 
possessed of all the talents necessary for moving an audience but 
neither inclined to, nor qualified for, armed attack, — accom plish. 
ing all his purposes by pacific and constitutional methods This 
valuable change, —- substituting discussion and the eee of an 
assembly in place of an appeal to arms, and procuring for the 
pronounced decision of the assembly such an influence ones men’s 
minds as to render it final and respected even by dissentients, — 
arose from the continued practical working of democratical insti- 
tutions. I shall nave occasion, at a later period of this history, tc 
estimate the value of that unmeasured obloquy which has ‘on 
ἜΣ or wane oer of the Peloponnesian war, 
— an yperbolus ; but, assuming 5 re 
founded, it will not be the ‘abel true i κέναι — 
material improvement on the earlie ag a Ky 
selus and προς who than nate πρὸ een Pa 
; ; agency of the 
people for the purpose of subverting the established ἰμυνουδόνωνι 
and acquiring despotic authority for themselves. Tlie dennmognn 
was essentially a leader of opposition, who gained his influence 
= os the men in real ascendency, and in actual execu- 
ive fur s. Now 5 > ear i i 
ai he ο πα nlp ty aenck mea ete ee 
ys surrection, and it conducted him 
either to personal sovereignty or to destruction; but the srowth 
of democratical institutions insured both to him and to-his political 
cpponents full liberty of speech, and a paran - 
determine between them; whilst it both adit ite heme ὅκα 
ambition, and set aside the appeal to armed force. The railing 
dvmagogue of Athens, at the time of the Peloponnesian war (oven 
if we accept literally the representations of his worst enemies) 
was thns a far less mischievous and dangerous person than the 
fizhting demagogue of the earlier centuries; and the « growth of 
habits of public speaking,” ! to use Aristotle’s expression, was 


' Aristot. Polit. ν, 4, 4; 7, 3. "Ex? δὲ τῶν ἀρχαΐων, bre γι ὁ αὐτὶ 
δημαγωγὸς καὶ στρατηγὸς, εἰς τυραννίδα μετέβαλλον - σχεδὸν γὰρ οἱ dition 
= ἀρχαίων τυράννων ἐκ δημαγωγῶν γεγόνασι. Αἴτιον δὲ τοῦ τότε μὲν γε- 
- αι, νῦν δὲ μὴ, ὅτε τότε μὲν, οἱ δημαγωγοὶ ἧσαν ἐκ τῶν στρατηγούντων' 

yap ww δεινοὶ ἡσάν λέγειν" νῦν δὲ, τῆς ῥητορικῆς ηὐξημένης, οἱ δυνάμενοι 


OPPRESSIVE RULE OF THE DESPOTS. 23 


the cause of the difference: the opposition of the tongue was a 
beneficial substitute for the opposition of the sword. 
The rise of these despots on the ruins of the previous oli- 
garchies was, in appearance, a return to the principles of the 
heroic age, — the restoration of a government of personal will in 
place of that systematic arrangement known as the City. But 
the Greek mind had so far outgrown those early p inciples, that 
no new government founded thereupon could meet with willing 
acquiescence, except under some temporary excitement. At first, 
doubtless, the popularity of the usurper,— combined with the 
fervor of his partizans and the expulsion or intimidation of 
opponents, and farther enhanced by the punishment of rich 
oppressors, — was sufficient to procure for him obedience ; and 
prudence on his part might prolong this undisputed rule for a 
considerable period, perhaps even throughout his whole life. 
But Aristotle intimates that these governments, even when they 
vegan well, had a constant tendency to become worse and worse: 
discontent manifested itself, and was aggravated rather than 
repressed by the violence employed against it, until at length the 
despot became a prey to mistrustful and malevolent anxiety, 
losing any measure of equity or benevolent sympathy which 
might once have animated him. If he was fortunate enough to 
bequeathe his authority to his son, the latter, educated in a corrupt 
atmosphere and surrounded by parasites, contracted dispositiope 
yet more noxious and unsociai: his youthful appetites were more 
ungovernable, while he was deficient in the prudence and vigor 
which had been indispensable to the self-accomplished rise of his 
father! For such a position, mercenary guards and a fortified 
acropolis were the only stay, — guards fed at the expense of the 
citizens, and thus requiring constant exactions on behalf of that 
which was nothing better than a hostile garrison. It was essential 
to the security of the despot that he should keep down the spirit 


λέγειν δημαγωγοῦσι μὲν, dv ἀπειρίαν δὲ τῶν πολεμικῶν οὐκ ἐπιτίϑενται, πλὴν 
ei που βραχῦ τι γέγονε τοιοῦτον. 

’ Aristot. Polit. ν, 8,20. The whole tenor of this eighth chapter (of the 
fifth book) shows how unrestrained were the personal passions, — the lust as 


well as the anger, — of a Grecian τύραννος. 
Τόν τοι τύραννον εὐσεβεῖν ob ῥᾷδιον (Sophokles ap. Schol. Aristides, vol 


iii, p. 291, ed. Dindorf). 


94 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


of the free people whom he governed; that he should isolate 
them from each other, and prevent those meetings and mutual 
communications which Grecian cities habitually presented in the 
school, the lesché, or the palestra ; that he should strike off the 
overtopping ears of corn in the field (to use the Greek locution) 
or crush the exalted and enterprising minds.! Nay, he had even 
to a certain extent an interest in degrading and impoverishing 
them, or at least in debarring them from the acquisition either of 
wealth or leisure: and the extensive constructions undertaken 
by Polykratés at Samos, as well as the rich donations of Peri- 
ander to the temple at Olympia, are considered by Aristotle to 
have been extorted by these despots with the express view of 
engrossing the time and exhausting the means of their subjects. 
It is not to be imagined that all were alike cruel or unprinci- 
pled; but the perpetual supremacy of one man and one family 
had become so offensive to the jealousy of those who felt them- 
selves to be his equals, and to the general feeling of the people, 
that repression and severity were inevitable, whether originally 
intended or not. And even if an usurper, having once entered 
upon this career of violence, grew sick and averse to its continu- 
ance, abdication only left him in imminent peril, exposed to the 


' Aristot. Polit. iii, 8,3; v, 8, 7. Herodot. v, 92. Herodotus gives the 
story as if Thrasybulus had been the person to suggest this hint by conduct- 
ing the messenger of Periander into a cornfield and there striking off the 
tallest ears with his stick: Aristotle reverses the two, and makes Periander 
the adviser: Livy (i, 54) transfers the scene to Gabii and Rome, with Sextus 
Tarquinius as the person sending for counsel to his father at Rome. Com- 
pare Plato, Republ. viii, c. 17, p. 565; Eurip. Supplic. 444-455. 

The discussion which Herodotus ascribes to the Persian conspirators, after 
the assassination of the Magian king, whether they should constitute the 
Persian government as a. monarchy, an oligarchy, or a democracy, exhibits 
a vein of ideas purely Grecian, and altogether foreign to the Oriental con- 
ception of government: but it sets forth, — briefly, yet with great perspicuity 
and penetration, — the advantages and disadvantages of all the three. Th 
case made out against monarchy is by far the strongest, while the counsel ΟἹ 
vehalf of monarchy assumes as a part of his case that the individual mon- 
arch is to be the best man in the state. The anti-monarchical champion 
Otanes concludes a long string of criminations against the despot, with these 
words above-noticed: “He subverts the customs of the country: he vie 
lates women: he puts men to death untried.” (Herod. iii, 80-82.) 


PHILOSOPHERS’ VIRW OF DESPOTS. οὗ 


vengeance ! of those whom he had injured, — unless, indeed, he 
could clothe himself with the mantle of religion, and stipulate 
with the people to become priest of some temple and deity ; in 
which case his new function protected him, just as the tonsure 
and the monastery sheltered a dethroned prince in the Middle 
Ages.2 Several of the despots were patrons of music and poetry, 
and courted the good-will of contemporary intellectual men by 
invitation as well as by reward ; and there were some cases, such 
as that of Peisistratus and his sons at Athens, in which an attempt 
was made (analogous to that of Augustus at Rome) to reconcile 
the reality of personal omnipotence with a certain respect for 
preéxisting forms. In such instances the administration, though 


' Thucyd. ii, 63. Compare again the speech of Kleon, iil, 37-40,— ὡς 
τυραννίδα yap ἔχετε αὐτὴν, ἣν λαβεῖν μὲν ἄδικον dokei εἶναι, ἀφεῖναι δὲ 
ἐπικίνδυνον. 

The bitter sentiment against despots seems to be as old as Alkzeus, and 
we find traces of it in Solon and Theognis (Theognis, 38-50; Solon, 
Fragm. vii, p. 32, ed. Schneidewin). Phanias of Eresus had collected in a 
book the “ Assassinations of Despots from revenge.” (Τυράννων ἀναιρέσεις 
ἐκ τιμωρίας, — Atheneus, ill, p. 90; x, p. 438.) 

* See the story of Mzandrius, minister and successor of Polykratés of 
Samos, in Herodotus, iii, 142, 143. 

3 Thucyd. vi, 54. The epitaph of Archediké, the daughter of Hippias 
(which was inscribed at Lampsakus, where she died), though written by a 
creat friend of Hippias, conveys the sharpest implied invective against the 
usual proceedings of the despots : — 

Ἡ πατρός τε καὶ ἀνδρὸς ἀδελφῶν τ᾽ οὖσα τυρώννων 
Παιδῶν τ᾽, οὐχ ἥἤρϑη νοῦν ἐς ἀτασϑαλίην (Thue. vi, 59). 

The position of Augustus at Rome, and of Peisistratus at Athens, may 
be illustrated by a passage in Sismondi, Républiques Italiennes, vol. iv, ch. 
26, p. 208 : — 

“Les petits monarques de chaque ville s’opposaient eux-mémes ἃ ce que 
leur pouvoir fit attribué, ἃ un droit héréditaire, parceque lhérédité aurait 
presque toujours été retorqué contre eux. Ceux qui avaient succédé ἃ une 
république, avaient abaissé des nobles plus anciens et plus illustres qu’eux : 
ceux qui avaient succédé A d’autres seigneurs n’avaient tenu aucun compte 
du droit de leurs prédécesseurs, et se sentaient intéressés a le nier. Ils se 
disaient dont mandataires du peuple: ils ne prenaient jamais le commande- 
ment d’une ville, lors méme qu’ils l'avaient soumise par les armes, sans 30 
faire attribuer par les anciens ou par l’assemblée du peuple, selon que les uns 
ou les autres se montraient plus dociles, le titre et les pouvoirs de seigneus 
général, pour un an. pour cing ans, ou pour toate leur vie, avec un paic fixéy 
qui devoit étre prise sur les déniers de la communauté.” 


WOL. ITI. 2 


26 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


not unstained by guilt, never otherwise than unpopular, and 
carried on by means of foreign mercenaries, was doubtless practi- 
cally milder. But cases of this character were rare, and the 
maxims usual with Grecian despots were personified in Periander, 
the Kypselid of Corinth,—a harsh and brutal person, but not 
destitute either of vigor or intelligence. 

The position of a Grecian despot, as depicted by Plato, by 
Xenophon and by Aristotle,! and farther sustained by the indi- 
cations in Herodotus, Thucydides, and Isokrates, though always 
coveted by ambitious men, reveals clearly enough “those wounds 


δ Consult, especially, the treatise of Xenophon, called Hiero, or Τυραννι- 
κὺς, in which the interior life and feelings of the Grecian despot are strikingly 
set forth, in a supposed dialogue with the poet Simonid.s. The tenor of 
Plato’s remarks in the eighth and ninth books of the Republic, and those of 
Aristotle in the fifth book (ch. 8 and 9) of the Politics, display the same pic 
ture, though not with such fulness of detail. The speech of one of the 
assassins of Euphrén (despot of Sikyon) is remarkable, as a specimen of 
Grecian feeling (Xenoph. Hellen. vii, 3, 7-2). The expressions both of 
Pilato and Tacitus, in regard to the mental wretchedness of the despot, are 
the strongest which the language affords: Kai πένης τῇ ἀληϑείᾳ φαινεται, 
ἐάν τις ὅλην ψυχὴν ἐπίστηται ϑεάσασθϑαι, καὶ φόβου γέμων διὰ παντὸς Toi 
βίου, σφαδασμῶν τε καὶ ὀδυνῶν πλήρης... .. «᾿Ανάγκη καὶ εἶναι, καὶ ἔτι μᾶλλον 
γίγνεσϑαι αὐτῷ ἢ πρότερον διὰ τὴν ἀρχὴν, φϑονερῷ, ἀπίστῳ, ἀδικῳ, ἀφίλῳ, 
ἀνοσίῳ, καὶ πάσης κακίας πανδοκεῖ τε καὶ τροφεῖ, καὶ ἐξ ἁπάντων τούτων 
μάλιστα μὲν αὐτῷ δυστυχεῖ εἶναι, ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ τοὺς πλήσιον αὐτοῦ τοιούτους 
ἀπεργάζεσϑαι (Republic. ix, p. 580). 

And Tacitus, in the well-known passage (Annal. vi, 6): “ Neque frustra 
preestantissimus sapientiz firmare solitus est, si recludantur tyrannorum 
mentes, posse aspici laniatus et ictus: quando ut corpora verberibus, ita 
sevitid, libidine. malis consultis, animus dilaceretur. Quippe Tiberium non 
fortuna, non solitadines, protegebant, quin tormenta pectoris suasque ipse 
peenas fateretur.” 

It is not easy to imagine power more completely surrounded with all cir- 
cumstances calculated to render it repulsive to a man of ordinary benevo- 
lence: the Grecian despot had large means of doing harm,— scarcely any 
means of doing good. Yet the acquisition of power over others, under any 
conditions, is a motive so all-ahsorbing, that even this precarious and anti- 
social sceptre was always intensely coveted, — Τυραννὶς, χρῆμα σφαλερὸν. 
πολλοὶ δὲ αὑτῆς ἐρασταί εἰσι (Herod. iii, 53). See the striking lines of Solon 
(Fragment. vii, ed. Schneidewin), and the saying of Jason of Phere, who 
used to declare that he felt incessant hunger until he became despot, — 
πεινῇν, Ste μὴ Tupavvoi* ὡς οὐκ ἐπιστάμενος ἰδιώτης εἶναι (Aristot Polit. iii, 
3 6.. 


SHORT DURATION OF DESPOTIC GOVERNMENT. 9] 


und lacerations of mind,” whereby the internal Erinnys avenged 
the community upon the usurper who trampled them down. Far 
from considering success in usurpation as a justification of the 
attempt (according to the theories now prevalent respecting 
Cromwell and Bonaparte, who are often blamed because they 
kept out a legitimate king, but never because they seized an 
unauthorized power over the people), these philosophers regard 
the despot as among the greatest of criminals: the man who 
assassinated him was an object of public honor and reward, 
and a virtuous Greek would seldom have scrupled to carry his 
sword concealed in myrtle branches, like Harmodius and Aristo- 
geiton, for the execution of the deed.! A station which over- 
topped the restraints and obligations involved in citizenship, was 
understood at the same time to forfeit all title to the common 
sympathy and protection,® so that it was unsafe for the despot to 
visit in person those great Pan-Hellenic games in which his own 
chariot might perhaps have gained the prize, and in which the 
theors, or sacred envoys, whom he sent as representatives of his 
Hellenic city, appeared with ostentatious pomp. A government 
carried on under these unpropitious circumstances could never 


' See the beautiful Skolion of Kallistratus, so popular at Athens, xxvii, p. 
456, apud Schneidewin, Poet. Grace. —’Ev μύρτου κλαδὶ τὸ ξίφος φορῆσω, 
ete. 

Xenophon, Hiero, ii, 8. Οἱ τύραννοι πάντες πανταχῆ ὡς διὰ πολεμίας 
πορεύονται. Compare Isokrates, Or. viii (De Pace), p. 182; Polyb. ii, 59; 
Cicero, Orat. pro Milone, c. 29 

Aristot. Polit. ii, 4, 8, ᾿Επεὶ ἀδικοῦσί ye τὰ μέγιστα διὰ τὰς ὑπερβολὰς, 
ἀλλ᾽ οὐ διὰ τἀναγκαῖα" οἷον τυραννοῦσιν, οὐχ ἵνα μὴ ῥιγῶσι" διὸ καὶ αἱ 
τιμαὶ μέγαλαι, ἂν ἀποκτείνῃ τις, οὐ κλέπτην, ἀλλὰ τύραννον. 

There cannot be a more striking manifestation of the sentiment enter- 
tained towards a despot in the ancient world, than the remarks of Plutarch 
on Timoleon, for his conduct in assisting to put to death his brother, the 
despot Timophanés (Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 4-7, and Comp. of Timoleon 
with Paulus milius, c. 2). See also Plutarch, Comparison of Dion and 
Brutus, c. 3, and Plutarch, Praecepta Reipublice Gerends, c. 11, p. 805; 6. 
17, p. 813; c. 32, p. 824,—he speaks of the putting down of a despot 
(τυραννίδων κατάλυσις) as among the most splendid of human exploits, — 
and the account given by Xenophon of the assassination of Jason of Phere, 
Hellenic. vi, 4, 32. 

* Livy, xxxviii, 50. “ Qui jus equum pati non possit,in eum vim haud 
injustam esse.” 


28 WistORY OF GREECE. 


be otherwise than short-lived. Though the individual daring 
enough to seize it, often found means to preserve it for the term 
of his own life, yet the sight of a despot living to old age was 
rare, and the transmission of his power to his son still more so.! 
Amidst the numerous points of contention in Grecian political 
morality, this rooted antipathy to a permanent hereditary ruler 
stood apart as a sentiment almost unanimous, in which the thirst 
for preeminence felt by the wealthy few, and the love of equal 
freedom in the bosoms of the many, alike concurred. It first 
began among the oligarchies of the seventh and sixth centuries 
B. C., a complete reversal of that pronounced monarchical senti- 
ment which we now read in the Iliad; and it was transmitted by 
them to the democracies, which did not arise until a later period. 
.The conflict between oligarchy and despotism preceded that 
between oligarchy and democracy, the Lacedemonians standing 
forward actively on both occasions to uphold the oligarchical 
principle: a mingled sentiment of fear and repugnance led them 
to put down despotism in several cities of Greece during the 
sixth century B. c., just as, during their contest with Athens in 


—_—— — on 


ip are Lo EN i ὦ - ᾿ i ae 
Plutarch, Sept. Sapient. Conviyv. c. 2, p. 147, — ὡς ἐρωτηϑεὶς ὑπὸ Mod 


παγόρου τοῦ “Iwvog, τί παραδοξότατον εἴης ἑωρακῶς, ἀποκρίναιο, τύραννον 


γέροντα. --- Compare the answer of Thales, in the same treatise, c. 7, p. 152 
. 7. me 189, 


The orator Lysias, present at the Olympic games, and seeing the theors 
of the Syracusan despot Dionysius also present, in tents with gilding and 
purple, addressed an harangue, inciting the assembled Greeks to demolish 
the tents (Lysis Λόγος ᾿Ολυμπιακὸς, Fragm. p. 911, ed. Reisk.; Dionys. 
Halicar. De Lysia Judicium, c. 29-30). Theophrastus ascribed to Themis- 
tokles a similar recommendation, in reference to the thedrs and the prize- 
chariots of the Syracusan despot Hiero (Plutarch, Themistokles, ὁ. 25). i 

The common-places of the rhetors afford the best proof how unanimous 
was the sentiment in the Greek mind to rank the despot among the most 
odious criminals. and the man who put him to death among the lhenelinetors 
of humanity. The rhetor Theon, treating upon common-places, says: Τόπος 
ἐστὶ λόγος αὐξητικὸς ὁμολ Ογουμένου πράγματος, ἦτοι ἁμαρτήματος, ἢ 
ἀνδραγαϑήματος. *Eoti γὰρ διττὸς ὁ τόπος - ὁ μέν τις, κατὰ τῶν πεπον η- 
ρευμένων, οἷον κατὰ τυράννου, προδότου, ανδροφόνου, ἀσώ«ς 
του ὁ δέ τις, ὑπὲρ τῶν χρηστόν τι διαπεπραγμένων " οἷον ὑπὲρ sup αν- 
voxTévov, ἀριστέως, νομοϑέτου. (Theon, Progymnasmata, c. tii 
ap. Walz. Coll. Rhett. vol. i, p. 222. Compare Aphthonius, Progymn. ¢. τῇ 


p. 82 of the same volume, and Dionysius Halikarn. Ars Rhetorica, x, 15,» 
390, ed. Reisk >.) i 


EARLY OLIGARCHIES. 29 


the following century, they assisted the oligarchical party, where- 
ever they could, to overthrow democracy. And it was thus 
that the demagogue-despot of these sarlier times, bringing out 
the name of the people as a pretext, and the arms of the people 
as a means of accomplishment, for his own ambitious designs, 
served as a preface to the reality of democracy, which mani- 
fested itself at Athens a short time before the Persian war, as a 
development of the seed planted by Solon. 

As far as our imperfect information enables us to trace, the 
sarly oligarchies of the Grecian states, against which the first 
usurping despots contended, contained in themselves far more 
repulsive elements of inequality, and more mischievous barriers 
between the component parts of the population, than the oligar- 
chies of later days. What was true of Hellas as an aggregate, 
was true, though in a less degree, of each separate community 
which went to compose that aggregate: each included a variety 
of clans, orders, religious brotherhoods, and local or professional 
sections, which were very imperfectly cemented together: and 
the oligarchy was not, like the government so denominated in 
subsequent times, the government of a rich few over the less rich 
and the poor, but that of a peculiar order, sometimes a patrician 
order, over all the remaining society. In such a case, the subject 
Many might number opulent and substantial proprietors as well 
as the governing Few; but these subject Many would themselves 
be broken into different heterogeneous fractions, not heartily sym- 
pathizing with each other, perhaps not intermarrying together, 
nor partaking of the same religious rites. The country-popula- 
tion, or villagers, who tilled the land, seem in these early times 
to have been held to a painful dependence on the proprietors who 
lived in the fortified town, and to have been distinguished by a 
dress and habits of their own, which often drew upon them an 
unfriendly nickname. These town proprietors seem to have 
often composed the governing class in early Grecian states, 
while their subjects consisted, — 1. Of the dependent cultivators 
living in the district around, by whom their lands were tilled. 2. 
Of a certain number of small self-working proprietors (αὐτουργοὶ) 
whose possessions were too scanty to maintain more than them 
selyes by the labor of their own hands on their own plot of 
grour? — residing either in the country or the town, as the case 


80 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


might be. 3. Of those who lived in the town, having no land 
but exercising handicraft, arts, or commerce. 
The governing proprietors went by the name of the Gamori. 
w Geomori, according as the Doric or Ionic dialect might be 
ised in describing them, since they were found in states belons. 
ng to one race as well as to the other. They appear to have 
onstituted a close order, transmitting their privileges to their 
thildren, but admitting no new members to a rerticipation, — for 
the principle called by Greek thinkers a timocracy, the appoint- 
ment of political rights and privileges according to comparative 
property, appears to have been little, if at all, applied in the 
earlier times, and we know no example of it earlier than Solon. 
So that, by the natural multiplication of families and mutation of 
property, there would come to be many individual gamori pos- 
sessing no land at all, and perhaps worse off than those small 
freeholders who did not belong to the order; while some of these 
latter freeholders, and some of the artisans and traders in the 
towns, might at the same time be rising in wealth and impor- 
tance. Under a political classification such as this, of which the 
repulsive inequality was aggravated by a rude state of manners 
and which had no flexibility to meet the changes in relative seni 
tion amongst individual inhabitants, discontent and outbreaks 
were unavoidable, and the earliest despot, usually a wealthy man 
of the disfranchised class, became champion and leader of the 
malcontents.!_ However oppressive his rule might be, at least it 
was an oppression which bore with indiscriminate severity upon 
ull the fractions of the population ; and when the hour of reaction 
against him or against his successor arrived, so that the common 
enemy was expelled by the united efforts of all, it was hardly 
possible to revive the preéxisting system of exclusion saat 
inequality without some considerable abatements. | 
As a general rule, every Greek city-community included in 
its population, independent of bought slaves, the three elements 
above noticed, — considerable land proprietors with rustic de- 
pendents, small self-working proprietors, and town-artisans,— the 
three elements being found everywhere in different proportions. 
But the progress of events in Greece, from the seventh century 


* Thucyd. i, 13. 


CLASSES OF THE PEOPLE. 5) 


8 δ. downwards, tended continually to elevate the comparative 
importance of the two latter, while in those early days the as 
cendency of the former was at its maximum, and altered only to 
decline. The military force of most of the cities was at first in 
the hands of the great proprietors, and formed by them; it con- 
sisted of cavalry, themselves and their retainers, with horses. fed 
upon their lands. Such was the primitive oligarchical militia, as 
it was constituted in the seventh and sixth centuries B. C., at 
Chalkis and Eretria in Eubeea, as well as at Kolophén and other 
cities in Ionia, and as it continued in Thessaly down to the fourth 
century B. σὺ; but the gradual rise of the small proprietors and 
town-artisans was marked by the substitution of heavy-armed 
infantry in place of cavalry ; and a farther change not less im- 
portant took place when the resistance to Persia led to the great 
multiplication of Grecian ships of war, manned by a host of sea- 
men who dwelt congregated in the maritime towns. All the 
changes which we are able to trace in the Grecian communities 
tended to break up the close and exclusive oligarchies with which 
our first historical knowledge commences, and to conduct them 
either to oligarchies rather more open, embracing all men of a 
certain amount of property, or else to democracies. But the 
transition in both cases was usually attained through the inter- 
lude of the despot. 

In enumerating the distinct and unharmonious elements of 
which the population of these early Grecian communities was 
made up, we must not forget one farther element which was to 
be found in the Dorian states generally,— men of Dorian, as 
contrasted with men of non-Dorian race. The Dorians were in 
all cases emigrants and conquerors, establishing themselves along 
with and at the expense of the prior inhabitants. Upon what 
terms the cohabitation was established, and in what proportions 
invaders and invaded came together, we are without information ; 
and important as this circumstance is in the history of these 
Dorian communities, we know it only as a general fact, and are 
unable to follow its results in detail. But we see enough to 
satisfy ourselves that in those revolutions which overthrew the 


! Aristot. Polit. iv, 3,2; 11,10 Aristot. Rerum Public. Fragm. ed. Nes 
mann, Fragm. v, Εὐβοέων πολιτειαί, p. 112; Strabo, x, p. 447 


32 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


oligarchies both at Corinth and Sikyon,— perhaps also at Me 
gara,— the Dorian and non-Dorian elements of the community 
came into conflict more or less direct. 

The despots of Sikyon are the earliest of whom we have any 
distinct mention: their dynasty lasted one hundred years, a 
longer period than any other Grecian despots known to Aris- 
totle; they are said,! moreover, to have governed with mildness 
and with much practical respect to the preéxisting laws. Ortha- 
goras,? the beginner of the dynasty, raised himself to the 
position of despot about 676 B.c., subverting the preéxisting 
Dorian oligarchy ; but the cause and circumstances of this rev- 
olution are not preserved. He is said to have been originally a 
cook. In his line of successors we find mention of Andreas, 
Myron, Aristénymus, and Kleisthenés ; but we know nothing ot 
any οἷ them until the last, except that Myrén gained a chariot 
victory at Olympia in the 33d Olympiad (648 B.c.), and built, 
at the same holy place, a thesaurus containing two ornamented 
alcoves of copper for the reception of commemorative offerings 
from himself and his family. Respecting Kleisthenés (whose 


' Aristot. Polit. v. 9,21. An oracle is said to have predicted to the Sikyo- 
nians that they would be subjected for the period of a century to the hand 
of the scourger (Diodor. Fragm. lib. vii-x ; Fragm. xiv, ed. Maii). 

* Herodot. vi, 126; Pausan. ii, 8,1. There is some confusion about the 
names of Orthagoras and Andreas; the latter is called a cook in Diodorus 
(Fragment. Excerpt. Vatic. lib. vii-x, Fragm. xiv). Compare Libanius in 
Sever. vol. iii, p. 251, Reisk. It has been supposed, with some probability, 
that the same person is designated under both names: the two names do 
not seem to occur in the same author. See Plutarch, Ser. Numin. Vind. c 
7, p. 553. 

Aristotle (Polit. ν. 10,3) seems to have conceived the dominion as having 
passed direct from Myron to Kleisthenés, omitting Arist6nymus. 

3 Pausan. vi, 19,2. The FEleians informed Pausanias that the brass iv 
these alcoves came from Tartessus (the south-western coast of Spain from 
the Strait of Gibraltar to tlhe territory beyond Cadiz): he declines to 
guarantee the statement. Bu: Ὁ. Miller treats it as a certainty: “Two 
apartments inlaid with Tartessian brass, and adorned with Doric and Ionic 
columns. Both the architectural orders employed in this building, and the 
Tartessian brass, which the Phoczans had then brought to Greece in large 
quantities from the hospitable king Arganthonius, attest the intercourse of 
Myrén with the Asiatics.” (Dorians, i, 8, 2.) So also Dr. Thirlwal! states 
the fact: “ Copper of Tartessus, which had not long been introducod inte 


KLEISTHENES — DESPOT OF SIKYON. 33 


age must be placed between 600-560 B. c., but can hardly be 
determined accurately,) some facts are reported to us highly 
curious, but of a nature not altogether easy to follow or verify. 

We learn from the narrative of Herodotus that the tribe to 
which Kleisthenés! himself (and of course his progenitors 
Orthagoras and the other Orthagoride also) belonged, was dis 
tinct from the three Dorian tribes, who have been already named 
in my previous chapter respecting the Lykurgean constitution at 
Sparta,— the Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanes. We also learn 
that these tribes were common to the Sikyonians and the Argei- 
ans; and Kleisthenés, being in a state of bitter hostility with 
Argos, tried in several ways to abolish the points of community 
between the two. Siky6n originally Dorized by settlers from 
Argos, was included in the “lot of Temenus,” or among the 
towns of the Argeian confederacy: the coherence of this confed- 
eracy had become weaker and weaker, partly without doubt 
through the influence of the predecessors of Kleisthenés; but 
the Argeians may perhaps have tried to revive it, thus placing 
themselves in a state of war with the latter, and inducing him to 
disconnect, palpably and violently, Sikyon from Argos. ‘There 
were two anchors by which the connection held, — first, legendary 
and religious sympathy ; next, the civil rites and denominations 
current among the Sikyonian Dorians: both of them were torn 
up by Kleisthenés. He changed the names both of the thre: 
Dorian tribes, and of that non-Dorian tribe to which he himself 
belonged: the last he called by the complimentary title of ar- 
chelai (commanders of the people) ; the first three he styled by 
the insulting names of hyatew, oneate, and chereatex, from the 
three Greek words signifying a boar, an ass, and a little pig. 
The extreme bitterness of this insult can only be appreciated 
when we fancy to ourselves the reverence with which the tribes 


Greece.” (Hist. Gr. ch. x, p. 483, 2d ed.) Yet, if we exanune the chronol- 
ogy of the case, we shall see that the 33d Olympiad (648 B. c.) must have 
heen earlier even than the first discovery of Tartessus by the Greeks, — 
hefore the accidental voyage of the Samian merchant Ko6laeus first made the 
region known to them, and more than half a century (at least) earlier thar 
the commerce of the Phoceans with Arganthonius. Compare Herod. iv 
152; i, 163, 167. 

Σ᾿ Herodot. v, 67. 

VOL. ΠΙ. 2° 3o- 


84 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


in a Grecian city regarded the hero from whom their name was 
borrowed. That these new denominations, given by Kleisthenés, 
involved an intentional degradation of the Dorian tribes as well as 
an assumption of superiority for his own, is atlirmed by Herodotus, 
and seems well-deserving of credit. 

But the violence of which Kleisthenés was capable in his anti 
Argeian antipathy, is manifested still more plainly in his pro 
ceedings with respect to the hero Adrastus and to the legendary 
sentiment of the people. Something has already been said, in 
my former volume,! about this remarkable incident, which must, 
however, be here again briefly noticed. The hero Adrastus, whose 
chapel Herodotus himself saw in the Sikyonian agora, was com- 
mon both to Argos and to Siky6én, and was the object of special 
reverence at both: he figures in the legend as king of Argos, 
and as the grandson and heir of Polybus, king of Sikyon. He 
was the unhappy leader of the two sieges of Thebes, so famous 
in the ancient epic, —- and the Sikyonians listened with delight 
both to the exploits of the Argeians against Thebes, as cele- 
brated in the recitations of the epical rhapsodes, and to the mourn- 
ful tale of Adrastus and his family mic‘ortunes, as sung in the 
tragic chorus. Kleisthenés not only forbade the rhapsodes to 
come to Siky6én, but farther resolved to expel Adrastus himself 
from the country,—such is the literal Greek expression,2 the 
hero himself being believed to be actually present and domiciled 
among the people. He first applied to the Delphian oracle for 
permission to carry this banishment into direct effect, but the 
Pythian priestess returned an answer of indignant refusal, — 
“Adrastus is king of the Sikyonians, but thou art a ruffian.” 
Thus baffled, he put in practice a stratagem calculated to induce 
Adrastus to depart of his own accord.3 He sent to Thebes to 
beg that he might be allowed to introduce into Siky6n the hero 
Melanippus, and the permission was granted. Now Melanippus 
was celebrated in the legend as the puissant champion of Thebes 
against Adrastus and the Argeian besiegers, and as having slain 


δ See above, vol. ii, p. 129, part i, ch. 21. 

* Herod. v, 67. Τοῦτον ἐπεϑύμησε ὁ Κλεισϑένης, ἐόντα ᾿Αργεῖον, ἐκβαλεῖν 
ἐκ τῆς χώρης. 

3 Herod. v, 67. φρόντιζε μηχανὴν Tz οὐτὸς ὁ "Adpnotoc ἰπαλλάξεται. 


PS πὰρ ET ee γ΄. gut aera «τ — 


DORIANS AND NON-DORIANS OF SIKYON. 84 


bith Mékisteus the brother, and Tydeus the son-in-law, of 
Adrastus; and he was therefore preéminently odious te the 
latter. Kleisthenés brought this anti-national hero into Sikydén, 
assigning to him consecrated ground in the prytaneium, or 
government-house, and even in that part which was most strongly 
fortified! (for it seems that Adrastus was conceived as likely 
to assail and do battle with the intruder) ; — moreover, he took 
away both the tragic choruses and the sacrifice from Adrastua, 
assigning the former to the god Dionysus, and the latter to 
Melanippus. 

The religious manifestations of Sikyon being thus transferred 
from Adrastus to his mortal foe, and from the cause of the Argei- 
aus in the siege of Thebes to that of the Thebans, Adrastus was 
presumed to have voluntarily retired from the place, and the pur- 
pose which Kleisthenés contemplated, of breaking the community 
of feeling between Sikyén and Argos, was in part accomplished. 

A ruler who could do such violence to the religious and legend- 
ary sentiment of his community may well be supposed capable of 
inflicting that deliberate insult upon the Dorian tribes which is 
implied in their new appellations. As we are uninformed, how- 
ever, of the state of things which preceded, we know not how 
far it might have been a retaliation for previous insult in the op- 
posite direction. It is plain that the Dorians of Sikyén main- 
tained themselves and their ancient tribes quite apart from the 
remaining community, though what the other constituent portions 
of the population were, or in what relation they stood to these 
Dorians, we are not enabled to make out. We hear, indeed, of a 
dependent rural population in the territory of Siky6én, as well as in 
that of Argos and Epidaurus, analogous to the Helots in Laconia. 
In Sikyén, this class was termed the Korynéphori (club men), 
or the Katonakophori, from the thick woollen mantle which they 
wore, with a sheepskin sewn on to the skirt: in Argos, they were 
called Gymnésii, from their not possessing the military panoply 
or the use of regular arms: in Epidaurus, Konipodes, or the dusty- 
footed.2, We may conclude that a similar class existed in Cor- 


' "Enayayouevoc δὲ ὁ Κλεισϑένης τὸν Μελάνιππον, τέμενος οἱ ἀπέδεξε ἐν 
οὐτῷ τῷ πρυτανηΐῳ, cai μὲν ἐνθαῦτα idpvoe ἐν τῷ ἰσχυροτάτῳ. (Herod. ib.) 
3 Julius Pollux, iii, 88 ; Plutarch, Quest. Gree. c. 1, p. 291; Theopompns 


36 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


inth, in Megara, and in each of the Dorian towns of tLe Argolie 
Akté. But besides the Dorian tribes and these rustics, there 
must probably have existed non-Dorian proprietors and town 
residents, and upon them we may suppose that the power of the 
Orthagoride and of Kleisthenés was founded, perhaps more friendly 
and indulgent to the rustic serfs than that of the Dorians had 
been previously. The moderation, which Aristotle ascribes ts 
the Orthagoride generally, is belied by the proceedings of Kleis- 
thenés: but we may probably believe that his predecessors, con- 
tent with maintaining the real predominance of the non-Dorian 
over the Dorian population, meddled very little with the separate 
position and civil habits of the latter, — while Kleisthenes, pro- 
voked or alarmed by some attempt on their part to strengthen 
alliance with the Argeians, resorted both to repressive measures 
and to that offensive nomenclature which has been above cited. 
The preservation of the power of Kleisthenés was due to his mil- 
itary energy (according to Aristotle) even more than to his mod- 
eration and popular conduct; it was aided, probably, by his 
magnificent displays at the public games, for he was victor in the 
chariot-race at the Pythian games 582 B. 6.» as well as at the 
Olympic games besides. Moreover, he was in fact the last of the 
race, nor did he transmit his power to any successor:! 

The reigns of the early Orthagoride, then, may be considered 
as marking a predominance, newly acquired but quietly exercised, 
of the non-Dorians over the Dorians in Sikyén: the reign of 
Kleisthénés, as displaying a strong explosion of antipathy 
from the former towards the latter; and though this antipathy, 
and the application of those opprobrious tribe-names in which it 
was conveyed, stand ascribed to Kleisthenés personally, we may 
see that the non-Dorians in Siky6n shared it generally, because 
these same tribe-names continued to be applied not only during 
the reign of that despot, but also for sixty years longer, after his 
death. Of course, it is needless to remark that such denomina- 


ap. Atheneum, vi, p. 271; Welcker, Prolegomen. ad Theognid. c. 19, p 
XXXiv. 

As an analogy to this name of Konipodes, we may notice the ancient 
courts of justice called Courts of Pie-powder in England, Pieds Poudré. 

' Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 21; Pausan. x, 7, 3. 


si1KYON AFTER KLEISTHENES. 37 


tions could never have been acknowledged or employed amcng 
the Dorians themselves. After the lapse of sixty years from the 
death of Kleisthenés, the Sikyonians came to an amicable adjust- 
ment of the feud, and placed the tribe-names on a footing satisfac- 
tory to all parties; the old Dorian denominations (Hylleis, Pam- 
phyli, and Dymanes) were reéstablished, and the name of the 
fourth tribe, or non-Dorians, was changed from Archelai to Avgia- 
leis, — JEgialeus son of Adrastus being constituted their epony- 
mus.! This choice of the son of Adrastus for an eponymus, seems 
to show that the worship of Adrastus himself was then revived 
in Siky6n, since it existed in the time of Herodotus. 

Of the war which Kleisthenés helped to conduct against Kir- 
rha, for the protection of the Delphian temple, I shall speak in 
another place. His death and the cessation of his dynasty seem 
to have occurred about 650 B. 6.» as far as the chronology can be 
made out.2 That he was put down by the Spartans, as K. F. 


1 Herod. v, 68. Τούτοισι τοῖσι οὐνόμασι τῶν φυλέων ἐχρέωντο οἱ Σικυώ- 
viol, καὶ ἐπὶ Κλεισϑένεος ἄρχοντος, καὶ ἐκείνου τεϑνεῶτος ἔτι ἐπ᾽ ἔτεα ἐξή- 
κοντα" μετέπειτα μέντοι λόγον σφισι δόντες, μετέβαλον ἐς τοὺς Ὕλλέας καὶ 
Παμφύλους καὶ Δυμανάταφ" τετάρτους δὲ αὐτοῖσι προσέϑεντο ἐπὶ τοῦ ᾿Αδρῆσ- 
του παιδὸς Αἰγιαλέος τὴν ἐπωνυμίην ποιεύμενοι κεκλῆσϑαι Αἰγιαλέας. 

2 The chronology of Orthagoras and his dynasty ts perplexing. The 
commemorative offering of Myron at Olympia is marked for 648 B. C., and 
this must throw back the beginning of Orthagoras to a period between 
620-670. Then we are told by Aristotle that the entire dynasty lasted one 
hundred years ; but it must have lasted, probably, somewhat longer, for the 
death of Kleisthenés can hardly be placed earlier than 560 8. c. The war 
against Kirrha (599 B. c.) and the Pythian victory (582 Β. c.) fall within 
his reign: but the marriage of his daughter Agaristé with Megakles can 
hardly be put earlier than 570 B. c., if so high; for Kleisthenés the Athenian, 
the son of that marriage, effected the democratical revolution at Athens in 
509 or 508 B. c.: whether the daughter, whom Megaklés gave in marriage 
to Peisistratus about 554 B. 6., was also the offspring of that marriage, as 
Larcher contends, we do not know. 

Megaklés was the son of that Alkmseon who hed assisted the deputies 
sent by Croesus of Lydia into Greece to consult the different oracles, and 
whom Croesus rewarded so liberally as to make his fortune (compare Herod. 
i, 46; vi, 125): and the marriage of Megaklés was in the next generation 
after this enrichment of Alkmseon, — μετὰ δὲ, yevén δευτέρῃ ὕστερον (Herod. 
vi, 126). Now the reign of Croesus extended from 560-546 B. c., and his 
deputation to the oracles in Greece appears to have taken place about 556 
np. c.; and if this chronology de admitted, the marriage of Megaklés with 


As HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Hermann, O. Maller, and Dr. Thirlwall SuF pose, can be hardy 
admitted consistently with the narrative of Herodotus, who men. 
tions the continuance of the insulting names imposed by him 
upen the Dorian tribes for many years after his death. Now, had 
the Spartans forcibly interfered for the suppression of his dynasty, 
we may reasonably presume that, even if they did not restore 
the decided preponderance of the Dorians in Sikyon, they would 
at least have rescued the Dorian tribes from this obvious ieno. 
mizy. But it seems doubtful whether Kleisthenés had any son 
and the extraordinary importance attached to the marriage of his 
daughter, Agarist¢é, whom he bestowed upon the Athenian Mc- 
gaklées of the great family of Alkmad6nidz, seems rather to evince 
that she was an heiress, — not to his power, but to his wealth. 
There can be no doubt as to the fact of that marriage, from which 
was born the Athenian leader Kleisthenés, afterwards the author 
of the great democratical revolution at Athens after the expul- 
sion of the Peisistratida:; but the lively and amusing details 
with which Herodotus has surrounded it, bear much more the 
stamp of romance than of reality. Dressed up, apparently, by 
some ingenious Athenian, as a compliment to the Alkmzonid 
lineage of his city, which comprised both Kleisthenés and Peri- 
klés, the narrative commemorates a marriage-rivelry between 
that lineage and another noble Athenian house, and at the same 


the daughter of the Sikyonian Kleisthenés cannot have taken place until 
considerably after 556 B. c. See the long, but not very satisfactory, note of 
Larcher, ad Herodot. v, 66. Ι 

But I shall show grounds for believing, when I recount the interview 
between Solon and Croesus, that Herodotus in his conception of events mis- 
dates very considerably the reign and proceedings of Croesus as well as of 
Peisistratus: this is a conjectare of Niebuhr which I think very just, and 
which is rendered still more probable by what we find here stated about the 
succession of the Alkmzonid#. For it is evident that Herodotus here con- 
eeives the adventure between Alkmzon and Croesus as having occurred one 
generation (about twenty-five or thirty years) anterior to the marriage be- 
tween Megaklés and the daughter of Kleisthenés. That adventure will thus 
stand about 590-585 Β. c., which would be about the time of the supposed 
interview (if real) between Solon and Crasus, describing the maximum of 
the power and prosperity of the latter. 

' Miiller, Dorians, book i, 8,2; Thislwall, Hist. of Greece, vol. i, ch. x, 0 
686, 2d ed 


KYPSELUS AND HIS DYNASTY AT CORINTH. 39 


time gives a mythical explanation of a phrase seemingly prover 
bial at Athens — “ Hippokleides don’t care.”' 

Plutarch numbers Aschinés of Sikyén® among the despots 
put down by Sparta: at what period this took place, or how it is 
to be connected with the history of Kleisthenés as given in Her 
odotus, we are unable to say. 

Contemporaneous with the Orthagoride at Sikyén, — but 
beginning a little later and closing somewhat earlier, — we find 
the despots Kypselus and Periander at Corinth. The former 
appears as the subverter of the oligarchy called the Bacchiade. 
Of the manner in which he accomplished his object we find no 
information: and this historical blank is inadequately filled up by 


| Herod. vi, 127-131. The locution explained is, — Οὐ φροντὶς Ἱπποκλείδῃ: 
compare the allusions to it in the Paremiographi, Zenob. v, 31; Diogenian. 
vii, 21; Suidas, xi, 45, ed. Schott. 

The convocation of the suitors at the invitation of Kleisthenés from all 
parts of Greece, and the distinctive mark and character of each, is prettily 
told, as well as the drunken freak whereby Hippokleidés forfeits both the 
favor of Kleisthenés, and cae hand of Agaristé, which he was on the point 
of obtaining. It seems to be a story framed upon the model of various inci- 
dents in the old epic, especially the suitors of Helen. 

On one point, however, the author of the story seems to have overlooked 
both the exigencies of chronology and the historical position and feelings of 
his hero Kleisthenés. For among the suitors who present themselves at 
Siky6n in conformity with the invitation of the latter, one is Ledkédés, son 
of Pheidén the despot of Argos. Now the hostility and vehement antipathy 
towards Argos, which Herodotus ascribes in another place to the Sikyonian 
Kleisthenés, renders it all but impossible that the son of any king of Argos 
could have become a candidate for the hand of Agaristé. I have already 
recounted the violence which Kleisthenés did to the legendary sentiment of 
his native town, and the insulting names which he put upon the Sikyonian 
Dorians, —all under the influence of a strong anti-Argeian feeling. Next, 
as to chronology : Pheidén king of Argos lived some time between 760-730 ; 
and his son can never have been a candidate for the daughter of Kleisthenés, 
whose reign falls 600-560 B. c. Chronologers resort here to the usual 
resource in cases of difficulty: they recognize a second and later Pheidon. 
whom they affirm that Herodotus has confounded with the first; or they 
alter the text of Herodotus, and in place of “son of Pheidén,” read “ de- 
scendant of Pheidén.” But neither of these conjectures rests upon any 
basis: the text of Herodotus is smooth and clear, and the second Pheidon is 
nowhere else authenticated. See Larcher and Wesseling, ad loc.; compa ἃ 
also vol. ii, p. 419, part ii, ch. 4, of this History. 

3 Plutarch, De Herod. Malign. c. 21, p. 859. 


40 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


various religious prognostics and oracles, foreshaduwing the nse, 
the harsh rule, and the dethronement, after two generations, of 
these powerful despots. 

According to an idea deeply seated in the Greek mind, the 
destruction of a great prince or of a great power is usually signi 
fied to him by the gods beforehand, though either through hard. 
ness of heart or inadvertence, no heed is taken of the warning. 
In reference to Kypselus and the Bacchiadw, we are informed 
that Melas, the ancestor of the former, was one of the original 
settlers at Corinth who accompanied the first Dorian chief Alé- 
tés, and that Alétés was in vain warned by an oracle not to 
admit him ;' again, too, immediately before Kypselus was born, 
the Bacchiade received notice that his mother was about to give 
birth to one who would prove their ruin: the dangerous infant 
escaped destruction only by a hair’s breadth, being preserved 
from the intent of his destroyers by lucky concealment in a chest. 
Labba, the mother of Kypselus, was daughter of Amphion, who 
belonged to the gens, or sept, of the Bacchiade; but she was 
lame, and none of the gens would consent to marry her with that 
deformity. Eetion, son of Echekratés, who became her husband, 
belonged to a different, yet, hardly less distinguished heroic gene- 
alogy: he was of the Lapithz, descended from Kzeneus, and dwell- 
ing in the Corinthian deme called Petra. We see thus that 
Kypselus was not only a high-born man in the city, but a Bacchiad 
by half-birth ; both of these circumstances were likely to make 
exclusion from the government intolerable to him. He rendered 
himself highly popular with the people, and by their aid over- 
threw and expelled the Bacchiadz, continuing as despot at Cor 
inth for thirty years until his death (Β. c. 655-625). According 
to Aristotle, he maintained throughout life the same conciliatory 
behavior by which his power had first been acquired; and his 
popularity was so effectually sustained that he had never any oc 
casion for a body-guard. But the Corinthian oligarchy of the 
century of Herodotus, — whose tale that historian has embodied 
in the oration of the Corinthian 2nvoy Sosiklés? to the Spartans, 


* Pausan. ii, 4, 9. 
* Aristot. Polit. v, 9,22; Herodot. v, 92. The taie respecting Kypselus, 
and his wholesale exaction from the people. contained in the spurious second 


PERIANDER DESPOT AT CORINTH. 41 


— gave a very different description, and depicted Kypselus as a 
cruel ruler, who banished, robbed, and murdered by wholesale. 
His son and successor Periander, though energetic as a warrior, 
distinguished as an encourager of poetry and music, and even 
numbered by some among the seven wise men of Greece, — is, 
nevertheless, uniformly represented us oppressive and inhuman 
in his treatment of subjects. The revolting stories which are 
told respecting his private life, and his relations with his mother 
and his wife, may for the most part be regarded as calumnies sug- 
gested by odious associations with his memory; but there seems 
good reason for imputing to him tyranny of the worst character, 
and the sanguinary maxims of precaution so often acted upon by 
Grecian despots were traced back in ordinary belief to Periander,! 
and his contemporary Thrasybulus, despot of Milétus. He main- 
tained a powerful body-guard, shed much blood, and was exorbi- 
tant in his exactions, a part of which was employed in votive 
offerings at Olympia; and this munificence to the gods was con- 
sidered by Aristotle and others as part of a deliberate system, 
with the view of keeping his subjects both hard at work and poor. 
On one occasion, we are told that he invited the women of Cor- 
inth to assemble for the celebration of a religious festival, and 
then stripped them of their rich attire and ornaments. By some 
later writers, he is painted as the stern foe of everything like 
luxury and dissolute habits, — enforcing industry, compelling 
every man to render account of his means of livelihood, and 
causing the procuresses of Corinth to be thrown into the sea.? 
Though the general features of his character, his cruel tyranny 
no less than his vigor and ability, may be sufficiently relied on, 
yet the particular incidents connected with his name are all ex- 
tremely dubious: the most credible of all seems to be the tale of 
his inexpiable quarrel with his son, and his brutal treatment of 
many noble Korkyrzan youths, as related in Herodotus. Peri- 


book of the Ciconomica of Aristotle, coincides with the general view of 
Herodotus (Aristot. Giconom. ii, 2); but I do not trust the statements of 
this treatise for facts of the sixth or seventh centuries B. c. 

' Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 2-22; iii, 8,3; Herodot. v, 92. 

3 Ephorus, Frag. 106, ed. Marx.; Herakleidés Porticus, Frag. v, ed 
Kohler; Nicolaus Damasc. p. 50, ed. Orell.; Diogen. Laért. i, 96-98; Sui 
das, v, Κυψελίδων ἀνάϑημα. 


~ -_- 


εὖ ΝΣ 


42 HISTORY OF GREECE. GREAT POWER OF PERIANDER. 43 


a 
Ψ΄ »ν- 


͵ << « 
- ° 
π΄“. PRIS me μῶν 


ander is said to have put to death his wife, Melissa, daughter of 
Proklés, despot of Epidaurus ; and his son Lykophron, informed 
of this deed, contracted an incurable antipathy against him. 
After vainly trying, both by rigor and by conciliation, to conquer 
this feeling on the part of his son, Periander sent him to reside 
at Korkyra, then dependent upon his rule; but when he found 
himself growing old and disabled, he recalled him to Corinth, in 
order to insure the continuance of the dynasty. Lykophron still 
obstinately dechined all personal communication with his father, 
upon which the latter desired him to come to Corinth, and engaged 
himself to go over to Korkyra. So terrified were the Korkyra- 
ans at the idea of a visit from this formidable old man, that they 
put Lykophrén to death, —a deed which Periander avenged by 
seizing three hundred youths of their noblest families, and 
sending them over to the Lydian king, Alyattés at Sardis, in 
order that they might be castrated and made to serve as eunuchs. 
The Corinthian vessels in which the youths were dispatched for- 
tunately touched at Samos in the way; where the Samians and 


Knidians, shocked at a proceeding which outraged all Hellenic 
sentiment, contrived to rescue the youths from the miserable fate 


intended for them, and, after the death of Periander, sent them 
back to their native island.! 

While we turn with displeasure from the political life of this 
man, we are at the same time made acquainted with the great ex- 
tent of his power, —greater than that which was ever possessed 
by Corinth after the extinction of his dynasty. Korkyra, Ambra- 
kia, Leukas, and Anaktorium, all Corinthian colonies, but in the 
next century independent states, appear in his time dependencies 
of Corinth. Ambrakia is said to have been under the rule of 
another despot named Periander, probably also a Kypselid by 
birth. It seems, indeed, that the towns of Anaktorium, Leukas, 
and Apollonia in the Ionian gulf, were either founded by the 
Kypselids, or received reinforcements of Corinthian colonists, 
during their dyrasty, though Korkyra was established consider- 


ably earlier.? 


: Herodot. iii, 47-54. He details at some length this tragical story. Com 


ὁ Plutarch, De Herodoti Malignitat. c. 22, p. 86C. 
ar Aristat. Polit. v, 3,6; 8, 9. Plutarch, Amatorius, c. 23, p. 768, and De 


The reign of Periander lasted for forty x ears (B. c. 625-585): 
Psammetichus son of Gordius, who succeeded him, reigned three » 
years, and the Kypselid dynasty is then said to have closed, after 
having continued for seventy-three years.!_ In respect of power, 
magnificent display, and wide-spread connections both in Asia and 
in Italy, they evidently stood high among the Greeks of their time. 
heir offerings consecrated at Olympia excited great admiration, 
especially the gilt colossal statue of Zeus, and the large chest of 
cedar-wood dedicated in the temple of Héré, overlaid with vari- 
ous figures in gold and ivory: the figures were borrowed from 
mythical and legendary story, and the chest was a commemora- 
tion both of the name of Kypselus and of the tale of his mar- 
vellous preservation in infancy.2 If Plutarch is correct, this 
powerful dynasty is to be numbered among the despots put down 
by Sparta ;* yet such intervention of the Spartans, granting it to 
lave been matter of fact, can hardly have been known to Herod- 
otus. 

Coincident in point of time with the commencement of Perian- 


Sera Numinis Vindictd, ο. 7, p. 553. Strabo, vii, p. 325; x, Ρ. 452. Scym- 
nus Chius, v, 454, and Antoninus Liberalis, c. iv, who quotes the lost work 
called ᾿Αμβρακικὰ of Athanadas. 

’ See Mr. Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, ad ann. 625-585 B. c. 

* Pausan. v, 2,4; 17, 2. Strabo, viii, p. 353. Compare Schneider, Epime 
trum ad Xenophon. Anabas. p. 570. The chest was seen at Olympia, both 
by Pausanias and by Dio Chrysostom (Or. xi, p. 325, Reiske). 

* Plutarch, De Herodot. Malign. c. 21, p. 859. If Herodotus had known 
or believed that the dynasty of the Kypselids at Corinth was put down by 
Sparta, he could not have failed to make allusion to the fact, in the long 
harangue which he ascribes to the Corinthian Sosiklés (v, 92). Whoever 
reads that speech, will perceive that the inference from silence to ignorance 
is in this case almost irresistible. 

O. Maller ascribes to Periander a policy intentionally anti-Dorian, — 
“prompted by the wish of utterly eradicating the peculiarities of the Dorie 
race. For this reason he abolished the public tables, and prohibited the 
ancient education.” (O. Maller, Dorians, iii, 8, 3.) 

But it cannot be shown that any public tables (συσσίτια), or any peculiar 
education, analogous to those of Sparta, ever existed at Corinth. If nothing 
more be meant by these συσσίτια than public banquets on particular festive 
occasions (see Welcker, Prolegom. ad Theognid. c. 20, p. xxxvii), these are 
noway peculiar to Dorian cities. Nor does Theognis, v, 270, bear ont 
Welcker in affirming “ syssitiorum vetus institutam” at Megara. 


44 HISTORY OF GREECE 


der’s reign at Corinth, we find Theagenés despot at Megara, whe 
is also said to hare acquired his power by demagogic arts, as well 
as by violent aggressions against the rich proprietors, whose cattle 
he destroyed in their pastures by the side of the river. We are 
not told by what previous conduct on the part of the rich this 
hatred of the people had been earned, but T heagenés carried the 
popular feeling completely along with him, obtained by public 
vote a body of guards ostensibly for his personal safety, and em- 


ployed them to overthrow the oligarchy.! But he did not main- 
tain his power, even for his own life : a second revolution dethroned 
and expelled him; on which occasion, after a short interval of 
temperate government, the people are said to have renewed ina 
still more marked way their antipathies against the rich 5 banish- 
ing some of them with confiscation of property, intruding into 
the houses of others with demands for forced hospitality, and 
even passing a formal palintokia, or decree, to require from the 
rich who had lent money on interest, the refunding of all past 
interest paid to them by their debtors.2 To appreciate correctly 
such a demand, we must recollect that the practice of taking in- 
terest for money lent was regarded by a large proportion of early 
ancient society with feelings of unqualified reprobation ; and it 
will be seen, when we come to the legislation of Solon, how much 
such violent reactionary feeling against the creditor was provoked 
by the antecedent working of the harsh law determining his 
rights. lad 

We hear in general terms of more than one revolution in the 
government of Megara, —a disorderly democracy, subverted by 
returning oligarchical exiles, and these again unable long to main- 
tain themselves ;? but we are alike uninformed as to dates and 
details. And in respect to one of these struggles, we are admitted 
to the outpourings of a contemporary and a sufferer, — the Me- 
garian poet Theognis. Unfortunately, his elegiac verses, as we 
possess them, are ina state so broken, incoherent, and interpolated, 
that we make out no distinct conception of the events which call 
them forth,— still less, can we discover in the verses of Theognis 


1 Aristot. Polit. v, 4, 5; Rhetor. i, 2, 7. 
® Plutarch, Quiest. Graec. c. 18, p. 295. 
3 Aristot. Polit. iv, 12, 10; v, 2 6; 4, 3. 


GOOD AND BAD—AS UNDERSTOOD BY THEOGNIS. 45 


shat strength and peculiarity of pure Dorian feeling, which, since 
the publication of O. Muller’s History of the Dorians, it has been. 
the fashion to look for so extensively. But we see that the poet 
was connected with an oligarchy, of birth and not of wealth, 
which had recently been subverted by the breaking in of the 
rustic population previously subject and degraded, — vhat these 
subjects were contented to submit to a single-headed despot, in 
order to escape from their former rulers,— and that Theognis had 
himself been betrayed by his own friends and companions, strip- 
ped of his property, and exiled, through the wrong doing “of 
enemies whose blood he hopes one day to be permitted to drink.”! 
The condition of the subject cultivators previous to this revolution 
he depicts in sad colors ; — they “ dwelt without the city, clad in 
goatskins, and ignorant of judicial sanctions or laws:”? after it, 
they had become citizens, and their importance had been im- 
mensely enhanced. And thus, according to his impression, the 
vile breed has trodden down the noble,— the bad have become 
masters, and the good are no longer of any account. The bitter- 
ness and humiliation which attend upon poverty, and the undue 
ascendency which wealth confers even upon the most worthless of 
mankind,? are among the prominent subjects of his complaint, 
and his keen personal feeling on this point would be alone suffi- 
cient to show that the recent revolution had no way overthrown 
the influence of property; in contradiction to the opinion of 
Welcker, who infers without ground, from a passage of uncertain 
meaning, that the land of the state had been formally redivided.' 


Theognis, vv, 682, 715, 720, 750, 816, 914, Welcker’s edition : — 
Τῶν εἴη μέλαν αἷμα πιεῖν, etc. 
" Theognis, v, 20. -- 
Κύρνε, πόλις μὲν ἔϑ᾽ Ade πόλις, λαοὶ δὲ δὴ ἄλλοι, 
Οἱ πρόσϑ᾽ οὔτε δίκας Ὦδεσαν οὔτε νόμους, 
᾽λλ᾽ ἀμφὶ πλευρῇσι δορὰς αἰγῶν κατέτριβον, 
Ἔξω δ᾽ ὥστ᾽ ἔλαφοι riod ἐνέμοντο πόλεος. 


3 See, especially, the lines from 500-560, 816-830, in Welcker’s edition. 

4 Consult the Prolegomena to Welcker’s edition of Theognis ; alsv, those 
a’ Schneidewin (Delectus Elegiac. Poetar. pp. 46-55). 

The Prolegomena of Welcker are particularly valuable and full of instrue- 
tion. Hie illustrates at great length the tendency common to Theognis, with 
cther early Greek poets, to apply the words good and bad, not with reference 


—————— eee ee, . 


46 HISTORY vf GREECE. 


The Mvzarian revolution, so far as we apprehend it from 
Theognis, appears to have improved materially the condition of 
the cultivators around the town, and to have strengthened a 
certain class whom he considers “the bad rich,”— while it extin- 
guished the privileges of that governing order, to which he him 
self belonged, denominated in his language “the good and the 
virtuous,” with ruinous effect upon his own individual fortunes. 
How far this governing order was exclusively Dorian, we have 
no means of determining. The political change by which T heog- 


to any ethical standard, but to wealth as contrasted with poverty, — nobility 
with low birth, — strength with weakness,—conservative and oligarchical 
politics as opposed to innovation (sect. 10-18). The ethical meaning of these 
words is not absolutely unknown, yet rare, in Theognis: it gradually grew 
ap at Athens, and became popularized by the Socratic school of philosophers 
as well as by the orators. But the early or political meaning always 
remained, and the fluctuation between the two has been productive of fre- 
quent misunderstanding. Constant attention is necessary when we read the 
expressions οἱ ἀγαϑοὶ, ἐσϑλοὶ, βέλτιστοι, καλοκἀγαϑοὶ, χρηστοὶ, etc., or on 
the other hand, οἱ κακοὶ, δειλοὶ, ete., to examine whether the context is such 
as to give to them the ethical or the political meaning. Welcker seems to 
go a step too far, when he says that the latter sense “fell into desuetude, 
through the influence of the Socratic philosophy.” (Proleg. sect. 11, Ρ. XXv.) 
The two meanings both remained extant at the same time, as we see by 
Aristotle (Polit. iv, 8, 3), --- σχεδὸν γὰρ παρὰ τοὶς πλείστοις of εὔποροι, τῶν 
καλῶν κἀγαϑῶν δοκοῦσι κατέχειν χώραν. A careful distinction is sometimes 
found in Plato and Thucydides, who talk of the oligarchs as “the persons 
culled super-excellent,” -— τοὺς καλοὺς κἀγαϑοὺς ὀνομαζομένους (Thucyd. viii, 
48),— ὑπὸ τῶν πλουσίων τε καὶ καλῶν κἀγαϑῶν λεγομένων ἐν τῇ πόλει 
(Plato, Rep. viii, p. 569). 

The same double sense is to be found equally prevalent in the Latin lan- 
guage: “ Bonique et medi cives appellati, non ob merita in rempublicam, 
omnibus pariter corruptis : sed uti quisque locupletissimus, et injuria validior, 
quia praesentia defendebat, pro bono habebatur.” (Sallust, Hist. Fragment. 
lib. i, p. 935, Cort) And again, Cicero (De Republ. i, 34): “Hoc errore 
valgi cum rempubiicam opes paucorum, non Virtutes, tenere coeperunt, 
nomen illi principes optimatium mordicus tenent, re autem carent eo nomine.” 
In Cicero’s Oration pro Sextio (c. 45) the two meanings are intentionally 
confounded together, when he gives his de‘inition of optimus quisque. Welcker 
, Proleg. s. 12) produces several other examples of the like equivocal mean- 
ing. Nor are there wanting instances of the same use of language in the 
laws and customs of the early Germans, — boni hormines, probi homines, 
Rachinburgi, Gudeminner.. See Savigny, Geschichte des Rémisch. Rechts 
im Mittelalte:, vol. i, p. 184; vol. ii, Ρ. xxii 


CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF THE DESPOTS. 47 


nis suffered, and the new despot whom he indicates as either 
actually installed or nearly impending, must have come consider- 
ably after the despotism of Theagenés ; for the life of the poet 
seems to fall between 570-490 B. c., while Theagenés must have 
ruled about 630-600 B. c. From the unfavorable picture, there- 
fore, which the poet gives as his own early experience of the 
condition of the rural cultivators, it is evident that the despot 
Theagenés had neither conferred upon them any permanent 
benefit, nor given them access to the judicial protection of the 
city. 

tt is thus that the despots of Corinth, Sikyén, and Megara 
serve as samples of those revolutionary influences, which towards 
the beginning of the sixth century B. c., seem to have shaken 
or overturned the oligarchical governments m very many cities 
throughout the Grecian world. There existed a certain sympathy 
and alliance between the despots of Corinth and Sikyén :! how 
far such feeling was farther extended to Megara, we do ‘not 
know. The latter city seems evidently to have been more popu- 
lous and powerful during the seventh -and sixth centuries B. C., 
than we shall afterwards find her throughout the two brilliant 
centuries of Grecian history: her colonies, found as far distant 
as Bithynia and the ‘Thracian Bosphorus on one side, and 88 
Sicily on the other, argue an extent of trade as well as naval 
foree once not inferior to Athens: so that we shall be the jess 
surprised when we approach the life of Solon, to find her in pes- 
session of the island of Salamis, and long maintaining it,-at one 
time with every promise of triumph, against the entire ‘force 
the Athenians. 


' Herod. vi, 128. 


HISTORY OF GREECE. 


CHAPTER X. 
10NIU PORTION OF HELLAS.— ATHENS BEFORE SOLON 


Havine traced in the preceding chapters the scanty stream 
of Peloponnesian history, from the first commencement of an 
authentic chronology in 776 B. c. to the maximum of Spartan 
territorial acquisition, and the general acknowledgment of Spar- 
tan primacy, prior to 547 B. c., I proceed to state as much as 
can be made out respecting the Ionic portion of Hellas during 
the same period. ‘This portion comprehends Athens and Eubea 
—the Cyclades Islands,—and the Ionic cities on the coast of 
Asia Minor, with their different colonies. 

In the case of Peloponnesus, we have been enabled to discerr 
something like an order of real facts in the period alluded to, — 
Sparta makes great strides, while Argos falls. In the case of 
Athens, unfortunately, our materials are less instructive. The 
number of historical facts, anterior to the Solonian legislation, is 
very few indeed ; — the interval between 776 B. c. and 624 B. C., 
the epoch of Drako’s legislation a short time prior to Kylon’s at- 
tempted usurpation, gives us merely a list of archons, denuded 
of all incident. 

In compliment to the heroism of Kodrus, who had sacrificed 
his life for the safety of his country, we are told that no person 
after him was permitted to bear the title of king :! his son Medon, 
and twelve successors, — Akastus, Archippus, Thersippus, Phor- 
bas, Megaklés, Diognétus, Phereklés, Ariphron, Thespieus, Ag- 
amestor, /Mschylus, and Alkmzx6on,— were all archons for life. 
In the second year of Alkmx6n (752 B. C.), the dignity of archon 
was restricted to a duration of ten years: and seven of these 
decennial archons are numbered, — Charops, /Esimides, Kleidi- 
kus, Hippomenés, Leokratés, Apsandrus, Eryxias. With Kreorn 
who succeeded Eryxias, the archonship was not only made aa. 


ἅν» ......-......... . . . ἘΕΒΕΝΒΒΗΒΕΒΝΝ 


1 Justin. ii, 7. 


ATHENS BEFORE SOLON. 49 


nual, but put into commission and distributed among nine persons 
and these nine archons, annually changed, continue throughout 
all the historical period, interrupted only by the few intervals of 
political disturbance and foreign compression. Down to Kleidi- 
kus and Hippomenes (714 B. c.), the dignity of archon had con- 
tinued to belong exclusively to the Medontide or descendants of 
Medoén and Kodrus:!' at that period it was thrown open to all 
the Eupatrids, or order of nobility in the state. 

Such is the series of names by which we step down from the 
level of legend to that of history. All our historical knowledge 
of Athens 1s confined to the period of the annual archons; 
which series of eponymous archons, from Kreén downwards, is 
perfectly trustworthy.2 Above 683 B. c., the Attic antiquaries 
lave provided us with a string of names, which we must take as 
we find them, without being able either to warrant the whole or 
to separate the false from the true. There is no reason to doubt 
the general fact, that Athens, like so many other communities ot 
Greece, was in its primitive times governed by an hereditary line 
of kings, and that it passed from that form of government into a 
commonwealth, first oligarchical, afterwards democratical. 

We are in no condition to determine the civil classification and 
political constitution of Attica, even at the period of the archon- 
ship of Kren, 683 B. c., when authentic Athenian chronology 
first commences, — much less can we pretend to any knowledge 
of the anterior centuries. Great political changes were intro- 
duced first by Solon (about 594 8. c.), next by Kleisthenés (509 
B. C.), afterwards by Aristeidés, Periklés, and Ephialtés, between 
the Persian and Peloponnesian wars: so that the old ante-Solon- 
ian, — nay, even the real Solonian, — polity was thus put more 
and more out of date and out of knowledge. But all the informa- 
tion which we possess respecting that old polity, is derived from 
authors who lived after all or most of these great changes,— and 


A. 


' Pausan. i, 3,2; Suidas, Ἱππομένης ; Diogenian. Centur. Proverb. iii, 1. 
᾿Ασεβέστερον 'Ἱππομένους. 

* See Boeckh on the Parian Marble, in Corp. Inscrip. Gree. part 12, zeet. 
6, pp. 307, 340, 332. 

From the beginning of the reign of Med6én son of Kodrus, to the first 
annual archun Kredn, the Parian Marble computes 407 years, Eusebirs 
387. 

VOL. ITI. 3 foe 


-- _ 


ee A ee ee 


itt ule a 


50 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


who, finding no records, nor anything better than current legends, 
explained the foretime as well as they could by guesses more or 
less ingenious, generally attached to the dominant legendary 
names. They were sometimes able to found their conclusions 
upon religious usages, periodical ceremonies, or common sacri- 
fices, still subsisting in their own time; and these were doubtless 
the best evidences to be found respecting Athenian antiquity, 
since such practices often continued unaltered throughout all the 
political changes. It is in this way alone that we arrive at some 
partial Knowledge of the ante-Solonian condition of Attica, 
though as a whole it still remains dark and unintelligible, even 
after the many illustrations of modern commentators. 
Philochorus, writing in the third century before the Christian 
era, stated that Kekrops had orjginally distributed Attica into 
twelve districts,— Kekropia, Tetrapolis, Epakria, Dekeleia, Eleu- 
sis, Aphidnx, Thorikus, Brauron, Kythérus, Sphéttus, Képhisia, 
Phalérus,—and that these twelve were consolidated into one 
political society by Theseus.! This partition does not comprise 
the Megarid, which, according to other statements, is represented 
as united with Attica, and as having formed part of the distribu- 
tion made by king Pandién among his four sons, Nisus, Ageus, 
Pallas, and Lykus, —a story as old as Sophoklés, at least.2 In 
other accounts, again, a quadruple division is applied to the 
tribes, which are stated to have been four in number, beginning 
from Kekrops,— called in his time Kekrodpis, Autochthon, Aktza, 
and Paralia. Under king Kranaus, these tribes, we are told, re- 
ceived the names of Kranais, Atthis, Mesogwa, and Diakria,3 — 
under Erichthonius, those of Dias, Athenais, Poseidonias, Heph- 
wstias: at last, shortly after Erechtheus, they were denominated 
after the four sons of Ién (son of Kreusa, daughter of Erech- 
theus, by Apoilo), Geleontes, Hoplétes, JEgikoreis, Argadeis, 
The four Attic or Ionic tribes, under these last-mentioned names, 


Philochorus ap. Strabo, ix, p. 396. See Schémann, Antig. 7.1 Gree, 
» Vv, sect. 2-5. 

ἡ Strabo, ix, p. 892. Philochorus and Andron extended the kingdom of 
Nisus from the isthmus of Corinth as far as the Pythium (near (πο) and 
Elousis (Str. i.) ; but there were many different tales. 

* Pollux, viii, c 9, 109-11). 


FOUR EARLY TRIBES OF ATTICA. 51 


continued to form the classification of the citizens until the revo- 
lution of Kleisthenes in 509 B. c., by which the ten tribes were 
introduced, as we find them down to the period of Macedonian 
ascendency. It is affirmed, and with some etymological plausi- 
bility, that the denominations of these four tribes must originally 
have had reference to the occupations of those who bore them,— 
the Hoplétes being the warrior-class, the Egikoreis goatherds, the 
Argadeis artisans, and the Geleontes (Teleontes, or Gedeontes) 
cultivators: and hence some authors have ascribed to the ancient 
inhabitants of Attica! an actual primitive distribution into hered- 
itary professions, or castes, similar to that which prevailed ir 
India and Egypt. If we should even grant that such a division 
into castes might originally have prevailed, it must have grown 
obsolete long before the time of Solon: but there seem no suf- 
ficient grounds for believing that it ever did prevail. The names 
of the tribes may have been originally borrowed from certain 
professions, but it does not necessarily follow that the reality cor- 
responded to this derivation, or that every individual who be- 
longed to any tribe was a member of the profession from whence 
the name had originally been derived. From the etymology of 
the names, be it ever so clear, we cannot safely assume the his- 
torical reality of a classification according to professions. And 
this objection (which would be weighty, even if the etymology 
had been clear) becomes irresistible, when we add that even the 
etymology is not beyond dispute ;? that the names themselves are 
written with a diversity which cannot be reconciled: and that 
the four professions named by Strabo omit the goatherds and 


' T6n, the father of the four heroes after whom these tribes were named, 
was affirmed by one story to be the primitive civilizing legislator of Attica, 
like Lykurgus, Numa, or Deukalidn (Plutarch. adv. Koldten, c. 31, p. 1125). 

* Thus Euripides derives the Αὐγικορεῖς, not from aif, a goat, but from 
Aiyle, the Aigis of Athéné (Ion. 1581): he also gives: Teleontes, derived from 
an eponymous 7 οἰεόπ, son of Ién, while the inscriptions at Kyzikus concur 
with Herodotus and others in giving Geleontes. Plutarch (Solon, 25) gives 
Gedeontes. In an Athenian inscription recently published by Professor 
Ross (dating, seemingly, in the first century after the Christian era), the 
worship cf Zeus GeleOn at Athens has been for the fi-st time verified, — 
Διὸς Γελέοντος ἱεροκήρυξ (Ross, Die Attischen Demen pp. vii-ix, Halle 
i846). 


2 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


include the priesta; while those specified Ly Plutarch leave cut 
the latter and include the former.! 

All that seems certain is, that these were the four ancient Ionic 
tribes — analogous to the Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanes among 
the Dorians — which prevailed not only at Athens, but among 
several of the Ionic cities derived from Athens. The Geleontes 
are mentioned in inscriptions now remaining belonging to Teds 
in Ionia, and all the four are named in those of Kyzikus in the 
Propontis, which was a foundation from the Ionic Miletus.2 The 
four tribes, and the four names (allowing for some variations of 
reading), are therefore historically verified ; but neither the time 
of their introduction nor their primitive import are ascertainable 
matters, nor can any faith be put in the various constructions of 
the legends of Ién, Erechtheus, and Kekrops, by modern com- 
mentators. 

These four tribes may be looked at either as religious and social 
aggregates, in which capacity each of them comprised three phra- 
tries and ninety gentes; or as political aggregates, in which point 
of view each included three trittyes and twelve naukraries. 
Each phratry contained thirty gentes; each trittys comprised 
four naukraries: the total numbers were tnus three hundred 
and sixty gentes and forty-eight naukraries. Moreover, each 
gens is said to have contained thirty heads of families, of whom 
therefore there would be a total of ten thousand eight hundred. 

Comparing these two distributions one with the other, we may 
remark that they are distinct in their nature and proceed in oppo- 
site directions. The trittys and the naukrary are essentially frac- 
tional subdivisions of the tribe, and resting upon the tribe as 
their higher unity; the naukrary is a local circumscription, com- 


1 Plutarch (Solon, c. 25); Strabo, viii, p. 383. Compare Plato, Kritias, 
p. 110. 

? Boeckh, Corp. Inscr. Nos. 3078, 3079, 3665. The elaborate commentary 
on this last-mentioned inscription, in which Boeckh vindicates the early 
historical reality of the classification by professions, is noway satisfactory to 
my mind. 

K. F. Hermann (Lehrbuch der Griechischen Staats Alterthiimer, sect. 
91-96) gives a summary of all that can be known respecting these old Athe- 
nian tribes. Compare Ilgen, De Tribubus Atticis, p. 9, seg.; Tittmann, 
Griechische Staats Verfassungen, pp. 570-582; Wachsmuth, Hellenische 
Alterthumskunde, sect. 43, 44. 


2 Vai, 3 


TRIBES, PHRATRIES, GENTES, ETC. 53 


posed of the naukrars, or principal householders (so the etymology 
seems to indicate), who levy in each respective district the quota 
of public contributions which belongs to it, and superintend the 
disbursement, — provide the military force incumbent upon the 
district, being for each naukrary two horsemen and one ship, — 
and furnish the chief district-officers, the prytanes of the naukra- 
ri! A certain number of foot soldiers, varying according to the 
demand, must probably be understood as accompanying these 
horsemen, but the quota is not specified, as it was perhaps thought 
unnecessary to limit precisely the obligations of any except the 
wealthier men who served on horseback, — at a period when oli- 
garchical ascendency was paramount, and when the bulk of the 
people was in a state of comparative subjection. The forty-eight 
naukraries are thus a systematic subdivision of the four tribes, 
embracing altogether the whole territory, population, contributions, 
and military force of Attica, —a subdivision framed exclusively 
for purposes connected with the entire state. 

But the phratries and gentes are a distribution completely differ- 
ent from this. ‘They seem aggregations of small primitive unities 
into larger; they are independent of, and do not presuppose, the 
tribe; they arise separately and spontaneously, without precon- 
certed uniformity, and without reference to a common political pur- 


1 About the naukraries, see Aristot. Fragment. Rerum Public. p. 89, ed 
Neumann; Harpokration, vv, Δήμαρχος, Navxpapixd; Photius, v, Navxpa- 
pia; Pollux, viii, 108; Schol. ad Aristoph. Nubes, 37. 

Oi πρυτάνεις τῶν Ναυκράρων, Herodot. v, 71: they conducted the military 
proceedings in resistance to the usurpation of Kylon. 

The statement that each naukrary was obliged to furnish one ship can 
hardly be true of the time before Solon: as Pollux states it, we should be 
led to conceive that he only infers it from the name ναύκραρος (Pollux, viii, 
108), though the real etymology seems rather to be from vaiw (Wachsmuth, 
Hellen. Alt. sect. 44, p. 240). There may be some ground for believing that 
the old meaning, also, of the word ναύτης connected it with vaio ; such a 
supposition would smooth the difficulty in regard to the func-ions of the 
vavtodixat as judges in cases of illicit admission into the phratores. See 
Hesychius and Harpokration, v, Navrodixa: ; and Baumstark, De Curatori- 
bus Emporii, Friburg, 1828, p. 67, seg.: compare, also, the fragment of the 
Solonian law, ἢ ἱερῶν ὀργίων ἢ ναῦται, which Niebuhr conjecturally corrects. 
Rom. Gesch. ν, i, p. 323, 2d ed.; Hesychius, Ναυστῆρες --- οἱ οἰκέται. See 
Pollux, Ναῦλον, and Lobeck, Ῥηματικὸν, sect. 3, p. 7; ᾿Δειναῦται napa 
Μιλησίοις 1 Plutarch, Quest. Gree. c. 32, p. 298. 


δ4 HISTORY OF G&aLece. 


pose ; the legislator finds them preéxisting, and adapts or modifies 
them to answer some national scheme. We must distinguish the 
general fact of the classification, and the successive subordination in 
the scale, of the families to the gens, of the gentes to the phratry, 
and of the phratries to the tribe,— from the precise numerical sym- 
metry with which this subordination is invested, as we read | —_— 
thirty families toa gens, thirty gentes toa phratry, three phratries 
to each tribe. If such nice equality of numbers could ever have 
been procured, by legislative constraint! operating upon preéxist- 
ent natural elements, the proportions could not have been per- 
manently maintained. But we may reasonably doubt whether it 
did ever so exist: it appears more like the fancy of an author 
who pleased himself by supposing an original systematic creation 
in times anterior to records, by multiplying together the number 
of days in the month and of months in the year. That every 
phratry contained an equal number of gentes, and every gens an 
equal number of families, is a supposition hardly admissible with- 
out better evidence than we possess. But apart from this question- 
able precision of numerical scale, the phratries and gentes them- 
selves were real, ancient, and durable associations among the 
Athenian people, highly important to be understood.2 The basis of 
the whole was the house, hearth, or tamily, — a number of which, 


' Meier, De Gentilitate AiticA, pp. 22-24, conceives that this numerical 
completeness was enacted by Solon; but of this there is no proof, nor is it 
in harmony with the general tendencies of Solon’s legislation. 

ἢ So in reference to the Anylo-Saxon Tythings and Hundreds, and to the 
still more widely-spread division of the Hundred, which seems to pervade 
the whole of Teutonic and Seandinavian antiquity, much more extensively 
tham the tything ; —there is no ground for believing that these precise numer- 
ical proportions were in general practice realized : the systematic nomencla- 
ture served its. purpose by marking the idea of graduation and the type to 
which a certain approach was aetually made. Mr. Thorpe observes, respect- 
ing the Hundred, in his Glossary to the “ Ancient Laws and Institi tes of 
England,” v, Hundred, T'ything, Frid-Borg, etc. “In the Dialogus de Seace- 
cario, it is said that a Hundred ‘ ex hydarum aliquot centenariis, sed non 
determinatis, constat: quidam enim ex pluribus, quidam ex paucioribus 
constat.’ Some accounts make it consist of precisely a hundred hydes, others 
of a hundred tythings, others of a hundred free families. Certain it is, that 
whatever may have been its original organization, the Hundred, at the time 
when it becomes known to us, differed greatly “1 extent in various parts of 
Rngland.” 


REAw CHARACTER OF THE ΑἹΓΟ GENTES. 56 


greater or less, composed the gens, or genos. This gens was 

there’.re a clan, sept, or enlarged, and partly factitious, brother 

hood, bound together by, — 1. Common religious ceremonies, and 
exclusive privilege of priesthood, in honor of the same god, sup- 
posed to be the primitive ancestor, and characterized by a special 
surname, 2. By a common burial-place. 3. By mutual Tights 
of succession to property. 4. By reciprocal obligations of help, 
defence, and redress of injuries. 5. By mutual right and obliga- 
tion to intermarry in certain determinate cases, especially where 
there was an orphan daughter or heiress. 6. By possession, in 
some cases at least, of common property, an archon and a treas- 
urer of their own. Such were the rights and obligations charac- 
terizing the gentile union:! the phratric union, binding together 
several gentes, was less intimate, but -still included some mutual 
rights and.obligations of an analogous character, and especially a 
communion of particular sacred rites and mutual privileges of 
prosecution in the event of a phrator being slain. Each phratry 
was considered as belonging to one.of the four tribes, and.all the 
phratries of the same tribe enjoyed a certain periodical commu- 
nion of saered rites, under the presidency of a magistrate called 
the phylo-basileus, or tribe-king, selected from the Eupatrids ; 
Zeus Gele6n was in this manner the patron-god of the tribe Ge- 
leontes. Lastly, all the four tribes were linked together by the 
common worship of Apollo Patréus, as their .divine father and 
guardian; for Apollo was the father of Ién, and the eponyms of 
all the four tribes were reputed sons of Ién. 

Such was the primitive religious and social union of the popu- 
lation of Attica in its gradually ascending scale, — as distin- 
guished from the political union, probably of later introduction, 
represented at first by the trittyes and naukraries, and in after 
times by the ten Kleisthenean tribes, subdivided into trittyes and 
demes. The religious and family bond of aggregation is the ear- 
lier of the two: but the political bond, though beginning later, 


' See the instructive inscription in Professor Rose's work (Uber die Die- 
men von Attika, p. 26) of the γένος ᾿Αμυνανόριδῶν, ΡΟΝ ἂν 
archon of that gens, the priest of Kekrops, the Ταμίας, or treasurer, a 
names of the members, with the deme and tribe of each individual ape 
paie Bossler, De Gent. Atticis, p. 53. About the peculiar religious rites 
the gens called Gephyri, see Herodot. v, 61. 


56 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


will be found to acquire constantly increasing influence through. 
out the greater part of this history. In the former, personal re« 
lation is the essential and predominant characteristic,’ — Πυθα] re- 
lation being subordinate: in the latter, property and residence 
become the chief considerations, and the personal element counts 
only as measured by these accompaniments. All these phratric 
and gentile associations, the larger as well as the smaller, were 
founded upon the same principles and tendencies of the Grecian 
mind,? — a coalescence of the idea of worship with that of ances- 
try, or of communion in certain special religious rites with com- 
munion of blood, real or supposed. The god, or hero, to whom 
the assembled members offered their sacrifices, was conceived as 
the primitive ancestor, to whom they owed their origin; often 
through a long list of intermediate hames, as in the cane of the 
Milesian Hekata-us, so often before adverted to.3 Each family 


'@vAal γενικαὶ, opposed to φυλαὶ rorixai.—Dionys. Hal. Ant. Rom. 
ly, 14. 

Plato, Euthydem. p. 302; Aristot. ap. Schol. in Platon. Axioch. p. 465, 
ed. Bek. ᾿Αριστοτέλης φησί" τοῦ ὅλου πλήϑους διῃρημένου ᾿Αϑήνῃσιν εἷς τε 
τοὺς γεωργοὺς καὶ τοὺς δημιουργοὺς, φυλὰς αὐτῶν εἶναι τέσσαρας, τῶν δὲ 
φυλῶν ἑκάστης μοιρὰς εἶναι τρεῖς, ἃς τριττύας τε καλοῦσι καὶ φρατρίας" ἐκώσ- 
rng δὲ τούτων τριάκοντα εἶναι γένη, τὸ δὲ γένος ἐκ τριώκοντα ἀνδρῶν συνισ- 
τάναι" τούτους δὴ τοὺς εἰς τὰ γένη τεταγμένους γεννῆτας καλοῦσι. Pollux, 
vii, 3. Οἱ μετέχοντες τοῦ γένους, γεννῆται καὶ ὁμογώλακτες " γένει μὲν οὐ 
πρυσῆκοντες, ἐκ δὲ τῆς συνόδου οὕτω προσαγορευόμενοι: compare alvo iii, 52; 
Meris Atticist. p. 108. | 

Harpokrat. Vv, ᾿Απόλλων Πατρῷος, Θεοίνιον. Τεννῆται, δ» ξῶνες, ete 
Etymol. Magn. v, Γεννῆται: Suidas, v, "Opyedvec: Pollux. Vili, 85: Demos. 
then. cont. Eubulid. p. 1319, εἶτα φράτορες, εἶτα 
Διὸς épxiov γεννῆται: and cont. Neggram. Ρ. 13865. Ismus uses dpyedvec ag 
synonymous with γεννῆται [566 Orat. ii. pp. 19, 20-28, ed. Bek.) Schémann 
(Antiq. J. P. Gree. § xxvi) considers the two as essentiell» distinct. p7- 
tpy and οὖλον both occur in the Iliad, ii, 362. See the Pissertation of 
Buttmann Uber den Begriff von φρατρία (Mythologus, c. 94, p. 305); and 
that of Meier, De Gentilitate Attica, where the points of knewleige attain- 
able respecting the gentes are well put together and discussed. 

In the Therean Inscription (No. 2448 ap. Boeckh. Corp. Inser. see his 
comment, page 310) containing the -estament of Epikt4ta, whereby a bequest 
is made to of ov) yeveic — ὁ uvdpeiog τῶν ovyyevav,—this latter ‘word ἄνω 
not mean kindred or blood relations, but s variety of she gentile ucian — 
* thiasus,” or “sodalitium.” Boeckh. 

“ Herodot. i, 143. ‘Exaraiy — γενηλογήσαντί τε &wray καὶ avadno. . 


Λπόλλωνος πατρῴου καὶ 


FACTITIOUS BROTHERHOOD. 57 


had its own sacred rites and funereal commemoration of ancestors, 
celebrated by the master of the house, to which none but mem- 
bers of the family were admissible: the extinction of a family, 
‘arrying with it the suspension of these religious rites, was held 
by the Greeks to be a misfortune, not merely from the loss of the 
citizens composing it, but also because the family gods and the 
manes of deceased citizens were thus deprived of their honors,! 
and might visit the country with displeasure. The larger associ- 
ations, called gens, phratry, tribe, were formed by an extension 
of the same principle, —of the family considered as a religious 
brotherhood, worshipping some common god or hero with an ap- 
propriate surname, and recognizing him as their joint ancestor; 
and the festivals Theoenia and Apaturia? —the first Attic, the 


τὴν πατριὴν ἐς ἑκκαιδέκατον ϑεόν. Again, γενεηλογήσαντι ἑωυτὸν, καὶ ἀνα. 
δήσαντι ἐς ἑκκαιδέκατον ϑεόν. The Attic expression, — ἀγχίστεια ἱερῶν καὶ 
ὁσίων, --- illustrates the intimate association between family relationship and 
common religious privileges. — Iszeus, Orat. vi, p. 89, ed. Bek. 

' Iseeus, Or. vi, p. 61; ii, p. 38; Demosth. adv. Makartatum, pp. 1053- 
1075; adv. Leochar. p. 1093. Respecting this perpetuation of the family 
sacred rites, the feeling prevalent among the Athenians is much the same as 
what is now seen in China. 

Mr. Davis observes: “Sons are considered in this country, where the 
power over them is so absolute through life, as a sure support, as well as a 
probable source of wealth and dignities, should they succeed in learning. 
But the grand object is, the perpetuation of the race, to sacrifice at the 
family tombs. Without sons, a man lives without honor or satisfaction. and 
dies unhappy ; and as the only remedy, he is permitted to adopt the sons of 
his younger brothers. 

‘It is not during life only, that a man looks for the service of his sons. 
It is his consolation in declining years, to think that they will continue the 
performance of the prescribed rites in the hall of ancestors, and at the family 
tombs, when he is no more: and it is the absence of this prospect which 
makes the childless doubly miserable. The superstition derives influence 
from the importance attached by the government to this species of posthu- 
mous duty: a neglect of which is punishable, as we have seen, by the laws. 
Indeed, of all the subjects of their care, there are none which the Chinese 80 
religiously attend to as the tombs of their ancestors, conceiving that any 
neglect is sure to be followed by worldly misfortune.” — (The Chinese, by 
John Francis Davis, chap. ix, pp. 131-134, ed. Knight, 1840.) 

Mr. Mill notices the same state of feeling among the indoos. — (History 
of British India, book ii, chap. vii, p. 381, ed. 8vo.) 

*Xenoph. [ellen. i, 5, 8; Herodot i, 147- Suidas, ᾿Απατουρία -- Zev 


3* 


68 HISTORY OF GREECE 


second common to all the Ionic race, — annually brought tozethe1 
the members of these phratries and gentes for worship, fontivity. 
and maintenance of special sympathies ; thus strengthening the 
larger ties without effacing the smaller. . 

Such were the manifestations of Grecian sociality, as we read 
them in the early constitution, not merely of Attica, but of other 

Grecian states besides. To Aristotle and D.kearchus, it was an 
interesting inquiry to trace back all political society into cer- 
tain assumed elementary atoms, and to show by what motives 
and means the original families, each having its separate meal- 
bin and fireplace,! had been brought together into larger agere- 
gates. But the historian must accept as an ultimate fact the 
earliest state of things which his witnesses make known to him ; 
and in the case now before us, the gentile and phratric unions are 
matters into the beginning of which we cannot pretend to pene- 
trate. 

Pollux — probably from Aristotle’s last work on the Constitu- 
tions of Greece — informs us, distinctly, that the members of the 
same gens at Athens were not commonly related by blood,— and 
even without any express testimony we might have concluded 
such to be fact: to what extent the gens, at the unknown epoch 
of its first formation, was based upon actual relationship, we have 
no means of determining, either with regard to the Athenian or 
me Roman gentes, which were in all main points analogous. 
Gentilism is a tie by itself; distinct from the family ties, but 
presupposing their existence and extending them by an artificial 
analogy, partly founded on religious belief and partly on positive 
compact, so as to comprehend strangers in blood. All the mem- 
bers of one gens, or even of one phratry, believed themselves to 
be sprung, not, indeed, from the same grandfather or great- 


Φράτριος --- ᾿Αϑηναία φρατρία, the presiding god of the phratric union. — 
Plato, Euthydem. c. 98. Ρ. 802; Demosth. adv. Makart. p. 1054. See Meier 
De Gentilitate Attic, pp. 11-14. , 

The πάτριαι at Byzantium, which were different from ϑέασοι, and which 
possessed corporate property (τά re ϑιασωτικὰ καὶ Td πατριωτικὼ, Aristot. 
(Economic. ii, 4), are doubtless the parallel of the Athenian phratries. 

: Dikeearchus ap. Stephan. Byz. v, Πατρὴ ; Aristot. Polit. i, 1, 6: Ὅμοσι- 
προὺς and ὁμοκάπτους are the old words cited by the latte: from Charondas 
and Epi enidés ᾿ 


COMMON DIVINE ANCESTOR OF THE GENS. 59 


grandfather, but from the same divine or heroic ancestor: all the 
contemporary members of the phratry of Hekateus had a 
‘common god for their ancestor in the sixteenth degree; and this 
fundamental belief, into which the Greek mind passed with sc 
much facility, was adopted and converted by positive compact 
into the gentile and phratric principle of union. It is because 
such a transfusion, not recognized by Christianity, is at va- 
riunce with modern habits of thought, and because we do not 
readily understand how such a legal and religious fiction can 
have sunk deep into the Greek feelings, that the phratries and 
gentes appear to us mysterious: but they are in harmony with 
all the legendary genealogies which have been set forth in the 
preceding volume. Doubtless Niebuhr, in his valuable discus- 
sion of the ancient Roman gentes, is right in supposing that they 
were not real families, proereated from any common historical an- 
cestur: but it is not the less true, though he seems to suppose other- 
wise, that the idea of the gens involved the belief in a common first 
father, divine or heroic, —a genealogy which we may properly 
call fabulous, but which was consecrated and aecredited among 
the members of the gens itself, and served as one important 


wh 


bond of unioa between them.! And though an analytical mind 


‘ Niebuhr, Romische Geschichte, vol. i, pp. 317-337. Varro’s language 
en that point is clear: “Ut in hominibus quedam sunt cognationes et gen- 
tilitates, sic in verbis. Ut enim ab Emilio homines orti /£milii et gentiles, 
sic ab Amilii nomine declinate voces in gentilitate nominali.” Pan. 
Diacon. p. 94. “ Gentilis dicitur ex eodem genere ortus, et is qui simili nom- 
ine appellatur,” ete. See Becker, Handbuch der Rémischen Alterthumer, 


vart 2, abth. 2, p. 36. 

The last part of the definition ought to be struck out for the Grecian 
geutes. The passage of Varro does not prove the historical reality of the 
primitive father, or genarch, Aimilius, but it proves that the members of the 
gens believed in him. 

Dr. Wilda, in his learned work, “ Das Deutsche Strafrecht,” (Halle, 1842,) 
dissents from Niebuhr in the opposite direction, und seems to maintain that 
the Grecian and Roman gentes were really distant blood relations (p. 123). 
How this can be proved, I do not know: and it is inconsistent with the opin- 
ion which he advances in the preceding page (p. 122), very justly, — that 
these quasi families are primordial facts in early human society, beyond 
which we cannot carry our researches. “The farther we go back in history, 
the more does the community exhibit the form of a family, though in reality 
it is not a mere family. This is the limit of historical search, which pe 
man can transgress with impunity,” (p. 122) 


60 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


like Aristotle might discern the difference between the gens and 
the family, so as to distinguish the former as the offspring of 
some special compact, still, this is no fair test of the foclinas 
usual among early Greeks ; nor is it certain that Aristotle hi 
self, son of the physician Nikomachus, who belonged to the sn 
of the Asklepiads,! would have consented to disallow the pin 
creative origin of ail these religious families without aa as, 


ception. The natural families of course changed from generation 
to generation, some extending themselves while others diminished 
or died out; but the gens received no alterations, except through 
the procreation, extinction, or subdivision of these eomponent 
families ; accordingly, the relations of the families with the gens 


were in perpetual course of fluctuation, and the gentile ances- 
torial genealogy, adapted as it doubtless was to the early nid 
tion of the gens, became in process of time partially obsclete and 
unsuitable. We hear of this genealogy but rarely, heeause ἢ is 
only brought before the public in certain cases veiled ae 
venerable. But the humbler gentes had their commen rites, and 
common superhuman ancestor and genealogy, as well as ih eee 
celebrated : the scheme and ideal basis was the same in all. iat 

Analogies, borrowed from very different people and parts of 
the world, prove how readily these enlarged and factitious family 
anions assort with the ideas of an early staze of society. The 
Highland clan, the Irish sept, the ancient legally constituted 


' Diogen. Laért. γ. 1. i 

τ See Colonel Leake’s Travels in Northern Greece, ch. 2, p. 85 (the Grec! 
_ ὑράτριαι seems to be adopted in Albania) ; Boué, La Turquie 53 
a tha er l, Pp. l met? 4 hap. 4, p. 530; Spenser’s View of the State 
 merend (at. +i, pp. 1942-1543, of Tonson’s edition of Spenser’s Works, 
li 15) ; ( ypricn Robert, Die Slaven in Turkey, b. 1, chs. 1 and 2 | 
So, too, in the laws of king Alfred in England, on tlie subject of murder 
the suild-brethren, or members of the same guild, are made to rank in i 
position of distant relatives, if there happen to be no blood relatives $< ὴ 
᾿ iy a man, kinless of paternal relatives, fight and slay a man. den, if he 
Niele relatives, - them pay a third of the wér: his guild-brethren 
‘iri part: for a third let him flee. If he have no maternal relatives. let 
bes guild-brethren pay half for half let him flee... .If a man kill a man dies 
Priester ae if he have no relatives, let half be paid to the king, half to 
is guild-brethren.” (Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes of England vol 
1, ΡΡ. 79-81.) Again, in the same work, Leges Henrici Primi, vol. i "596 
she ideas of the kindred and the guild run together in the sinid Neldiine men 


WIDE DIFFUSION OF THE GENTILE TIR. 61 


families in Friesland and Dithmarsch, the phis, or phera, among 
the Albanians, are examples of a similar practice :! and the 


ner: “Si quis hominem occidat, — Si eum tune cognatio sua deserat, et pro 
eo gildare nolit,” etc. In the Salic law, the members of a contubernium were 
invested with the same rights and obligations one towards the other (Rogge, 
Gerichtswesen der Germanen, ch. iii, p. 62). Compare Wilda, Deutsches 
Strafrecht, p. 389, and the valuable special treatise of the same author (Das 
Giidenwesen im Mittelalter. Berlin, 1831), where the origin and progress of 
the guilds from the primitive times of German heathenism is unfolded. He 
shows that these associations have their basis in the earliest feelings and hab- 
its of the Teutonic race, — the family was, as it were, a natural guild, — the 
guild, a factitious family. Common religious sacrifices and festivals, — mutual! 
defence and help, as well as mutual responsibility, were the recognized 
bonds among the congildones: they were sororitates as well as fraternitates, 
comprehending both men and women (deren Genosser wie die Glieder einer 
Familie eng unter einander verbunden waren, p. 145). Wilda explains how 
this primitive social and religious phratry (sometimes this very expression 
fratria is used, see p. 109) passed into something like the more political 
tribe, or phylé (see pp. 43, 57, 60, 116, 126, 129, 344). The sworn commune, 
which spread so much throughout Europe in the beginning of the twelfth 
century, partakes both of the one and of the other, — conjuratio, — amicitia 
jJurata (pp. 148, 169). 

The members of an Albanian phara are all jointly bound to exact, and 
each severally exposed to suffer, the vengeance of blood, in the event of 
homicide committed upon, or by, any one of them (Boué, ut supra). 

1 See the valuable chapter of Niebuhr, Rom. Gesch. vol. i, pp. 317, 350, 
2d edit. 

The Alberghi of Genoa in the Middle Ages were enlarged families created 
by voluntary compact: “De tout temps (observes Sismondi) les familles 
puissantes avaient été dans l’usage, 4 Génes, d’augmenter encore leur puis- 
sance en adoptant d’autres familles moins riches, moins illustres, ou moins 
nombreuses, — auxquelles elles communiquoient leur nom et leurs armes, 
qu’elles prenoient ainsi engagement de proteger, — et qui en retour s’asso- 
cioient A toutes leurs quérelles. Les maisons dans lesquelles on entroit ainsi 
par adoption, étoient nommées des alberghi (auberges), et il y avoit peu de 
maisons illustres qui ne se fussent ainsi récrutées ἃ l'aide de quelque famille 
étrangére.” (Républiques Italiennes, t. xv, ch. 120, p. 366.) 

Eichhorn (Deutsche Staats und Rechts-Geschichte, sect. 18, vol. i, p. 84, 5th 
edit.) remarks in regard to the ancient Germans, that the German “ familia 
et propinquitates,” mentioned by Tacitus (Germ. c. 7), and the “ gentibus 
cognationibusque hominum” of Czxsar (B. G. vi, 22), bore more analogy to 
the Roman gens than to relationship of blood or wedlock. According to 
the idea of some of the German tribes, even blood-reiationship might be 
formally renounced and broken off, with all its connected rights and obliga 
dons, at the pleasure of the individual: he might érolara bireslf 2x rointe< 


62 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


adoption of prisoners by the North American Indians, as well as 
the universal prevalence and efficacy of the ceremony of adoption 
in the Grecian and Roman world. exhibit to us a solemn formal- 
ity under certain circumstances, originating an union and affec tions 
similar to those of kindred. Of this same nature were thre 
phratries and gentes at Athens, the curie and gentes at 
Rome, but they were peculiarly modified by the religious imavgi- 
nation of the ancient world, which always traced back the past 
time to gods and heroes: and religion thus supplied both the 
common genealogy as their basis, and the privileged communion 
of special sacred rites as means of commemoration and perpet- 
uity. The gentes, both at Athens and in other parts of Greece, 
bore a patronymic name, the stamp of their believed common 
paternity: we find the Asklepiade in many parts of Greece, — 
the Aleuad in Thessaly — the Midylide, Psalychide, Blepsiac~, 
Euxenide, at /Egina, —the Branchide at Miletus, — the Ne; i- 
dx at Koés,—the Iamide and Klytiade at Olympia, — the Ake- 
storide at Argos, — the Kinyrade in Cyprus, — the Penthilide 
at Mitylene,' — the Talthybiade at Sparta, — not less than the 
Kodride, Kumolpid», Phytalide, Lykomédex, Butade. Euneide, 
Hesychide, Brytiada, &c., in Attica.2 To each of these corre- 


to use the Greek expression. See the Titul. 63 of the Salic law, as quoted 
by Eichhorn, ἡ. ¢. 

Professor Koutorga of St. Petersburg (in his Essai sur ]’¢ rganisation de 
la Tribu dans I’ Antiquité, translated from Russian into French by M. Chopin, 
Paris, 1839) has traced out and illustrated the fundamental analogy between 
the social classification, in early times, of Greeks, Romans. Germans, and 
Russians (see especially, pp. 47, 213), Respecting the early history of 
Attica, however, many of his positions are advanced upon very untrust- 
worthy evidence (see p. 123, seq.). 

' Pindar, Pyth. viii, 53; Isthm. vi, 92; Nem. vii, 103; Strabo, Ix, p. 421; 
Stephan. Byz. v, Koc; Herodot. V, 44; vil, 134; ix, 37; Pausan. x, 1, 4: 
Kallimachus, Lavacr. Pallad. 335; Schol. Pindar. Pyth. ii. 27; Aristot. Pol. 
Vv, 8,13; ᾿Αλευάδων rode τρωτους, Plato, Menon. 1, which marks them as a 
Bumerous gens. See Buttmann, Dissert. on the Aleuadx in the Mytholo- 
g4s, vol. ii, p. 246. Bacchiade at Corinth, ἐδίδοσαν καὶ ἤγοντο ἐξ ἀλλήλως 
(Herod. ν, 99). 

* Harpokration, ν. ᾿Ετεοθουτάδαι. Βουτάδαι; Thucyd. viii, 53; Plutarch 
Theseus, 12; Themistoklés, 1; Demosth. cont. Negr. p. 1365; Polemo ap 
Schol. ad Soph. CEdip. Kol. 489; Plutarch, Vit. x, Orator. pp. 841-44 
Ree the Dissertation of O. Miiller De Minerva Poliade c. 2. 


GENTES AND DEMES IN ATTICA. 63 


sponded a mythical ancestor more or less known, and passing for 
the first father as well as the eponymous hero of the gens, — 
Kodrus, Eumolpus, Butes, Phytalus, Hesychus, &c. 

The revolution of Kleisthenés in 509 B. c. abolished the old 
tribes for civil purposes, and created ten new tribes, — leaving 
the phratries and gentes unaltered, but introducing the local dis- 
tribution according to demes, or cantons, as the foundation of his 
new political tribes. A certain number of demes belonged to 
each of the ten Kleisthenean tribes (the demes in the same tribes 
were not usually contiguous, so that the tribe was not coincident 
with a definite circumscription), and the deme, in which every 
individual was then registered, continued to be that in which his 
descendants were also registered. But the gentes had no con- 
nection, as such, with these new tribes, and the members of the 
same gens might belong to demes.! It deserves to be remarked, 
however, that to a certain extent,in the old arrangement of 
Attica, the division into gentes coincided with the division into 
demes ; that is, it happened not unfrequently that the gennétes or 
members of the same gens lived in the same canton, so that the 
name of the gens and the name of the deme was the same: 


moreover, it seems that Kleisthenés recognized a certain number 


of new demes, to which he gave names derived from some im- 
portant gens resident near the spot. It is thus that we are to 
explain the large number of the Kleisthenean demes which bear 


; 2 
patronymic hnames.~ 


' Demosth. cont. Newer. p. 1365. Tittmann (Griechische Staatsverfass, p. 
277) thinks that every citizen, after the Kleisthenean revolution, was of 
necessity a member of some phratry, as well as of some deme: but the evi- 
dence which he produces is, in my judgment, insutlicient. The ideas of the 
phratry and the tribe are often confounded together; thus the JEgeide of 
Sparta, whom Herodotus (iv, 149) calls a tribe, are by Aristotle called a 
phratry of Thebans (ap. Schol. ad Pindar. Isthm. vii, 18). Compare 
Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde, sect. 83, p. 17. 

A great many of the demes seem to have derived their names from the 
shrubs or plants which grew in their neighborhood (Schol. ad Aristophan. 
Platus, 586, Μυρρινοῦς, ‘Pauvoic, etc.). i 

* For example, Zthalidx, Butade, Kothokidz, Dedalide, Eiresider, Epiei- 
kidw, Ereadx, Eupyridw, Echelide, Keiriade, Kydantide, Lakiade, Pam- 
botadx, Perithoidx, Perside, Semachide, Skambénidex, Sybride, Titakidas, 
Thyrgonide, Hybade, Thymoetade, Peonide, Philaide, Chollide: all these 


64 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


There is one remarkable difference between the Roman and 
the Grecian gens, arising from the different practice in regard to 
naming. A Roman patrician bore habitually three names, -- 
the gentile name, with one name following it to denote his family, 
and another preceding it peculiar to himself in that family. But 
m Athens, at least after the revolution of Kleisthenés, the gentile 
name was not employed: a man was described by his own single 
oume, followed first by the name of his father, and next by that 
of the deme to which he belonged,— as ischinés, son of Atrom- 


names of demes, bearing the patronymic form, are found in Harpokration 
aul Stephanus Byz. alone 

We do not know that the Kepauei¢c ever constituted a γένος, but the name 
of the deme Κεραμεὶς is evidently given, upon the same principle, to a place 
ehicfly occupied by potters. The gens Κοιρώνιδαι are said to have been called 
Φιλεεὶς (1 Φλνεὶς) and Περεϑοῖδαι as well as Κοιρώνεδαι : the names of rentes 
and those of demes seem not always distinguishable. 

The Butadz, though a | ighly venerable gens, also ranked as a deme (see 
the Psephism about Lykargus in Plutarch, Vit. x. Orator p. 852): yet we 
do not know that there was any locality called Butade. Perhaps some of 
the names above noticed may be simply names of gentes, enrolled as demes, 
“a without meaning to imply any community of abode among the mem- 

Crs 


Phe members of the Roman gens occupied adjoining residences, on some 


occasions, “-- τὸ WS a [Θ ζ f | ᾿ Ὶ iliari i 
to what extent we do not know (Heiberg, De Familiari Patri - 


ciorum Nexu, ch. 24, 25. Sleswic, 1829). 

We tind the same patronymic names of demes and villages elsewhere : in 
Kos and Rhodes (Ross, Inser. Gr. ined., Nos. 15-26. Halle. 1846): Léstade 
im Naxos (Aristotle ap. Athen. viii, p. 348); Botachide at Tegea (Steph 
Byz. in v); Branchi “ar Miletus, etc ; ἃ ing illustration is 

ν ); Bre chide, near Miletus, ete; and an interesting illustration ig 
afforded, in other times and other places, by the frequency of the ending kon 
. ᾿ς ων ὡ ΄ ." ᾿ we, i * + iy = 
m villages near Zurich in Switzerland, — Mezikon, Nennikon. Wezikon ete 
Bliintschli, in his history of Zurich, shows that these terminations are 
abridzments of inghoven, including an original patronymic element, — indi- 
eating tie primary settlement of members of a family, or of a band bearing 
the name of its captain, on the same spot (Bliintschli, Staats und Rechts 
Geschichte der Stadt Zurich, vol i. p. 26). 

In other Inscriptions from the island of Kés. published by Professor Ross. 
we have a deme mentioned (without name), composed of three coalescing 
gentes, “In hoc et sequente titulo alium jam deprehendimus demum Coum, 
e tribus gentibus appellatione patronymica conflatum, Antimachidarum, 
#giliensium, Archidarum.” (Ross, Inscript. Gree. Ine¢. Fascic. iii, No 
307, p. 44. Berlin, 1845.) This is a specimen of the process systematically 
introduced by Kleisthenés in Attica. 


GENTILE RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS. 66 


étus,a Aothékid. Such a difference in the habitual system of 
naming, tended t> make the gentile tie more present to every 
one’s mind at Rome than in the Greek cities. 

Before the pecuniary classification of the Atticans introduced 
by Solon, the phratries and gentes, and the trittyes and nauk- 
raries, were the only recognized bonds among them, and the 
only basis of legal rights and obligations, over and above the 
natural family. The gens constituted a close incorporation, both 
as to property and as to persons. Until the time of Solon, ne 
man had any power of testamentary disposition: if he died 
without children, his gennétes succeeded to his property,! and so 
they continued to do even after Solon, if he died intestate. An 
orphan girl might be claimed in marriage of right by any mem- 
ber of the gens, the nearest agnates being preferred ;? if she was 
poor, and he did not choose to marry her himself, the law of 
Solon compelled him to provide her with a dowry proportional to 
his enrolled scale of property, and to give her out in marriage 
to another; and the magnitude of the dowry required to be 
given, — large, even as fixed by Solon, and afterwards doubled, 
— seems a proof that the lawgiver intended indirectly to enforce 


actual marriage.2 If a man was murdered, first his near rela- 
tions, next his gennétes and phrators, were both allowed and 
required to prosecute the crime at law ;4 his fellow demots, or 


' Plutarch, Solon, 21. We find a common cemetery exclusively belong- 
ing to the gens, and tenaciously preserved (Demosth. cont. Eubulid. p. 1307; 
Cicero, Legg. ii, 26). 

3 Demosth. cont. Makartat. p. 1068. See the singular additional proviso 
in Plutarch, Solon, c. 20. 

3 See Meursius, Themis Attica, i, 13. 

4 That this was the primitive custom, and that the limitation μέχρις ἀνεψι» 
adav (Meier, De Bonis Damnat. p. 23, cites ἀνεψειαδῶν καὶ φρατόρων) was 
subsequently introduced (Demosth. cont. Euerg. et Mnesib. p. 1161), we may 
gather from the law as it stands in Demosth. cont. Makartat. p. 1069, which 
includes the phrators, and therefore, ἃ fortiori, the gennétes, or gentiles. 

The same word γένος is used to designate both the circle of nameable 
relatives, brothers, first cousins (ἀγχιστεῖς, Demosth. cont. Makartat. c. 9, p. 
1058), etc., going beyond the οἶκος, —- and the quasi-family, or gens. As the 
gentile tie tended to become weaker, so the former sense of the word became 
more and mire current, to the extinction of the latter. Οἱ ἐν γένει, or ol 
προσήκοντες, would have borne a wider sense in the days of Drako than ἰδ 


VOL. Il. doc, 


66 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


inhabitants of the same deme, did not possess the like right of 
prosecuting. All that we hear of the most ancient Athenian 
laws is based upon the gentile and phratric divisions, which are 
treated throughout as extensions of the family. It is to be ob- 
served that this division is completely independent of any prop- 
erty qualification, — rich men as well as pour being compre- 
hended in the same gens.! Moreover, the different gentes were 
very unequal in dignity, arising chiefly from the religious cere- 
monies of which each possessed the hereditary and exclusive 
adiministration, and which, being in some cases considered as of 
preeminent sanctity in reference to the whole city, were there- 
fore nationalized. Thus the Eumolpide and Kérykes, who 
supplied the Hierophant, and superintended the mysteries of the 
Eleusinian Démétér,— and the Butadex, who furnished the 
priestess of Athéné Polias as well as the priest of Poseidon 
Krechtheus in the acropolis, — seem to have been reverenced 
above all the other gentes.2 When the name Butadw was 


tiose of Demosthenes: Συγγενὴς usually belongs to γένος in the narrower 
semse, γεννητῆς to γένος in the wider sense; but Iszeus sometimes uses the 
former word as an exaet equivalent of the latter (Orat. vii, pp. 95, 99, 102, 
103, Bekker). Tpeaxdc appears to be noted in Pollux as the equivalent of γένος, 
or vens (vill, 111), but the word does not occur in the Attic orators. and we 
cinnot make out its meaning: with certainty: the Inscription of the Deme 
of Peirzeus given in Boeckh (Corp. Insc. No. 101, p. 140,) rather adds to the 
tunfusion by revealing the existence of a τριακὰς constituting the fractional 
pirt of a deme, and not connected with a gens: compare Boeckh’s Com- 
tient. ad loc. and his Addenda and Corrigenda, p. 900. 

Dr. Thirlwall translates γένος, house; which I cannot but think incon- 
venient, because that word is the natural equivalent of olxoc,—a very 
important word in reference to Attic feelings, and quite different from γένος 
(*list. of Greece, vol. ii, p. 14, ch. 11). It will be found impossible to trans- 
late it by any known English word which does not at the same time suggest 
trronvous ideas: which I trust will be accepted as my excuse for adopting it 
untrans'ated into this History 

' Demosthen. cont. Makar-at. l. c. 

* See Aischines de Falsa Legat. Ρ. 292, c. 46; Lysias cont. Andokid. p. 
108; Andokid. de Mysteriis, p. 63, Reiske; Deinarchus and Hellarikus ap. 
dar) okration. v, Ἱεροφάντης. 

In case of crimes of impiety, particularly in offences against the sanctity 
of the Mysteries, the Eumolpide had a peculiar tribunal of their own num- 
ber, before which offenders were brought by the king archon. Whether ἐξ 
was often used, seems doubtful; they had also certain unwritten customs of 


ATTICA NOT AT FIRST UNITED AS ONE STA7c. 67 


adopted in the Kleisthenean arrangement us the name of a deme, 
the holy gens so called adopted the distinctive denomination of 
Eteobuiade, or “ The True Butade.”! 

A great many of the ancient gentes of Attica are known to us 
by name; but there is only one phratry (the Achniadz) whose 
title has come down to us.2. These phratries and gentes probably 
never at any time included the whole population of the country, 
—and the proportion not included in them tended to become 
larger and larger, in the times anterior to Kleisthenés,3 as well 
as afterwards. They remained, under his constitution, and 
throughout the subsequent history, as religious quasi-families, or 
corporations, conferring rights and imposing liabilities which 
were enforced in the regular dikasteries, but not directly con- 
nected with the citizenship or with political functions: a man 


—— ---ς 


great antiquity, according to which they pronounced (Demosthen. cont. 
Androtion. p. 601; Schol. ad Demosth. vol. ii, p. 137, Reiske: compare 
Meier and Schomann, Der Attische Prozess, p. 117). The Butada, also, 
bad certain old unwritten maxims (Androtion ap. Athen. ix, p. 374). 

Compare Bossler, De Gentibus et Familiis Attica, p. 20, and Ostermann, 
De Prxconibus Greecor. sect. 2 and 3 (Marburg, 1845). 

' Lykurgus the orator is described as τὸν δῆμον Βουτάδης, γένους τοῦ τῶν 
᾿Ετεοβουταδῶν (Plutarch. Vit. x, Orator. p. 841). 

* In an inscription (apud Boeckh. Corpus Inscrip. No. 465). 

Four names of the phratries at the Greek city of Neapolis, and six names 
out of the thirty Roman curiae, have been preserved (Becker, Handbuch der 
Romischen Alterthiimer, p. 32; Boeckh, Corp. Inscript. ii, p. 650). 

Each Attic phratry seems to have had its own separate laws and customs, 
distinct from the rest, roi¢ φράτορσι, κατὰ τοὺς ἐκείνων νόμους (15:8, Or. 
viii, p. 115, ed. Bek.; vii, p. 99; iii, p. 49). 

Bossler (De Gentibus et Familiis Attic#, Darmstadt, 1833), and Meier 
(De Gentilitate Attica, pp. 41-54) have given the names of those Attic 
gentes that are known: the list of Meier comprises seventy-nine in number 
(see Koutorga, Organis. Trib. p. 122). 

3 Tittmann (Griech. Staats Alterthiimer, p. 271) is of opinion that Kleis- 
thenés augmented the number of phratries, but the passage of Aristotle 
brought to support this opinion is insufficient proof (Polit. vi, 2,11). Still 
less can we agree with Platner (Beytrage zur Kenntniss des Attischen 
Rechts, pp. 74-77), that three new phratries were assigned to each of the 
new Kleisthenean tribes. 

Allusion is made in Hesychius, ᾿Ατριάκαστοι, Ἔξω τριακάδος, te persons 
not included in any gens, but this can hardly be understood to refer to times 
enterior to Kleisthenés, as Wachsemath woald argue (p. 238). 


68 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


might be a citizen without being enrolled in any gens. The 
forty-eight naukraries ceased to exist, for any important pur- 
poses, under his constitution: the deme, instead of the naukrary, 
became the elementary political division, for military and financial 
objects, and the demarch became the working local president, in 
place of the chief of the naukrars. The deme, however, was 
not coincident with a naukrary, nor the demarch with the pre- 
vious chief of the naukrary, though they were analogous and 
constituted for the like purpose.! While the naukraries had 
been only forty-eight in number, the demes formed smaller subdi- 
visions, and, in later times at least, amounted to a hundred and 
seventy-four.? 

But though this early quadruple division into tribes is toler- 
ably intelligible in itself, there is much difficulty in reconciling it 
with that severalty of government which we learn to have origi- 
nally prevailed among the inhabitants of Attica. From Kekrops 
down to Theseus, says Thucydidés, there were many different cities 
in Attica, each of them autonomous and self-governing, with its 
own prytaneium and its own archons; and it was only on occa- 
sions of some common danger that these distinct communities 
took counsel together under the authority of the Athenian kings, 
whose city at that time comprised merely the holy rock of 
Athéné on the plain,’—- afterwards so conspicuous as the acropolis 
of the enlarged Athens,— together with a narrow area under it 


' The language of Photius on this matter (v, Navxpapia μὲν ὁποῖόν τι 
ἡ συμμορία καὶ ὁ δῆμος " ναὔκραρος δὲ ὁποῖόν τι ὁ δὶ μαρχος) is More exact 
than that of Harpokration, who identifies the two completely, — v, Δήμαρχος. 
If it be true that the naukraries were continued under the Kleisthenean con- 
stitution, with the alteration that they were augmented to fifty in number, 
five to every Kleisthenean tribe, they must probably have been continued in 
name alone without any real efficiency or function. Kleidémus makes this 
statement, and Boeckh follows it (Public Economy of Athens, 1. ii, ch. 21, 
Ρ. 256): yet I cannot but doubt its correctness. For the τριττὺς (one-third 
of a Kleisthenean tribe) was certainly retained and was a working and avail- 
able division (see Démosthenés de Symmoriis, c. 7, p. 184), and it seems 
hardly probable that there should be two coexistent divisions, one represent- 
ing the third part, the other the fifth part, of the same tribes. 

* Strabo, ix, p. 396. 

3 Strabo, ix, p. 396, πετρὰ ἐν πεδίῳ περιοικουμένη κύκλῳ Euripid. lea, 
1978, σκόπελον of vaiove’ ἐμόν ( Athéneé) 


TWELVE tOCAL SUBDIVISIONS OF ATTICA 69 


on the southern side. It was Theseus, he states, who effected 
that great revolution whereby the whole of Attica was consoli- 
dated into one government, all the local magistracies and councils 
being made to centre in the prytaneium and senate of Athens : 
his combined sagacity and power enforced upon all the inhabi- 
tants of Attica the necessity of recognizing Athens as the one 
city in the country, and of occupying their own abodes simply as 
constituent portions of Athenian territory. This important 
move, which naturally produced a great extension of the central 
city, was commemorated throughout the historical times by the 
Athenians in the periodical festival called Synoekia, in honor of 
the goddess Athéné.! 

Such is the account which Thucydidés gives of the original 
severalty and subsequent consolidation of the different portions 
of Attica. Of the general fact there is no reason to doubt, 
though the operative cause assigned by the historian,— the power 
and sagacity of Theseus, — belongs to legend and not to history. 
Nor can we pretend to determine either the real steps by which 
such a change was brought about, or its date, or the number of 
portions which went to constitute the full-grown Athens, — far- 
ther enlarged at some early period, though we do not know when, 
by voluntary junction of the Beeotian, or semi-Bootian, town 
Eleuthere, situated among the valleys of Kitherén between 
Eleusis and Platwa. It was the standing habit of the population 
of Attica, even down to the Peloponnesian war,? to reside in 
their several cantons, where their ancient festivals and temples 
yet continued as relics of a state of previous autonomy: their 
visits to the city were made only at special times, for purposes 


ι Thucyd. ii, 15; Theophrast. Charact. 29, 4. Plutarch (Theseus, 24) 
gives the proceedings of Theseus in greater detail, and with a stronger tinge 
of democracy. 

® Pausan. i, 2,4; 38,2; Diodor. Sicul. iv,2; Schol. ad Aristophan. Acharn 
242. 

The Athenians transferred from Eleuthere to Athens both a venerable 
statue of Dionysus and a religious ceremony in honor of that god. The 
junction of the town with Athens is stated by Pausanias to have taken 
place in consequence of the hatred of its citizens for Thebes, and must have 
occurred before 509 B. C., about which period we find Hysise to be the fronties 


deme of Attica (Herodot. v, 72; vi, 108). 


70 HISTORY OF GREECF 


religious or political, and they yet looked upon the country rest 
dence as their real home. How deep-seated this cantonal feeling 
was among them, we may see by the fact that ic survived the 
temporary exile forced upon them by the Persian invasion, and 
was resumed when the expulsion of that destroying host enabled 
them to rebuild their ruined dwellings in Attica.! 

How many of the demes recognized by Kleisthenés had origi- 
nally separate governments, or in what local aggregates they 
stood combined, we cannot now make out ; it will be recollected 
that the eity of Athens itself contained several demes, and Pei- 
reeus also formed a deme apart. Some of the twelve divisions, 
which Philochorus ascribes to Kekrops, present probable marks 
of an ancient substantive existence, — Kekropia, or ‘the region 
surrounding and including the city and acropolis; the tetrapolis, 
composed of CEnoé, Trikorythus, Probalinthus, and Marathon ;3 
Eleusis; Aphidne and Dekeleia. both distinguished by their 
peculiar mythical connection with Sparta and the Dioskuri. But 
it is difficult to imagine that Phalérum, which is one of the sepa- 
rate divisions named by Philochorus, can ever have enjoyed an 
autonomy apart from Athens. Moreover, we find among some 
of the demes which Philochorus does not notice, evidences of 

' Thucyd. ii, 15, 16. οὐδὲν ἀλλο ἢ πόλιν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἀπολείπων ἕκαστος, --- 
respecting the Athenians from the country who were driven into Athens at 
the first invasion during the Peloponnesian war. 

* Etymologicon Magn. y. "Exaxpia ywpa; Strabo, viii. Ρ. 388; Stephan. 
Byz. v, Τετράπολις. 

The τετράώκωμοι comprised the four demes. Πειραῖεις, Φαληρει;, Ξυπετεῶ- 
νες, Θυμοίταδαι (Pollux, iv, 105): whether this is an old division however, 
has been doubted (see Ilgen, De Tribubus Atticis, p. 51). 

The 'Exaxpéwy τριττὺς is mentioned in an inscription apud Ross (Die 
Demen von Attika, Ρ. vi). Compare Boeckh ad Corp. Inser. No. 89: among 
other demes, it comprised the deme Plétheia. Mesoga also (or ~ather the 
Mesogei, οἱ Μεσόγειοι) ‘ppears as a communion for sacrifice and religious 
purposes, and as containing the deme Baté. See Inscriptiones Attire nuper 
reperte duodecim, by Ern. Curtius; Berlin, 1843: Inscript. i, p 3. The 
exact site of the deme Baté in Attica is unknown (Ross, Die De nen von 
Attica, p. 64); and respecting the question, what portion of Attica was 
called Mesogwa, very diferent conjectures have been started, whieh there 
appears to be no means of testing. Compare Schémann de Comiti», ἡ 
343, and Wordsworth, Athens and Attica. p. 229, 2d edit. 

* Dikearchus, Fragm p- 109, ed. Fuhr; Plutarch, Theseus, c. 33. 


ELEUSIS. 7] 


standing antipathies, and prohibitions of intermarriage, which might 
seem to indicate that these had once been separate little states.! 
Though in most cases we can infer little from the legends and 
ligious ceremonies which nearly every deme? had peculiar to 
itself, yet those of Eleusis are so remarkable, as to establish the 
probable autonomy of that township down to a comparatively late 
period. The Homeric Hymn to Démétér, recounting the visit 
of that goddess to Eleusis after the abduction of her daughter, 
and the first establishment of the Eleusinian ceremonies, specifies 
the eponymous prince Eleusis, and the various chiefs of the place, 
— Keleos, Triptolemus, Dioklés, and Eumolpus ; it also notices 
the Rharian plain in the neighborhood of Eleusis, but not the 
least. allusion is made to Athens or to any concern of the Atheni- 
ans.in the presence or worship of the goddess. There is reason 
to believe that at the time when this Hymn was composed, Eleusis 
was an independent town: what. that time was we have no means 
of settling, though Voss puts it as low as the 30th Olympiad. 
And the proof hence derived is so much the more valuable, be- 
cause the Hymn to Démétér presents a coloring strictly special 
and local ; moreover, the story told by Solon to Croesus, respect- 
ing ‘Tellus the Athenian, who perished in battl against the —_— 
boring townsmen of Eleusis,‘ assumes, in ike _manner, ~ 
independence of the latter in earlier times. Nor is it unimpor- 
tant to notice that, even so low as 800 B. c., the observant visitor 
Dikxarchus professes to detect a difference between the native 


1 Such as that between the Pallenwans and Agnusians (Plutarch, Theseus, 
12). ' | i 
Acharne was the largest and most populous deme in Attica (see Ross, 
Die Demen von Attika, p. 62; Thucyd. ii, 21); yet Philochorus does not 
mention it as having ever constituted a substantive πόλις. . 

Several of the demes seem to have stood in repute for peculiar qualities, 
good or bad: see Aristophan. Acharn. 177, with Elmsley’s note. 

3 Strabo, ix, p. 396; Plutarch, Theseus, 14. Polemo had written δ book 
expressly on the eponymous heroes of the Attic demes and tribes (Preller. 
Polemonis Fragm. p. 43)" ‘he Atthidographers were all rich on the same 
subject: see the Fragments of the Atthis of Hellanikus (p 24, ed. Preller), 


also those of Istrus, Philochorus, ete. 
3 J. H. Voss, Erlaiiterungen, p. 1: see the Hymn, 96-106, (51-475 com 


pare Hermesianax ap. Athen. xiii, p. 597. 
4 Herodot. i, 30. 


72 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Athenians and the Atticans, az well in physiognomy as m char 
acter and taste.! 
In the history set forth to us of the proceedings of Theseus, 


᾿ 


no mention is made of these four Ionic tribes; but another and a 
totally different distribution of the people into eupatride, geé- 
mori, and demiurgi, which he is said to have first introduced, is 
brought to our notice ; Dionysius of Halikarnassus gives only a 
double division, — eupatride and dependent cultivators ; corre 
sponding to his idea of the patricians and clients in early Rome.2 
As far as we can understand this triple distinction, it seems to be 
disparate and unconnected with the four tribes above mentioned. 
The eupatrid are the wealthy and powerful men, belonging to 
the most distinguished families in all the various gentes, and 
principally living in the city of Athens, after the consolidation 
of Attica: from them are distinguished the middling and lower 
people, roughly classified into husbandmen and artisans. To the 
eupatride, is ascribed a religious as well as a political and social 
ascendency ; they are represented as the source of all authority 
on matters both sacred and profane ;3 they doubtless comprised 
those gentes, such as the Butads, whose sacred ceremonies were 
looked upon with the greatest reverence by the people: and we 
may conceive Eumolpus, Keleos, Dioklés, ete., as they are de- 
scribed in the Homeric Hymn to Démétér, in the character of 
eupatride of Eleusis. The humbler gentes, and the humbler 
members of each gens, would appear in this classification con- 
founded with that portion of the people who belonged to no gens 
at all. 

From these eupatride exclusively, and doubtless by their 
selection, the nine annual archons — probably also the prytanes 


' Dikwarch. Vita Grecia, p. 141, Fragm. ed. Fuhr. 

* Plutarch, Theseus, ο. 25: Dionys. Hal. ii, 8. 

* Etymologic. Magn. Eirarpida: — oi αὐτὸ τὸ ἄστυ οἰκοῦντες, καὶ μετέχον- 
ἐς τοῦ βεσιλικοῦ γένους, καὶ τὴν τῶν ἱερῶν ἐπιμέλειαν ποιούμενοι. The 
θασιλικὸν γένος includes not only the Kodrids, but also the Erechtheids, 
Pandionids, Pallantids, etc. See also Plutarch, Theseus, c. 24; Hesychius, 
᾿Αγροιῶται. 

Yet Isokratés seems ἴω speak of the great family of the Alkmmonidx 
as not included among the eupatridx. (Orat. xvi, De Bigis, p. 351, p 506, 
Bek.) 


SENATE UF AREOPAGUS. 72 


of the naukrari—were taken. ‘That the senate of areopagus 
was formed of members of the same order, we may naturally 
presume: the nine archons all passed into it at the expiration of 
their year of office, subject only to the condition of having duly 
passed tlie test of accountability; and they remained members 
for life. These are the only political authorities of whom we 
hear in the earliest imperfectly known period of the Athenian 
government, after the discontinuance of the king, and the adop- 
tion of the annual change of archons. ‘The senate of areopagus 
seems to represent the Homeric council of old men;! and there 
were doubtless, on particular occasions, general assemblies of 
the people, with the same formal and passive character as the 
Homeric agora,— at least, we shall observe traces of such assem 
blies anterior to the Solonian legislation. Some of the writers 
of antiquity ascribed the first establishment of the senate of 
areupagus to Solon, just as there were also some who con 
sidered Lykurgus as having first brought together the Spartan 
gerusia. But there can be little doubt that this is a mistake, 
and that the senate of areopagus is a primordial institution, of 
immemorial antiquity, though its constitution as well as its 
functions underwent many changes. It stood at first alone as a 
permanent and collegiate authority, originally by the side of the 
kings and afterwards by the side of the archons: it would then 
of course be known by the title of Zhe Boulé, — The Senate, or 
council; its distinctive title, “ Senate of Areopagus,” borrowed 
from the place where its sittings were held, would not be bestow- 
ed until the formation by Solon of the second senate, or council, 
from which there was need to discriminate it. 

This seems to explain the reason why it was never mentioned 
in the ordinances of Drako, whose silence supplied one argument 
in favor of the opinion that it did not exist in his time, and that 
it was first constituted by Solon.2) We hear of the senate of 
areopagus chiefly as a judicial tribunal, because it acted in this 
character constantly throughout Athenian history, and because 


' Meier und Schémann, Der Attische Prozess. LEinleitung, p. 10. 

* Plutarch, Solon, c. 19; Aristotle, Polit. ii, 9,2; Cicero, De Offic. i, 22 
Pollux seems to follow the opinion that Solon first instituted the senate of 
areopagus (vill, 125). 

VOL. IIL 4 


Fi HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the orators have most frequent occasion τὼ allude tu its decisions 
on matters of trial. But its functions were originally of the 
widest senatorial character, directive generally as well as judicial, 
And although the gradual increase of democracy at Athens, as 
will be hereafter explained, both abridged its powers and con- 
tributed still farther comparatively to lower it, by enlarging the 
direct working of the people in assembly and judicature, as well 
as that of the senate of Five Hundred, which was a permanent 
adjunct and adminicle of the public assembly, — yet it seems to 
have been, even down to the time of Periklés, the most important 
body in the state. And after it had been cast into the back- 
ground by the political reforms of that great man, we still find it 
on particular occasions stepping forward to reassert its ancient 
powers, and to assume for the moment that undefined interference 
which it had enjoyed without dispute in antiquity. The attach. 
ment of the Athenians to their ancient institutions gave to the 
senate of areopagus a constant and powerful hold on their 
minds, and this feeling was rather strengthened than weakened 
when it ceased to be an object of popular jealousy, — when it 
could no longer be employed as an auxiliary of oligarchiecal pre- 
tensions. 

Of the nine archons, whose number continued unaltered from 
638 B. Cc. to the end of the free democracy, three bore special 
titles, — the archon eponymus, from whose name the designation 
of the year was derived, and who was spoken of as The Archon; 
the archon basileus (king), or more frequently, the basileus ; and 
the polemarch. The remaining six passed by the general title of 
Thesmothete. Of the first three, each possessed exclusive 
judicial competence in regard to certain special matters: the 
thesmothetz were in this respect all on a par, acting sometimes 
as a board, sometimes individually. The archon eponymus de- 
termined all disputes relative to the family, the gentile, and the 
phratric relations: he was the legal protector of orphans and 
widows.' The archon basileus, or king archon, enjoyed compe- 
tence in complaints respecting offences against the religious 
sentiment and respecting homicide. The polemarch, speaking of 
times anterior to Kleisthenés, was the leader of the military 


* Pollux, viii, 89-91. 


NINE ARCHONS AT ATHENS. 79. 


force and judge in disputes between citizens and non-citizens, 
Moreover, each of these three archons had particular religious 
festivals assigned to him, which it was his duty to superintend and 
conduct. The six thesmothete seem to have been judges in 
disputes and complaints, generally, against citizens, saving the 
special matters reserved for the cognizance of the first two 
archons. According to the proper sense of the word thesmothetz, 
all the nine archons were entitled to be so called,' though the 
first three had especial designations of their own: the word 
thesmoi, analogous to the themistes? of Homer, includes in its 
meaning both general laws and particular sentences, —the two 
ideas not being yet discriminated, and the general law being con- 
ceived only in its application to some particular case. Drako 
was the first thesmothet who was called upon to set down his 
thesmoi in writing, and thus to invest them essentially with a 


character of more or less generality. 
In the later and better-known times of Athenian law, we find 
these archons deprived in great measure of their powers of 


' We read the ϑεσμοϑέτων ἀνάκρισις in Demosthen. cont. Eubulidem, ς, 
17, p. 1319, and Pollux, viii, 85; a series of questions which it was necessary 
for them to answer before they were admitted to occupy their office. Similar 
questions must have been put to the archon, the basileus, and the polemarch 
so that the words ϑεσμοϑέτων ἀνάκρισις may reasonably be understood te 
apply to all the nine archons, as, indeed, we find the words τοὺς ἐννέα ἄρχοντας 
ὠνακρίνετε shortly afterwards, p. 1320. 

* Respecting the word ϑέμιστες in the Homeric sense, see above, vol. ii, 
ch. xx. 

Both Aristotle (Polit. ii, 9, 9) and Démosthenés (contr. Euerg. et Mnési- 
bul. c. 18, p. 1161) call the ordinances of Drako νόμοι, not ϑεσμοί, Ando- 
kidés distinguishes the ϑεσμοὶ of Drako and the νόμοι of Solon (De Mysteriis, 
p. 11). This is the adoption of a phrase comparatively modern; Solon 
called his own laws ϑεσμοί. The oath of the περίπολοι ἔφηβοι (the youth 
who formed the armed police of Attica during the first two years of their 
military age), as given in Pollux (viii, 106), seems to contain at least many 
ancient phrases: this phrase, — καὶ τοῖς ϑεσμοῖς τοῖς ἱδρυμένοις πείσοναι, --- 
is remarkable, as it indicates the ancient association of religious sanction 
which adhered to the word ϑεσμοί: for ἱδρύεσϑαι is the word employed in 
reference to the establishment and domiciliation of the gods who protected 
the country, — ϑέσϑαι νόμους is the later expression for making laws. Com- 
pare Stobeus De Republic. xliii, 48, ed Gaisford, and Démosthen cont 


Makartat. c. 13, p. 1069. 


75 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


judging and deciding, and restricted to the task of first hearivy 
the parties and collecting the evidence, next, of introduving the 
matter for trial into the appropriate dikastery, over which they 
presided. Originally, there was no separation of powers: the 
archons both judged and administered, sharing among themselves 
those privileges which had once been united in the hands of the 
king, and probably accountable at the end of their year of office te 
the senate of areopagus. It is probable also, that the functions of 
that senate, and those of the prytanes of the naukrars, were of 
the same double and confused nature. All of these functionaries 
belonged to the eupatrids, and all of them doubtless acted more 
or less in the narrow interest of their order: moreover, there was 
ample room for favoritism, in the way of connivance as well as 
antipathy, on the part of the archons. That such was decidedly 
the case, and that discontent began to be serious, we may infer 
from the duty imposed on the thesmothet Drako, B. c. 624, to put 
in writing the thesmoi, or ordinances, so that they might be 
“shown publicly,” and known beforehand.!' He did not meddle 
with the political constitution, and in his ordinances Aristotle 
finds little worthy of remark except the extreme severity? of the 
punishments awarded; petty thefts, or even proved idleness of 
life, being visited with death or disfranchisement. 

But we are not to construe this remark as demonstrating any 
special inhumanity in the character of Drako, who was not in- 
vested with the large power which Solon afterwards enjoyed, and 
cannot be imagined to have imposed upon the community severe 
laws of his own invention. Himself of course an eupatrid, he 
set forth in writing such ordinances as the eupatrid archons had 
before been accustomed to enforce without writing, in the partic: 
ular cases which came before them; and the general spirit of 


'"Ore ϑεσμὸς ἐφάνη ὅδε, -το such is the exact expression of Solon’s law 
(Plutarch, Solon, c. 19); the word ϑεσμὸς is found in Solon’s own poems, 
ϑεσμοὺς δ' ὁμοίους τῷ κακῷ τε κἀγαϑῷ. 

* Aristot. Polit. ii, 9,9; Rhetoric. ii. 25, 1; Aulus Gell. N. A. xi, 18; 
Pausanias, ix, 36,4; Plutarch, Solon, c. 19; though Pollux (viii, 4%) does 
not agree with him. Taylor, Lectt. Lysiacw, ch. 10. 

Respecting the ϑεσμοὶ of Drako, see Kuhn. ad AZlian. V. H. viii, 10. The 
preliminary sentence which Porphyry (De Abstinentid, iv, 22) ascribes to 
Drako can hardly be zenuine. 


TRIAL OF HOMICIDE AT ATHENS. 77 


penal legislation had become so much milder, during the two 
centuries which followed, that these old ordinances appeared to 
Aristotle intolerably rigorous. Probably neither Drako, nor the 
Lokrian Zaleukus, who somewhat preceded him in date, were 
more rigorous than the sentiment of the age: indeed, the few 
fragments of the Drakonian tables which have reached us, far 
from exhibiting indiscriminate cruelty, introduce, for the first time, 
into the Athenian law, mitigating distinctions in respect to homi- 
cide ;! founded on the variety of concomitant circumstances. 
He is said to have constituted the judges called Ephetz, fifty-one 
elders belonging to some respected gens or possessing an exalted 
position, who held their sittings for trial of homicide in thre¢ 
different spots, according to the difference of the cases submitted 
tothem. If the accused party, admitting the fact, denied any 
culpable intention and pleaded accident, the case was tried at the 
place called the palladium; when found guilty of accidental 
homicide, he was condemned to a temporary exile, unless he 
could appease the relatives of the deceased, but his property was 
left untouched. If, again, admitting the fact, he defended him- 
self by some valid ground of justification, such as self-defence, or 
flagrant adultery with his wife on the part of the deceased, the 
trial took place on ground consecrated to Apollo and Artemis, 
called the Delphinium. A particular spot called the Phreattyr 
close to the seashore, was also named for the trial of a person, 
who, while under sentence of exile for an unintentional homicide, 
might be charged with a second homicide, committed of course 
without the limits of the territory: being considered as impure 
from the effects of the former sentence, he was not permitted to 
set foot on the soil, but stood his trial on a boat hauled close in 
shore. At the prytaneium, or government-house itself, sittings 
were held by the four phylo-basileis, or tribe-kings, to try any 
inanimate object (a piece of wood or stone, ete.) which had 
caused death to any one, without the proved intervention of a 
human hand: the wood or stone, when the fact was verified, was 


1 Pausanias, ix, 36, 4. Δράκοντος ᾿Αϑηναίοις ϑεσμοϑητήσαντος ἐκ tiv 
ἐκείνου κατέστη νόμων οὗς ἔγραφεν ἐπὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς, ἄλλων τε ὁπόσων ἄδειαν 
εἶναι χρή, καὶ δὴ καὶ τιμωρίας μοιχοῦ : compare Dér-osthen.cont. Aristokrat 
p- 687; Lysias de Cade Eratosthen. p. 31. 


OE Ag ng ge ge ge .... . 


- 


- 


18 ΠΣ ’ORY OF GKkEECE. 


formally cast beyond the border.! All these distinctions of course 
imply the preliminary investigation of the case, called anak risis, 
by the xing-archon, in order that it might be known what was 
the issue, and where the sittings of the ephete were to be held. 
So intimately was the mode of dealing with homicide connect- 


' Harpokration, vv, ᾿Εφέται, "Ex? Δελφινίῳ, Ἐπὶ Παλλαδίῳ, Ev Φρεαττοῖ: 
Pollux, viii, 119, 124, 125; Photius, v, 'Egeraz; Hesychius, ἐς Φρέατου ; 
Démesthen. cont. Aristokrat. ο. 15-18, pp. 642-645 ; cont. Makartat. c. 15. 
p. 1068. When Pollax speaks of the five courts in which the eplicti 
judged, he probably includes the areopagus (see Démosth. cont. Aristokrat 
ε. 14, p. 641). 

About the judges ἐν Φρεαττοῖ, see Aristot. Polit. iv, 13,2. On the gener! 
subject of this ancient and obscure criminal procedure, see Matthix, J) 
Judiciis Atheniensium (in Miscellan. Philologie, vol. i, p- 143, seg.) ; 
Schomann, Antiq. Jur. Pub. Att. sect. 61, p. 288; Platner, Prozess uni 
Klaven bey den Attikern, b. Loe τ: ond BOW. Weber, Comment. ad 
Démosthen. cont. Aristokrat. »p- 627, 641; Meier und Schémann, Attisel. 
Prozess, pp. 14-19. 

I cannot consider the ephets: as judges in appeal, and I agree with those 
{Schomann, Antiq. Jur. Pub. Gr. p- 171; Meier und Schimann, Attiseh 
Prozess, p. 16; Platner, Prozess und Klagen, t. i, p. 18) who distrust the 
etymology which connects this word with ἐφέσιμος. The active sense of 
the word, akin to ἐφίεμαι (Esch. Prom. 4) and ἐφετμὴ, meets the case bet- 
ter: see U. Miiller, Prolegg. ad Mythol. p. 424 (though there is no reason 
for believing the ephete to be older than Drako) : compare, however, K. F 
Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griechischen Staats Alterthiimer, sects. 103, 104, who 
thinks differently. 

The trial, condemnation, and banishment of inanimate objects which had 
been the cause of death, was founded on feelings widely diffused throughout 
the Grecian world (see Pausan. vi, 11, 2; and Theokritus, Idyll. xxii, 60) - 
analogous in principle to the English law respecting deodand, an& to the 
spirit perveding the ancient Germanic codes generally (see Dr. C. Triimmer 
Die Lehre von der Zurechnung, c. 28-38, Hamburg, 1845). 

The Germanic codes do not content themselves with imposing a zeneral 
obligation to appease the relatives and gentiles of the slain party, but deter- 
mine beforehand the sum which shall be sufficient to the purpose, wich, in 

the case of involuntary homicide, is paid to the surviving relatives as ¢ com- 
pensation ; for the difference between culpable homicide, justifiable he nicide, 
and accidental homicide, see the elaborate treatise of Wilda, Das D .nteche 
Strafrecht, ch. viii, Pp. 544-559, whose doctrine, however, is disputee oy Dr. 
Trommer, in the treatise above noticed. 

At Rome, according to the Twelve Tables, and earlier, involuntai, hemi- 
cide was to be expiated by the sacrifice of a ram (Walter, Gezchicate des 
Romisch. Rechts, sect. 768). 


’ 


EPHETH, AREOPAGUS, ETC. 79 


ed with the religious feelings of the Athenians, that these old reg- 
ulations were never formally abrogated throughout the kistorical 
times, and were read engraved on their column by the contempo- 
raries of Démosthenés.! The areopagus continued in Judicial 
operation, and the ephete are spoken of as if they were so, even 
through the age of Démosthenés ; though their functions were 
tacitly usurped or narrowed, and their dignity impaired,? by the 
more popular dikasteries afterwards created. It is in this way 
that they have become known to us, while the other Drakonian 
institutions have perished: but there is much obscurity respecting 
them, particularly in regard to the relation between the epheta 
and the areopagites. Indeed, so little was known on the subject, 
even by the historical inquirers of Athens, that most of them 
supposed the council of areopagus to have received its first 
origin from Solon: and even Aristotle, though he contradicts 
this view, expresses himself in no very positive language.3 That 
judges sat at the areopagus for the trial of homicide, previous to 
Drako, seems implied in the arrangements of that lawgiver 
respecting the ephetz, inasmuch as he makes no new provision 
for trying the direct issue of intentional homicide, which, accord- 
ing to all accounts, fell within the cognizance of the areopagus : 
but whether the ephete and the areopagites were the same persons, 
wholly or partially, our information is not sufficient to discover. 
3efore Drako, there existed no tribunal for trying homicide, 
except the senate, sitting at the areopagus, and we may conjecture 
that there was something connected with that spot, — legends, 


' Démosthen. cont. Euerg. et Mnésib. Ρ. 1161. 

* Démosthen. cont. Aristokrat. p. 647. τοσούτοις δικαστηρίοις, ἃ ϑεοὶ κατέ- 
δειξαν, καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα ἄνϑρωποι χρῶνται πάντα τὸν χρόνον, p. 6483. ---- οἱ ταῦτ᾽ 
ἐξαρχῆς τὰ νόμιμα διαϑέντες, οἵτινές rod? ἧσαν, ci?’ ἥρωες, εἴτε ϑεοί. Seg 
also the Oration cont. Makartat. p. 1069; Aschin. cont. Ktesiphon. p. 630; 
Antiph. De Cede Herodis, c. 14. 

The popular dikastery, in the age of Isokratés and Démosthenés, held 
sittings ἐπὶ Παλλαδίῳ for the trial of charges of unintentional homicide, — 
a striking evidence of the special holiness of the place for that purpose (see 
Isokrat. cont. Kallimachum, Or. xviii, p. 381; Démosth. cont. Nezr. p. 
1348). 

The statement of Pollux (viii, 125), that the ephetw became despised, ie 
aot confirmed by the language of Démosthenés. 

* Platarch, Solon, e. 19; Aristot. Polit. ii, 9, 2. 


=~ 


> 


Ξ - led 
a “5. 


80 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ceremonies, or religious feelings, — which compelled judges there 
sitting to condemn every man proved guilty of homicide, and 
forbade them to take account of extenuating or justifying circum- 
stances.! Drako appointed the ephete to sit at different places ; 
and these places are so pointedly marked, and were so unalterably 
maintained, that we may see in how peculiar a manner those 
‘pecial issues, of homicide under particular circumstances, which 
he assigned to each, were adapted, in Athenian belief, to the new 
sacred localities chosen,* each having its own distinct ceremonial 
and procedure appointed by the gods themselves. That the 
religious feelings of the Greeks were associated in the most inti- 
mate manner with particular localities, has already been often 
remarked ; and Drako proceeded agreeably to them in_ his 
arrangements for mitigating the indiscriminate condemnation of 
every man found guilty of homicide, which was unavoidable so 
long as the areopagus remained the only place of trial. The 
man who either confessed, or was proved to have shed the blood 
of another, could not be acquitted, or condemned to less than the 
full penalty (of death or perpetual exile, with confiscation of 
property) by the judges on the hill of Arés, whatever excuse he 
might have to offer: but the judges at the palladium and del 
phiniam might hear him, and even admit his plea, without 
contracting the ta®nt of irreligion. Drako did not directly meddle 
with, nor indeed ever mention, the judges sitting in areopagus. 
In respect to homicide, then, the Drakonian ordinarces were 
partly a reform of the narrowness, partly a mitigation of the 
rigor, of the old procedure; and these are all that have come 
down to us, having been preserved unchanged from the religious 
respect of the Athenians for antiquity on this peculiar matter 
The rest of his ordinances are said to have been repealed by 
Solon, on account of their intolerable severity. So they doubt- 
less appeared, to the Athenians of a later day, who had come to 


Read on this subject the maxims laid down by Plato (Legg. xii, p 941), 
Nevertheless, Plato copies, to a great degree, the arrangements of the ephetic 
tribunals, in his provisions for homicide (Legg. ix, pp. 865-873). 

* I know no place in which the special aptitude of particular loca)'tics 
consecrated each to its own purpose, is so powerfully set forth, as i» the 
speech of Camillus against the transfer of Rome to Veii (Livy, v, 52) 


— = ar naa” aaa ἜΝ ΟΝ 


Fi Ml a er i 


CONSPIRACY OF KYLON. 81 


measure οἰἴδηοθβ by a different scale; and even to Solon, whe 
had to calm the wrath of a suffering people in actual mutiny. 
That under this eupatrid oligarchy and severe legislation the 
people of Attica were sufficiently miserable, we shall presently 
see, when I recount the proceedings of Solon: but the age of 
democracy had not yet begun, and the government received its 
first shock from the hands of an ambitious eupatrid who aspired 
to the despotism. Such was the phase, as has been remarked in 
the preceding chapter, through which, during the century now 


al 


under consideration, a large proportion of the Grecian govern- 


ments passed. 

Kyl6én, an Athenian patrician, who superadded to a great 
family position the personal celebrity of a victory at Olympia, 
as runner in the double stadium, conceived the design of seizing: 
the acropolis and constituting himself despot. Whether any spe- 


cial event had occurred at home to stimulate this project, we do 
not know: but he obtained both encouragement and valuable aid 
from his father-in-law Theagenés of Megara, who, by means of 
his popularity with the people, had already subverted the Mega 

rian oligarchy, and become despot of his native city. Previous 
to so hazardous an attempt, however, Kylon consulted the Del- 
phian oracle, and was advised by the god in reply, to take the 
opportunity of “the greatest festival of Zeus” for seizing the 
acropolis. Such expressions, in the natural interpretation put 
upon them by every Greek, designated the Olympic games in Pel- 
oponnesus, — to Kyloén, moreover himself an Olympic victor, that 
interpretation came recommended by an apparent peculiar pro- 
priety. But Thucydidés, not indifferent to the credit of the oracle, 
reminds his readers that no question was asked nor any express 
direction given, where the intended “ greatest festival of Zeus” 
was to be sought, — whether in Attica or elsewhere, —and that the 
public festival of the Diasia, celebrated periodically and solemnly 
in the neighborhood of Athens, was also denominated the “ great- 
est festival of Zeus Meéilichius.” Probably no such exegetical 
scruples presented themselves to any one, until after the misera- 
ble failure of the conspiracy ; least of all to Kylon himself, who, 
at the recurrence of the next ensuing Olympic games, put him- 
self at the head of a force, partly furnished by Theagenés, partly 


VOL. TL 48 θοο. 


ee a δ “ --σ' 


32 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


composed of his friends at home, and took sudden possession of the 
sacred rock of Athens. But the attempt excited general indigna- 
tion among the Athenian people, who crowded in from the coun- 
try to assist the archons and the prytanes of the naukrari in 
putting it down. Kylén and his companions were blockaded in 
the acrcpolis, where they soon found themselves in straits for 
want of water and provisions; and though many of the Atheni- 
ans went back to their homes, a sufficient besieging force was left 
to reduce the conspirators to the last extremity. After Kylon 
limself had escaped by stealth, and several of his companions 
had died of hunger, the remainder, renouncing all hope of de- 
fence, sat down as suppliants at the altar. The archon Megaklés, 
ou regaining the citadel, found these suppliants on ‘the point of 
expiring with hunger on the sacred ground, and to prevent such 
a pollution, engaged them to quit the spot by a promise of sparing 
their lives. No sooner, however, had they been removed into 
profane ground, than the promise was violated and they were put 
to death: some even, who, seeing the fate with which they were 
nienaced, contrived to throw themselves upon the altar .ef the 
venerable goddesses, or eumenides, near the areopagus, received 
their death-wounds in spite of that inviolable protection. |! 
Though the conspiracy was thus put down, and the govern- 
ment upheld, these deplorable incidents left behind them a long 
train of calamity .— profound religious remorse mingled with ex- 
asperated politi al antipathies. There still remained, if not a 
considerable Ky/onian party, at least a large body of persons who 
resented the way in which the Kylonians had been put ‘to death, 
aud who became in consequence bitter enemies of Megaklés the 
archon, and of the great family of the Alkmeénide, to which he 
belonged. Not only Megaklés himself and his personal assistants 
were denounced as smitten with a curse, but the taint was 81» 
posed to be transmitted to his descendants, and we shall hereafter 
find the wound reopened, not only in the second and third genera- 
tion, but also two centuries after the original event.2 When we 
see that the impression left by the proceeding was so very serious, 


The narrative is given in Thue d. i, 126; Herod. v, 71 ; Plutarch, Solon, 
12. 
* Aristophan. Equit. 445, a4 the Scholia ; Herodot. νυ, 70. 


TRIAL OF THE ALKMZONIDS. 83 


even after the length of time which had elapsed, we may well 
believe that it was sufficient, immediately afterwards, to poison 
altogether the tranquillity of the state. The Alkmezdénids and 
their partisans long defied their opponents, resisting any public 
trial, — and the dissensions continued without hope of termination, 
until Solon, then enjoying a lofty reputation for sagacity and 
patriotism, as well as for bravery, persuaded them to submit te 


judicial cognizance, -— at a moment so far distant from the event, 


that several of the actors were dead. They were accordingly 
tried before a special judicature of three hundred eupatrids, My- 
ron, of the deme Phlyeis, being their accuser. In defending 
themselves against the charge that they had sinned against the 
reverence due to the gods and the consecrated right of asylum, 
they alleged that the Kylonian suppliants, when persuaded to 
quit the holy ground, had tied a cord round the statue of the god- 
dess and clung to it for protection in their march; but on ape 
proaching the altar of the eumenides, the cord accidentally broke, 
—and this critical event, so the accused persons argued, proved 
that the goddess had herself withdrawn from them her protect» 
ing hand and abandoned them to their fate.’ Their argument, 
remarkable as an illustration of the feelings of the time, was not, 
however, accepted as an excuse: they were found guilty, and 
while such of them as were alive retired into banishment, those 
who had already died were disinterred and cast beyond the borders. 
Yet their exile, continuing as it did only for a time, was not held 
sufficient to expiate the impiety for which they had been con- 
demned. The Alkmednids, one of the most powerful families in 
Attica, long continued to be looked upon as a tainted race,2 and in 


' Plutarch, Solon, c. 12. If the story of the breaking of the cord had 
been true, Thucydidés could hardly have failed to notice it; but there is no 
reason to doubt that it was the real defence urged by the Alkmex6nids. 

When Ephesus was besieged by Croesus, the inhabitants sought protection 
k their town by dedicating it to Artemis: they carried a cord from the walls 
of the town to the shrine of the goddess, which was situated without the walls 
(Herod. i, 26). The Samian despot Polykratés, when he consecrated to the 
Delian Apollo the neighboring island of Rhéneia, connected it with the 
island of Delos by means of a chain (Thucyd. iii, 104). 

These analogies illustrate the powerful effect of visible or material zontin 
uity on the Grecian imagination. 


* Herodot. i 6] 


84 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


cases of public calamity were liable to be singled out as having by 
their sacrilege drawn down the judgment of the gods upon their 
countrymen.! 

Nor was the banishment of the guilty parties adequate in other 
reapects to restore tranquillity. Not only did pestilential disor- 
ders prevail, out the religious susceptibilities and apprehensions of 
the Athenian community also remained deplorably excited: they 
were oppressed with sorrow and despondency, saw phantoms and 
heard supernatural menaces, and felt the curse of the gods upon 
them without abatement.2 In particular, it appears that the 
minds of the women — whose religious impulses were recognized 
generally by the ancient legislators as requiring watchful control 
— were thus disturbed and frantic. The sacrifices offered at Athens 
did not succeed in dissipating the epidemic, nor could the proph- 
ets at home, though they recognized that special purifications 
were required, discover what were the new ceremonies capable 
The Delphian oracle directed 


of appeasing the divine wrath. 
them to invite a higher spiritual influence from abroad, and this 


produced the memorable visit of the Kretan prophet and sage 


Epimenidés to Athens. 

The century between 620 and 500 B. Ο. appears to have been 
remarkable for the first diffusion and potent influence of distinct 
religious brotherhoods, mystic rites, and expiatory ceremonies. 
none of which, as I have remarked in a former chapter, find any 


recognition in the Homeric epic. To this age belong Thalétas, 


Aristeas, Abaris, Pythagoras, Onomakritus, and the earliest 


provable agency of the Orphic sect. Of the class of men 


here noticed, Epimenidés, a native of Phaestus or Knossus in 
Krete,4 was one of the most celebrated,— and the old legendary 
connection between Athens and Krete, which shows itself in the 
tales of Theseus and Minos, is here again manifested in the re- 
course which the Athenians had to this island to supply their 
spiritual need. Epimenidés seems to have been connected with 


1 See Thucyd. v, 16, and his language respecting Pleistoanax of Sparta. 

Plutarch, Solon, c. 12. Καὶ φόβοι τινες ἐκ δεισιδαιμονίας ἅμα καὶ φάσματα 
aateiye τὴν πόλιν, ete. 

2 Lobeck, Aglaophamus, ii, p. 313; Hoéckh, Kreta, iii, 2, p. 252. 

4 The statements respecting Epimenidés are collected and discussed in the 
treatise of Heinrich, Eipimenides aus Kreta. Leipsic, 180] 


8 Vol. 8 


EPIMENIDES ΟΕ KRE'rE. 3b 


the worship of the Kretan Zeus, in whose savor he stad sv h.gh 
as to receive the denomination of the new Kuréte!— the Kurétes 
having been the primitive ministers and organizers of that wor- 
ship. He was said to be the son of the nymph Balté; to be 
supplied by the nymphs with constant food, since he was never 
seen to eat; to have fallen asleep in his youth in a cave, and to 
lave continued in this state without interruption for fifty-sevca 
years ; though some asserted that he remained all this time a 
wanderer in the mountains, collecting and studying medicinal 
botany in the vocation of an Iatromantis, or leech and prophet 
combined. Such narratives mark the idea entertained by an- 
tiquity of Epimenidés, the Purifier,2 who was now called in to 
heal both the epidemic and the mental affliction prevalent among 
the Athenian people, in the same manner as his countryman and 
contemporary Thalétas had been, a few years before, invited to 
Sparta to appease a pestilence by the effect of his music and 
religious hymns.2 The favor of Epimenidés with the gods, his 
knowledge of propitiatory ceremonies, and his power of working 
upon the religious feeling, was completely successful in restoring 
both health and mental tranquillity at Athens. He is said to 
have turned out some black and white sheep on the areopagus, 
directing attendants to follow and watch them, and to erect new 
altars to the appropriate local deities on the spots where the 
animals lay down.4 He founded new chapels and establishe] 


* Diogen. Laért. i, 114, 115. 

? Plutarch, Solon, c. 12; Diogen. Laért. i, 109-115; Pliny, H. N. vii, 5% 
δεοφιλὴς καὶ σοφὸς περὶ τὰ ϑεῖα τὴν ἐνθουσιαστικὴν καὶ τελεστικὴν σοφί: 
av, etc. Maxim. Tyrius, xxxviii, 8, δεινὸς τὰ ϑεῖα, ob μαϑὼν ἀλλ᾽ ὕπνον 
αὐτῷ διηγεῖτο μακρὸν καὶ ὄνειρον διδώσκαλον. 

ἸΙατρόμαντις, ΒΟΥ]. Supplic. 277; Καϑαρτὴῆς, lamblichus, Vit. Pythagor. 
c. 28. 

Plutarch (Sept. Sapient. Conviv. p. 157) treats Epimenidés simply as 
having lived up to the precepts of the Orphic life, or vegetable dict: to this 
circumstance, I presume, Plato (Legg. iii, p. 677) must be understood ts 
refer, though it is not very clear. See the Fragment of the lost Arétes of 
Luripides, p. 98, ed. Dindorf. 

Karmanor of Tarrha in Krete had purified Apollo himself for the slaughter 
ef Pytho (Pausan. ii, 30, 3). 

? Plutarch, De Musica, pp. 1134-1146; Pausanias, i, 14, 3. 

* Cicero (Legg. ii 11) states that Epimenidés directed a temple % bs 


A a ee 


86 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


various lustral ceremonies; and more especially, he regulated the 
worship paid by the women, in such a manner as to calm the 
violent impulses which had before agitated them. We know 
hardly anything of the details of his proceeding, but the general 
fact of his visit, and the salutary effects produced in removing 
the religious despondency which oppressed the Athenians, are 
well attested: consoling assurances and new ritual precepts, from 
the lips of a person supposed to stand high in the favor of Zeus, 
were the remedy which this unhappy disorder required. More- 
over, Epimenidés had the prudence to associate himself with 
Solon, and while he thus doubtless obtained much valuable 
advice, he assisted indirectly in exalting the reputation of Solon 
himself, whose career of constitutional reform was now fast ap- 
proaching. He remained long enough at Athens to restore 
completely a more comfortable tone of religious feeling, and then 
departed, carrying with him universal gratitude and admiration, 
but refusing all other reward, except a branch from the sacred 
olive-tree in the acropolis.! His life is said to have been pro- 
longed to the unusual period of one hundred and fifty-four years, 
according to a statement which was current during the time of his 
younger contemporary Xenophanés of Kolophon ;2 and the Kre- 
tans even ventured to affirm that he lived three hundred years. 
‘hey extolled him not merely as a sage and a spiritual purifier, 
but also as a poet, — very long compositions on religious and myth- 
erected at Athens to "Y/pi¢ and ’Avaideca (Violence and Impudence) : 
Clemens said that he had erected altars to the same two goddesses (Protrep- 
ticon, p. 22): Theophrastus said that there were altars at Athens (without 
mentioning Epimenidés) to these same (ap. Zenobium, Proverb. Cent. iv. 
80). Ister spoke of a lepéw 'Arasde cag at Athens (Istri Fragm. ed. Siebelis, 
p.62) 1 question whether this story has any other foundation than the fact 
stated by Pausunias, that the stones which were placed before the tribunal of 
areopagus, for the accuser and the accused to stand upon, were called by these 
names, — Ὕϑρεως, that of the accused; ’Avaideiac, that of the accuser (i, 28, 
5). The confasion between stones and altars is not difficult to be under- 
stood. The other story, told by Neanthés of Kyzikus, respecting Epimem- 
dés, that he had offered two voung men as human sacrifices, was distinctl> 
pronoanced to be untrue by Polemo: and it reads completely like a romance 
(Athenzus, xiii, p. 602). 

* Plutarch. Precept. Reipubl. Gerend. c. 27, p. 820 

* Diogen. Laért. /. δ. 


EPIMENIDES OF KRETE 87 


ical subjects being ascribed to him; according to some accounts, 
. . Ὕ » . Mi 
they even worshipped him as a god. Both Plato and Cicero con 
sidered Epimenidés in the same light in which he was regarded 
by his contemporaries, as a prophet divinely inspired, and foretell- 
ῃ . 
ing the future under fits of temporary ecstasy: but according to 
Aristotle, Epimenidés himself professed to have received from 
the gods no higher gift than that of divining the unknown phe- 
nomena of the past.! 
The religious mission of Epimenidés to Athens, and its effica- 
‘ious as well as healing influence on the public mind, deserve 
Ἢ Ϊ F i Thie » tg ‘vat h 7}}" 9 ” 
notice as characteristics of the age in which they occurred. 1 
᾿ ν > 
we transport ourselves two centuries forward, to the Peloponne- 


sian war, when rational influences and positive habits of thought 
had acquired a durable hold upon the superior minds, and when 
practical discussions on political and judicial matters were familiar 


to every Athenian citizen, no such uncontrollable religious misery 
could well have subdued the entire public; and if it had, no 
living man could have drawn to himself such universal venera- 
tion as to be capable of effecting a cure. Plato,? admitting the 
real healing influence of rites and ceremonies, fully believed in 
Epimenidés as an inspired prophet during the past ; but towards 
those who preferred claims to supernatural power in his own 
day, he was not so easy of faith. He, as well as Euripides and 
Theophrastus, treated with indifference, and even with contempt, 
the orpheotelestz of the later times, who advertised themselves 
as possessing the same patent knowledge of ceremonial rites, 
und the same means of guiding the will of the gods, as Epimeni- 
dés had wielded before them. These orpheoteleste unquestion- 
ably numbered a considerable tribe of believers, and speculated 


with great effect, as well as with profit to themselves, upon the 


' Plato, Legg. i, p. 642; Cicero, De Divinat. i, 18; Aristot. Rhet. iii, 17. 

Plato places Epimenidés ten years before the Persian invasion of Greece 
whereas his real date is near upon 600 B. c.; a remarkable example of 
carelessness as to chronology. 

* Respecting the characteristics of this age, s¢ .he second chapter of the 
treatise of Heinrich, above alluded to, Kreta und Griechenland in Hinsicht 


auf Wunderglanben. 
3 Plato, Kratylus, p. 405; Pheedr. p. 244. 


-.--- 


88 HISTORY OF GREECE 


timorous consciences of rich men:! but they enjoyed no ie 
spect with the general public, or with those to whose authority 
the public habitually looked up. Degenerate as they were, 
however, they were the legitimate representatives of the prophet 
and purifier from Knossus, to whose presence the Athenians had 
been so much indebted two centuries before: and their altered 
position was owing less to any falling off in themselves, than to 
an improvement in the mass upon whom they sought to operate. 
Ilad Epimenidés himself come to Athens in those days, his visit 
would probably have been as much inoperative to all public 
purposes as a repetition of the stratagem of Phyé, clothed and 
equipped as the goddess Athéné, which had succeeded so com- 
pletely in the days of Peisistratus, — ἃ stratagem which even 
Herodotus treats as incredibly absurd, although, a century before 
his time, both the city of Athens and the demes of Attica had 
obeyed, as a divine mandate, the orders of this magnificent and 
stately woman, to restore Peisistratus.2 


CHAPTER XI. 
SOLONIAN LAWS AND CONSTITUTION. 


WE now approach a new era in Grecian history, — the first 
known example of a genuine and disinterested constitutional 
reform, and the first foundation-stone of that great fabric, which 
afterwards became the type of democracy in Greece. The ar- 
chonship of the eupatrid Solon dates in 594 Β. c., thirty years 
after that of Drako, and about eighteen years after the conspir- 
acy of Kylon, assuming the latter event to be correctly placed 
B. c. 612. 

The life of Solon by Plutarch and by Diogenés, especially the 


— 


' Eurip. Hippolyt 957; Plato, Republ. ii, p 364; Theophrast. Charact ¢ 
16. 
* Herodot. i 60. 


SOLON 89 


former, are our principal sources of information respecting this 
remarkable man; and while we thank them for what they have 
told us, it is impossible to avoid expressing disappointment that 
they have not told us more. For Plutarch certainly had before 
him both the original poems, and the original laws, of Solon, and 
the few transcripts which he gives from one or the other form the 
principal charm of his biography: but such valuable materials 
ought to have been made available to a more instructive result 
than that which he has brought out. There is hardly anything 
more to be deplored, amidst the lost treasures of the Grecian 
mind, than the poems of Solon; for we see by the remaining 
fracments, that they contained notices of the public and social 
phenomena before him, which he was compelled attentively to 
study, — blended with the touching expression of his own 
personal feelings, in the post, alike honorable and difficult, to 
which the confidence of his countrymen had exalted him. 

Solon, son of Exekestidés, was a eupatrid of middling fortune, 
but of the purest heroic blood, belonging to the gens or family of 
the Kodrids and Neleids, and tracing his origin to the god Po 
seidon. His father is said to have diminished his substance by 
prodigality, which compelled Solon in his earlier years to have 
recourse to trade, and in this pursuit he visited many parts of 
Greece and Asia. He was thus enabled to enlarge the sphere 
of his observation, and to provide material for thought as well as 
for composition: and his poetical talents displayed themselves at 
a very early age, first on light, afterwards on serious subjects. 
It will be recollected that there was at that time no Greek prose 
writing, and that the acquisitions as well as the effusions of an 
intellectual man, even in their simplest form, adjusted themselves 
not to the limitations of the period and the semicolon, but to 
those of the hexameter and pentameter: nor in point of fact do 
the verses of Solon aspire to any higher effect than we are ac- 
customed to associate with an earnest, touching, and admonitory 
prose composition. The advice and appeals which he frequently 
addressed to his countrymen? were delivered in this easy metre, 
doubtless far less difficult than the elaborate prose of subsequent 


' Plutarch, Solon. i; Diogen. Laért. iii, 1; Aristot Polit. iv. 9, 10. 
3 Platarch, Solon, v. 


90 HISTURY OF GREECE 


writers or speakers, such as Thucydidés, Isokratés, or Demosthe 


nés. His poetry and his reputation became known throughout 
many parts of Greec, and he was classed along with Thalés of 
Milétus, Bias of Priéné, Pittakus of Mytilené, Periander of Cor- 
inth, Kleobulus of Lindus, Cheilén of Lacedzmon, — altogether 
forming the constellation afterwards renowned as the Seven wisa 
men. 

The first particular event in respect to which Solon appears as 
an active politician, is the possession of the island of Salamis, 
then disputed between Megara and Athens. Megara was at that 
time able to contest with Athens, and for sometime to contest 
with success, the occupation of this important island,— a re- 
markable fact, which perhaps may be explained by supposing 
that the inhabitants of Athens and its neighborhood carried on 
the struggle with only partial aid from the rest of Attiea. How- 
ever this may be, it appears that the Megarians had actually es- 
tablished themselves in Salamis, at the time when Solon began 
his political career, and that the Athenians had experienced so 
much loss in the strugele, as to have formally prohibited any 
citizen from ever submitting a proposition for its reconquest. 
Stung with this dishonorable abnegation, Solon counterfeited a 
state of ecstatic excitement, rushed into the agora, and there, on 
the stone usually oecupied by the official herald, pronounced ἰὼ 
the crowd around a short elegiae poem,' which he had previously 
composed on the subject of Salamis. He enforced upon them 
the disgrace of abandoning the island, and wrought so powerfully 
upon their feelings, that they rescinded the prohibitory law: 
“ Rather (he exclaimed) would I forfeit my native city, and be- 
come a citizen of Pholecandrus, than be still named an Athenian, 
branded with the shame of surrendered Salamis!” The Athe- 
nians again entered into the war, and conferred upon him the 
command of it,— partly, as we are told, at the instigation of 


' Plutarch, Solon, viii. It was a poem of one hundred lines, γαριέντως 
* iy πεποιημένων. 

Diogenés tells us, that “Solon read the verses to the people throngh the 
medium of the herald,” — a statement not less deficient in taste thar, in aceu- 
racy, and which spoils the whole effect of the vigorous exordium, Aira, 
κήρυξ HAVO ἀφ᾽ ἱμερτὴς Σαλαμῖνος, ete 


SALAMIS ACQUIRED BY ATHENS. 91) 


Peisistratus, though the latter must have been at this time (600- 
594 B. 0.) a very young man, or rather a boy.! 

The stories in Plutarch, as to the way in which Salamis was 
recovered, are contradictory as well as apocryphal, ascribing ἔν 
Solon various stratagems to deceive the Megarian occupiers ; un- 
fortunately, no authority is given for any of them. According 
to that which seems the most plausible, he was directed by the 
Delphian god, first to propitiate the local heroes of the island; 
and he accordingiy crossed over to it by night, for the purpose 
of sacrificing to the heroes Periphémus and Kychreus, on the 
Salaminian shore. Five hundred Athenian volunteers were 
then levied for the attack of the island, under the stipulation that 
if they were victorious they should hold it in property and citi- 
zenship.2 ‘They were safely landed on an outlying promontory, 
while Solon, having been fortunate enough to seize a ship which 
the Megarians had sent to watch the proceedings, manned it with 
Athenians, and sailed straight towards the city of Salamis, to 
which the five hundred Athenians who had landed also directed 
their march. The Megarians marched out from the city to repel 
the latter, and during the heat of the engagement, Solon, with 
his Megarian ship, and Athenian crew, sailed directly to the 
city: the Megarians, interpreting this as the return of their own 
crew, permitted the ship to approach without resistance, and the city 
was thus taken by surprise. Permission having been given to the 


' Plutarch, /. c.; Diogen. Laért. i, 47. Both Herodotus (i, 59) and some 
authors read by Plutarch ascribed to Peisistratus an active part in the war 
against the Megarians, and even the capture of Niswa, the port of Megara. 
Now the first usurpation of Peisistratus was in 560 B. c., and we can hardly 
believe that he can have been prominent and renowned in a war no less than 
forty years before. 

It will be seen hereafter —see the note on the interview between Solon 
and Kroesus, towards the end of this chapter — that Herodotus, and perhaps 
other authors also, conceived the Solonian legislation to date at a period 
later than it really does; instead of 594 B.c., they placed it nearer to the 
usurpation of Peisistratus. 

? Plutarch, Solon, κυρίους εἶναι τοῦ πολιτεύματος. The strict meaning of 
these words refers only to the government of the island ; but it seems almost cer- 
tainly implied that they would be established in it as kléruchs, er proprietors 
of land, not meaning necessarily that all the preéxisting proprietors would 


be expelled. 


90 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Megarians to quit the island, Solon took possession of it for the 
Athenians, erecting a temple to Enyalius, the god of war, on 
Cape Skiradium, near the city of Salamis.' 

The citizens of Megara, however, made various efforts for the 
recovery of so valuable a possession, so that a war ensued long 
as well as disastrous to both parties. At last, it was agreed be- 
tween them to refer the dispute to the arbitration of Sparta, and 
five Spartans were appointed to decide it, — Kritolaidas, Amom- 
pharetus, Hypséchidas, Anaxilas, and Kleomenés. The verdict 
in favor of Athens was founded on evidence which it is some- 
what curious to trace. Both parties attempted to show that the 
dead bodies buried in the island conformed to their own peculiar 
mode of interment, and both parties are said to have cited verses 
from the catalogue ot the lliad2 - each accusing the other οἵ « rror 
or interpolation. But the Athenians bad the advantage on two 
points; first, there were oracles from Delphi, wherein Salamis 
was mentioned with the epithet Ionian; next, Phileus and Eury- 
sakés, sons of the Telamonian Ajax, the great hero of the island, 
had accepted the citizenship ot Athens, made over Salamis to the 
Athenians, and transferred their own residences to Braurén and 
Melité in Attica, where the deme or gens Philaidw still wer- 
shipped Philzus as its eponymous ancestor. Such a title was 
held sufficient, and Salamis was adjudged by the five Spartans to 
Attica with which it ever afterwards remained incorporated 


'Piutarch, Solon, 8, 9, 10. Datmachus of Platzea, however, denied to 
Solon any personal share in the Salaminian war (Plutarch, comp. Solon and 
Public. c. 4). 

Polyznus (i, 20) ascribes a different stratagem to Solon: compare Elian, 
V. H. vii, 19. It is hardly necessary to say that the account which the 
Megarians gave of the way in which they lost the island was totally differ- 
ent: they imputed it to the treachery of some exiles (Pausan. i, 40, 4): 
compare Justin, ii, 7. 

* Aristot. Rhet. i, 16, 3. 

* Plutarch, Solon, 10: compare Aristot. Rhet. i, 16. Alkibiadés traced up 
his γένος to Eurysakés (Plutarch, Alkibiad. ο. 1); Miltiadés traced up his to 
Philzus (Ierodot. vi, 35). 

According to the statement of Héreas the Megarian, both his countrymen 
and the Athenians had the same way of interment: both interred the dead 
with their faces towards the west. This statement, therefore, affords no 
proof of any peculiarity of Athenian custom in burial. 

The Eurysakeium, or precinct sacred to the hero Eurysakés, stood in the 


AfMENS BEFORE SOLON. 93 


until the days of Macedonian supremacy. Two centuries and a 
half later, when the orator AEschinés argued the Athenian right 
to Amphipolis against Philip of Macedon, the legendary elements 
of the title were indeed put forward, but more in the way of 
preface or introduction to the substantial political grounds.! But 
in the year 600 B. c., the authority of the legend was more 
deep-seated and operative, and adequate by itself to determine a 
favorable verdict. | 

In addition to the conquest of Salamis, Solon increased his 
reputation by espousing the cause of the Delphian temple against 
the extortionate proceedings of the inhabitants of Kirrha, of 
which more will be said in a coming chapter; and the favor of 
the oracle was probably not without its effect in procuring for 
him that encouraging prophecy with which his legislative career 
opened. ᾿ ! 

It is on the occasion of Solon’s legislation, that we obtain our 
first glimpse — unfortunately, but a glimpse — of the actual state 
of Attica and its inhabitants. It is a sad and repulsive picture, 
presenting to us political discord and private suffering combined. 

Violent dissensions prevailed among the inhabitants of Attica, 
who were separated into three factions, — the pedieis, or men of 


the plain, comprising Athens, Eleusis, and the neighboring terri- 
tory, among whom the greatest number of rich families were 
included; the mountaineers in the east and north of Attica, called 
diakrii, who were on the whole the poorest party; and the pa- 
ralii in the southern portion of Attica, from sea to sea, whose 
means and social position were intermediate between the two.? 


Upon what particular points these intestine disputes turned we 
are not distinctly informed ; they were not, however, peculiar to 
the period immediately preceding the archontate of Solon ; they 
had prevailed before, and they reappear afterwards prior to the 


deme of Melité (Harpokrat. ad v), which forme a portion of the city of 
Athens. 

> JEschin. Fals. Legat. p. 250, c. 14. 

3 Plutarch Solon, c. 13. The language of Plutarch, in which he talks of 
the pedicis as representing the oligarchical tendency, and the diakrii as rep- 
resenting the democratical, is not quite acccrate when applied to the days 
of Salon. Democratical pretensions, as such, can hardly be said to have 


then existed. 


94 HISTOné Wt GREECE. 


oe ΝΕ ὍΝ . . 
despotism of Pcisistratus, the latter standing forward as the leade1 
of the diakrii, and as champion, real or pretended, of the poorer 
population. 
But in the time of Solon these intestine quarrels wer 


Θ aggra 
vated by something much more difficult to deal with, — 2 im 
eral mutiny of the poorer population against the rich, resulting 
from misery combined with oppression. The thétes, whose cone 
dition we have already contemplated in the poems of Homer and 
Hesiod, are now presented to us as forming the bulk of the pop- 
ulation of Attica, — the cultivating tenants, metayers, and small 
proprietors of the country. They are exhibited as weighed 
down by debts and dependence, and driven in large neibore out 
of a state of freedom into slavery, — the whole mass of them 
we are told, being in debt to the rich, who are proprietors of the 
greater part of the soil.!. They had either borrowed money for 
their own necessities, or they tilled the lands of the rich as de- 
pendent tenants, paying a stipulated portion of the 
in this capacity they were largely in arrear. 

All the calamitous effects were here seen of the old harsh law 
of debtor and creditor, — once prevalent in Greece, Italy, Asia, 
and a large portion of the world, — combined with the recogni- 


tion of slavery as a legitimate status, and of the richt of one 


produce, and 


‘Pi 
utarch, Solon, 13. “Arr ‘ap ὁ δὴ ἣν ὑπὸ uy πἢ Ἴ 
 ᾿ΕἸΒΙΑΡΟΝ, , 1 A'rac μὲν γὰρ ὁ δῆμος ἦν vTOYpEewe τῶν πλουσίων" 
Ἶ yep ἐγεώργουν ἐκείνοις Extra τῶν γινομένων τελοῦντες, ἐκτημόριοι προσαγο- 
— καὶ ϑῆτες" ἢ χρέα λαμβάνοντες ἐπὶ τοῖς σώμασιν. ἀγίέ 
Ἔν ᾿ εν ᾿ Ὕ ᾿ ὦ» “ , ᾿ ἢ ] ' ; sh Ι ἢ 
ἀνείζουσιν ἦσαν" οἱ μὲν αὐτοῦ δουλεύοντες, οἱ δὲ ἐπὶ 


has i τῇ ξένῃ πιπρασκόμενοι 
Πολλ ὟΣ ] »»..... >t " } , i ᾿ ᾿ a μ» we ᾿ mH ΄ a / . 
ia καὶ παῖδας ἰδίους ἠναγκάζοντο πωλεῖν, καὶ ΤΊ 

ν χαλεπότητα τῶν δανειστῶν i δὲ πλεὶ } 
τὴ χαλεπότητα τῶν δανειστῶν. Οἱ δὲ πλειστοι καὶ pone 


καὶ παρεκάλουν ἀλλήλους μὴ 


yiuot τοῖς 


πόλιν φεύγειν διὰ 


iV 
ewTarol συνίσταντο 


περιορᾷν, ete. 
Respecting these hektémori, “tenants paying one-sixth portion,” we find 
little viel information : they are just noticed in Hesychius (v, Ἑκτήμοροι, 
Επίμορτος) and in Pollux, vii, 151: from whom we learn that émiuoproc yi 
Was an expression which occurred in one of the Solonian laws “Whether 
they paid to the landlord one-sixth, or retained for themselves only one-sixt! 
has been doubted (see Photius, Πελάται). ἽΠἢ 
Dionysius Hal. (A. R. ii, 9) compares 


the thétes in Attica to the R 
ν ier z ° ; 3 Η 
clients: that both agreed in a 


being relations of i 
t . σ᾽ rel ἢ of personal and proprietary 
i i is certain ; but we can hardly carry the comparison farther, nor 
ere any evidence in Attica of that sanctity of oblizati iit aud 4 
op : hat sanctity of obligation which is said ta 
muni the Roman patron to his client. 


LAW OF DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 95 


man to sell himself as well as that of another man to buy him 
Every debtor unable to fulfil his contract was liable to be ad- 
judged as the slave of his creditor, until he could find means either 
of paying it or working it out; and not only he himself, but his 
minor sons and unmarried daughters and sisters also, whom the 
law gave him the power of selling.!. The poor man thus borro.ved 
upon the security of his body, to translate literally the Greek 
phrase, and upon that of the persons of his family; and so se- 
verely had these oppressive contracts been enforced, that many 
debtors had been reduced from freedom to slavery in Attica 
itself, —many others had been sold for exportation, — and some 
had only hitherto preserved their own freedom by selling their 
children. Moreover, a great number of the smaller properties 
in Attica were under mortgage, signified, — according to the for- 
mality usual in the Attic law, and continued down throughout the 
historical times, — by a stone pillar erected on the land, inseribed 
with the name of the lender and the amount of the loan. The 
proprietors of these mortgaged lands, in case of an unfavorable 
turn of events, had no other prospect except that of irremediable 
slavery for themselves and their families, either in their own 
native country, robbed of all its delights, or in some barbarian 
region where the Attic accent would never meet their ears. 
Some had fled the country to escape legal adjudication of their 
persons, and earned a miserable subsistence in foreign parts by 
degrading occupations: upon several, too, this deplorable lot had 
fallen by unjust condemnation and corrupt judges; the conduct 
of the rich, in regard to money sacred and profane, in regard te 
matters public as well as private, being thoroughly unprincipled 
and rapacious. 

The manifold and long-continued suffering of the poor undcr 
this system, plunged into a state of debasement not more tolera- 
ble than that of the Gallic plebs,— and the injustices of the 
rich, in whom all political power was then vested, are facts well 


' Se the Frisii, when unable to pay the tribute imposed by the Roman 
empire, “ primo boves ipsos, mox agros, postremo corpora conjugum et liber- 
orum, servitio tradebant.” (Tacit. Annal. iv, 72.) About the selling of 
children by parents, to pay the taxes, in the later times of the Roman empira 
see Zosimus, ii, 38; Libanius, t. ii, p. 427, ed. Paris, 1627. 


96 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


attested by the poems of Solon himself, even in the short frag- 
meuta preserved to us:! and it appears that immediately preced- 
ing the time of his archonship, the evils had ripened to such a 
point, — and the determination of the mass of sufferers, to extort 
for themselves some rnode of relief, had become sO pronounced, 
-- Cant the existing laws could ho longer be enforced. Accord. 
ing to the profound remark of Aristotle, — that seditions are gens 
erated by great causes but out of small incidents,2— we may 
conceive that some recent events had occurred as immediate 
stimulants to the outbreak of the debtors, —like those which 
lend so striking an interest to the early Roman annals, as the in- 
flaming sparks of violent popular movements for which the train 
had tong before been laid. Condemnations by the archons, of 
insolvent debtors, may have been unusually numerous, or the mak 
treatment of some particular debtor, once a respected freeman, 


in his condition of slavery, may have been brought to act vividly 


upon the public sympathies, — like the case of the old plebeian 
centurion at Rome,’ — first impoverished by the plunder of the 
enemy, then reduced to borrow, and lastly adjudged to his crediv 


‘See the Fragment περὶ τῆς ᾿Αϑηναίων πολιτείας, No. 2. Schneidewin. 
Δήμου YF ἡγεμόνων ἄδικος νόος. οἷσιν ἔτοιμος 
Ὕρριος ἐκ μεγάλης ἀλ yea πολλὰ παϑεῖν. 
-- OW ἱερῶν κτεάνων οὗτε τι δημοσίων 
Φειδόμενοι, κλέπτουσιν ἐφ᾽ ἁρπα) ἢ ἄλλοϑεν ἄλλος, 
Οὐδὲ φυλάσσονται σεμνὰ δίκα mC ϑέμεϑλα. 
εὐ νν Ταῦτα μὲν ἐν δήμῳ στρέφεται κακά " τὼν δὲ πενιχρῶν 
Ἱκνεῦνται πολλοὶ γαῖαν ἐς ἀλλοδαπὴν 


Πραϑέντες, δεσμοῖσι τ᾽ ἀεικελίοισε δεϑέντες 


3 Aristot. Polit. γίγνονται δὲ αἱ στάσεις οὐ περὶ μικρῶν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ μικρῶν 

* Livy, ii, 23; Dionys. Hal. A. R. vi, 96: compare Livy, vi, 34-36. 

“ An placeret, fenore cireumventam plebem, potius quam sorte creditum 
solvat, corpus in nervum ac supplicia dare? et gregatim quotidie de fora 
addictos duci, et repleri vinctis nobiles domos? et ubicunque patricius habi- 
tet, ibi carcerem privatum esse ?” 

The exposition of Niebuhr, respecting the old Roman law of debtor and 
creditor (Rém. Gesch. i. p. 602, seg. ; Arnold’s Roman Hist. ch. viii, vol. i, p 
135), and the explanation which he there gives of the nexi, as distinguished 
from the addicti, have been shown to be incorrect by M. von Savigny, in an 
excellent Dissertation Uber das Alt-Rémische Schuldrecht (Abbandlungen 
Berlin Academ. 1833, pp. 70-73), an abstract of which will be found in ap 
Appendix, at the close of this chapter 


ARCHONSHIP OF SOLON, 97 


tor as an insolvent,-—- who claimed the protection of the people in 
the forum, rousing their feelings to the highest pitch by the marks 
of tae slave-whip visible on his person. Some such incidents had 
probably happened, though we have no historians to recount them; 
moreover, it is not unreasonable to imagine, that that public men- 
tal affliction which the purifier Epimenidés had been invoked to 
appease, as it sprung in part from pestilence, so it had its cause 
partly in years of sterility, which must of course have aggravated 
the distress of the small cultivators. However this may be, such 
was the condition of things in 594 B. c., through mutiny of the 
poor freemen and thétes, and uneasiness of the middling citizens, 
that the governing oligarchy, unable either to enforce their pri- 
vate debts or to maintain their political power, were obliged to 
invoke the well-known wisdom and integrity of Solon. Though 
his vigorous protest — which doubtless rendered him acceptable 
to the mass of the people — against the iniquity of the existing 
system had already been proclaimed in his poems, they still hoped 
that he would serve as an auxiliary, to help them over their difli- 
culties, and they therefore chose him, nominally, as archon along 
with Philombrotus, but with power in substance dictatorial. 

It had happened in several Grecian states, that the governing 
oligarchies, either by quarrels among their own members or by 
the general bad condition of the people under their government, 
were deprived of that hold upon the public mind which was 68- 
sential to their power; and sometimes, as in the case of Pittakus 
οἵ Mityléné, anterior to the archonship of Solon, and often in the 
factions of the Italian republics in the Middle Ages, the collision 
of opposing forces had rendered society intolerable, and driven 
all parties to acquiesce in the choice of some reforming dictator. 
Usually, however, in the early Greek oligarchies, this ultimate 
crisis was anticipated by some ambitious individual, who availed 
himself of the public discontent, to overthrow the oligarchy, and 
usurp the powers,of a despot; and so, probably, it might have 
happened in Athens, had not the recent failure of Kylén, with 
all its miserable consequences, operated as a deterring motive 
It is curious to read, in the words of Solon himself, the temper 
in which his appointment was construed by a large portion of the 
cofamcnity, but most especially by his own friends: and we are 

VOL 111. 5 7oc. 


Gx HISTURY OF GREECE. 


to bear in mind that at this early day, so far as our knowledy: 
goes, democratical government was a thing unknown in Greece, 
—all Grecian governments were either oligarchical or despotic, 
the mass of the freemen having not yet tasted of constitutional 
privilege. His own friends and supporters were the first to urge 
him, while redressing the prevalent discontents, to multiply par- 
tisans for himself personally, and seize the supreme power: they 
even “chid him as a madman, for declining to haul up the net 
when the fish were already enmeshed.”! The mass of the 
people, in despair with their lot, would gladly have seconded him 
in such an attempt, and many even among the oligarchy might 
have acquiesced in his personal government, from the mere 
apprehension of something worse, if they resisted it. That 
Solon might easily have made himself despot, admits of littl 
doubt ; and though the position of a Greek despot was always 
perilous, he would have had greater facility for maintaining him- 
self in it than Peisistratus possessed after him; so that nothing 
but the combination of prudence and virtue which marks his 
lofty character, restricted him within the trust specially confided 
to him. ‘To the surp ‘ise of every one, — to the dissatisfaction of 
his own friends,—under the complaints alike, as he says, of various 
extreme and dissentient parties, who required him to adopt 
measures fatal to the peace of society,2 — he set himself honestly 
to solve the very difficult and critical problem submitted to him. 
Of all grievances, the most urgent was the condition of the 
poorer class of debtors; and to their relief Solon’s first measure, 
the memorable seisachtheia, or shaking off of burdens, wea 
' See Plutarch, Solon, 4; and above all the Trochaic tetrameters of Solo4 
nimself, addressed to Phékus, Fr. 24-26, Schneidewin --. 
Οὐκ ἔφυ Σόλων Ἰαϑύφρων, οὐδὲ ουλῇῆεις ἀνήρ, 
᾿Εσϑλὰ γὰρ ϑεοῦ δίδοντος, αὐτὸς οὐκ ἐδέξατο. 
Περιβαλὼν δ' ἄγραν, ἀγασϑεὶς οὐκ ἀνέσπασεν μέγα 
Δίκτυον, ϑυμοῦ ϑ' ἁμαρτῆ καὶ φρενῶν a ποσφαλεῖίς 
® Aristides, Περὶ τοῦ Παραφϑέγματος, ii, p. 397 ; and Fragm. 29, Schn.. of 
the Iambics of Solor : — 
. «εἰ γὰρ ἤϑελον 
“A τοῖς ἐναντίοισιν ἤνδανεν τότε, 
Αὐϑις δ᾽ ἃ τοῖσιν ἁτέροις δρᾶσαι. ..... 
Πολλὼν ἂν ἀνδρῶν 70’ ἐχηρώϑη πόλι. 


SEISACHTHE] A, CR RELIEF-LAW. 99 


directed. The relief which it afforded was complete and imme 
diate. It cancelled at once all those contracts in which the debtor 
had borrowed on the security of either his person or of his land: it 
forbade all future loans or contracts in which the person of the 

debtor was pledged as security : it deprived the creditor in future 
of all power to imprison, or enslave, or extort work from hie 
debtor, and confined him to an effective judgment at law, author 

izing the seizure of the property of the latter. It swept off all 
the numerous mortgage pillars from the landed properties in 
Attica, and left the land free from all past claims. It liberated, 
and restored to their full rights, all those debtors who were 
actually in slavery under previous legal adjudication ; and it even 
provided the means — we do not know how — of repurchasing 
in foreign lands, and bringing back to a renewed life of liberty 
in Attica, many insolvents who had been sold for exportation.! 
And while Solon forbade every Athenian to pledge or sell his 
vwn person into slavery, he took a step farther in the same direc- 
tion, by forbidding him to pledge or sell his son, his daughter, 
or an unmarried sister under his tutelage, — excepting only the 
case in which either of the latter might be detected in unchastity.2 


’ See the valaable fragment of his Iambics, preserved by Plutarch and 
Aristidés, the expression of which is rendered more emphatic by the appeal 
to the personal Earth, as having passed by his measures from slavery inte 
freedom (compare Plato, Legg. v, pp. 740-741):— 


Συμμαρτυροίη ταῦτ᾽ ἂν ἐν δίκῃ Κρόνου 

Μήτηρ, μεγίστη δαιμόνων ᾿Ολυμπίων, 

"Apiora, Τὴ μέλαινα, τῆς ἐγώ ποτε 

Ὄρους ἀνεῖλον πολλαχῆ πεπηγότας, 

Ἡρόσϑεν δὲ δουλεύουσα, νῦν ἐλευϑέρα. 

Πολλοὺς δ᾽ ᾿Αϑῆήνας, πατρίδ᾽ εἰς ϑεόκτιτον 

᾿Ανήγαγον πραϑέντας, ἄλλον ἐκδίκως, 

Ἄλλων δικαίως" τοὺς δ' ἀναγκαίης ὕπο 

Χρησμὸν λέγοντας, γλῶσσαν οὔκετ᾽ ᾿Αττικὴν 

Ἰέντας, ὡς ἂν πολλαχῆ πλανωμένους" 

Τοὺς δ᾽ ἐνθάδ᾽ αὐτοῦ δουλίην ἀεικέα 

Ἔχωυντας, ἤδη δεσπότας τρομευμένους, 

᾿Ελευϑέρους ἔϑηκα. 
also Plutarch, Solon, c. 15. 

* Plutarch, Solon, c. 23: compare c. 13. Ihe statement in Sextus Em- 

piticus (Pyrrhon. Hypot. iii. 24, 211), that Solon enacted a law permitting 
fathers to kill (φονεύειν) their children, cannot be true, and must be eopied 


——_—— 


: — ~ = - = 


100 HISTORY OF GREECE 


Whether this last ordinance was contemporaneous with the seisach 
theia, or followed as one of his subsequent reforms, seems doubtful 

By this extensive measure the poor debtors, — the thétes, 
small tenants, and preprietors,— together with their families, were 
rescued from suffering and peril. But these were not the only 
debtors in the state: the creditors and landlords of the exoner- 
ated théetes were doubtless in their turn debtors to others, and 
were less able to discharge their obligations in consequence of 
the loss inflicted upon them by the seisachtheia. It was to 
assist these wealthier debtors, whose bodies were in no danger,— 
yet without exonerating them entirely, — that Solon resorted to 
the additional expedient of debasing the money standard; he 
lowered the standard of the drachma in a »roportion something 
more than twenty-five per cent., so that one hundred drachmas 
of the new standard contained no more silver than seventy-three 
of the old, or one hundred of the old were equivalent ‘to one 
hundred and thirty-eight of the new. By this change, the credi- 
tors of these more substantial debtors were obliged to submit to a 
loss, while the debtors acquired an exemption, to the extent of 
about twenty-seven per cent.! 


from some untrustworthy authority: compare Dionys. Hal. A. R. ii, 26, 
where he contrasts the prodigious extent of the putria potestas among the 
early Romans, with the restrictions which all the Greek legislators alike, — 
Solon, Pittakus, Charondas, — either found or introduced : he says, however, 
that the Athenian father was permitted to disinherit legitimate male children, 
which does not seem to be correct. 

Meier (Der Attische Prozess, iii, 2, p.427) rejects the above-mentioned 
statement of Sextus Empiricus, and farther contends that the exposure of 
new-born infants was not only rare, but discountenanced as well by law as 
by opinion ; the evidence in the Latin comedies to the contrary, he considers 
as manifestations of Roman, and not of Athenian, manners. In this latter 
opinion I do not think that he is borne out, and I agree in the statement of 
Schomann (Ant. J. P. Grae. sect. 82), that the practice and feeling of Athens 
as well as of Greece generally, left it to the discretion of the father whether 
he would consent, or refuse, to bring up a new-born child. 

' Plutarch, Solon, c. 15. See the full exposition given of this debasement 
of the coinage, in Boeckh’s Metrologie, ch. ix, p. 115. 

M. Boeckh thinks (ch. xv, s. 2) that Solon not only debased the coin, but 
also altered the weights and measures. I dissent from his opinion on this 
latter point, and have given my reasons for so doing, in a review of his va 
wable treatise in the Classical Museum, No. 1. 


SEISACHTHEIA, OR RELIEF-LAW. 101 


Lastly, Solon decreed that all those who had been condemned 
p, the archons to atimy (civil disfranchisement) should be restored 
to their full privileges of citizens, — excepting, however, from 
this indulgence those who had been condemned by the ephetz, or 
by the areopagus, or by the phylo-basileis (the four kings of the 
tribes), after trial in the prytaneium, on charges either of murder 
or treason.! So wholesale a measure of amnesty affords strong 
giounds for believing that the previous judgments of the archons 
had been intolerably harsh; and it is to be recollected that the 
Drakonian ordinances were then in force. 

Such were the measures of relief with which Solon met the 
dangerous discontent then prevalent. That the wealthy men and 
leaders of the people, whose insolence and iniquity he has him 
self so sharply denounced in his poems, and whose views in nom- 
inating him he had greatly disappointed,? should have detested 
propositions which robbed them without compensation of so many 
of their legal rites, it is easy to imagine. But the statement of 
Plutarch, that the poor emancipated debtors were also dissatisfied, 
from having expected that Solon would not only remit their 
debts, but also redivide the soil of Attica, seems utterly incredi- 
ble; nor is it confirmed by any passage now remaining of the 
Solonian poems.’ Plutarch conceives the poor debtors as having 
in their minds the comparison with Lykurgus, and the equality 
of property at Sparta, which, as I have already endeavored to 
show,‘ is a fiction ; and even had it been true, as matter of history 
long past and antiquated, would not have been likely to work 
upon the minds of the multitude of Attica in the forcible way 
that the biographer supposes. The seisachthvia must have ex- 
asperated the feelings and dimininished the fortunes of many 
persons; but it gave to the large body of thétes and small pro- 
prietors all that they could possibly have hoped. And we are 


' Plutarch, Solon, c. 19. In the general restoration of exiles throughout 
the Greek cities, proclaimed first by order of Alexander the Great, after- 
wards by Polysperchon, exception is made of men exiled for sacrilege oa 
homicide (Diodor. xvii, 109; xviii, 8-46). 

* Plutarch, Solon, ο. 15. οὐδὲ μαλακῶς, οὐδ᾽ ὑπείκων τοῖς δυναμένοις οὐδ 
κρὸς ἡδονὴν τῶν ἑλομένων ἔϑετο τοὺς νόμους, etc. 

3 Plutarch, Solon, c. 16. 

4 See above vol. ii, part ii, ch. vi. 


ia a ee See 


τς πα. ας. 


Fe πα + 


Se 


- 


102 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


told that after a short interval it became eminently acceptab.e in 
the general public mind, and procured for Solon a great increass 
of popularity, — all ranks concurring in a common sacrifice of 
thanksgiving and harmony.'! One incident there was which oc- 
easioned an outcry of indignation. Three rich friends of Solon, 
all men of great fam ly in the state, and bearing names which 
will hereafter reappear in this history as borne by their descend: 
ants, — Konén, Kleinias, and Hipponikus, having obtained 
from Solon some previous hint of his designs, profited by it, 
first, to borrow money, and next, to make purchases of lands : 
and this selfish breach of confidence would have disgraced Solon 
himself, had it not been found that he was personally a great 
loser, having lent money to the extent of five talents. Wi 
should have been glad to learn what authority Plutarch had for 
this anecdote, which could hardly have been recorded in Sulon’s 
own poems.? 

In regard to the whole measure of the seisachtheia. indeed, 
though the poems of Solon were open to every one, ancient 
authors gave different statements, both of its purport and of its 
extent. Most of them construed it as having caneelled indis- 
criminately all money contracts; while Androtion. and others, 
thought that it dd nothing more than lower the rate of interest 
and depreciate the currency to the extent of twenty-seven pel 
cent., leaving the letter of the contracts unchanced. How An- 
drotion came to maintain such an opinion we cannot easily 
understand, for the fragments now remaining from Solon seem 
distinctly to refute it, though, on the other hand. they do not 0 
so far as to substantiate the full extent of the opposite νυ 
entertained by many writers, — that all money contracts indis- 
criminately were rescinded:* against which there is also 8 


* Plutarch, 1 c. ἐϑυσᾶν re κοενῆ, Ye ἰσαχϑειαν τὴν ϑυσίαν ὑνομάζοντες, ete 

“Τὸ anecdote is again noticed, but without specification of the names of 
the friends, in Plutarch, Reipub. Gerend. Preecep. p. 807. 

Ὁ Plutarch, Solon, c. 15. The statement of Dionysius of Hal., in regard 
to the bearing of the seisachtheia, is in the main accurate, — γρεὼν ἄφεσιν 
Ψηφισαμένη v τοις ἀπύροις (vy, 65),— τὸ the debtors who were liable on the 
security of their bodies and their lands, and who were chiefly peor, — not to 
al/ debtors. 

Herakleidés Pontic. {(Πολετ. ¢. 1) and Dio Chrysostom (Or. xxxi, p. 331) 
express themseives loosely. 


SEISACHTHEIA, OR RELIEF-LAW 103 


farther reason, that, if the fact had been so, Solon could have 


had no motive to debase the money standard. Such debasement 


pupposes that there must have been some debtors, at least, whose 


contracts remained valid, and whom, nevertheless, he desired 
His poems distinctly mention three things: 


partially to assist. 
2. The enfranchise- 


1. The removal of the mortgage pillars. 


ment of the land. 3. The protection, liberation, and restoration 


of the persons of endangered or enslaved debtors. All these 
expressions point distinctly to the thétes and small proprietors, 
whose sufferings and peril were the most urgent, and whose case 
required a remedy immediate as well as complete: we find that 


his repudiation of debts was carried far enough to exonerate 


them, but no farther. 
It seems to have been the respect entertained for the character 
» a 5 αἱ «νἠδο (ePOS] , sc VArious isconceptions 
of Solon which partly occasioned these various misconception 


of his ordinances for the relief of debtors: Androtion in ancient, 


and some eminent critics in modern times, are anxious to make 
out that he gave relief without loss or injustice to any one. But 
this opinion is altogether inadmissible: the loss to creditors, by 


the wholesale abrogation of numerous préexisting contracts, and 


partial depreciation of the coin, is a fact not to be dis- 
The seisachtheia of Solon, unjust so far as it rescinded 


by the 
guised, 
previous agreements, but highly salutary in its consequences, 18 
to be vindicated by showing that in no other way could the bonds 


oth Wachsmuth (Hell. Alterth. v, i, p. 249) and K. F. Hermann (Gr. 
Steats Alter. ὦν s. 106) quote the heliastic oath, and its energetic protest 
against repudiation, as evidence of the bearing of the Solonian seisachtheia. 
But that oath is referable only to a later period ; it cannot be produced in 
proof of any matter applicable to the time of Solon; the mere mention of 
the senate of Five Hundred in it, shows that it belongs to times subsequent 


to the Kleisthenean revolution. Nor does the passage from Plato (Legg. ui 
ω. 684) apply to the case. 

~ Both Wachsmuth and Hermann appear to me to narrow too much the 
xtent of Solon’s measure in reference to the clearing of debtors. But on 
the other hand, they enlarge the effect of his measures in another way, with- 
out any sufficient evidence, — they think that he raised the villein tenants into 
Free proprietors. Of this I see no proof, and think it improbable. A large 
proportion of the small debtors whom Solon exonerated were probably free 


proprietors before ; the existence of the ὅροι, or mortgage pillars, upon the’ 


land proves this. 


104 HISTORY OF GREFCY. 


of government have been held together, or the misery of the 
multitude alleviated. We are to consider, first, the creat per 
sonal cruelty of these preéxisting contracts, which condemned 
the body of the free debtor and his family to slavery ; next, the 
profound detestation created by such a system in the large mass 
of the poor, against both the judges and the creditors by whom 
it had been enforced, which rendered their feelings unmanageable, 
so soon as they came together under the sentiment of a common 
danger, and withthe determination to insure to each cther mutual 
protection. Moreover, the law which vests a creditor with 
power over the person of his debtor, so as to convert him into a 
slave, is likely to give rise to a class of loans. which inspire 
nothing but abhorrence, — money lent with the foreknowledge 
that the borrower will be unable to repay it, but also in the con- 
viction that the value of his person as a slave will make ood 
the loss; thus reducing him to a condition of extreme misery, 
for the purpose sometimes of aggrandizing, sometimes of enrich- 
ing, the lender. Now the foundation on which the respect for 
contracts rests, under a good law of debtor and creditor, is the 
very reverse of this; it rests on the firm conviction that such 
contracts are advantageous to both parties as a class, and that to 
break up the confidence essential to their existence would pro- 
duce extensive mischief throughout all society. ‘The man whose 
reverence for the obligation of a contract is now the most pro- 
found, would have entertained a very different sentiment if he 
had witnessed the dealings of lender and borrower at Athens. 
under the old ante-Solonian law. The oligarchy had tried their 
best to enforce this law of debtor and creditor, with its disastrous 
series of contracts, and the only reason why they consented to 
invoke the aid of Solen, was because they had lost the power 
of enforcing it any longer, in consequence of the newly awaken- 
ed courage and combination of the people. That which they 
could not do for themselves, Solon could not have done for them, 
even had he been willing; nor had he in his possession the 
means either of exempting or compensating those creditors, who, 
separately taken, were open to no reproach ; indeed, in following 
his proceedings, we see plainly that he thought compensation due, 
not to the creditors, but to the past sufferings of the enslaved 
debtors, since he redeemed several of them from foreign cap 


SEISACHTHEIA, OR RELIEF-LAW. 105 
tivity, and brought them back to their home. It is certain that 
no measure, simply and exclusively prospective, would have 
sufliced for the emergency: there was an absolute necessity for 
overruling all that class of preéxisting rights which had _pro- 
duced so violent a social fever. While therefore, to this extent, 
the seisachtheia cannot be acquitted of injustice, we may confi- 
dently affirm that the injustice inflicted was an indispensable 
price, paid for the maintenance of the peace of society, and for 
the final abrogation of a disastrous system as regarded insolvents.! 
And the feeling as well as the legislation universal in the modern 
Kuropean world, by interdicting beforehand all contracts for 
selling a man’s person or that of his children into slavery, goes 
far to sanction practically the Solonian repudiation. 

One thing is never to be forgotten in regard to this measure, 
combined with the concurrent amendments introduced by Solon 
in the law, — it settled finally the question to which it referred. 
Never again do we hear of the law of debtor and creditor as 
disturbing Athenian tranquillity. The general sentiment which 
grew up at Athens, under the Solonian money-law, and under 
the democratical government, was one of high respect for the 
sanctity of contracts. Not only was there never any demand in 
he Athenian democracy for new tables or a depreciation of the 


money standard, but a formal abnegation of any such projects 
was inserted in the solemn oath taken annually by the numerous 


diakasts, who formed the popular judicial body, called héliaa, 
or the héliastic jurors, —the same oath which pledged them to 


' That which Solon did for the Athenian peuple in regard to debts, is less 


than what was promised to the Roman plebs (at the time of its secession to 
the Mons Sacer in 491 8 6.) by Menenius Agrippa, the envoy of the senate, 
to appease them, but which does not seem to have been ever realized (Dionys. 
Hal. vi, 83). He promised an abrogation of all the debts of debtors unable 
to pay, without exception, —if the language of Dionysius is to be trusted, 
which probably it cannot be. | 

Dr. Thirlwall justly observes respecting Solon, “ He must be considered 
as an arbitrator, to whom all the parties interested submitted their claima, 
with the avowed intent that they should be decided by him, not upon the 
footing of legal right, but according to his own view of the public interest. 
It was in this light that he himself regarded his office, and he appears te 
have discharged ὃ faithfully and discreetly.” (History of Greece, ch. xi, vol 
ii, p. 42.) 


5* 


106 HISTORY OF GREECE 


uphold the democratical constitution, also bound them to repu 
diate all proposals either for an abrogation of debts or for a re- 


division of the lands.! There can be little doubt that under the 


Solonian law, which enabled the creditor to seize the property ot 


his debtor, but gave him no power over the person, the system 


of money-lending assumed a more beneficial character: the old 


noxious contracts, mere snares for the liberty of a poor freeman 
and his children, disappeared, and loans of money took their 
place, founded on the property and prospective earnings of the 
debtor, which were in the main useful to both parties, and there- 
fore maintained their place in the moral sentiment of the public. 
And though Solon had found himself compelled to rescind all the 
morteages on land subsisting in his time, we see money freely 


lent upon this same security. throuchout the historical times of 


᾿ - im - eer ν... μὰ 
' Démosthen. cont. Timokrat. p. 746. οὐδὲ τῶν χρεῶν τῶν ἰδίων ἀποκοπὰς, 
οὐδ᾽ οἰκιῶν {ψηφιοῦμαι) : compare Dio 


οὐδὲ γῆς ἀναδασμὸν ΤῊΝ ᾿Αϑηναέων, 
͵ Α΄, Π 4 : ὶ : 

Ml ἥνεν., ᾽ εν » « , ¢ . ) j * ) 
Chrysostom, Orat. xxxi, p. 252, who also dwells upon the anxiety of various 


Grecian cities to fix a curse upon all propositions for χρεῶν ἀποκυπὴ and γὴς 
dvadacucc. What is not less remarkable is, that Dio seems not to be aware 
of “αν οἱ. well-authenticated case in Grecian history, in which a redivision 
of lands had ever actually taken place —6 μηδ᾽ ὅλως ἴσμεν εἰ ποτὲ συνε 37 


le.) 

, For the law of debtor and creditor, as it stood during the times of the 
Orators at Athens, see Heraldus, Animadyv. ad Salmasium, pp. 174-286; 
Meier und Schémann, Der Attische Prozess, b. iii, ¢ 2, p. 497, seqgg. (though 
1 doubt the distinction which they there draw between ypéo¢ and daveior) ; 
Hiatner, Prozess und Klagen, Ὁ. ii, absch. 11, pp. 349, 361. 

‘There was one exceptional case, in which the Attic law always continued 
to the creditor that power over the person of the insolvent debtor which all 
creditors had possessed originally, —it was when the creditor had Tent 
tnoney for the express purpose of ransoming the debtor from captivity 
‘Démosthen. cont. Nikostr. p. 1249),—- analogous to the actio depensi in 
ihe old Roman law. 

Any citizen who owed money to the public treasury, and whose debt 
hecame overdue, was deprived for the time of all civil rights until he had 
cleared it off. 

Diodorus (i, 79) gives us an alleged law of the Egyptian king Bocchoris, 
releasing the persons of debtors and rendering their properties only liable, 
whien is affirmed to have served as an example for Solon to copy. If we can 
trust this historian, lawgivers in other parts of Greece still retained the old 
severe law enslaving the debtor’s person: rompare a passage in Isokrates 


(Orat. xiv. Plataicus, p. 305; p 414, Bek 


DISTINCT1ON BETWEEN PRINCIPAL AND INTEREST. 107 


Athens, and the evidentiary mortgage pillars remaining ever 
after undisturbed. 

In the sentiment of an early society, as in the old Roman law, 
a distinction is commonly made between the principal and the 
interest of a loan, though the creditors have sought to blend them 
indissolubly together. If the borrower cannot fulfil his promise 
to repay the principal, the public will regard him as having 
committed a wrong which he must make good by his person; but 
there is not the same unanimity as to his promise to pay interest: 
on the contrary, the very exaction of interest will be regarded 
by many in the same light in which the English law considers 
usurious interest, as tainting the whole transaction. But in the 
modern mind, principal, and interest within a limited rate, have 
so grown together, that we hardly understand how it can ever 
lave been pronounced unworthy of an honorable citizen to lend 
money on interest; yet such is the declared opinion of Aristotle, 
and other superior men of antiquity; while the Roman Cato, 
the censor, went so far as to denounce the practice as a 
heinous crime.! It was comprehended by them among the 
worst of the tricks of trade,—and they held that all trade, or 
profit derived from interchange, was unnatural, as being made 
by one man at the expense of another: such pursuits, therefore, 
could not be commended, though they might be tolerated to a 


οὶ 


certain extent as matter of necessity, but they belonged essen- 
tially to an inferior order of citizens.2). What is remarkable in 


' Aristot. Polit. i, 4, 25; Cato ap. Cicero. de Offic. ii, 25. Plato, in his 
Treatise de Legg. (v, p. 742) forbids all lending on interest : indeed, he for- 
bids any private citizen to possess cither gold or silver. 

To illustrate the marked difference made in the early Roman law, between 
the claim for the principal and that for the interest, I insert in an Appendix, 
at the end of this chapter, the explanation given by M. von Savigny, of the 
treatment of the nexi and addicti,— connected as it is by analogy with the 
Solonian seisachtheia. 

* Aristot. Polit. i, 4, 23. Τῆς δὲ μεταβλητικῆς ψεγομένης δικαίως (οὐ 
γὰρ κατὰ φύσιν, ἀλλ᾽ ἀπ᾽ ἀλλήλων ἔστιν), εὐλογώτατα μισεῖται ἡ ὀβολοστ- 
τικῆ, ete. Compare Ethic. Nikom. iv, 1. 

Plutarch borrows from Aristotle the quibble derived from the word γόκος 

ihe Greek expression for interest), which has given birth to the well-known 
uictum of Aristotle, —~ that money being naturally darren, to extract offspring 
from it must necessarily be contrary to nature (see Plutareh, De Vit. Air. Al 


p. 829). 


108 His tORY OF GREECE. 


Greece is, that the antipathy of a very early state of society 
against traders and money-lenders lasted longer among the phi- 
losophers than among the mass of the people, — it harmonized 
more with the social ¢déa/l of the former, than with the practical 
instincts of the latter. 

In a rude condition, such as that of the ancient Germans de- 
scribed by Tacitus, loans on interest are unknown: habitually care- 
less of the future, the Germans were gratified both in giving and 
receiving presents, but without any idea that they thereby either 
imposed or contracted an obligation.' To a people in this state 
of feeling, a loan on interest presents the repulsive idea of mak- 
ing profit out of the distress of the borrower; moreover, it is 
worthy of remark, that the first borrowers must have been for 
the most part men driven to this necessity by the pressure of 
want, and contracting debt as a desperate resource, without any 
fair prospect of ability to repay: debt and famine run together, 
in the mind of the poet Hesiod.2 The borrower is, in this un- 

' Tacit. Germ. 26. ‘ Foenus agitare et in usuras extendere, ignotum : 
ideoque magis servatur quam si vetitum esset,” (c. 21.) “ Gaudent muner 
ibus: sed nec data imputant, nec aeceptis obligantur.” 

3 Hesiod, Opp. Di. 647, 404. Βουληαιὶ χρέα τὲ προφυγεῖν, καὶ λιμὸν 
ἀτερπῆ. Some good observations on this subject are to be found in the 
excellent treatise of M. ‘Turgot, written in 1763,“ Mémoire sur les Préts 
d’Argent :” — 

“Les causes qui avoient autrefois rendu odieux le prét ἃ intérét, ont cessé 
d’agir avec tant de force.... De toutes ces circonstances réunies, il est resulté 
que les emprunts faits par le pauvre pour subsister ne sont plus qu’un objet 
ἃ peine sensible dans la somme totale d’emprunts: que la plus grande partie 
des préts se font a homme riche, ou du moins ἃ l'homme industrieux, qui 
esptre se procurer de grands profits par l’emploi de l’argent qu’il emprunte. 

. Les préteurs sur gaye 4 gros intérét, les seuls qui prétent véritablement 
au pauvre pour ses besoins journaliers et non pour le mettre en état de 
gagner, ne font point le méme mal que les anciens usuricrs qui conduisoient 
par degrés ἃ la misére et a l’esclavage les pauvres citoyens auxquels ils 
avoient procuré des secours funestes....Le créancier qui pouvait réduire son 
débiteur en esclavage y trouvait un profit: c’étoit un esclave qu’il acquérait: 
mais aujourd'hui le créancier sait qu’en privant son débiteur de la liberté, il 
ny gagnera autre chose que d’étre obligé de le nourrir en prison : aussi ne 
s’avise-t-on pas de faire contracter ἃ un homme qui n’a rien, et qui est réduit 
ἃ emprunter pour vivre, des engagemens qui emportent la contrainte par 
corps. La seule sireté vraiment solide contre ’homme pauvre est le gage: 
et l'homme pauvre s’estime heurcux de trouver un secours pour le moment 


LOANS ON INTEREST. 109 


happy state, rather a distressed man soliciting aid, than a solvent 
man capable of making and fulfilling a contract; and if he can- 
not find a friend to make him a free gift in the former character, 
he will not, under the latter character, obtain a loan from a 
stranger, except by the promise of exorbitant interest,! and by the 
fullest eventual power over his person which he is in a condition 


to grant. In process of time a new class of borrowers rise up, 


sans autre danger que de perdre ce gaye. Aussi le peuple a-t-il pldtot de ‘4 
reccnnoissance pour ces petits usuriers qui le secourent dans son besoin, 
(Mémoire sur les Préts 
d’Argent, in the collection of CGeuvres de ‘Turgot, by Dupont de Nemours, 
vol. v, sects. Xxx, XXxi, pp. 326, 527, 329, written in 1763.) 

'“Tn Bengal (observes Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Ὁ. i, ch. 9, p 
143, ed. 1812) money is frequently lent to the farmers at 40, 50, and 60 per 
cent. and the succeeding crop is mortgaged for the payment.” 

Respecting this commerce at Florence in the Middle Ages, M. Depping 
observes: “ Il semblait que lesprit commercial fit inné chez les Florentins : 


quoiqu’ils lui vendent assez cher ce secours.” 


déji aux 12me et 15me giecles, on les voit tenir des banques et préter de 
Vargent aux princes. Ils owvrirent partout des maisons de prét, marchérent 
de pair avec les Lombards, et, il faut le dire, ils furent souvent maudits, 
comme ceux-ci, par leurs débiteurs, ἃ cause de leur rapacité. Vingt pour 
cent par an était le taux ordinaire des préteurs Florentins: et il n’était pas 
rare 4115 en prissent trente et quarante.” Depping, Histoire du Commerce 
entre le Levant et l’Europe, vol. i, p. 235. 

Boeckh (Public Economy of Athens, book i, ch. 22) gives from 12 to 18 
per cent. per annum as the common rate of interest at Athens in the time of 
the orators. 

The valuable Inscription (No. 1845, in his Corpus Inscr. Pars viii, p. 23 
sect. 3) proves, that at Korkyra a rate of 2 per cent. per month, or 24 per 
cent. per annum, might be obtained from perfectly solvent and responsible bor 
rowers. For this is a decree of the Korkyrxan government, prescribing what 
shall be done with a sum of money given to the state for the Dionysiac fes- 
tivals, — placing that money under the care of certain men of property and 
character, and directing them to lend it out exactly at 2 per cent. per month, 
neither more nor less, until a given sum shall be accumulated. This Inscrip 
tion dates about the third or second century B. c., according to Boeckhs 
conjecture. 

The Orchomenian Inscription, No. 1569, to which Boeckh refers in the 
pissage above alluded to, is unfortunately defective in the words determining 
the rate of interest payable to Eubulus: but there is another, the Theraan 
{Inscription (No. 2446), containing the Testament of Epiktéta, wherein tne 
annual sum payable in lieu of a principal sum bequeathed, is calculated a 7 
per cent.; a rate which Boeckh justly r2gards as modcrate -vonsidereé ἐκ 
reference to ancient Greece. 


110 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


who demand money for temporary convenience or profit, but with 
full prospect of repayment, —a relation of lender and borrower 
quite different from that of the earlier period, when it presented 


itself in the repulsive form of misery on the one side, set against 


the prospect of very large profit on the other. If the Germans 
of the time of Tacitus had looked to the condition of the poor 
debtors in Gaul, reduced to servitude under a rich creditor, and 
swelling by hundreds the crowd of his attendants, they would not 
have been disposed to regret their own ignorance of the practice 
of money-lending.! How much the interest of money was then 
regarded as an undue profit extorted from distress, is powerfully 

Cwsar, B. G. i, 4, respecting the Gallic chiefs and plebs : “ Die constituta 
eause dictioms, Orgetorix ad judicium omnem suam familiam, ad hominum 
millia decem, undique cotgit: et omnes clientes, olxeratosque suos, quorum 
Magnum numerum habebat, eodem conduxit: per eos, ne caussam diceret, 
se eripuit.” Ibid. vi, 13: “ Plerique, cum aut @re alieno, aut magnitudine 
tributorum, aut injurid potentiorum, premuntur, sese in servitutem dicant 
nobilibus. In hos eadem omnia sunt jura, que dominis in servos.” The 
wealthy Romans cultivated their large possessions partly by the hands of 
adjudged debtors, in the time of Columella (i, 3, 14): “More prepotentium, 
qui possident fines gentium, quos....aut occupatos nexu civium, aut ergas- 
tulis, tenent.” 

According to the Teutonic codes also, drawn up several centuries subse- 
qucntly to Tacitus, it seems that the insolvent debtor falls under the power 
of his creditor and is subject to personal fvtters and chastisement (Grimm, 
Deutsche Rechts Alterthiimer, pp. 612-615): both he and Von Savigny 
assimilate it to the terrible process of personal execution and addiction in 
the old law of Rome, against the insolvent debtor on loan. King Alfred 
exhorts the creditor to leni:y (Laws of King Alfred, Thorpe, Ancient Laws 
of England, vol. i, p. 53, law 35) 

A striking evidence of the alteration of the character and circumstances 
of debtors, between the age of Solon and that of Plutarch, is afforded by 
the treatise of the latter,“ De Vitando Ere Alieno,’ wherein he sets forth 
in the most vehement manner the miscrable consequences of getting into 
debt. “ Zhe poor,” he says, “do not yet into αἰ bt, for no one will lend them money 
(τοῖς ydp ἀπόροις οὐ δανειζουσιν. ἀλλὰ Ἰυυλομένοις εὐπορίαν τινα ἑαυτοῖς 
κτάσϑαι cai μάρτυρα δίδωσι καὶ ϑεϑαιώτην ἄξιον, ὅτι ἔχει πιστεύεσϑα:) : the 
borrowers are men who have still some property and some security to offer 
but who wish to keep up a rate of expenditure beyond what they can afford 
and become utterly ruined by contracting debts.” (Plut. pp. 827,830.) This 
shows how intimately the multiplication of poor debtors was connected with 
the liability of their persons to enslavement Compare Plutarch, De Cupi 
dine Divitiarum, c. 2, p. 523. 


LOANS ON INTEREST 111 


iilustrated by the old Jewish law; the Jew being permitted to 
take interest from foreigners (whom the lawgiver did not think 
himself obliged to protect), but not from his own countrymen. ! 


' Levitic. 25: 35-36 ; Deuteron. 23: 20. This enactment seems sufficiently 
intelligible; yet M. Salvador ( Histoire des Institutions de Moise, liv. iii, ch. 
6) puzzles himself much to assign to it some far-sighted commercial pur- 
pose. “ Unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury, but unto a stranger 
thou mayst lend upon usury:”—it is of more importance to remark that 
the word here translated Usury really means any uiterest for money, great or 
small;—see the opinion of the Sanhedrim of seventy Jewish doctors, 
assembled at Paris in 1807, cited in M. Salvador’s work, /. ¢. 

The Mosaic law, therefore, (as between Jew and Jew, or even as between 
Jew and the μέτοικος, or resident stranger, distinguished from the foreigner.) 
went as far as the Koran in prohibiting all taking of interest. That its 
enactments were not much observed, any more than those of the Koran, we 
have one proof at least in the proceeding of Nehemiah at the building of 
the second temple, — which presents so curious a parallel in many respects 
to the Solonian seisachtheia, that I transcribe the account of it from Prideaux, 
Connection of Sacred and Profane History, part i, b. 6, p. 290: — 

“The burden which the people underwent in the carrying on of this work, 
and the incessant labor which they were enforced to undergo to bring it to so 
speedy a conclusion, being very great,....care was taken to relieve them 
from a much greater burden, the oppression of usurers: which they then in 
great misery lay under, and had much greater reason to omplain of. For 
the rich, taking advantage of the necessities of the meaner sort, had exacted 
heavy usury of them, making them pay the centesima for all moneys lent 
them ; that is, 1 per cent. for every month, which amounted to 12 per cent. 
for the whole year; so that they were forced to mortgage their lands, and 
sell their children into servitude, to have wherewith to buy bread for the sup- 
port of themselves and their families; which being a manifest breach of the 
‘aw of God, given them by Moses (for that forbids all the race of Israel to take 
usury of any of their brethren), Nehemiah, on his hearing hereof, resolved 
forthwith to remove so great an iniquity; in order whereto he called a gen- 
eral assembly of all the people, where having set forth unto them the nature 
of the offence, how creat a breach it was of the divine law, and how heavy 
an oppressicn upon their brethren, and how much it might provoke the 
wrath of God against them. he caused it to be enacted by the general suf- 
frage of that whole assembly, that all should return to their brethren what. 
soever had been exacted of them upon nsury, and also release all the lands, 
vineyards, olive-yards, and houses, which had been taken of them upon mortgage 
on the account hereof.” 

The measure of Nehemiah appears thus to have been not merely a 
seisachtheia such as that of Solon, but alse a παλιντοκία, or refanding of 
interest paid by the debtor in past *me,—analogous to the proceeding of 


112 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The Koran follows out this point of view consistently, and pro- 
hibits the taking of interest altogether. In most other nations 
laws have been made to limit the rate of interest, and at Rome, 
especially, the legal rate was successively lowered,— though it 
seems, as might have been expected, that the restrictive ordi- 
nances were constantly eluded. All such restrictions have been 
intended for the protection of debtors; an effect which large ex- 
perience proves them never to produce, unless it be called pro- 
tection to render the obtaining of money on loan impracticable 
for the most distressed borrowers. But there was another effect 
which they did tend to produce, — they softened down the primi- 
tive antipathy against the practice generally, and confined the 
odious name of usury to loans lent above the fixed legal rate. 

In this way alone could they operate beneficially, and their ten- 
dency to counterwork the previous feeling was at that time not 
unimportant, coinciding as it did with other tendencies arising 
out of the industrial progress of society, which gradually exhib- 
ited the relation of lender and borrower in a light more recip- 
rocally beneficial, and less repugnant to the sympathies of the 
bystander. | 

At Athens, the more favorable point of view prevailed through- 
out all the historical times,—the march of industry and com- 
merce, under the mitigated law which prevailed subsequently 
to Solon, had been sufficient to bring it about at a very early 
period, and to suppress all public antipathy against lenders at in- 
terest.2 We may remark, too, that this more equitable tone of 
opinion grew up spontaneously, without any legal restriction on 


the Megarians on emancipating themselves from their oligarchy, as recounted 
above, chapter ix, p. 44. 

* In every law to limit the rate of interest, it is of course implied that the 
law not only ought to fix, but can fix, the maximum rate at which money is 
to be lent. The tribunes at Rome followed out this proposition with perfect 
consistency : they passed successive laws for the reduction of the rate of inter- 
est, until at length they made it illegal to take any interest at all: “Gemeci- 
um, tribunum plebis, tulisse ad populum, ne fonerari liceret.” (Liv. vii, 42.’ 
History shows that the law, though passed, was not carried into execution. 

* Boeckh (Public Econ. of Athens, b. i, ch. 22, p. 128) thinks differently, 
—in my judgment, contrary to the evidence: the passages to which he 
refers, especially that of Theophrastus, are not sufficient to sustain his 
opinion, and there are other passages which go far to contradict it. 


LOANS ON INTEREST. 118 


the rate of interest, —no such restriction having ever been im- 
posed, and the rate being expressly declared free by a law ascribed 
to Solon himself.!| The same may probably be said of the com- 
muniues of Greece generally, —at least there is no information 
to make us suppose the contrary. But the feeling against lend- 
ing money at interest remained in the bosoms of the philosophical 
men long after it had ceased to form a part of the practical mo- 
rality of the citizens, and long after it had ceased to be justi- 
fied by the appearances of the case as at first it really had been. 
Plato, Aristotle, Cicero,? and Plutarch, treat the practice as a 
branch of that commercial and money-getting spirit which they are 
anxious to discourage; and one consequence of this was, that they 
were less disposed to contend strenuously for the inviolability of 
existing money-contracts. ‘The conservative feeling on this point 
was stronger among the mass than among the philosophers. Plato 
even complains of it as inconveniently preponderant,3 and as 
arresting the legislator in all comprehensive projects of reform. 
l‘or the most part, indeed, schemes of cancelling debts and redi 
viding lands were never thought of except by men of desperate 
and selfish ambition, who made them stepping-stones to despotic 
power. Such men were denounced alike by the practical sense 
οἵ the community and by the speculative thinkers; but when 
we turn to the case of the Spartan king Agis the Third, who pro- 
posed a complete extinction of debts and an equal redivision of 


' Lysias cont. Theomnést. A. c. 5, p. 360. 

* Cicero, De Officiis, i, 42. 

* Plato, Legg. iii, p. 684. ὡς ἐπιχειροῦντι δὴ νομοϑέτῃ κινεῖν τῶν τοιούτων 
τι πῶς ἀπαντᾷ, λέγων, μὴ κινεῖν τὰ ἀκίνητα, καὶ ἐπαρᾶται γῆς τε ἀναδασμοὺς 
εἰσηγούμενον καὶ χρεῶν ἀποκοπὰς, ὥστ᾽ εἰς ἀπορίαν καϑίστωσϑαι πάντα ἄνδρα, 
ete: compare also v, pp. 736-737, where similar feelings are intimated not 
less emphatically. 

Cicero lays down very good principles about the mischief of destroying 
fuith in contracts; but his admonitions to this effect seem to be accompanied 
with an impracticable condition: the lawgiver is to take care that debts shall 
not be contracted to an extent hurtful to the state: “Quamobrem ne sit es 
alienum, quod reipublice noceat, providendum est (quod multis rationibus 
caveri potest): non, si fuerit, ut locupletes suum perdant, debitores lucrentur 
alienum,” etc. What the multe rationes were, which Cicero had in his 
mind, I do not know: compare his opinion about faneratores, Offic. i, 42 
li, 25. 

VOL. III. Soc. 


114 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the landed property of the state, not with any selfish or personal 
views, but upon pure ideas of patriotism, well or ill understood, 
and for the purpose of renovating the lost ascendency of Sparta, 
——we find Plutarch' expressing the most unqualified admiration 
of this young king and his projects, and treating the opposition 
made to him as originating in no better feelings than meanness 
and cupidity. The philosophical thinkers on politics conceived — 
and to a great degree justly, as I shall show hereafter — that the 
conditions of security, in the ancient world, imposed upon the citi- 
zens generally the absolute necessity of keeping up a military 
spirit and willingness to brave at all times personal hardship and 
discomfort ; so that increase of wealth, on account of the habits 
of self-indulgence which it commonly introduces, was regarded 
by them with more or less of disfavor. If in their estimation 
any Grecian community had become corrupt, they were willing 
to sanction great interference with preéxisting rights for the pur- 
pose of bringing it back nearer to their ideal standard: and the 
real security for the maintenance of these rights lay in the con- 
servative feelings of the citizens generally, much more than in 
the opinions which superior minds imbibe from the philosophers. 

Those conservative feelings were in the subsequent Athenian 
democracy peculiarly deep-rooted: the mass of the Athenian 
people identified inseparably the maintenance of property, in 
all its various shapes, with that of their laws and constitution, 
And it is a remarkable fact, that though the admiration enter- 
tained at Athens for Solon, was universal, the principle of his 
scisachtheia, and οὐ his money-depreciation, was not only never 
imitated, but found the strongest tacit reprobation ; whereas at 
Rome, as well as in most of the kingdoms of modern Europe, we 
know that one debasement of the coin succeeded another, — the 
temptation, of thus partially eluding the pressure of financial 
embarrassments, proved, after one successful trial, too itrong to 
be resisted, and brought dewn the coin by successive deprecia- 
tions from the full pound of twelve ounces to the standard of half 
an ounce. It is of some importance to take notice of this fact, 


ἢ See Plutarch’s Life of Agis, especially ch. 13, about the bonfire in which 
the κλάρια, or mortgage-deeds, of the creditors were all burnt, in the agora cf 
Sparta: compare also the comparison of Agis with Gracchus, ec. 2. 


PERMANENCE OF ATHENIAN MONEY-STANDARD. 11} 


when we reflect how much “ Grecian faith” has been degraded 
by the Roman writers into a byword for duplicity in pecuniary 
dealings.!| The democracy of Athens, — and, indeed, the cities 
of Greece generally, both oligarchies and democracies, — stands 
far above the senate of Rome, and far above the modern king 
doms of France and England, until comparatively recent times, 
in respect of honest dealing with the coinage:* moreover, while 


'* Greed fide mereari.” Polybius puts the Greeks greatly below the 
Romans in point of veracity and good faith (vi, 56); in another passage, he 
speaks not quite so confidently (xviii, 17). Even the testimony of the 
Roman writers is sometimes given in favor of Attic good faith, not against it 
— “ut semper et in omni re, quicquid sincera fide gereretur, id Romani, 
Attied fieri, rredicarent.” ( Velleius Patere. ij, 23.) 

The language of Heffter (Atheniische Gerichts Verfassung, p. 466), 
especially, degrades very undeservedly the state of good faith and credit at 
Athens. 

The whole tone and argument of the Uration of Démosthenés against 
Leptinés is a remarkable proof of the respect of the Athenian dikastery for 
‘ested interests, even under less obvious forms than that of pecuniary pos- 
session. We may add a striking passage of Démosthenés cont. Timokrat. 
wherein he denounces the rescinding of past transactions (τὰ πεπραγμένα 
‘veal, contrasted with prospective legislation) as an injustice peculiar to an 
oligarchy, and repugnant to the feelings of a democracy (cont. Timokrat. ς, 
“Ὁ, p. 7243; c. 36, 747). 

ΤΑ similar credit, in respect to monetary probity, may be claimed for the 
republic of Florence. M. Sismondi says, “ Au milieu des révolutions moné- 
taires de tous les pays voisins et tandis que la mauvaise foi des gouverne- 
mens altéroit le numéraire d’une extrémité ἃ lautre de l'Europe, le florin 
θὰ séquin de Florence est toujours resté le méme: ἢ] est du méme poids, da 
méme titre: il porte la méme empreinte que celui qui fut hattu en 1959.” 
(Itépubliques Italiennes, vol. iii, ch. 18. p. 176.) 

M. Boeckh (Public Econ. of Athens. i, 6; iv, 19), while affirming, justly 
and decidedly, that the Athenian republic always set a high value on main- 
taining the integrity of their silver money, — yet thinks that the gold pieces 
Which were coined in Olymp. 93, 2, (408 Β. ¢.) under the archonship of Anti- 
genes (out of the golden ornaments in the acropolis, and at a time οὕ publie 
embarrassments) were debased and made tc pass for more than their value, 
The only evidence in support of this position appears to te the passage im 
Aristophanés (Ran. 719-737) with the Scholia; but this vely passage seems 
to me rather to prove the contrary. “The Athenian people (says Aristo- 
phanés) deal with their public servants as they do with their coins: they 
prefer the new and bad to the old and good.” If the people were so exceed 
ingly, and even extravagantly, desirous of obtaining the new coins, this is ἃ 


116 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


there occurred at Rome several political changes which brought 
about new tables,' or at least a partial depreciation of contracts, 
no phenomenon of the same kind ever happened at Athens, 
during the three centuries between Solon and the end of the free 
working of the democracy. Doubtless there were fraudulent 
debtors at Athens, and the administration of private law, though 
it did not in any way connive at their proceedings, was far too 
imperfect to repress them as effectually as might have been 
wished. But the public sentiment on the point was just and 
decided, and it may be asserted with confidence, that a loan of 
money at Athens was quite as secure as it ever was at any 
time or place of the ancient world,— in spite of the great and 
important superiority of Rome with respect to the accumulation 
of a body of authoritative legal precedent, the source of what 
was ultimately shaped into the Roman jurisprudence. Among 
the various causes of sedition or mischief in the Grecian com- 
munities,? we hear little of the pressure of private debt. 

By the measures of relief above described,3 Solon had accom- 
plished results surpassing his own best hopes. He had healed 
the prevailing discontents; and such was the confidence and 
gratitude which he had inspired, that he was now called upon to 


draw up a constitution and laws for the better working of the 


strong proof that they were not depreciated, and that no loss was incurred by 
giving the old coins in exchange for them. 

'“ Sane vetus Urbi feenebre malum (says Tacitus, Ann. vi, 16) et seditio- 
num discordiarumque creberrima causa,” ete: compare Appian, Bell. Civil. 
Preefat.; and Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, |. xxii, ὁ 22. 

The constant hopes and intrigues of debtors at Rome, to get rid of their 
debts by some political movement, are nowhere more forcibly brought out 
than in the second Catilinarian Oration of Cicero, c. 8-9: read also the 
striking harangue of Catiline to his fellow-conspirators (Sallust, B. Catilin. 
6. 20-21). 

* The insolvent debtor, in some of the Beeotian towns, was condemned to 
sit publicly in the agora with a basket on his head, and then disfranchised 
(Nikolaus Damaskenus, Frag. p. 152, ed. Orelli). 

According to Diodorus, the old severe law against the body of a debtor, 
long after it had been abrogated by Solon at Athens, atill continued im other 
parts of Greece (i, 79). 

3 Salon, Frag. 27, ed. Schneid. — 

"A μὲν ἄελπτα σὺν ϑεοῖσιν ἦνυσ᾽, ἄλλο @ ob μάτην 
Ἕρδοι. 


Vol, 3 


SOLUNT aw CENSUS AND LIABILITY. 117 


government χα future. His constitutional changes were great and 
valuable: respecting his laws, what we hear is rather curious 
than important. 

It has been already stated that, down to the time of Solon, the 
classification received in Attica was that of the four Tonic tribes, 
comprising in one scale the phratries and gentes, and in another 
scale the three trittyes and forty-eight naukraries, — while the 
eupatrid, seemingly a few specially respected gentes, and per 
haps a few distinguished families in all the gentes, had in their 
hands all the powers of government. Solon introduced a new 
principle of classification, called, in Greek, the timocratie prin 
ciple. He distributed all the citizens of the tribes, without any 
reference to their gentes or phratries, into four classes, according 
to the amount of their property, which he caused to be assessed 
and entered in a public schedule. ‘Those whose annual income 
was equal to five hundred medimni of corn (about seven hundred 
imperial bushels) and upwards, — one medimnus being considered 
equivalent to one drachma in money, — he placed in the highest 
class ; those who received between three hundred and five hun- 
lred medimni, or drachms, formed the second class ; and those be 
ween two hundred and three hundred, the third! The fourth 
and most numerous class comprised all those who did not possess 
iand yielding a produce equal to two hundred medimni. The 
first class, called pentakosiomedimni, were alone eligible to the 
archonship and to all commands: the second were called the 
knights or horsemen of the state, as possessing enough to enable 
them to keep a horse and perform military service in that ca- 
pacity: the third class, called the zeugite, formed the heavy- 
armed infantry, and were bound to serve, each with his full 
panoply. Each of these three classes was entered in the public 


' Plutarch, Solon, 18-23; Pollux, viii. 130; Aristot. Polit. ii, 9,4; Aris- 
tot. Fragm. περὶ IloActeiwy, Fr. 51, ed. Neumann; Harpokration and Pho- 
tius, v. ‘Imag; Etymolog. Mag. Zevyiotov, Θητικόν ; the Etym. Mag. Zev- 
νέσιον, and the Schol. Aristoph. Equit. 627, recognize only three classes. 

He took a medimnus (of wheat or barley?) us equivalent to a drachm, and 
a sheep at the same value (7b. ο. 23). 

The medimnus seems equal to about . 2-5 (1.4) English imperial bushel 
consequently 5“) medimni = 700 English imperial bushels, or 874 quarters 


118 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


schedule as possessed of a taxable capital, calculated with ἃ 
eertain reference to his annual income, but in a proportion dimin- 
ishing according to the scale of that income,— and a man paid taxes 
to the state according to the sum for which he stood rated in the 
echedule ; so that this direct taxation acted really like a gradu- 
ated income-tax. The ratable property of the citizens belonging 
to the richest class, the pentakosiomedimnus, was calculated and 
entered on the state-schedule at a sum of capital equal to twelve 
times his annual income: that of the hippeus, or knight, at a suin 
equal to ten times his annual income: that of the zeugite, at a 
sum equal to five times his annual income. Thus a pentakosio- 
medimnus, whose income was exactly five hundred drachms, the 
minimum qualification of his class, stood rated in the schedule for 
a taxable property of six thousand drachms, or one talent, being 
twelve times his income, — if his annual income were one thou- 
sand drachms, he would stand rated for twelve thousand draclims, 
or two talents, being the same proportion of income to ratable 
eapital. But when we pass to the second class, or knights, the 
proportion of the two is changed,— the knight possessing an 
income of just three hundred drachms, or three hundred medimni, 
would stand rated for three thousand drachms, or ten times his 
real income, and so in the same proportion for any income above 
three handred and below five hundred. Again, in the third class, 
or below three hundred, the proportion is a second time altered, 
— the zeugite possessing exactly two hundred drachms of income, 
was rated upon a stil! lower calculation, at one thousand drachms, 
Ὑ ἃ sum equal to five times his income; and all incomes of this 
“lass, between two hundred and three hundred drachms, would in 
hike manner be multiplied by five in order to obtain the amount 
of ratable capital. Upon these respective sums of scheduled 
capital, all direct taxation was levied: if the state required one 
per cent. of direct tax, the poorest pentakosiomedimnus w wuld 
pay (upon six thousand drachms) sixty drachms; the 7. vor 

est hippeus would pay (upon three thousand drachms) thirty, 
the poorest zeugite would pay (upon one thousand drachms) ten 
trachms. And thus this mode of assessment would operate like 
a graduated income-tax, looking at it in reference to the thre@ 


different classes, — but as an equal income-tax, looking at it iq 


GRADUATED POLITICAL PRIVILEGS ὃ. 119 


reference to the different individuals comprised in one and the 


same class.! 
All persons in the state whose annual income amounted to less 


' The excellent explanation of the Solonian {τίμημα) property-schedule 
and graduated qualification, first given by Boeckh, in his Staatshaushaltung 
der Athener (b. iii, c. 5), has elucidated a subject which was, before him, 
nothing but darkness and mystery. ‘The statement of Pollux (viii, 130), 
given in very loose language, had been, before Boeckh, erroneously appre- 
hended; ἀνήλεσκον εἰς τὸ δημύσιον, does not mean the sums which the pen- 
takosiomedimnus, the hippeus, or the zeugite, actually paid to the state, but 
the sums for which each was rated, or which each was Liable to pay, if called 
cpon: of course, the state doesnot call for the whole of a man’s rated prop- 
erty, but exacts an equal proportion of it from each. 

On one point I cannot concur with Boeckh. He fixes the pecuniary 
qualification of the third class, or zeugites, at one hundred and fifty drachms, 
not at two hundred. All the positive testimonics (as he himself allows, p. 
31) agree in fixing two hundred, and not one hundred and fifty; and the in- 
ference drawn from the old law, quoted in Démosthenés (cont. Makartat. p. 
1067) is too uncertain to outweigh this concurrence of authorities. 

Moreover, the whole Solonian schedule becomes clearer and more sym 
metrical if we adhere to the statement of two hundred drachms, and not 
one hundred and fifty, as the lowest scale of zeugite income ; for the sched- 
uled capital is then, in all the three scales, a definite and exact multiple of 
the income returned,—in the richest class it is twelve times,—=in_ the 
middle class, ten times, — in the poorest, five times the income. But this 
corrcenondence ceases, if we adopt the supposition of Boeckh, that the low- 
est zeugite income was one hundred and fifty drachms; for the sum of one 
thousand drachms (at which the lowest zeugite was rated in the schedule) is 
no exact multiple of one hundred and fiftydrachms. In order to evade this 
difficulty, Boeckh supposes that the adjustment of income to scheduled cap- 
ital was effected in a way both roundabout and including nice fractions: he 
thinks that the income of each was converted into capital by multiplying by 
twelve, and that, in the case of the richest class, or pentakosiomedimni, the 
whole sum so obtained was entered in toe schedule,—in the case of the 
second class, or hippeis, five-sixths of the sum, —and in the case of the third 
class, or zeugites, five-ninths of the sum. Now this process seems to me 
rather complicated, and the employment of a fraction such as five-ninths 
(both difficult and not much above the simple fraction of one-half) very im- 
probable: moreover, Boeckh’s own table, p. 41, gives fractional sums in the 
εἰν τὰ class, when sone appear in the first or second. 

Such objections, of course, would not be admissible, if there were any 
positive evidence to prove the point. But in this case they are in harmony 
with all the positive evidence, and are amply sufficient, in my judgment, to 
countervail the presumption arising from the old law on which Boeckh 


relies. 


120 HISTORY OF GREECE 


than two hundred medimni, or drachms, were placed in the fourth 
class, and they must have constituted the large majority of the 
community. They were not liable to any direct taxation, and, 
perhaps, were not at first even entered upon the taxable schedule, 
more especially as we do not know that any taxes were actually 
levied upon this schedule during the Solonian times. It is said 
that they were all called thétes, but this appellation is not 
well sustained, and cannot be admitted: the fourth compartment 
in the descending scale was indeed termed the thetic census, be- 
cause it contained all the thétes, and because most of its members 
were of that humble description ; but it is not conceivable that a 
proprietor whose lund yielded to him a clear annual return of 
one hundred, one hundred and twenty, one hundred and forty, or 
one hundred and eighty drachms, could ever have been desig- 
nated by that name.! | 
Such were the divisions in the political scale established by 
Solon, called by Aristotle a lumocracy, in which the rights, hon: 
ors, functions, and liabilities of the citizens were measured out 
according to the assessed property of each. Though the scale is 
stuted as if nothing but landed property were measured by it, 
yet we may rather presume that property of other kinds was 
intended to be included, since {ft served as the basis of every 
man’s liability to taxation. The hichest honors of the Stace, - 
that is, the places of the nine archons annually chosen, as well as 
those in the senate of areopagus, into which the past archons 
always entered,— perhaps also the posts of prytanes of the 
naukrari, — were reserved for the first class: the poor eupatrids 
became ineligible ; while rich men, not eupatrids, were admitted. 
Other posts of interior distinction were filled by the second and 
third classes, who were, moreover, bound to military service. the 
' See Boeckh, Staatshaushaltung der Athener, ut supra Pollux ¢ 
Inscription describing Anthemion son of Diphilus, — Θητικοῦ ἀντ 
ixrad’ ἀμειψάμενος. ‘The word τελεῖν does not necessarily mean actucl pav- 
ment, but “the being included in a class with a certain agrrevate of aunes 
and liabilities,” — equivalent to censeri (Boeckh, p. 36). 
Plato, in his treatise De Legibus, admits a quadripartite census of citizens 
according to more or less of property (Legg. v, p. 744; vi, p. 756) Com- 
pare Tittmann, Griechische Staats Verfassungen. pp. 648,653 ; Καὶ. F. Hermann, 
Tehrbuch der Gr. Staats Alt. § 108 


tOURTH OR POOREST CLASS. 19] 


ore on horseback, the other as heavy-armed soldiers on foot. 
Moreover, the liturgies of the state, as they were called, — un- 
paid functions, such as the trierarchy, chorégy, gymnasiarchy, 
ete., which entailed expense and trouble on the holder of them, 
— were distributed in some way or other between the members 
of the three classes, though we do not know how the distribution 
was made in these early times. On the other hand, the mem- 
bers of the fourth or lowest class were disqualified from holding 


any individual office of dignity, — performed no liturgies, served 


in case of war only as light-armed, or with a panoply provided 
by the state, and paid nothing to the direct property-tax, or 
eisphora. It would be incorrect to say that they paid no taxes ; 
for indirect taxes, such as duties on imports, fell upon them in 
common with the rest; and we must recollect that these latter 
were, throughout a long period of Athenian history, in steady 
operation, while the direct taxes were only levied on rare oc- 
casions. 

But though this fourth class, constituting the great numerical 
majority of the free people, were shut out from individual office, 
their collective importance was in another way greatly increased. 
They were invested with the right of choosing the annual arch- 
ons, out of the class of pentakosiomedimni; and what was of 
more importance still, the archons and the magistrates generally, 
after their year of office, instead of being accountable to the 
senate of areopagus, were made formally accountable to the 
public assembly sitting in judgment upon their past conduct. 
They might be impeached and called upon to defend themselves, 
punished in case of misbehavior, and debarred from the usual 
honor of a seat in the senate of areopagus. 

Had the public assembly been called upon to act alone, without 
aid or guidance, this accountability would have proved only nom- 
inal. But Solon converted it into a reality by another new insti- 
tution, which will hereafter be found of great moment in the 
working out of the Athenian democracy. He created the pro- 
bouleutic or preconsidering senate, with intimate and especial 
reference to the public assembly, —to prepare matters for its 
discussion, to convoke and superint2nd its meetings, and to insure 
the execution of its decrees. This senate, as first constituted by 


VOL. III. A 


1 HIS'TURY OF GREECE. 


Solon, comprised four hundred members, taken in equal proper- 
tions from the four tribes,— not chosen by lot, as they will “be 
found to be in the more advanced stage of the democracy, but 
elected by the people, in the same way as the archons then were, 
— persons of the fourth or poorest class of the census, though 
contributing to elect, not being themselves eligible. ἱ 

But while Solon thus created the new preconsidering senate, 
irentified with and subsidiary to the popular assembly, he mani- 
fested no jealousy of the preexisting areopagitic senate: on the 
contrary, he enlarged its powers, gave to it an ample supervision 
over the execution of the laws generally, and imposed upon it the 
censorial duty of inspecting the lives and occupations of the 
citizens, as well as of punishing men of idle and dissolute habits. 
He was himself, as past archon, a member of this ancient senate, 
and he is said to have contemplated that, by means of the twe 
senates, the state would be held fast, as it were with a double 
anchor, against a!l shocks and storms.! 

Such are the only new political institutions, apart from the 
laws to be noticed presently, which there are grounds for ascrib- 
ing to Solon, when we take proper care to discriminate what 
really belongs to Solon and his age, from the Athenian constitu- 
tion as afterwards remodelled. It has been a practice common 
with many able expositers of Grecian affairs, and followed 
partly, even by Dr. Thirlwall,? to connect the name of Solon with 
the whole political and judicial state of Athens as it stood be- 
tween the age of Periklés and that of Démosthenés, — the reg- 


* Plutarch, Solon, 18, 19, 23; Philochorus, Frag. 60, ed. Didot. Athenznus. 
iv, p. 168; Valer. Maxim. ii, 6. 

* Meursius, Solon, passim; Sigonius, De Republ. Athen. i, p. 39 (thougk 
in some passages he makes a marked distinction between the time before and 
after Kleisthenés, p. 28). See Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde 
vol. i, sects 46. 47: Tittmann, Griechische Staatsverfassungen, p. 146; Plat- 
mer, Der Attische Prozess. hook il, ch. 5. pp 28-38 : Dr. Thirlwall, History of 
Greece, vol. ii, ch. xi, pp. 46-57. 

Niebuhr, in his brief allusions to the legislation of Solon, keeps duly in 
view the material difference between Athens as constituted by Solon, and 
Athens as it came to be after Kleisthenés: but he presumes a closer analogy 
between the Roman } xtricians and the Athenian eupatride than we are en 
led to count upon. 


ANALYSIS OF SULONIAN {NSTITUTIONS. 129 


ulations of the senate of five hundred, the numerous rublie 
dikasts or jurors taken by lot from the people, as well as the 
body annually selected for law-revision, and called nomothets, 
and the prosecution, called the graphé paranom6n, open to be 
instituted against the proposer of any measure illegal, unconsti- 
tutional, or dangerous. There is, indeed, some countenance for 
this confusion between Solonian and post-Solonian Athens, in the 
usage of the orators themselves ; for Démosthenés and Aéschinés 
employ the name of Solon in a very loose manner, and treat him 
as the author of institutions belonging evidently to a later age 

for example, the striking and characteristic oath of the heliastic 
iurors, which Démosthenés! ascribes to Solon, proclaims itself in 


' })émosthen. cont. Timokrat. p. 746. /Eschinés ascribes this oath to ὁ 
ntetnc (ce. Ktesiphon. p. 389). 

Dr. Thirlwall notices the oath as prescribed by Solon (History of Greece, 
vol. ii, ch. xi, p. 47). 

So again Démosthenés and Adschinés, in the orations against Leptinés (6. 
21, p. 486) and against Timokrat. pp. 706-707, — compare Aischin. c. Ktesiph 
p 429,—in commenting upon the formalities enjoined for repealing an ex- 
isting law and enacting a new one, while ascribing the whole to Solon,— say, 
umong other things, that Solon directed the proposer “to post up his project 
of law before the eponymi,” (ἐκϑεῖναι πρόσϑεν τῶν Ἔ πωνύμων :) now the 
eponymi were (the statues of) the heroes from whom the ten Kleisthenean 
tribes drew their names, and the law making mention of these statues, pro- 
claims itself as of a date subsequent to Kleisthenés. Even the law defining 
the treatment of the condemned murderer who retarned from exile, which 
both Démosthenés and Doxopeater (ap. Walz. Collect. Rhetor. vol. ii, p. 223) 
eall a law of Drako, is really later than Solon, as may be seen by its men- 
tion of the ἀξων (Démosth. cont. Aristok. p. 629). 

Andokidés ix not less liberal in his employment of the name of Solon (see 
Orat. i, De Mysteriis, p. 13), where he cites es a law of Solon, an enactment 
which contains the mention of the tribe antis and the senate of five hun- 
dred (obviously, therefore, subsequent to the revolution of Kleisthenés), be- 
sides other matters which prove ix to have been passed even subsequent to 
the oligarchical revolution of the four hundred, towards the close of the Pe- 
loponnesian war. The prytanes, the proédri, and the division of the yeat 
into ten portions of time, each called by the name of a prytany, — so inter- 
woven with all the public proceedings of Athens,— do not belong to the So- 
lonian Athens, but to Athens as it stood after the ten tribes of Kleisthenes. 

Schémann maintains emphatically, that the sworn nomothets, as they 
stood in the days of Démosthenés, were instituted by Solon; but he admite 


at the same time that all the allusions of the orators to this institution in 


124 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


many ways as belonging to the age after Kleisthenés, especially 
by the mention of the senate of five hundred, and not of four 
biundred. Among the citizens who served as jurors or dikasts, 
Solon was venerated generally as the author of the Athenian 
laws ; and the orator, therefore, might well employ his name for 
the purpose of emphasis, without provoking any critical inquiry 
whether the particular institution, which he happened to be then 
impressing upon his audience, belonged really to Solon himself 
or to the subsequent periods. Many of those institutions, which 
Dr. Thirlwall mentions in conjunction with the name of Solon 
are among the last refinements and elaborations of the haa 
ical mind of Athens, — gradually prepared, doubtless, during the 
interval between Kleisthenés and Perikles, but not kewnsds ‘into 
full operation until the period of the latter (460-429 Β. ©); for 
it is hardly possible to conceive these numerous Siien and 
assemblies in regular, frequent, and long-standing operation 
without an assured payment to the dikasts who eonapooed them. 
Now such payment first began to be made about the time of 
Periklés, if not by his actual proposition ;| and Démosthenés had 
good reason for contending that, if it were suspended, the judicial 
as well as the administrative system of Athens would at once 


clude both words and matters essentially post-Solonian, so that modifications 
subsequent to Solon must have been introduced. This admission seems to 
me fatal to the cogency of his proof: see Sch6mann, De Comitiis ch vii ) 
25-268 ; and the same author, Antiq. J. P. Att. sect. xxxii His μιαῤμηνῆς is 
shared by K. Ε΄. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech. Staats Alterth. sect 131; 
anid Platner, Attischer Prozess, vol. ii, p. 38. | ealaini 
Meier, De Bonis Damnatorum, p. 2, remarks upon the laxity with which 
the orators use the name of Solon: “ Oratores Solonis nomine sxepe utuntur, 
abi omnino legislatorem quemquam significare volunt, etiamsi a Solone i Εἰ 
lex lata non est.” Herman Schelling, in his Dissertation De Solonis Legibus 
ap. Oratt. Attic. (Berlin, 1842), has collected and discussed the wshisanoes ta 
Suton and to his laws in the orators. He controverts the opinion just ne 
from Meier, but upon arguments no way satisfactory to me (pp. 6-8) : pie 
more SO, as he himself admits that the dialect in which the Solonian sie a 
pear in the citation of the orators can never have been the original dialect ot 
Solon himself (pp. 3-5), and makes also substantially the same admission as 
Schomann, in regard to the presence of post-Solonian matters in the 
posed Solonian laws (pp. 23-27). Νὴ 
' See Boeckh, Public Economy of Athens, book ii, c. 15. 


SULUN FOUNDER OF ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY. 18. 


fall to pieces.'! And it would be a marvel, such as nothing short of 
strong direct evidence would justify us in believing, that in an age 
when even partial democracy was yet untried, Solon should con- 
ceive the idea of such institutions: it would be a marvel still 
greater, that the half-emancipated thétes and small proprietors, 
for whom he legislated, — yet trembling under the rod of the 
eupatrid archons, and utterly inexperienced in collective business, 
__ should have been found suddenly competent to fulfil these as- 
cendent functions, such as the citizens of conquering Athens in 
the days of Periklés, — full of the sentiment of force and actively 
identifying themselves with the dignity of their community, — 
became gradually competent, and not more than competent, to 
exercise with effect. To suppose that Solon contemplated and 
provided for the periodical revision of his laws by establishing a 
nomothetic jury, or dikastery, such as that which we find in ope- 
ration during the time of Démosthenés, would be at variance, in 
my judgment, with any reasonable estimate either of the man or 
of the age. Herodotus says that Solon, having exacted from the 
Athenians solemn oaths that they would not rescind any of his 
laws for ten years, quitted Athens for that period, in order that 
he might not be compelled to rescind them himself: Plutarch in- 
forms us that he gave to his laws force for a century absolute.? 
Solon himself, and Drako before him, had been lawgivers, evoked 
and empowered by the special emergency of the times; the idea 
of a frequent revision of laws, by a body of lot-selected dikasts, 
belongs to a far more advanced age, and could not well have 
been present to the minds of either. The wooden rollers of 
Solon, like the tables of the Roman decemvirs,’ were doubtless 
intended as a permanent “ fons omnis publici privatique juris.” 
If we examine the facts of the case, we shall see that nothing 
more than the bare foundation of the democracy of Athens as it 
stood in the time of Periklés, can reasonably be ascribed to 
Solon. “I gave to the people,” Solon says, in one of his short 


! Démosthen. cont. Timokrat. c. 26, p. 731: compare Aristophanés Ekkle- 


siazus. 302. 
2 Herodot. 1, 29; Plutarch, Solon, c. 25. Aulus Gellius affirms that the 


Athenians swore, under strong religious penalties, to observe them forerst 
(ii. 12). 
* Livy iii, 34. 


———— 
ἊΝ --. ὦ 


~ 


ee 


--- 


126 HISTORY UF GREECE. 


remaining fragments,'“as much strength as sufficed for their needs, 
without either enlarging or diminishing their dignity : for those 


too who possessed power and were noted for wealth, I took care 
that no unworthy treatment should be reserved. I stood with 
the strong shield cast over both parties, so as not to allow an 
unjust triumph to either.” Again, Aristotle tells us that Solon 
bestowed upon the people no greater measure of power than was 
barely necessary,? — to elect their magistrates and to hold them 
to accountability : if the people had had less than this, they could 
not have been expected to remain tranquil, — they would have 
been in slavery and hostile to the constitution. Not less distinctly 
does Herodotus speak, when he describes the revolution sub- 


sequently operated by Kleisthenés — the latter, he tells us, found 


' Solon, Fragm. ii, 3, ed. Schneidewin: — 

Δήμῳ μὲν yap ἔδωκα τύσον κράτος, dacov ἐπαρκεῖ, 
Tine οὔτ᾽ ἀφελὼν, οὔτ᾽ ἐπορεξάμενος" 

Oi δ᾽ εἶχον δύναμιν καὶ χρήμασιν ἧσαν ἀγητοὶ, 
Καὶ τοῖς ἐφρασώμην μηδὲν ἀεικὲς ἔχέιν. 

στην δ' ἀμφιθαλὼν κρατερὸν σάκος ἀμφοτέροισε, 
Νικᾷν δ᾽ οὐκ εἴασ' οὐδετέρους ἀδίκως. 

The reading ἐπαρκεῖ in the first line is not universally approved: Brunck 
adopts ἐπαρκεῖν, which Niebuhr appioves. The latter construes it to mean, 
“I gave to the people only so much power as could not be withheld from 
them.” (Rém. Geschicht. t. ii, p- 346, 2d ed) Taking the first two lines 
together, I think Niebuhr’s meaning is substantially correct, though I give a 
more literal translation myself. Solon seems to be vindicating himself 
against the reproach of having been too democratical, which was, doubtless. 
addressed to him in every variety of language. 

* Aristot. Polit ii, 9,4. Ἐπεὶ Σόλων γ᾽ ἔοικε τὴν ἀναγκαιοτάτην ἀποδιύ ὑ- 
vat τῷ δήμῳ δύναμιν, τὸ rie ἀρχὰς αἱρεῖσϑαι καὶ εὐθύνειν μηδὲ γὰρ τούτου 
κύριος ὧν ὁ δῆμος, δοῦλος ἂν ein καὶ πολέμιος. 

In this passage respecting Solon (containing sections 2, 3, 4 of the edition 
of M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire), Aristotle first gives the opinion of certain 
critics who praised Solon, with the reasons upon which it is founded : 
the opinion of certain critics who blamed him, with their reasons : thirdly, 
his own judgment. The first of these three contains sect. 2 (from Σόλωνα 
ὁ ἔνιοι, down to τὰ δικαστήρια ποιήσας ἐκ πάντων). The 


next, 


second contains 
the greater part of sect. 3 (from Διὸ καὶ μέμφονταί τινες αὐτῷ, down to τὴν 
νῦν δημοκρατίαν. The remainder is his own judgment. I notice this, 
because sections 2 and 3 are not to be taken as the opinion of Aristotle him- 
self, but of those upon whom he was commenting, who considered Solon ss 
the author cf the dikasteries selected by lot. 


SOLON FOUNDER OF ATHENIAN DEMOCKACY. 127 


*the Athenian people excluded from everything.” ps hese pas- 
sages seem positively to contradict the supposition, in itself 
sufficiently improbable, that Solon is the author of the peculiar 
democratical institutions of Athens, such as the constant and 
numerous dikasts for judicial trials and revision of laws. The 
venuine and forward democratical movement of Athens begins 
ony with Kleisthenés, from the moment when that distinguished 
Alkme6nid, either spontaneously, or from finding himself worsted 
in his party strife with Isagoras, purchased by large popular con- 
cessions the hearty codperation of the multitude under very 
dangerous circumstances. While Solon, in his own statement as 
well as in that of Aristotle, gave to the people as much power as 
was strictly needful, but no more, — Kleisthenés (to use the sig- 
nificant phrase of Herodotus),“ being vanquished in the party 
contest with his rival, took the people into partnership.”2 It was 
thus to the interests of the weaker section, in a strife of contend- 
ing nobles, that the Athenian people owed their first admission 
to political ascendency, — in part, at least, to this cause, though 
the proceedings of Kleisthenés indicate a hearty and spon 
taneous popular sentiment. But such constitutional admission of 
the people would not have been so astonishingly fruitful in positive 
results, if the course of public events for the half-century after 
Kleisthenés had not been such as to stimulate most powerfully 
their energy, their self-reliance, their mutual sympathies, and 
their ambition. I shall recount in a future chapter those his- 
torical causes, which, acting upon the Athenian character, gave 
such efficiency and expansion to the great democratical impulse 
communicated by Kleisthenés : at present, it is enough to remark 
that that impulse commences properly with Kleisthenés, and not 
with Solon. 


1 Herodot. v, 69. τὸν ᾿Αϑηναίων δῆμον, πρότερον ἀπωσμένον πάντων, etc. 

3 Herodot. ν, 66-69. Οὗτοι οἱ ἄνδρε. (Kleisthenés and Isagoras) ἐστα- 
σίασαν περὶ δυνάμεως" ἑσσούμενος δὲ . (λεισϑένης τὸν δῆμον προσεταιρί- 
ζέγαϊ. ..... : ᾿ , 

ἐνννν Ὡς γὰρ δὴ τὸν ᾿Αϑηναίων δῆμον, πρότερον ἀπωσμένον πάντων, τότε 
πρὸς τὴν ἑωῦτοῦ μοίρην προσεϑήκατο, (Kleisthenés) τὰς φυλὰς μετωνόμασε 
eee τἧν δὲ, τὸν δῆμον προσϑέμενος, πολλῷ κατύπερϑε τῶν ἀντιστασιά τεων 

As to the marked democratical tendency of the proceedings of Kleisthenés. 
see Aristot. Polit. vi, 2, 11; iii, 1, 10. 


128 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


But the Solonian constitution, though only the foundation, was 
yet the indispensable foundation, of the subsequent democracy ; 
and if the discontents of the miserable Athenian population, in- 
stead of experiencing his disinterested and healing management, 
had fallen at once into the hands of selfish power-seekers, like 
Kylon or Peisistratus, the memorable expansion of the Athenian 
mind during the ensuing century would never have taken place, 
and the whole subsequent history of Greece would probably have 
taken a different course. Solon left the essential powers of the 
state still in the hands of the oligarchy, and the party combats 
—to be recounted hereafter — between Peisistratus, Lykurgus, 
and Megaklés, thirty years after his legislation, which ended in 
the despotism of Peisistratus, will appear to be of the same purely 
oligarchical character as they had been before he was appointed 
archon. But the oligarchy which he established was very dif- 
ferent from the unmitigated oligarchy which he found, so teeming 
with oppression and so destitute of redress, as his own poems 
testify. 

It was he who first gave both to the citizens of middling 
property and to the general mass, a locus standi against the 
eupatrids ; he enabled the people partially to protect themselves, 


and familiarized them with the idea of protecting themselves, by 


the peaceful exercise of a constitutional franchise. The new 
force, through which this protection was carried into effect, was 
the public assembly called heliwa,' regularized and armed with 


᾿ Lysias cont. Theomnest. A. c. 5, p. 357, who gives ἐὰν μὴ προστιμῆσῃ ἡ 
‘HAiaca as a Solonian phrase; though we are led to doubt whether Solon 
ean ever have employed it, when we find Pollux (vii, 5, 22) distinctly 
stating that Solon used the word érairia to signify what the orators called 
προστιμηματα. 

The original and proper meaning of the word Ἡ λίαια is, the publie assem- 
bly (see Tittmann, Griech. Staatsverfass. pp. 215-216); in subsequent times 
we find it signifying at Athens —1. The aggregate of six thousand dikasta 
chosen by lot annually and sworn, or the assembled people considered as 
exercising judicial functions; 2. Each of the separate fractions into which 
this aggregate body was in practice subdivided for actual judicial business. 
Ἐκκλησία became the term for the public deliberative assembly properly se 
ealled, which could never be held on the same day that the dikasteries sat 
(Démosthen. cont. Timokrat c. 21, p 726): every dikastery ie in fact 


MITIGATED OLIGARCHY. 129 


enlarge] prerogatives, and farther strengthened by its indispen- 
sable ally, — the pro-bouleutic or pre-considering senate. Under 
the Solenian constitution, this force was merely secondary and 
defensive, but after the renovation of Kleisthenés, it became 
paramount and sovereign; it branched out gradually into those 
numerous popular dikasteries which so powerfully modified both 
public and private Athenian life, drew to itself the undividec 
reverence and submission of the people, and by degrees rendered 
the single magistracies essentially subordinate functions. The 
popular assembly as constituted by Solon, appearing in modified 
efliciency, and trained to the office of reviewing and judging the 
general conduct of a past magistrate, — forms the intermediate 
stage between the passive Homeric agora, and those omnipotent 
assemblies and dikasteries which listened to Periklés or Démos- 
thenés. Compared with these last, it has in it but a faint streak 
of democracy, —and so it naturally appeared to Aristotle, whe 
wrote with a practical experience of Athens in the time of the 
orators ; but compared with the first, or with the ante-Solonian 
constitution of Attica, it must doubtless have appeared a con- 
cession eminently democratical. To impose upon the eupatrid 
archon the necessity of being elected, or put upon his trial of 
after-accountability, by the rabJle of freemen (such would be the 
phrase in eupatrid society), would be a bitter humiliation to 
those among whom it was first introduced ; for we must recollect 
that this was the most extensive scheme of constitutional reform 
yet propounded in Greece, and that despots and oligarchies shared 
between them at that time the whole Grecian world. As it ap- 
pears that Solon, while constituting the popular assembly with 
its pro-bouleutic senate, had no jealousy of the senate of areopa- 


always addressed as if it were the assembled people engaged in a specific 
duty. 

I imagine the term Ἡλίαια in the time of Solon to have been used in its 
original meaning, — the public assembly, perhaps with a connotation of 
employment in judicial proceeding. The fixed number of six thousand 
does not date before the time of Kleisthenés, because it is essentially con- 
nected with the ten trites; while the subdivision of this body of six thou- 
sand into various bodies of jurors for different courts and purposes did not 
commence, probably, until after the first reforms of Kleisthenés. I shal 
revert to this point when I touch upon the latter, and his times. 


VOL. III. id 900, 


13U HISTORY OF GREECE. 


gus, and indeed even enlarged its powers, we may infer that 
his grand object was, not to weaken the oligarchy generally, but 
to improve the administiation and to repress the misconduct and 
irregularities of the individual archons; and that too, not by 
diminishing their powers, but by making some degree of popu- 
larity the condition both of their entry into oflice, and of their 
safety or honor after it. 

It is, in my judgment, a mistake to suppose that Solon trans- 
ferred the judicial power of the archons to a popular dikastery ; 
these magistrates still continued self-acting judges, deciding and 
condemning without appeal,— not mere presidents of an as- 
sembled jury, as they afterwards came to be during the next 
century.! For the general exercise of such power they were ac- 
countable after their year of office; and this accountability was 


the security against abuse, — a very insufficient security, yet not 
wholy inoperative. It will be seen, however, presently, that 


these archons, though strong to coerce, and perhaps to oppress, 
small and poor men, — had no means of keeping down rebellious 


' The statement of Plutarch, that Solon gave an appeal from the decision 
of the archon to the judgment of the popular dikastery (Plutarch, Solon, 
18), is distrusted by most of the expositors, though Dr. Thirlwall seems to 
admit it, justifying it by the analogy of the ephetw, or judges of appeal, 
constituted by Drako (Hist. of Greece, vol. ii, ch. xi, p. 46). 

To me it appears that the Drakonian ephctz were not really judges in 
appeal : but be that as it may, the supposition of an appeal from the judg- 
ment of the archon is inconsistent with the known course of Attic procedure, 
and has apparently arisen in Plutarch’s mind from confusion with the Roman 
provocatio, which really was an appeal from the judgment of the consul to 
that of the people. Plutarch’s comparison of Solon with Publicola leads to 
this suspicion,-— Καὶ τοῖς φεύγουσι δίκην, ἐπικαλεῖσϑαι τὸν δῆμον, ὥσπερ ὑ 
Σόλων τοὺς δικαστὰς, ἔδωκε (Publicola). The Athenian archon was first a 
judge without appeal; and afterwards, ceasing to be a iudge, he became 
president of a dikastery, performing only those preparatory steps which 
bronght the case to an issue fit for decision: but he does not seem ever to 
have been a judge subject to appeal. 

It is hardly just to Plutarch to make him responsible for the absurd 
remark that Solon rendered his laws intentionally obscure, in order that the 
dikasts might have more to do and greater power: he gives the remark, 
himself, only with the saving expression λέγεται, “ it is said;” and we may 
well doubt whether it was ever seriously intended even by ita author, who 
ever he may have been. 


GRADUAL CHANGE IN THE LAWS OF SOLON. 131 


nobles of their own rank, such as Peisistratus, Lykurgus, and 
Megaklés, each with his armed followers. When we compare 
the drawn swords of these ambitious competitors, ending in the 
despotism of one of them, with the vehement parliamentary strifo 
between Themistoklés and Aristeidés afterwards, peaceably de 
cided by the vote of the sovereign people, and never disturbing the 
public tranquillity, — we shall see that the democracy of the en 
suing century fulfilled the conditions of order, as well as of pro- 
gress, better than the Solonian constitution. 

To distinguish this Solonian constitution from the democracy 
which followed it, is essential to a due comprehension of the 
progress of the Greek mind, and especially of Athenian affairs. 
That democracy was achieved by gradual steps, which will be 
hereafter described: Démosthenés and Aéschinés lived under it 
as a system consummated and in full activity, when the stages of 
its previous growtl were no longer matter of exact memory; 
and the dikasts then assembled in judgment were pleased te 
hear the constitution to which they were attached identified 
with the names either of Solon, or of Theseus, to which they 
were vo less partial. ‘heir inquisitive contemporary Aristotle 
vas not thus misled: but even the most common-place Atheni- 
ans of the century preceding would have escaped the same delu- 
sion. For during the whole course of the democratical movement 
from the Persian invasion down to the Peloponnesian war, and 
especially during the changes proposed by Periklés and Ephial- 
tés, there was always a strenuous party of resistance, who would 
not suffer the people to forget that they had already forsaken, 
and were on the point of forsaking still more, the orbit marked 
out by Solon. The illustrions Periklcs underwent innumerable 
attacks both from the orators in the assembly and from the comic 
writers in the theatre; and among these sarcasms on the political 
tendencies of the day, we are probably to number the complaint 
breathed by the poet Kratinus, of the desuetude into which both 
Solon and Drako had fallen. “I swear,! said he, in a fragment 


} Kratinus ap. Plutarch. Solon. 25.— 
Πρὸς τοῦ Σόλωνος καὶ Δράκοντος, οἷσι viv 
Φρύγουσιν ἤδη τὰς κάχρυς ταῖς κύρβεσιν. 
Isokratés praises the τηοάγαΐθ democracy in early Athens, as compared 


132 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


of one of his comedies, by Solon and Drako, whose wooden 
tablets (of laws) are now employed by people to roast their 
barley.” The laws of Solon respecting penal offences, respecte 
ing inheritance and adoption, respecting the private relations 
generally, etc., remained for the most part in force; his quadri- 
partite census also continued, at least for financial purposes until 
the archonship of Nausinikus in 377 B. C.; so that Cicero and 
others might be warranted in affirming that his laws still pre- 
vailed at Athens: but his political and judicial arrangements had 
undergone a revolution! not less complete and memorable than 
the character and spirit of the Athenian people generally. ‘The 
choice, by way of lot, of archons and other magistrates, and the 
distribution by lot of the general body of dikasts or jurors into 
pannels for judicial business, may be decidedly considered as not 
belonging to Solon, but adopted after the revolution of Kleis- 
thenés ;2 probably, the choice of senators by lot also. ‘The lot 
was a symptom of pronounced democratical spirit, such as we 
must not seek in the Solonian institutions. 

It is not easy to make out distinctly what was the political po- 
sition of the ancient gentes and phratries, as Solon left them. 
The four tribes consisted altogether of gentes and phratries, in- 
somuch that no one could be included in any one of the tribes 
who was not also a member of some gens and phraty. Now the 


new pro-bouleutic or pre-considerate senate consisted of four hun 
dred members, — one hundred from each of the tribes: persons not 


with that under which he lived; but in the Orat. vii (Areopagitic.) he con- 
nects the former with the names of Solon and Kleisthenés, while in the 
Orat. xii (Panathenaic.), he considers the former to have lasted from the 
days of ‘Theseus to those of Solon and Peisistratus. In this latter oration 
he describes pretty exactly the power which the people possessed under the 
Sylonian constitution, — τοῦ τὰς ἀρχὰς καταστῆσαι Ka λαϑεῖν δίκην παρὰ 
τῶν ἐξαμαρτανύντων, which coincides with ‘he phrase of Aristotle — τὰς 
ἀρχὰς αἱρεῖσϑαι καὶ ¢ ᾿ϑύνειν, τος supposing ὦ χόντων to be understood as the 
substantive of ἐξαμαρτανόντων. 

Compare Isokratés, Or. vii, p. 143 (p. 192 Bek.) and p. 150 (202 Bek.) 
and Orat. xii, pp. 260-264 (351-356 Bek ). 

' Cicero, Orat. pro Sext. Roscio, ¢. 95: /JElian, V. H. viii, 10. 

?This seems to be the opinion of Dr. Thirlwall, against Wachsmuth. 
though he speaks with doubt. (History of Greece, vol. ii, ch. 11, p. 48 


2d ed.) 


VENUS OF MILO 


Greece, vol. three. 


THE LAWS OF SOLON. 133 


included in any gens or phratry could therefore have had no ae 
cess to it. The conditions of eligibility were similar, according 
to ancient custom, for the nine archons, — of course, also, for the 
senate of areopagus. So that there remained only the public as- 
sembly, in which an Athenian not a member of these tribes could 
take part: yet he was a citizen, since he could give his vote for 
aichons and senators, and could take part in the annual decision 
of their accountability, besides being entitled to claim redress for 
wrong from the archons in his own person, — while the alien 
could only do so through the intervention of an avouching citi- 
zen, oF prostates. It seems, therefore, that all persons not included 
in the four tribes, whatever their grade of fortune might be, were 
on the same level in respect to political privilege as the fourth 
and poorest class of the Solonian census. It bas already been 
remarked that, even before the time of Solon, the number of Athe- 
nians not included in the gentes or phratries was probably con- 
siderable: it tended to become greater and greater, since these 
bedies were close and unexpansive, while the policy of the new 
lawgiver tended to invite industrious settlers from other parts of 
Greece to Athens. Such great and increasing inequality of poli- 
tical privilege helps to explain the weakness of the government 
in repelling the aggressions of Peisistratus, and exhibits the im- 
portance of the revolution afterwards wrought by Kleisthenés, 
when he abolished (for all political purposes) the four old tribes, 
and created ten new comprehensive tribes in place of them. 

In regard to the regulations of the senate and the assembly of 
the people, as constituted by Solon, we are altogether without in- 
formation: nor is it safe to transfer to the Solonian constitution 
the information, comparatively ample, which we possess respecting 
these bodies under the later democracy. 

The laws of Solon were inscribed on wooden rollers and trian- 
gular tablets, in the species of writing called boustrophédon (lines 
alternating first from left to right, and next from right to left, 
like the course of the ploughman), and preserved first in the 
acropolis, subsequently in the prytaneium. On the tablets, called 
kyrbeis, were chiefly commemorated the laws respecting sacred 
rites and sacrifices :! on the pillars, or rollers, of which there were 


ὁ Plutarch, Solon, 23-25. He particularly mentions the sixteent> ~su> 


134 HISTORY ΟΡ GREECE. 


at least sixteen, were placed the regulations respecting matters 
profane. So small are the fragments which have come down to 
us, and so much has been ascribed to Solon by the orators, which 
belongs really to the subsequent times, that it is hardly possible 
to form any critical judgment respecting the legislation as a 
whole, or to discover by what general principles or purposes he 
was guided. 

He left unchanged all the previous laws and practices respect- 
ing the crime of homicide, connected as they were intimately 
with the religious feelings of the people. The laws of Drako on 
this subject therefore remained, but on other subjects, according 
to Plutarch, they were altogether abrogated : there is, however, 
room for supposing, that the repeal cannot have been so sweep- 
ing as this biographer represents. 

The Solonian laws se€em to have borne more or less upon all 
the great departments of human interest and duty. We find 
regulations political and religious, public and private, civil and 
criminal, commercial, agricultural, sumptuary, and disciplinarian. 
Solon provides punishment for crimes, restricts the profession and 
status of the citizen, prescribes detailed rules for marriage as 
well as for burial, for the common use of springs and wells, and 
for the mutual interest of conterminous farmers in planting or 
hedving their properties. As far as we can judge, from the im- 


we learn, also, that the thirteenth ζξων contained the eighth law (c. 19): the 
twenty-first law is alluded to in Iarpokration, v, Ὅτι οἱ ποιητοί. 

Some remnants of these wooden rollers existed in the days of Plutarch, in 
the Athenian prytaneium. Harpokration and Photius, v, Κύρβεις: 
Aristot. tepi Πολετειῶν, Frag ed. Neumann; Euphorion ap. Harpokrat. 
Ὁ κάτωνϑεν νόμος. Bekker, Anecdota, p. 413. 

What we read respecting the ἄξονες and the κυρεῖς does not convey ἃ 
clear idea of them. Besides Aristotle, both Seleukus and Didymus are 
named as having written commentaries expressly about them (Plutarch 
Solon, i; Suidas, v, Op) eave; ; compare also Meursius, Solon, c. 24; Vit 
Aristotelis ap Westermann. Vitarum Scriptt. Gree. p. 404), and the collec. 
tion in Step’-an. Thesaur. p. 1095. 

' Plutarch, Solon, c. 17; Cyrill. cont. Julian. y, p. 169, ed. Spanheim 
The enumeration of the different admitted justifications for homicide, which 
we find in Démosth. cont. Aristokrat. p. 637, seems rather too copious and 
systematic for the age of Drako; it may have been amended by Solon, or 
perhaps, in an age subsequent to Solon 


a“ 

Ce 
ΩΝ 
Oe, 


PROHIBITIONS OF SOLON 


perfect manner in which his laws come before us, there does nei 
seem to have been any attempt at a systematic order or classifi- 
cation. Some of them are mere general and vague directions, 
while others again run into the extreme of speciality. 

By far the most important of all was the amendment of the 
law of debtor and creditor which has already been adverted to, 
and the abolition of the power of fathers and brothers to sell 
their daughters and sisters into slavery. The prohibition of all 
contracts on the security of the body, was itself sufficient to pro- 
duce a vast improvement in the character and condition of the 
poorer population, — a result which seems to have been so sen- 
sibly obtained from the legislation of Solon, that Boeckh and 
some other eminent authors suppose him to have abolished villen- 
age and conferred upon the poor tenants a property in their lands, 
annulling the seignorial rights of the landlord. But this opinion 
rests upon no positive evidence, nor are we warranted in ascribing 
to him any stronger measure in reference to the land, than the 
annulment of the previous mortgages.! 

The first pillar of his laws contained a regulation respecting 
exportable produce. He forbade the exportation of all produce 
of the Attic soil, except olive-oil alone, and the sanction employed 
to enforce observance of this law deserves notice, as an illustra- 
tion of the ideas of the time ;—the archon was bound, on pain 
of forfeiting one hundred drachms, to pronounce solemn curses 


against every offender.” We are probably to take this prohi- 


' See Boeckh, Public Economy of the Athenians, book iii, sect. 5. Titt- 
mann (Griechisch. Staatsverfass. p. 651) and others have supposed (from 
Aristot. Polit. ii, 4, 4) that Solon enacted a law to limit the quantity of land 
which any individual citizen might acquire. But the passage does not seem 
to me to bear out such an opinion. 

2 Plutarch, Solon, 24. The jirst law, however, is said to have related 
to the insuring of a maintenance to wives and orphans (Harpokration, v 
Ziroc). 

By a law of Athens (which marks itself out as belonging to the century 
after Solon, by the fulness of its provisions, and by the number of steps and 
official persons named in it), the rooting up of an olive-tree in Attica was 
forbidden, under a penalty of two hundred drachms for each tree so de- 
stroyed,— except jor sacred purposes, or to the extent of two trees yer 
anrum for the convenience of the rroprietor (Démosthen. cont. Makartat c 


16, p. 1074) 


136 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


bitiun in conjunction with other objects said to have been contem- 
plated by Solon, especially the encouragement of artisans and 
manufacturers at Athens. Observing, we are told, that many 
new emigrants were just then flocking into Attica to seek an 
establishment, in consequence of its greater security, he was 
anxious to turn them rather to manufacturing industry than to 
the cultivation of a soil naturally poor.! He forbade the grant- 
ing of citizenship to any emigrants, except such as had quitted 
irrevocably their former abodes, and come to Athens for the pur- 


pose of carrying on some industrious profession ; and in order to 


prevent idleness, he directed the senate of areopagus to keep 
watch over the lives of the citizens generally, and punish every 
cne who had no course of regular labor to support him. If a 
father had not taught his son some art or profession, Solon relieved 
the son from all obligation to maintain him in his old age. And 
it was to encourage the multiplication of these artisans, that he 
insured, or sought to insure, to the residents in Attica a monop- 
oly of all its landed produce except olive-oil, which was raised in 
abundance more than sufficient for their wants. It was his wish 
that the trade with foreigners should be carried on by exporting 
the produce of artisan labor, instead of the produce of land.? 
This commercial prohibition is founded on principles substan- 
tially similar to those which were acted upon in the early history 
of England, with reference both to corn and to wool, and in other 
European countries also. In so far as it was at all operative, it 
tended to lessen the total quantity of produce raised upon the 
soil of Attica, and thus to keep the price of it from rising, —a 
purpose less objectionable — if we assume that the legislator is 


' Plutarch, Solon, 22. ταῖς τέχναις ἀξίωμα περιέϑηκε. 

3 Plutarch, Solon, 22-24 According to Herodotus, Solon had enacted 
that the authorities should punish every man with death who could not show 
8 regular mode of industrious life (Herod. ii, 177 ; Diodor. i, 77). 

So severe a punishment is not credible; nor is it likely that Solon bor- 
rowed nis idea from Egypt. 

According to Pollux (viii, 6) idleness was punished by atimy (civil dis 
franchisement) under Drako: under Solon, this punishment only took effect 
against the person who had been convicted of it on three successive occa- 
sions. See Meursius, Solon, c. 17; and the “Areopagus” of the same 
author, c. 8 and 9; and Taylor, Lectt. Lysiac. cap. 10. 


SULON’S ENCOURAGEMENT OF INDUSTRY 137 


to interfere at ἃ]] --- than that of our late Corn Laws, which were 
destined to prevent the price of grain from falling. But the law 
of Solon must have been altogether inoperative, in reference to 
the great articles of human subsistence; for Attica imported, both 
largely and constantly, grain and salt provisions, — probably, 
also, wool and flax for the spinning and w saving of the women, 
and certainly timber for building. Whether the law was ever 
enforced with reference to figs and honey, may well be doubted ; 
at least these productions of Attica were in after-times generally 
consumed and celebrated throughout Greece. Probably also, in 
the time of Solon, the silver-mines of Laureium had hardly 
begun to be worked: these afterwards became highly productive, 
and furnished to Athens a commodity for foreign payments not 
less convenient than lucrative.! 

It is interesting to notice the anxiety, both of Solon and of Drako, 
to enforce among their fellow-citizens industrious and self-main- 
taining habits ;? and we shall find the same sentiment proclaimed 
by Periklés, at the time when Athenian power was at its maxi- 
mum. Nor ought we to pass over this early manifestation in 
Attica, of an opinion equitable and tolerant towards sedentary 
industry, which in most other parts of Greece was regarded as 
comparatively dishonorable. The general tone of Grecian sen- 
timent recognized no occupations as perfectly worthy of a free 
citizen except arms, agriculture, and athletic and musical exer- 
cises ; and the proceedings of the Spartans, who kept aloof even 
from agriculture, and left it to their Helots, were admired, though 
they could not be copied throughout most part of the Hellenic 
world. Even minds like Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon con- 
curred to a considerable extent in this feeling, which they justified 
on the ground that the sedentary life and unceasing house-work 
of the artisan was inconsistent with military aptitude: the town- 
occupations are usually described by a word which carries with 
it contemptuous ideas, and though recognized as indispensable to 
the existence of the city, are held suitable only for an inferior and 
vemi-privileged order of citizens. This, the received sentiment 


' Xenophon, De Vectigalibus, iii, 2. 
* Thucyd. ii, 40 (the funeral oration delivered by Periklés),—«ai <2 
τένεσεϑαι οὐχ ὑμολογεῖν τινι αἰσχρὸν, ἀλλ᾽ ob διαφεύγειν ἔργῳ αἴσχιον. 


188 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


among Greeks, as well as foreigners, found a streny and growing 
opposition at Athens, as I have already said, — corroborated 
also by a similar feeling at Corinth.! The trade of Corinth, as 
well as of Chalkis in Euboea, was extensive, at a time when that 
of Athens had svaree any existence. But while the despotism 
of Periander can hardly have failed to operate as a discourage- 
ment to industry at Corinth, the contemporaneous legislation of 
Solon provided for traders and artisans a new home at Athens, 
giving the first encouragement to that numerous town-population 
both in the city and in the Peirzeus, which we find actually 
residing there in the succeeding century. ‘The multiplication of 
such town-residents, both citizens and metics, or non-freemen, was 
a capital fact in the onward march of Athens, since it determined 
not merely the extension of her trade, but also the preéminence 
of her naval force, — and thus, as a farther consequence, lent ex 
traordinary vigor to her democratical government. It seems, 
moreover, to have been a departure from the primitive temper of 
Atticism, which tended both to cantonal residence and rural oc- 
cupation. We have, therefore, the greater interest in noting the 
first mention of it as a consequence of the Solonian legislation. 
To Solon is first owing the admission of a power of testamen- 
tary bequest at Athens, in all cases in which a man had no le- 
gitimate children. According to the preéxisting custom, we may 
rather presume that if a deceased person left neither children 
nor blood relations, his property descended, as at Rome, to his 
gens and phratry.!' Throughout most rude states of society, the 
power of willing is unknown, as among the ancient Germans, — 
among the Romans prior to the twelve tables, — in the old lawe 
of the Hindus, ete. Society limits a man’s interest or power of 


' Herodot. ii, 167-177: compare Xenophon, CEconomic. iv, 3. : 

The unbounded derision, however, which Aristophanes heaps upon Kleén 
as a tanner, and upon Hyperbolus as a lamp-maker, proves that, if any man- 
afacturer engaged in politics, his party opponents found enough of the old 
sentiment remaining to turn it to good account against him. 

* This seems the just meaning of the words, ἐν τῷ γένει rot τεϑνηκότος 
ἔδει τὰ χρήματα καὶ τὸν οἶκον καταμένειν, for that early day (Plutarch, Solon, 
21)- compare Meier, De Gentilitate Attic, p. 33. nn 

3 Tacitus, German.-c. 20; Halhed, Preface to Gentoo Code, p. i, iii; Mill's 


History of British India, b. ii, ch. iv, p. 214. 


TESTAMENTARY BEQUESTS ALLOWED BY SOLON. 139 


enjoyment to his life, and considers his relatives as having joint 
reversionary claims to his property, which take effect, in certain 
determinate proportions, after his death; and this view was the 
more likely to prevail at Athens, inasmuch as the perpetuity of 
the family sacred rites, in which the children and near relatives 
partook of right, was considered by the Athenians as a matter of 
public as well as of private concern. Solon gave permission to 
every man dying without children to bequeathe his property by will 
as he should think fit, and the testament was maintained, unless 
it could be shown to have been procured by some compulsion or 
improper seduction. Speaking generally, this continued to be 
the law throughout the historical times of Athens. Sons, wher- 
ever there were sons, succeeded to the property of their father in 
equal shares, with the obligation of giving out their sisters in 
marriage along with a certain dowry. If there were no sons, 
then the daughters succeeded, though the father might by will, 
within certain limits, determine the person to whom they should 
be married, with their rights of succession attached to them: or 
might, with the consent of his daughters, make by will certain 
other arrangements about his property. A person who had no 
children, or direct lineal descendants, might bequeathe his prop- 
erty at pleasure: if he died without a will, first his father, then 
his brother or brother’s children, next his sister or sister’s child- 
ren succeeded: if none such existed, then the cousins by the 
father’s side, next the cousins by the mother’s side, —the male 
line of descent having preference over the female. Such was the 
principle of the Solonian laws of succession, though the particu- 
lars are in several ways obscure and doubtful.! Solon, it appears, 
was the first who gave power of superseding by testament the 
rights of agnates and gentiles to succession, —a proceeding in 
consonance with his plan of encouraging both industrious occupa: 


' See the Dissertation of Bunsen, De Jure Hereditario Atheniensium, pp. 
28, 29; and Hermann Schelling, De Solonis Legibus ap. Oratt. Atticos, 
ch. xvii. 

The adopted son was not allowed to bequeathe by will that property of 
which adoption had made him the possessor: if he left no legitimate chil 
dren, the heirs at law of the adopter claimed it as ef right (Démosthen 
cont. Leochar p. 1100; cont. Stephan. B. p. 1133; Bunsen, ut sup. pp 
55-58) 


140 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


tiou and the conseyuent multiplication of individual acquis 

ions. ! 

Tt ἴω been already mentioned that Solon forbade the sale ον 
daughters or sisters into slavery, by fathers or brother — Ὧν il- 
bition which shows how much females had before been loo so upon 
as articles of property. And it would seem that before his time 
the violation of a free woman must have been punished " the 
discretion of the magistrates ; for we are told that he was the 
first who enacted a penalty of one hundred drachms against ~ 
offender, and twenty drachms against the renner of a cs 
woman? Moreover, it is said that he forbade a bride mere 
given in marriage 10 carry with her any personal a νους 

appurtenances, except to the extent of three robes and sr 
matters of furniture not very valuable. Solon farther — 

upon women several restraints in regard to a ite 
obsequies of deceased relatives: he forbade ΥΩ ἌΜΜΟΝ ἣ 

singing of composed dirges, and costly sacrifices 


{ions of sorrow, Keegan alg 
- he limited strictly the quantity of meat and 
3 ν 


and contributions 


a , ‘snaral he , ‘ohibited nocturnal 
drink admissible for the funeral banquet, and prohib Se 
exit, except in a car and with alight. It appears that both in 


Greece and Rome, the feelings of duty and affection on the part 
f surviving relatives prompted them to ruinous expense 1n 
fs 7 ffusions both of grief and 
a funeral, as well as to unmeasured effusions grief 
conviviality ; and the general necessity experienced for inter- 
« nu ᾿ Ι ; ' 
ference of the law is attested by the remark of Plutarch, that 
prohibitions to those enacted by Solon were likewise in 
4 


similar se . 
force at his native town of Cheeroneia. 


1 Plutarch, Solon, 21. τὰ χρήματα, κτήματα τῶν ἐχόντων ἐποίησεν. , 
odin schinés (Ὁ Timarch. pp. 16-78), the punishmen 
2 According to Aischinés (cont Timarch. pp ), 


roc i s of seduc 
enacted by Solon against the tpoayw) ὃς, or procurer, in such cases 


tion, was death. | | 
3 Plutarch, Solon, 20. These gepvai were independent of the dowry of 


the bride, for which the husband, when he τοσυίνοῦ it, Bey “9s μὴν Ἣν 
rity, and repaid it in the event of his wife’s death: see Bunsen, 

" mca “iq [he Solonian restrictions on the subject of enya ha 
to a ereat degree copied in the twelve tables at Rome: see cer : = : eB 
ii, 23, 24. He esteems it a right thing to put the rich an wedge oe 
level in respect to funeral ceremonies. Plato follows an opposit: , 


SOLON’S REWARDS TO THE OLYMPIC VICTORS. 14] 


Other penal enactments of Solon are yet to be mentioned. He 
forbade absolutely evil-speaking with respect to the dead: he for- 
bade it likewise with respect to the living, either in a temple or 
before judges or archons, or at any public festival, —on pain 
of a forfeit of three drachms to the person aggrieved, and two 
more to the public treasury. How mild the general character of 
his punishments was, may be judged by this law against foul 
language, not less than by the law before mentioned against 
rape: both the one and the other of these offences were much 
more severely dealt with under the subsequent law of democrat- 
ical Athens. The peremptory edict against speaking ill of a 
deceased person, though doubtless springing in a great degree 
from disinterested repugnance, is traceable also in part to that 
fear of the wrath of the departed which strongly possessed the 
early Greek mind. 

It seems generally that Solon determined by law the outlay 
for the public sacrifices, though we do not know what were his 
particular directions : we are told that he reckoned a sheep and a 
medimnus (of wheat or barley ?) as equivalent, either of them, to 
a drachm, and that he also prescribed the prices to be paid for 
first-rate oxen intended for solemn occasions. But it astonishes 
us to see the large recompense which he awarded out of the 
public treasury to a victor at the Olympic or Isthmian games : 
to the former five hundred drachms, equal to one year’s income 
of the highest of the four classes on the census; to the latter 


limits the expense of funerals upon a graduated scale, according to the census 
of the deceased (Legg. xii, p. 959). 

Démosthenés (cont. Makartat. p 1071) gives what he calls the Solonian 
law on funerals, different from Plutarch on several points. 

Ungovernable excesses of grief among the female sex are sometimes 
mentioned in Grecian towns: see the μανικὸν πένϑος among the Milesian 
women (Polyzn. viii, 63): the Milesian women, however, had a tinge of 
Karian feeling. 

Compare an instructive inscription, recording a law of the Greek city of 
Gambreion in Aolic Asia Minor, wherein the dress, the proceedings, and the 
time of allowed mourning, for men, women, and children who had lost thei 
relatives, are strictly prescribed under severe penalties (Franz, Finf Inschrif- 
ten und fiinf Stadte in Kleinasien, Berlin, 1840, p. 17). Expensive cere 
monies in the celebration of marriage are forbidden by some of the οἱ] 
Scandinavian laws (Wilda, Das Gilde \wesen im Mittelalter, p. 18). 


142 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


one hundred drachms. ‘The magnitude of these rewards strike: 
us the more when we compare them with the fines on rape and 
evil speaking ; and we cannot be surprised that the philosopher 
Xenophanés noticed, with some degree of severity, the extrava- 
gant estimate of this species of excellence, current among the 
Grecian cities.| At the same time, we must remember both 
that these Pan-Hellenic sacred games presented the chief visible 
evidence of peace and sympathy among the numerous commu- 
nities of Greece, and thai in the time of Solon, factitious reward 
ras still needful to encourage them. In respect to land and 
agriculture, Solon proclaimed a public reward of five drachms 
for every wolf brought in, and one drachm for every wolf’s cub: 
the extent of wild land has at all times been considerable in 
Attica. He also provided rules respecting the use of wells be- 
tween neighbors, and respecting the planting in conterminous 
olive-grounds. Whiether any of these regulations continued in 
operation during the better-known period of Athenian history 
cannot be safely affirmed.? 

In respect to theft, we find it stated that Solon repealed the 
punishment of death which Drako had annexed to that crime, and 
enacted as a penalty, compensation to an amount double the value 
of the property stolen. ‘The simplicity of this law perhaps affords 
ground for presuming that it really does belong to Solon, but the 
law which prevailed during the time of the orators respecting 
theft? must have been introduced at some later period, since it 


' Plutarch, Solon, 23. Xenophanés, Frag. 2, ed. Schneidewin. If Dioge- 
nés is to be trusted, the rewards were even larger anterior to Solon: he 


" 


reduced them (Diog. 1. i, 55). 

* Plutarch, Solon, c. 23. See Suidas, v, Φεισόμεϑα. 

ὁ See the laws in Démosthen. cont. Timokrat. pp. 733-736. Notwith- 
standing the opinion both of Heraldus (Animadversion. in Salmas. iy, 8) 
and of Meier (Attischer Prozess, p. 356), 1 cannot imagine anything more 
than the basis of these laws to be Solonian, — they indicate a state of Attic 
procedure too much elaborated for that day (Lysias c. Theomn. p. 356). The 
word πούοκώκκῃ belongs to Solon, and probably the penalty of five days’ 
cenfinement in the stocks, for the thief who had not restored what he had 
stolen. 

Aulus Gell. (xi, 18) mentions the simple pena dupii: in the authors from 
whom he copied, it is »vident that Solon was stated to have enacted this law 
yererally for all thefts: we cannot tell from whom he copied, bet in anothe: 


SOLON’S CENSURE OF NEUTRALITY. 143 


enters into distinctions and mentions both places and forms of 
procedure, which we cannot reasonably refer to the 46th Olym- 
piad. The public dinners at the prytanerum, of which the 
archons and a select few partook in common, were also either 
first established, or perhaps only more strictly regulated, by 
Solon: he ordered barley cakes for their ordinary meals, and 
wheaten loaves for festival days, prescribing how often each per 
son should dine at the table.! The honor of dining at the table 
ot the prytaneium was maintained throughout as a valuable re- 
ward at the disposal of the government. 

Among the various laws of Solon, there are few which have 
attracted more notice than that which pronounees the man, who in 
a sedition stood aloof and took part with neither side, to be dis- 
honored and disfranchised.2 Strictly speaking, this seems more 
in the nature of an emphatic moral denunciation, or a religious 
curse, than a legal sanction capable of being formally applied in 
an individual case and after judicial trial, — though the sentence 
of atimy, under the more elaborated Attic procedure, was both 
definite in its penal consequences and also judicially delivered, 
We may, however, follow the course of ideas under which Solon 
was indueed to write this sentence on his tables, and we may trace 
the influence of similar ideas in later Attic institutions, It is 
obvious that his denunciation is confined to that special case in 
which a sedition has already broken out: we must suppose that 
Kylon has seized the aeropolis, or that Peisistratus, Megaklés, 
and Lykurgus are in arms at the head of their partisans. As- 
suming these leaders to be wealthy and powerful men, which 


part of his work, he copies a Solonian law from the wooden ἄξονες on the 
authority of Aristotle (ii, 12). 

Plato, in his Laws, prescribes the pena dupli in all cases of theft, without 
distinction of circumstances (Legg. ix, p. 857; xii, p. 941); it was also 
the primitive law of Rome: “ Posuerunt furem duplo condemnari, foeneza- 
torem quadruplo.” (Cato, De Re Rustica, Proemium ), — that is to say, im 
tases of furtum nec manifestum (Walter, Geschichte des Rémisch. Rechts. 
sect. 757). 

' Plutarch, Solon, 24; Athen. iv, p. 137; Diogen. Laért. i, 58: καὶ πρῶ. 
τὸς THY συναγωγὴν τῶν ἐννέα ἀρχόντων ἐποίησεν, εἰς τὸ συνει πεῖν, -- where 
perhaps, συνδειπνεῖν is the proper reading. 

ἢ Plutarch, Solon, 20, and De Sera Nunainis Vindicta, p. 550; Aulus Gell 
li, 1s. 


144 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


would in all probability be the fact, the constituted authority — 
such as Solon saw before him in Attica, even after his own or- 
ganic amendments — was not strong enough to maintain the 
peace ; it became, in fact, itself one of the contending parties. 
Under such given circumstances, the sooner every citizen publicly 
declared his adherence to some one of them, the earlier this sus- 
pension of legal authority was likely to terminate. Nothing was 
80. mischievous as the indifference of the mass, or their disposi- 
tion to let the combatants fight out the matter among themselves. 
and then to submit to the victor:! nothing was so likely to en- 
courage aggression on the part of an ambitious malcontent, as the 
conviction that, if he could once overpower the small amount of 
physical force which surrounded the archons and exhibit himself 
in armed possession of the prytaneium or the acropolis, he might 
immediately count upon passive submission on the part of all the 
freemen without. Under the state of feeling which Solon incul- 
rates, the insurgent leader would have to calculate that every 
man who was not actively in his favor would be actively against 
him, and this would render his enterprise much more dangerous ; 
indeed, he could then never hope to succeed except on the double 
supposition of extraordinary popularity in his own person, and 
universal detestation of the existing government. He would thus 
be placed under the influence of powerful deterring motives, and 
mere ambition would be far less likely to seduce him into a course 
which threatened nothing but ruin, unless under such encourage- 
ments from the preéxisting public opinion as to make his success 
a result desirable for the community. Among the small political 
societies of Greece, — and especially in the age of Solon, when the 
number of despots in other parts of Greece seems to have been at 
its maximum,— every government, whatever might be its form, 
was sufficiently weak to make its overthrow a matter of compara- 
tive facility. Unless upon the supposition of a band of foreign 
mercenaries, — which would render it a government of naked force, 
and which the Athenian lawgiver would of course never contem- 
plate, — there was no other stay for it except a positive and pro- 
nounced feeling of attachment on the part of the mass of citizens: 


‘ See a case of such indifference manifested by the people of Argos, in 
Platarch’s Life of Aratus, c. 27. 


SUBSEQUE*ST DEMOCRACY CONTRASTED. 145 


indifference on their part would render them a prey to every daring 
man of wealth who chose to become a conspirator, That they 
should be ready to come forward not only with voice but with arms, 
—and that they should be known beforehand to be SO, — WAS e3- 
sential to the maintenance of every good Grecian government. 
It was salutary in preventing mere personal attempts at revolution, 
and pacific in its tendency, even where the revolution had actually 
broken out, — because, in the greater number of cases, the pro- 
portion of partisans would probably be very unequal, and the 
inferior party would be compelled to renounce their hopes. 

It will be observed that in this enactment of Solon, the exist- 
ing government is ranked merely as one of the contending parties. 
The virtuous citizen is enjoined not to come forward in its sup- 
port, but to come forward at all events, either for it or against 
it: positive and early action is all that is prescribed to him as 
matter of duty. In the age of Solon, there was no political idea 
or system yet current which could be assumed as an unquestion- 
able datum, — no conspicuous standard to which the citizens could 
be pledged under all circumstances to attach themselves. The 
option lay only between a mitigated oligarchy in possession and 
a despot in possibility; a contest wherein the affections of the 
people could rarely be counted upon in favor of the established 
government. But this neutrality in respect to the constitution was 
at an end after the revolution of Kleisthenés, when the idea of 
the sovereign people and the democratical institutions became 
both familiar and precious to every individual citizen. We shall 
hereafter find the Athenians binding themselves by the most sin- 
cere and solemn oaths to uphold their democracy against all 
attempts to subvert it; we shall discover in them a sentiment not 
less positive and uncompromising in its direction, than energetic 
in its inspirations. But while we notice this very important 
change in their character, we shall at the same time perceive that 
the wise precautionary recommendation of Solon, to obviate se- 
dition by an early declaration of the impartial public between 
two contending leaders, was not lost upon them. Such, in point 
of fact, was the purpose of that salutary and protective institu. 
tion which is called Ostracism. When two party-leaders, in the 
early stages of the Athenian democracy, each powerful in adhe 

VOL. III. " 10ος. 


146 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


rents and influence, had become passionately embarked in bitter 
and prolonged opposition to each other, such opposition was likely 
to conduct one or other to violent measures. Over and above the 


hopes of party triumph, each might well fear that if he himself 


continued within the bounds of legality, he might fall a victim to 
ugeressive proceedings on the part of his watagonists. To ward 
off this formidable danger, a public vote was called for to deter- 
mine which of the two should go into temporary banishment, 
retaining his property and unvisited by any disgrace. A number 
uf citizens, not less than six thousand, voting secretly and there- 
fore independently, were required to take part, pronouncing upon 
one or other of these eminent rivals a sentence of exile for ten 
years: the one who remained became of course more powerful, 
yet less in a situation to be driven into anti-constitutional courses, 
‘lan he was before. I shall in a future chapter speak again of this 
wise precaution, and vindicate it against some erroneous interpreta. 
tions to which it has given rise ; at present, I merely notice its anal- 
ogy with the previous Solonian law, and its tendency to accomplish 
the same purpose of terminating a fierce party-feud by artificially 
“alling in the votes of the mass of impartial citizens against one 
or other of the leaders,— with this important difference, that 
while Solon assumed the hostile parties to be actually in arms, 
the ostracism averted that grave public calamity by applying its 
remedy to the premonitory symptoms. i 

| have already considered, in a previous chapter, the directions 
given by Solon for the more orderly recital of the Homerie 
poems ; and it is curious to contrast his reverence for the old apie 
with the unqualified repugnance which he manifested towards 
Thespis and the drama, — then just nascent, and holding out 
little promise of its subsequent excellence. Tragedy and comedy 
were now beginning to be grafted on the lyric and choric song. 
First, one actor was provided to relieve the chorus, — subse 
quently, two actors were introduced to sustain fictitious characters 
and carry om a dialogue, in such manner that the songs of the 
chorus and the interlocution of the actors formed a continuous 
piece. Solon, after having heard Thespis acting (as all the early 
composers did, both tragic and comic) in his own comedy, asked 
him afterwards if he was not ashamed to pronounce such false- 
hoods before so large an audience. And when Thespis answered 


SOLUN QUITS HIS NATIVE CITY 147 


that there was no harm in saying and doing such things merely 
for amusement, Solon indignantly exclaimed, striking the ground 
with his stick,' “If once we come to praise and esteem such 
amusement as this, we shall quickly find the effects of it in our 
daily transactions.” For the authenticity of this anecdote it 
would be rash to vouch, but we may at least treat it as the pro- 
test of some early philosopher against the deceptions of the 
drama; and it is interesting, as marking the incipient struggles 
of that literature in which Athens afterwards attained such un- 
rivalled excellence. 

It would appear that all the laws of Solon were proclaimed, 
inscribed, and accepted without either discussion or resistance, 
He is said to have described them, not as the best laws which he 
could himself have imagined, but as the best which he could 
have induced the people to accept ; he gave them validity for the 
space of ten years, for which period? both the senate collectively 
and the archons individually swore to observe them with fidelity, 
under penalty, in case of non-observance, of a golden statue, as 
large as life, to be erected at Delphi. But though the acceptance 
of the laws was accomplished without difficulty, it was not found 
s0 easy either for the people to understand and obey, or for the 
framer to explain them. Every day, persons came to Solon 
either with praise, or criticism, or suggestions of various improve- 
ments, Or questions as to the construction of particular enact. 
ments; until at last he became tired of this endless process of 
reply and vindication, which was seldom successful either in re 
moving obscurity or in satisfying complainants. Foreseeing that, 
if he remained, he would be compelled to make changes, he obtained 
leave of absence from his countrymen for ten years, trusting that 
before the expiration of that period they would have become ac- 
customed to his laws. He quitted his native city, in the full 
certainty that his laws would remain unrepealed until his return ; 
for, says Herodotus, “ the Athenians could not repeal them, since 
they were bound by solemn oaths to observe them for ten years.” 
The unqualified manner in which the historian here speaks of an 
uath, as if it created a sort of physical necessity, and shut out all 


* 


' Plutarch, Solon, 29 ; Diogen. Laért. i, 59. 
* Plutarch, Solon, 15. 


148 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


possibility of a contrary result, deserves notice as illustrating 
Grecian sentiment.! 

On departing from Athens, Solon first visited Egypt, where he 
communicated largely with Psendphis of Heliopolis and Sonchis 
of Sais, Egyptian priests, who had much to tell respecting their 
ancient history, and from whom he learned matters, real or pre 
tended, far transcending in alleged antiquity the oldest Grecian 
genealogies, — especially the history of the vast submerged isl- 
and of Atlantis, and the war which the ancestors of the Athenians 
had successfully carried on against it, nine thousand years before. 
Solon is said to have commenced an epic poem upon this subject, 
but he did not live to finish it, and nothing of it now remains. 
From Egypt he went to Cyprus, where he visited the small town 
of /Ereia, said to have been originally founded by Demophon, 
son of Theseus; it was then under the dominion of the prince 
Philokyprus, — each town in Cyprus having its own petty prince. 
It was situated near the river Klarius, in a position precipitous 
and secure, but inconvenient and ill-supplied; and Solon per- 
suaded Philokyprus to quit the old site, and establish a new town 
down in the fertile piaia beneath. He himself stayed and became 
ekist of the new establishment, making all the regulations 
requisite for its safe and prosperous march, which was indeed so 
decisively manifested that many new settlers flocked into the new 
plantation, called by Philokyprus Soli, in honor of Solon. Ta 
our deep regret, we are not permitted to know what these regu- 
lations were; but the general fact is attested by the poems of 
Solon himself, and the lines, in which he bade farewell to Philo 
kyprus on quitting the island, are yet before us. On the dispo- 
sitions of this prince, his poem bestowed unqualified commen- 
dation.2 


1 Herodot. i, 29. Σόλων, ἀνὴρ ᾿Αϑηναῖος, ὃς ᾿Αϑηναίοισι νόμους κελεύσαοι 
ποιῆσας, ἀπεδήμησε ἔτεα δέκα, ἵνα δὴ μὴ τινα τῶν νόμων ἀναγκάσϑῃ λῦσαι 
τῶν ἔϑετο" αὑτοὶ γὰρ οὐκ οἷοι τε ἧσαν αὐτὸ ποιῆσαι ᾿Αϑηναῖοι 
ὁρκίοισι γὰρ μεγάλοισι κατείχοντο, δέκα ἔτεα χρήσεσϑαε νόμοισι 
Τοὺς ἄν σφι Σόλων ϑῆται. 

One hundred years is the term stated by Plutarch (Solon, 25). 

? Plutarch, Solon, 26; Herodot. v, 113. The statements of Diogenés 
that Solon founded Soli in Kilikia, and that he died in Cyprus, are not 
worthy of credit (Diog. Laért. i, 51-62). 

5 Vol.3 


SOLON AND CRESUS. 149 


Besides his visit to Egypt and Cyprus, a story was also current 
of his having conversed with the Lydian king Croesus, at Sardis; 
and the communication said to have taken place between them, 
has been woven by Herodotus into a sort of moral tale, which 
forms one of the most beautiful episodes in his whole history. 
Though this tale has been told and retold as if it were genuine 
history, yet, as it now stands, it is irreconcilable with chronology, 
— although, very possibly, Solon may at some time or other have 
visited Sardis, and seen Croesus as hereditary prince.! 


! Plutarch tells us that several authors rejected the reality of this interview 
as being chronologically impossible. It is to be recollected that the question 
all turns upon the interview as described by Herodotus and its alleged sequel; 
‘or that there may have been an interview between Solon and Croesus at 
Sardis, at some period between B. c. 594 and 560, is possible, though not 
shown. 

It is evident that Solon made no mention of any interview with Croesus 
in his poems; otherwise, the dispute would have been settled at once. 
Now this, in a man like Solon, amounts to negative evidence of some value 
for he noticed in his poems both Egypt and the prinve Philokyprus in 
Cyprus, and had there been an) conversation so impressive as that which 
Herodotus relates, between him and Creesus, he could hardly have failed ta 
mention it. 

Wesseling, Larcher, Volney, and Mr. Clinton, all try to obviate the chre 
nological difficulties, and to save the historical character of this interview, 
but in my judgment unsuccessfully. See Mr. Clinton’s F, H. ad ann. 546 
B.c., and Appendix, c. 17, p. 298. The chronological data are these, — 
Croesus was born in 595 B. c., one year before the legislation of Solon: he 
sueceeded to his father at the age of thirty-five, in 560 B. c.: he was over- 
thrown, and Sardis captured, in 546 B. c., by Cyrus. 

Mr. Clinton, after Wesseling and the others, supposes that Croesus was 
king jointly with his father Halyattés, during the lifetime of the latter, and 
that Solon visited Lydia and conversed with Croesus during this joint reign 
in 570 8. c. “We may suppose that Solon left Athens in B. Ο. 575, about 
twenty years after his archonship, and returned thither in B c. 565, about 
five years before the usurpation of Peisistratus.” (p. 300.) Upon whick 
hypothesis we may remark : — 

1 The arguments whereby Wesseling and Mr. Clinton endeavor to show 
that Croesus was king jointly with his father, do not sustain the conclusion 
The passage of Nikolaus Damaskenus, which is produced to show that it was 
Halyattés (and not Croesus) who conquered Karia, only attests that Halyat- 
tés marched with an armed force into Karia (ἐπὶ Καρίαν στρατεύων) : this 
same author states, that Croesus was deputed by Hatyattés to govern 
Adramyttiun and the plain of Thébé (ἄρχειν ἀποδεδειγμένος), but Mr. Clintor 


15G HISTORY OF GREECE. 


But even if no chronological objections existed, the moral pur 
pose of the tale is so prominent, and pervades it so systemat: 


stretches this testimony to an inadmissible extent when he makes it tanta- 
mount to a conquest of olis by Halyattés, (“so that Molis is already com 
guered.”) Nothing at all is said about ®olis, or the cities of the olic 
Grecks, in this passage of Nikolaus, which represents Croesus as governing a 
surt of satrapy under his father Halyattés, just as Cyrus the younger did in 
after-times under Artaxerxés. And the expression of Herodotus, ἐπεί re, 
δόντος τοῦ πατρὸς, ἐκράτησε τῆς ἀρχῆς ὁ Κροῖσος, appears to me, when taken 
along with the context, to indicate a bequest or nomination of successor, and 
not a donation during life. 

2. The hypothesis, therefore, that Croesus was king 570 B. c., during the 
lifetime of his father, is one purely gratuitous, resorted to on account of the 
chronological difficulties connected with the account of Herodotus. But it 
is quite insufficient for such a purpose ; it does not save us from the neces- 
sity of contradicting Herodotus in most of his particulars ; there may, per- 
haps, have been an interview between Solon and Creesus in B. c. 570, but it 
cannot be the interview described by Herodotus. That interview takes place 
within ten years after the promulgation of Solon’s laws, — at the maximurr 
of the power of Croesus, and after numerous conquests effected by himself 
as king, — at a time when Creesus had a son old enough to be married and 
to command armies (Herod. i, 35), — at a time, moreover, immediately pre 
ceding the turn of his fortunes from prosperity to adversity, first in the 
death of his son succeeded by two years of mourning, which were put an 
end to (πένϑεος ἀπέπαυσε, Herod. i, 46) by the stimulus of war with the Per 
sians. That war, if we read the events of it as described in Herodotus, 
cannot have lasted more than three or four years,—so that the interview 
between Solon and Croesus, as Herodotus conceived it, may be fairly stated to 
have occurred within seven years before the capture of Sardis. 

If we put together all these conditions, it will appear that the interview 
recounted by Herodotus is a chronological impossibility : and Niebuhr (Rom, 
zesch. vol. i, p. 579) is right in saying that the historian has fallen into 4 
mistake of ten olympiads, or forty years; his recital would consist with 
chronology, if we suppose that the Solonian legislation were referable to 554 
B. c., and not 594. 

In my judgment, this is an illustrative tale, in which certain real charac. 
ters,— Croesus and Solon; and certain real facts, —the great power and 
succeeding ruin of the former by the victorious arm of Cyrus, — together 
with certain facts probably altogether fictitious, such as the two sons of 
Croesus, the Phyrgian Adrastus and his history, the hunting of the mis 
chievous wild boar on Mount Olympus the ultimate preservation of Croesus, 
ete., are put together so as to convey an impressive moral lesson. The 
whole adventure of Adrastus and the son of Croesus is depicted in language 
«ninently beautiful and poctical. 

Plutarch treat« the impressiveness and suitableness of this narrative ag 


SOLON AND CRESUS. 151 


ically, from beginning to end, that these internal grounds are of 
themselves sufficiently strong to impeach its credibility as a 
matter of fact, unless such doubts happen to be outweighed — 
which in this case they are not— by good contemporary testi- 
mony. The narrative of Solon and Croesus can be taken for 
nothing else but an illustrative fiction, borrowed by Herodotus 
from some philosopher, and clothed in his own peculiar beauty of 
expression, which on this occasion is more decidedly poetical than 
τὰ habitual with him. I cannot transcribe, and I hardly dare te 
abridge it. The vainglorious Croesus, at the summit of his con- 
quests and his riches, endeavors to win from his visitor Solon an 
opinion that he is the happiest of mankind. The latter, after 
having twice preferred to him modest and meritorious Grecian 
citizens, at length reminds him that his vast wealth and power 
are of a tenure too precarious to serve as an evidence of happi- 
ness, —that the gods are jealous and meddlesome, and often 
make the show of happiness a mere prelude to extreme disaster, 
- and that no man’s life can be called happy until the whole of 
it has been played out, so that it may be seen to be out of the 
reach of reverses. ‘Creesus treats this opinion as absurd, but 4 
great judgment from God fell upon him, after Solon was depart- 
a — probably (observes Herodotus) because he fancied himself 
the happiest of all men.” First, he lost ‘his favorite son Atys, 8 
brave and intelligent youth, — his only other son being dumb. 
For the Mysians of Olympus, being ruined by a destructive and 


historical truth, and puts aside the chronological tables 
following 


arks: “Plutarch must have had a very imperfect idea of the 
suitableness of 8 


the best proof of its ' 
as unworthy of trust. Upon which reasoning Mr. Clinton has the 
very just rem 
sature of historical evidence, if he could imagine that the of 
story to the character of Solon was a better argument for its authenticity 
than the number of witnesses by whom it is attested. Those who invented 
the scene (assuming it to be a fiction) would surely have had the skill to 
adapt the discourse to the character of the actors.” (p. 300 ) 

To make this remark quite complete, it would be necessary to add the 
words “ trustworthiness and means of knowledge,” in addition to the “ wg 
of attesting witnesses. And it is a remark the more worthy of πῆμ": 
inasmuch as Mr. Clinton here pointedly adverts to the existence of planus 


fiction, as being completely distinct from attested matter of fact, — risers 
tion of which he ‘ook no account in his vindication of the histors 


credibility of the eaily Greek legends 


152 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


— te boar nage they were unable to subdue, applied 
or aid to Creesus, who sent to the spot a chosen huntine fore 

and permitted, though with great ssieccitiaie in Pes Reagge 
an alarming dream,-—that his favorite son should accompany 
them. The young prince was unintentionally slain by the Phry- 
gian exile Adrastus, whom Croesus had sheltered and protected ;! 
and he had hardly recovered from the anguish of this misfortune, 
when the rapid growth of Cyrus and the Persian power induced 
him to go to war with them, against the advice of his wisest 
counsellors. After a struggle of about three years he was com- 
pletely defeated, his capital Sardis taken by storm, and himself 
made prisoner. Cyrus ordered a large pile to be prepared, and 
placed upon it Croesus in fetters, together with fourteen young 
Lydians, in the intention of burning them alive, either as a re- 
ligious offering, or in fulfilment of a vow, “or perhaps (says He- 
rodotus) to see whether some of the gods would not interfere to 
rescue a man so preéminently pious as the king of Lydia.”2 In 
this sad extremity, Croesus bethought him of the warning which 
he had before despised, and thrice pronounced, with a deep groan, 
the name of Solon. Cyrus desired the interpreters to inquire 
whom he was invoking, and learned in reply the anecdote of the 
Athenian lawgiver, together with the solemn memento which he 
had offered to Croesus during more prosperous days, attesting the 
frail tenure of all human greatness. The remark sunk deep into 
the Persian monarch, as a token of what might happen to him- 
self: he repented of his purpose, and directed that the pile, which 
had already been kindled, should be immediately extinguished. 
But the orders came too late; in spite of the most zealous efforts 


' Herod. i, 32. ‘2 Κροῖσε, ériatauevov μὲ τὸ ϑεῖον, πᾶν ἐὸν φϑονερόν τε Kal 
ταραχῶδες, ἐπειρωτᾷς μὲ ἀνθρωπηΐων πραγμάτων πέρι. i, 34. Μετὰ δὲ Σόλωνα 
οἰχύμενον, ἔλαβεν ἐκ ϑεοὺ νέμεσις μεγάλη Κροῖσον, ὡς εἰκάσαι ὅτι ἐνόμισε 
ἑωῦτὸν εἶναι ἀνϑρώπων ἀπήντων ὑλβεώτατον. 

The hunting-match, and the terrible wild boar with whom the Mrysians 
cannot cope, appear to be borrowed from the legend of Kalydén. The whole 
scene of Adrastus, returning after the accident in a state of desperate 
remorse, praying for death with outstretched hands, spared by Croesus, and 
then killing himself on the tomb of the young prince, is Ceeply tragie 
»Herad. i, 44-45). 

* Herodot. i, 85. 


RETURN OF SOLON TO ATHENS. 152 


of the bystanders, the flame was found unquenchable, and Croesus 
would still have been burned, had he not implored with prayers 
and tears the succor of Apollo, to whose Delphian and Theban 
temples he had given such munificent presents. His prayers 
were heard, the fair sky was immediately overcast, and a profuse 
rain descended, sufficient to extinguish the flames.! The life of 
(‘roesus was thus saved, and he became afterwards the confiden- 
tial friend and adviser of his conqueror. 

Such is the brief outline of a narrative which Herodotus has 
siven with full development and with impressive effect. It would 
have served as a show-lecture to the youth of Athens, not less 
admirably than the well-known fable of the Choice of Héraklés, 
which the philosopher Prodikus,? a junior contemporary of He- 
rodotus, delivered with so much popularity. It illustrates forcibly 
the religious and ethical ideas of antiquity; the deep sense of 
the jealousy of the gods, who would not endure pride in any one 
except themselves ;3 the impossibility, for any man, of realizing 
to himself more than a very moderate share of happiness; the 
danger from reactionary nemesis, if at any time he had over- 
passed such limit; and the necessity of calculations taking in the 
whole of life, as a basis for rational comparison of different indi 
viduals ; and as a practical consequence from these feelings, a 
constant protest on the part of the moralists against vehement 
ympulses and unrestrained aspirations. The more valuable this 
narrative appears, in its illustrative character, the less can we 
presume to treat it as a history. 

It is much to be regretted that we have no information respect- 
ing events in Attica immediately after the Solonian laws and 
constitution, which were promulgated in 594 B. C., so as to under- 
stand better the practical effect of these changes. What we next 
hear respecting Solon in Attica refers to a period immediatel» 
preceding the first usurpation of Peisistratus in 560 B. C., and 


1 Herodot. i, 86, 87: compare Plutarch, Solon, 27-28. See a similar 
story about Gygés king of Lydia (Valerius Maxim. vii, 1, 2). 
3 Xenoph. Memorab. ii, 1, 21. Πρόδικος ὁ σοφὸς ἐν τῷ συγγράμματι τῷ 
περὶ Ἡρακλέους, ὅπερ δὴ καὶ πλείστοις ἐπιδείκνυται, ete. 
3 Herodot. vii, 10. φιλέει γὰρ ὁ ϑεὸς τὰ ὑπερέχοντα πάντα κολοίειν. «.« «- 
ob yap ἐᾷ φρονέειν μέγα 6 ϑεὸς GAP ov ἢ ἑωῦτόν. 
7* 


154 AISTURY OF GREECE. 


after the return of Solon from his long absence. We are here 
again introduced to the same oligarchical dissensions as are ee 
ported to have prevailed before the Solonian legislation: the 
pedieis, or opulent proprietors of the plain round Athens, under 
Lykurgus; the parali of the south of Attica, under Megaklés: 
and the diakrii, or mountaineers of the eastern cantons the sci 
ex of the three classes, under Peisistratus, are in . state of 
vivlent intestine dispute. The account of Plutarch represents 
Solon as returning to Athens during the height of this sedition. 
He was treated with respect by all parties, but his recommenda- 
tions were no longer obeyed, and he was disqualified by age 
from acting with effect in public. He employed his best efforts 
to mitigate party animosities, and applied himself particularly to 
restrain the ambition of Peisistratus, whose ulterior projects he 
quickly detected. | 
The future greatness of Peisistratus is said to have been first 
portended by a miracle which happened, even before his birth 
to his father Hippokratés at the Olympic games. It was venlined. 
partly by his bravery and conduct, which had been displayed in 
the capture of Niswa from the Megarians,! — partly by his pop- 


' Herodot. i, 59. I record this allusion to Niswa and the Megarian war 
because I find it distinctly stated in Herodotus; and because it may possib] , 
refer to some other /ater war between Athens and Megara than that which is 
mentioned in Plutarch’s Life of Solon as having taken place before the 
Solonian legislation (that is, before 594 Β. 6.), and therefore nearly fort 
years before this movement of Peisistratus to acquire the despotism. Pei 
sistratus must then have been so young that he could not with any pro riety 
be said to have “ captured Nisa” (Νίσαιάν τε ἑλών) : moreover ‘the aie 
reputation, which was found useful to the ambition of Peisistratus in 60 
B. C., must have rested upon something more recent than his bravery dis- 
played about 597 Β. c.; just as the celebrity which enabled Napoleon to 
play the game of successful ambition on the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 1799) was 
obtained by victories gained within the preceding five years, and could a 
have been represented hy any historian as resting upon victories gained in 
the Seven Years’ war, between 1756-1763. 

At the same time. my belief is that the words of Herodotus respecting 
Peisistratus do really refer to the Megarian war mentioned in Platarch’s 
~ife of Solon, and that Herodotus supposed that Megarian war to have 
been much more near to the despotism of Peisistratus than it really was. In 
the conception of Herodotus, and by what (after Niebuhr) I venture tw call 
a mistake in bis chronology, the interval between 600-560 Β. c. shrinks ones 


STRATAGEM OF PEISISTRATUS. 155 


larity of speech and manners, his championship of the poor,! 
and his ostentatious disavowal of all selfish pretensions, — partly 
by an artful mixture of stratagem and force. Solon, after having 
addressed fruitless remonstrances to Peisistratus himself, publicly 


denounced his designs in verses addressed to the people. The 
deception, whereby Peisistratus finally accomplished his design, 
i; memorable in Grecian tradition.2 He appeared one day in 
the agora of Athens in his chariot with a pair of mules: he had 
intentionally wounded both his person and the mules, and in this 
condition he threw himself upon the compassion and defence of 
the people, pretending that his political enemies had violently 
attacked him. He implored the people to grant him a guard, 
and at the moment when their sympathies were freshly aroused 
both in his favor and against his supposed assassins, Aristo pro- 


forty years to littie or nothing. Such mistake appears, not only on the 
present occasion, but also upon two others: first, in regard to the alleged 
dialogue between Solon and Creesus, described and commented upon a few 
pages above; next, in regard to the poet Alkseus and his inglorious retreat 
before the Athenian troops at Sigeium and Achilleium, where he lost his 
shield, when the Mityleneans were defeated. The reality of this incident is 
indisputable, since it was mentioned by Alkseus himself in one of his songs; 
nts it to have occurred in an Athenian expedition 
directed by Peisistratus. Now the war in which Alkzeus incurred this misfor- 
tune, and which was brought to a close by the mediation of Periander of 
Corinth, must have taken place earlier than 584 B.C. and probably took 
place before the legislation of Solon; long before the time when Peisistratus 
had the direction of Athenian affairs, — though the latter may have carried 


on, and probably did carry on, another and a later war against the Mityle 
which led to the introduction of his illegitimate son, 


but Herodotus represe 


neans in those regions, 
Hegesistratus, as despot of Sigeium (Lerod. v. 94-95). 

If we follow the representation given by Herodotus of these three differ- 
nts, we shall see that the same chronological mistake per- 


ent strings of eve 
er nearly ten olympiads, or forty years. 


vades all of them,—he jumps ov 
Alkeus is the contemporary of Pittakus and Solon. 

I have already remarked, in the previous chapter respecting the despots 
of Siky6n (ch. ix.), another imstance of confused chronology in Herodotus 
respecting the events of this period,—respecting Croesus, Megaklés, Alkmax6n 
and Kleisthenés of Sikyon. 

! Aristot. Politic. v, 4,5; Plutarch, Solon, 29. 

3 Plato, Republic, viii, p. 565. τὸ τυραννικὸν αἴτημα τὸ πολυϑρυλλητὸν 

-+++-alreiy τὸν δῆμον φύλακάς τινας τοῦ σώματος, ἵνα σῶς αὐτοῖς % ὁ τεῦ 


μου Bondoc. 


156 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


posed formally to the ekklesia, — the pro-bouleutic senate, bein 
composed of friends of Peisistratus, had previously edna 
the proposition,! — that a company of fifty club-men should be 
assigned as a permanent body-guard for the defence of Pei sist 
tus. To this motion Solon opposed a strenuous πεν an 
found himself overborne, and even treated as if bis hed lost * 
senses. The poor were earnest in favor of it, while the vith ‘cn 
afraid to express their dissent ; and he could only comfort ἜΡΘΗ 
alter the fatal vete had been passed, by exclaiming that he ni 
wiser than the former and more determined than the latter Su oh 
a one of the first known instances in which this aie ail 
stratagem was playe ’ agains 3 an 
bt ag was played off against the liberty of a Grecian com- 
| Phe unbounded popular favor which had procured the passing 
of this grant, was still farther manifested by the alisunce of all 
precautions to prevent the limits of the orant from being ince: 


ed. The r of the 
1. ‘The number of the body-cuard was not long confined to 


ΠῚ Γ ξ ® ‘ r —_— 
ty, and probably their clubs were soon exchanged for sharper 


weapons. Peisistratus thus found himself strong enough to throw 
off the mask and seize the acropolis. His lendion yponents 
Megakles and the Alkmz6nids, immediately fled the aes and i 
was left to the venerable age and undaunted patriotism of Sol , 
to stand forward almost alone in a vain attempt to ila ‘de 
usurpation. He publicly presented himself in the nickel la : 
employing encouragement, remonstrance, and reproach in si 
to rouse the spirit of the people. To prevent this deapetinsn from 
coming, he told them would have been easy ; to shake it off ow 
was more difficult, yet at the same time more plorious 3 hi ks 
spoke 235 vain; for all who were not actually saat to etiam 
re einige δῖ to their fears, and remained passive; nor 
did any one join Solon, when, as a last appeal, he put on his 
armor and planted himself in military posture before the door f 
his house. “I have done my duty, he exclaimed at lengtl Ἢ 
have sustained to the best of my power my country ait ὼ 


l Di ~~ - μ 
iog. 9. ἡ βουλὴ, Πε [ ἤ 

“ων Laért. i, 49. ἡ βουλὴ, Πεισιστρατίδαι ὄντες, ete. 
Plutarch, Solon, 29-30; Diog. Laért. i, 50-51 


* Plutarch, Sol . i 
ἢ, Solon, 30; Diogen. Laért. i, 49; Di > “ἕω 
δ Melt. ἣν. xic~xzxiv. 5 , 49; Diodor. Excerpta, lib. vii-z 


DEATH OF SOLON. 157 


» and he then renounced all farther hope of opposition, — 
nees of his friends that he should flee, 


when they asked him on what he relied 
age.” Nor did he even think it nec- 
ations of his Muse: some verses yet 
remain, composed seemingly at a moment when the strong hand 
of the new despot had begun to make itself sorely felt, in which 
he tells his countrymen: “If ye have endured sorrow from your 
own baseness of soul, impute not the fault of this to the gods. 
Ye have yourselves put force and dominion into the hands of 
these men, and have thus drawn upon yourselves wretched 
slavery.” 

It is gratifying to lk 
throughout his despotism 
touched. How long this 
tical subversion of his 
determine ; but according to the most 
the very next year, at the advanced age of eighty. 

We have only to regret that we are deprived of the means ot 
following more in detail his noble and exemplary character. He 
represents the best tendencies of his age, combined with much 
the improved ethical sensibility ; the 
and observation, not less potent in 
old age than in youth; the conception of regularized popular in- 
stitutions, departing sensibly from the type and spirit of the gov- 
alculated to found a new character in 
and reflecting sympathy with the 
mass of the poor, anxious not merely to rescue them from the op- 
pressions of the rich, but also to create in them habits of self- 
relying industry ; lastly, duriug his temporary possession of 8 
power altogether arbitrary, not merely an absence of all selfish 
ambition, but a rare discretion in seizing the mean between con- 
flicting exigencies. In reading his poems we must always recol- 
lect that what now appears common-place was once new, SO that to 
his comparatively unlettered age, the social pictures which he 
draws were still fresh, and his exhortations calculated to live in 
the memory. The poems composed on moral subjects, generally 
inculcate a spirit of gentleness towards others and moderation in 
nersonal objects ; they represent the gods as irresistible, retribu- 


laws: 
though resisting the insta 
and returning for answer, 
for protection, “On my old 
essary to repress the inspir 


‘arn that Peisistratus, whose conduct 
was comparatively mild, left Solon un- 
distinguished man survived the prac- 
own constitution, we cannot certainly 
probable statement he died 


that is personally excellent ; 
thirst for enlarged knowledge 


ernments around him, and ὁ 
the Athenian people; a genuine 


153 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


tive, favoring the good and punishing the bad, though sometimes 
very tardily. but his compositions on special and present occa- 
sions are usually conceived in a more vigorous spirit; denounc- 
ung the oppressions o! the rich at one time, and the timid submission 
to Peisistratus at another, — and expressing, in emphatic language, 
his own proud consciousness of having stood forward as champion 
cf the mass of the people. Of his early poems hardly anything 
iz preserved; the few lines which remain seem to manifest a jo- 
vial temperament, which we may well conceive to have been over- 
laid by the political difficulties against which he had to contend, 
— difficulties arising successively out of the Megarian war, the 
Kylonian sacrilege, the public despondency healed by Epimenidés, 
and the task of arbiter between a rapacious oligarchy and a suf- 
fering people. In one of his elegies, addressed to Mimnermus, 
he marked out the sixtieth year as the longest desirable period of 
lite, in preference to the eightieth year, which that poet had ex- 
pressed a wish to attain ;! but his own life, as far as we can judge, 
seems to have reached the longer of the two periods, and not the 
least honorable part of it —the resistance to Peisistratus — oc- 
curs immediately before his death. 

There prevailed a story, that his ashes were collected and scat- 
tered around the island of Salamis, which Plutarch treats as 
absurd, — though he tells us at the same time that it was believed 
both by Aristotle, and by many other considerable men: it is at 
least as ancient as the poet Kratinus, who alluded to it in one of 
his comedies, and I do not feel inclined to reject it.2 The inserip- 
tion on the statue of Solon at Athens described him as a Salami- 
nian: he had been the great means of acquiring the island for his 
country,— and it seems highly probable that among the new 
Athenian citizens who went to settle there, he may have received 
a lot of land and become enrolled among the Salaminian demots. 
The dispersion of his ashes in various parts of the island conneets 
him with it as in some sort the cekist; and we may construe tliat 


᾿ Solon, Fragment 22, ed Bergk. Isokratés affirms that Solon was the 
frst person to whom the appellation Sophist —in later times carrying with 
it so much obloquy — was applied, (Isokratés, Or. xv, De Permutatione, p 
344; p. 496, Bek.) 

* Plutarch, Solon, 32; Kratinus ap. Diogen. Laért i, 62. 


2QMAN LAW OF DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 159 


incident, if not as the expression of a public vote, at least as 8 
piece of affectionate vanity on the part of his surviving friends.! 
We have now reached the period of the usurpation of - Peisis- 
tratus (B. Cc. 560), whose dynasty governed Athens — with two 
temporary interruptions during the life of Peisistratus himself — 
for fifty years. The history of this despotism, milder than Gre- 
cian despotism generally, and productive of important conse- 
quences to Athens, will be reserved for a succeeding chapter. 


APPENDIX. 


Tur explanation which M. von Savigny gives of the Nexi and Addict 
under the old Roman law of debtor and creditor (after he has refuted the 
elucidation of Niebuhr on the same subject), while it throws great light 
on the historical changes in Roman legislation on that important subject, 
sets forth at the same time the marked difference made in the procedure of 
Rome, between the demand of the creditor for repayment of principal, and 
the demand for payment of interest. ” we 

The primitive Roman law distinguished a debt arising from satay ent 
(pecunia certa credita) from debts arising out of contract, delict, sale, etc., - 
any other source: the creditor on the former ground had a quick and easy 
process, by which he acquired the fullest power over the person and property 
of his debtor. After the debt on loan was either confessed or proved before 
the magistrate, thirty days were allowed to the debtor for payment: if pay- 
ment was not made within that time, the creditor laid hold of him (manus 
injectio) and carried him before the magistrate again. The debtor was sh 
acain required either to pay or to find a surety (vinder) ; if neither of these 
demands were complied with, the creditor took possession of him and car 
ried him home, where he kept him in chains for two months ; during which 
interval he brought him before the praetor publicly on three successive nun- 
ding. If the debt was not paid within these two months, the sentence of 
addiction was pronounced, and the creditor became empowered either to put 
his debtor to death, or to sell him for a slave (p. 81), or to keep him at forced 
work, without any restriction as to the degree of ill usage which might be 
inflicted upon him. The judgment of the magistrate authorized him, be- 
sides, to seize the property of his debtor wherever he could find any, within 


' Aristidés, in noticing this story of the spreading of the ashes of Solon in 
Salamis, treats him as 'Αρχηγέτης of the island (Orat. xIvi, Ὑπὲρ τῶν TETTO 
pwr, p. 172; p. 330, Dindorf). The inscription on his statue, which descrites 
aim as born in Salamis, can hardly have been literally true ; for when he 
was born, Salamis was not incorporated in Attica; but it may have been 
true by a sort of adoption (see Diogen. Laért. i, 62). The statue seems to 
have been erected by the Salaminians tazmselves, a long time after Solon 


see Menage ad Diogen. Laért. ἐς c. 


166 HISTORY OF GREECY¥. 


the limits sufficient for payment: this was one of the points which Niebuhr 
had denied. 

Such was the old law of Rome, with respect to the consequences of an 
action for money had and received, for more than a century after the Twelve 
Tables. But the law did not apply this stringent personal execution to any 
debt except that arising from loan, — and even in that debt only to the princi- 
pal money, not to the interest, — which latter had to be claimed by a process 
both more gentle and less efficient, applying to the property only and not to 
the person of the debtor. Accordingly, it was to the advantage of the creditor 
to devise some means for bringing his claim of interest under the same 
stringent process as his claim for the principal ; it was also to his advantage, 
if his claim arose, not out of money lent, but out of sale, compensation for 
injury, or any other source, to give it the form of an action for money lent. 
Now the nexum, or nexi obligatio, was an artifice —a fictitious loan — 
whereby this purpose was accomplished. The severe process which legally 
belonged only to the recovery of the principal money, was extended by the 
nexum so as to comprehend the interest; and so as to comprehend, also, 
claims for money arising from all other sources (as well as from loan), 
wherein the law gave no direct recourse except against the property of a 
debtor. The debitor nexus was made liable by this legal artifice to pass 
into the condition of an addictus, either without having borrowed money 
at all, or for the interest as well as for the principal of that which he had 
borrowed. 

The Lex Peetelia, passed a out B. c. 325, liberated all the nexi then under 
liability, and interdicted the nexi obligatio forever afterwards (Cicero, De 
Republ. ii, 34; Livy, viii, 28). Here, as in the seisachtheia of Solon, the 
existing contracts were cancelled, at the same time that the whole class of 
similar contracts were forbidden for the future. 

But though the nexi obligatio was thus abolished. the old stringent rem 
edy still continued against the debtor on loan, as far as the principal sum 
sorrowed, apart from interest. Some mitigations were introduced : by a Lex 
Julia, the still more important provision was added, that the debtor by 
means of a cessio bonorum might save his person from seizure. But thig 
cessio bonorum was coupled with conditions which could not always bg 
fulfilled, nor was the debtor admitted to the benefit of it, if he had been 
guilty of carelessness or dishonesty. Accordingly, the old stringent process, 
and the addiction in which it ended, though it became less frequent, still 
continued throughout the course of Imperial Rome, and even down to the 
time of Justinian. The private prison, with adjudicated debtors working in 
it, was still the appendage to a Roman money-lender’s house, even in the 
third and fourth centuries after the Christian era. though the practice seems 
tou have become rarer and rarer. The status of the addictus debitor, with its 
peculiar rights and obligations, is discussed by Quintilian (vii, 3); and Aulus 
Gellius observes: “ Addici namque nunc et vinciri multos videmus, quia vin- 
culorum peenam deterrimi iomines contemnunt,” (xx, 1.) 

If the addictus debitor was adjudged to several creditors, they wera 
ullowed by the Twelve Tables to divide his body among them. No example 


ROMAN LAW OF DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 16} 


was known of this puwer having been τ carried into effect, but the law 
fas srstood to give the power distinctly. 
Ἢ t papain τὴ have res us the old Roman law of debtor and creditor, 
partly as a point of comparison with the ante-Solonian practice in Attica, 
partly to illustrate the difference drawn in an early state of society between 
the claim for the principal and the claim for the interest. 

See the Abhandlung of Von Savigny in the Transactions of the Berlin 
Academy for 1833, pp. 70-103; the subject is also treated by the same 
admirable expositor, in his System des heutigen Romischen Rechts, vol. v, 
sect. 219, and in Beilage xiv, 10-11 of that volume. 

The same peculiar stringent process, which was available in the case of 
an action for pecunia certa credita, was also specially oxtenaee to the eg 
who had paid down money to liquidate another man’s debt ; the debtor, i 
solvent, became his addictus,— this was the actio depenst. I have already 
remarked in a former note, that in the Attic law, a case analogous to this 
‘was the only one in which the original remedy against the person of the 


debtor was always maintained. When aman had paid money to redeem a 


citizen from captivity, the latter, if he did not repay it, became the slave of the 

party who had advanced the money. ae 
Walter (Geschichte des Rémischen Rechts, sects. 583-715, 2d ed.) calls in 

question the above explanation of Von Savigny, on grounds which do not 


appear to me sufficient. ea 

How long the feeling continued, that it was immoral and en to 
receive any interest at all for money lent, may be seen from the “inti 
notice respecting the state of the law in France even down to li apes DE 

“ Avant la Révolution Francaise (de 1789) le prét a intérét n’était pas 
également admis dans les diverses parties du royaume. Dans les pays δ᾿ 
droit écrit, il était permis de stipuler Pintéret des déniers prétés : mais la 
jurisprudence des parlemens resistait souvent ἃ cet usage. Suivant le oo 
commun des pays coutumiers, on ne pouvait stipuler aucun ἰπυότϑε pour le 
prét appelé en droit mutuum. On tenait pour maxime que Vargent ne pro- 
duisant rien par lui-méme, un tel prét devait étre gratuit : que la perception 
d'intéréts était une usure: a cet égard, on admettait assez généralement les 
principes du droit canonique. Du reste, la législation et la ae 
variaient suivant les localités et suivant la nature des contrats et seni ) ον 
tions.” (Carette, Lois Annotées, ou Lois, Décrets, Ordonnances, Paris 1848; 
Note sur le Décret de l’Assemblée Nationale concernant le Prét et Intérét, 

1789. 

a “ Εἰκλσδὸ Assembly declared the legality of all loans on interest, 
“suivant le taux déterminé par la loi,” but did not then fix any special pale. 
“Te décret du 11 Avril, 1793, défendit la vente et l’achat du seaonaied 
“La loi du 6 floréal, an 111, déclara que lor et largent sont aye 
mais elle fut rapportée par le décret du 2 prairial suivant. Les articles sit 
et 1907 du Code Civil permettent le prét a intérét, mais pd taux ug ou 
sutcrisé par la loi. La loi du 3 Seryt. 1807 a fixé le taux σον a 5 per 
cent. en matiére civile et ἃ 6 per cent en matier2 commerciale. 


110ς. 
VOL. III. 


162 HISTORY CF GREECE 


The articl: on Leading-houses, in Beexmann’s History of Inventions (vol, 
iii, pp. 9-50), is highly interesting and instructive on the same subject. It 
traces the gradual calling in question mitigation, and disappearance, of the 
ancient antipathy against taking interest for money, an antipathy long sane- 


tioned by the ecclesiastics as well as by the jurists. Lending-houses, or 


Monts de Piété, were first commenced in Italy about the middle of the 
fifteenth century, by some Franciscan monks, for the purpose of rescuing 
poor borrowers from the exorbitant exactions of the Jews: Pope Pius the 
Seccnd (Aineas Silvius, one of the ablest of the popes, about 1458-1464), 
was the first who approved of one of them at Perugia, but even the papal 
sanction was long combated by a large proportion of ece¢lesiastics. At first, 
it was to be purely charitable ; not only neither giving interest to thosc who 
contributed money, nor taking interest from the borrowers,—but not even 
providing fixed pay to the administrators: interest was tacitly taken, but the 
popes were a long time before they would formally approve of such a prac- 
tice. “At Vicenza, in order to avoid the reproach of usury, the artifice was 
employed of not demanding any interest, but admonishing the borrowers that 
they should give a remuneration according to their piety and ability,” (p. 
31.) The Dominicans, partisans of the old doctrine, called these establish- 
ments Montes /mpictatis. A Franciscan monk Bernardinus, one of the most 
active promoters of the Monts de Piété, did not venture to defend, but only 
to excuse as an unavoidable evil, the payment of wages to the clerks and 
administrators: “Speciosius et religiosius fatebatur Bernardinus fore, si 
absque ullo penitus obolo et pretio mutuum daretur et commodaretur libere 
pecunia, sed pium opus et pauperum subsidium exiguo sic duraturum 
tempore. Non enim (inquit) tantus est ardor hominum, ut gubernatores et 
officiales, Montium ministerio necessarii, velint laborem hune omnem gratis 
subire: quod si remunerandi sint ex sorte principali, vel ipso deposito, seu 
exili Montium ezrario, brevi exhaurietur, et commodum opportunumque 
istud pauperum refugium ubique peribit,” ‘p. 33.) 

The Council of Trent, during the following century, pronounced in favor 
of the legality and usefulness of these lending-houses, and this has since 
been understood to be the sentiment of the Catholic church generally. 

To trace this gradua) change of moral feeling is highlv instructive, — the 
more so, as that general basis of sentiment, of which the antipathy against 
lending money on interest is only a particular case, still prevails largely in 
society and directs the current of moral approbation and disapprobetion. In 
some nations, as among the ancient Persians before Cyrus, this sent mens 
has been carried so far as to repudiate and despise all buying and selling 
(Herodot. i, 153). With many, the principle of reciprocity in human deal- 
ings appears, when conceived in theory, odious and contemptible, and goes 
by some bad name, such as egoism, selfishness, calculation, political econo. 
my, ete: the only sentiment which they will admit in theory, is, that the 
man who has, ought to be ready at all times to give away what he has te 
him who has not; while the latter is encouraged to expect and reguire 
sack gratuitous donation 


EUBGA. — CYCLADES. 


CHAPTER XII. 


EUBG@A. — CYCLADES. 


Among the Ionic portion of Hellas are to be reckcned (besides 
Athens) Eubcea, and the numerous group of islands included be- 
tween the southernmost Eubcean promontory, the eastern coast of 
Peloponnesus, and the north-western coast of Kréte. Of these 
islands some are to be considered as outlying prolongations, in a 
south-easterly direction, of the mountain-system of Attica; others, 
of that of Eubceea; while a certain number of them lie apart from 
either system, and seem referable to a volcanic origin.! To the 
first class belong Keés, Kythnus, Seriphus, Pholegandrus, Sikinus, 
Gyarus, Syra, Paros, and Antiparos ; to the second class, Andros, 
Ténos, Mykonos, Délos, Naxos, Amorgos; to the third class, 
Kimolus, Mélos, Théra. These islands passed amongst the an- 
cients by the general name of the Cyclades and the Sporades ; 
the former denomination being commonly understood to comprise 
those which immediately surrounded the sacred island of Délos, 
- the latter being given to those which lay more scattered and 
apart. But the names are not applied with uniformity or steadi- 
ness even in ancient times: at present, the whole group are usu 
ally known by the title of Cyclades. 

The population of these islands was called Ionic, — with the ex- 
ception of Styra and Karystus in the southern part of Eubcea, 
and the island of Kythnus, which were peopled by dryopes,? the 
same tribe as those who have been already remarked in the Ar- 
colic peninsula; and with the exception also of Mélos and Théra, 
which were colonies from Sparta. 

The island of Euboea, long and narrow like Kréte, and exhibit- 
ing a continuous backbone of lofty mountains from north-west to 
south-east, is separated from Boeotia at one point by a strait so 
narrow (celebrated in antiquity under the name of the Euripus), 


i See Fiedler, Reisen durch Griechenland, vol. ii, p. 87. 
2 Herodot. viii, 46 ; Thneyd. vii, 57. 


164 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


that the two were connected by a bridge for a large portion of 
the historical period of Greece, erected during the later times of 
the Peloponnesian war by the inhabitants of Chalkis.!_ Its gen- 
eral want of breadth leaves little room for plains: the “ss of 


the island consists principally of mountain, rock, dell, and ravine, 


suited in many parts for pasture, but rarely convenient for grain- 
culture or town habitations. Some plains there were, however, 
of zreat fertility, especially that of Lelantum,? bordering on the 
sea near Chalkis, and continuing from that city in a sontheesky di- 
rection towards Eretria. Chalkis and Eretria, both situated on 
the western coast, and both occupying parts of this fertile plain, 
were the two principal places in the island: the domain of each 
seems to have extended across the island from sea to sea. 
Towards the northern end of the island were situated Histiza, 
afterwards called Oreus, — as well as Kérinthus and Dium, Athé- 
ne Diades, Aidépsus, AXge, and Orobix, are also mentioned on 
the north-western coast, over against Lokris. Dystus, Styra, and 
Karystus are made known to us in the portion of the island south 
of Eretria, —the two latter opposite to the Attic demes Hale 
negara and Prasiw.4 The large extent of the island αἵ 
θα was thus distributed between six or seven cities 
larger and central portion belonging to Chalkis and κα Ναὶ ; bon 
the extensive mountain lands, applicable only for pastures in the 
mcg ead the most part public lands, let out for pasture te 
such proprietors as had the means of providing winter sust 
elsewhere for their cattle, — were aa visited aa Ὡς 
cept the shepherds ; and were hardly better known ‘to the citizens 


4 Diodor. xiil, 47. 
ἢ Kallimachus, Hymn. ad Delum, 38 i i 
achus, Hymn. : , 289, with Spanheim’s note; Theogni 
νυ $88; Theophrast. Hist. Plant. 8, 5. sii 

See Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, vol. ii, ch. 14, p. 254, seg. The 
passage of Theognis leads to the belief that Kérinthus formed a part of the 
territory of Chalkis. 

‘ : 

Skylax (c. 59) treats the island of Skyrus as opposite to Eretria, the 
territory of which must, therefore, have included a portion of the eastern 
coast of Eubeea, as well as the western. He recognizes only four cities in 
the island, — Karystus, Eretria, Chalkis and Hestiza. 


4 Mannert. Geograph. Gr. Rém. part viii, book i, ec. 
. ps ᾿ς. 16, p. 248; ¥, 
vp. 445-449. . 


CHALKIS, FRETRIA, NAXOS, ETC. 165 


resident in Chalkis and Eretria than if they had been situated 
on the other side of the 7E.gean.! 

‘he towns above enumeratea in Eubcea, excepting Athensw 
Diades, all find a place in the Iliad. Of their history we know 
no particulars until considerably after 776 B. C., and they are first 
‘troduced to us as Ionic, though in Homer the population are 
salled Abantes. ‘The Greek authors are never at ἃ loss to give 
us the etymology of a name. While Aristotle tells us that the 
Abantes were Thracians who had passed over into the island 
from Abx in Phokis, Hesiod deduces the name of Eubcea from 
the cow 16.2 Hellopia, a district near Histeea, was said to have 
been founded by Hellops, son of Ion : according to others, Acklus 
and Kothus, two Athenians,’ were the founders, the former of 
Eretria, the latter of Chalkis and Kérinthus: and we are told, 
that among the demes of Attica, there were two named Histiza 
and Eretria, from whence some contended that the appellations 
of the two Euboean towns were derived. Though Herodotus 
represents the population of Styra as Dryopian, there were others 


! The seventh Oration of Dio Chrysostom, which describes his shipwreck 
near Cape Kaphareus, on the island of Eubcea, and the shelter and kindnese 
which he experienced from a poor mountain huntsman, presents one of the 
most interesting pictures remaining, of this purely rustic portion of the 
Greek population (Or. vii, p. 221, seq.), —men who never entered the city, 
and were strangers to the habits, manners, and dress there prevailing, — 
men who drank milk and were clothed in skins (γαλακτοπότας ἀνὴρ, ovpet- 
Barac, Eurip. Elektr. 169), yet nevertheless (as it seems) possessing right 
of citizenship (Ρ. 238) which they never exercised. The industry of the 
poor men visited by Dion had brought into cultivation a little garden and 
field in a desert spot near Kaphareus. 

Two-thirds of the territory of this Euboic city consisted of barren moun- 
tain (p. 232); it must probably have been Karystus. 

The high lands of Eubcea were both uninhabited and difficult of approach, 
even at the time of the battle of Marathon, when Chalkis aad Eretria had 
not greatly declined from the maximum of their power: the inhabitants of 
Eretria looked to τὰ ἄκρα τῆς Εὐβοίης as a refuge against the Persian force 


ander Datis (Herod. vi, 100). 

® Strabo, x, p. 445. 

$ Plutarch, Quest. Greec. p. 296; Strab. x, p. 446 (whose statements are 
very perplexed); Velleius Patercul. i, 4. 

According to Skymnus the Chian (v. 572), Chalkis was founded by Pam 
dérus son of Erechtheus, and Kérinthus by Kotlin, from Athens 


965 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


- — a it had originally been pec pled from Marathon 
etrapolis Atti 
The siniads “ gig se oe Segeon ge He cnthorigess 
i al Str: sulted seem to trace the 
population of Eubcea, by one means or other, to an Attic origi 
though there were peculiarities in the Bestrian dialect whi Ps 
rise to the supposition that they had been joined by sett] “ from 
Elis, or from the Triphylian Makistus. iii sone 
(Our earliest historical intimations represent Chalkis and Er 
tria as the wealthiest, most powerful, and most leases ὯΝ 
cities in European Greece, — apparently surpassing ‘Ailioas in 
not inferior to Samos or Miletus. Besides the fertility of th : 
plain Lelantum, Chalkis possessed the advantage of co ἦν ; d 
iron ore, obtained in immediate proximity both to the a a 
to the sea, — whivh her citizens smelted and converted int δὴ 
and other implements, with a very profitable rest rile Chalk 
dic sword acquired a distinctive renown.! In this wleond ai 
of wealth several of the other islands shared: iron πεν ἡμὴ 
" agit Kythnus, and Seriphus, and traces are still imcoten 
e H i a ' ma a . a i 
πων Ὦ roll μι, pagans nei ees 
| st early times veins of silver 
and gold, by which the inhabitants were greatly enriched : thoucl 
their large acquisitions, attested by the magnitude of the tithe? 
which they offered at the Delphian temple, were only of t a8 
rary duration, and belong particularly to the seventh an ‘aaah 
centuries before the Christian era. The island of *scalii 
was at an early day wealthy and populous. hertiongg Tenge 
Keos, and several other islands, were at one time bihiinad 46 


iste Aga τὰ sot δὲ Χαλκιδικαὶ σπάϑαι (Alkeus, Fragm. 7. 
belongs to th E <i πρρυχ θορόν (Aristophan. Equit 937), --- certainly 
Ps ila e Eubuie Chalkis, not to the Thrakian Chalkidiké. Boeckh 
‘ taatshaushalt. der Athener, vol. ii, p. 284, App. xi, cites Χαλκιδικὰ ποτηρί 7 
in an inscription: compare Steph. Byz. Χαλκὶς Minacid ir et 
Homer, Hymn. Apoll. 219. ' ἱείτης Εὐβοίης 
Ξ See the mi vies . 4 
“-- fio — account of the islands in Fiedler (Reisen, vol. ii, 
The copper and iron ore near Chalkis had ceas ! 
δ time of Strabo : Fiedler indicates the Anat mien fete ao ‘ieee 
Herodot. iii, 57. The Siphnians, however, in an evil ὮΝ 3). | 
the wrong of withholding this tithe: the sea soon rushed in a Pipes son 
the mines ever afterwards unworkable (Pausan. x, 11, 2). and rendered 


EARLY IONIC FESTIVAL AT DELOS. 167 


a:1 other islands seem to have been in 
which at the time immedi- 
ἃ a considerable maritime 


dependence upen Eretri 
like manner dependent upon Naxos, 
ately preceding the Ionic revolt possesse 
force, and could muster eight thousand heavy-armed citizens,? — 
a very large force for any sing!e Grecian city. Nor was the mili- 
tary force of Eretria much inferior; for in the temple of the 
Amarynthian Artemis, rearly a mile from the city, to which the 
Eretrians were in the habit of marching in solemn procession to 
celebrate the festival of the goddess, there stood an ancient col- 
umn setting forth that the procession had been performed by no 
less than three thousand hoplites, six hundred horsemen, and sixty 
The date of this inscription cannot be known, but it 
can hardly be earlier than the 45th Olympiad, or 600 B. C.,— 
near about the time of the Solonian legislation. Chalkis waa 
still more powerful than Eretria; both were in early times gov- 
erned by an oligarchy, which among the Chalkidians was called 
hippobotz, or horse-feeders, — proprietors probably of most part 
of the plain called Lelantum, and employing the adjoining moun- 
tains as summer pasture for their herds. The extent of their 
rty is attested by the large number of four thousand kle- 
whom Athens quartered upon their lands, 


chariots. 


prope 
rucha, or out-freemen, 


after the victory gained over them when they assisted the ex- 
lied Hippias in his efforts to regain the Athenian sceptre.* 


pe 
Confining our attention, as we now do, to the first two centuries 
of Grecian history, or the interval between 776 B. Ο. and 560 
B. C., there are scarce any facts which we can produce to ascer- 
tain the condition of these Ionic islands. Two or three circum- 


' Strabo, x, p. 448. 
3 Herodot. v, 31. Compare the accounts of these various islands in the 


recent voyages of Professor Ross, Reisen auf den Gricchischen Inseln, vel 
i, letter 2; vol. ii, letter 15. 
The population of Naxos is now a 


Andros fifteen thousand (Ross, vol. i, p. 28; vol. ii, p. 22). 
But the extent and fertility of the Naxian plain perfectly suffice for that 


aggregate population of one hundred thousand souls, which seems implied in 
the account of Herodotus. 


3 Strabo, /. c. 
« Herodot. v, 77; Aristoteles, Fragment. περὶ letrescov, ed. Neumann, 


pp 111-112: compare Aristot. Polit. iv, 3, 2. 


bout eleven thousand souls; that of 


168 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Btances, however, may be named, which go to confirm our idea 
of their early wealth and importance. 
1. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo presents to us the island of 
Délos as the cenire of a great periodical festival in honor of 
Apollo, celebrated by all the cities, insular and continental of 
the [onic name. What the date of this hymn is, we hone no 
means of determin: ng: Thucydidés quotes it, without hesitation, as 
the production of Homer, and, doubtless, it was in his time univer- 
sally accepted as such,— though modern critics concur in reeardine 
both that and the other hymns as much later than the Tliad and 
Odyssey : it cannot probably be later than 600 B. c. The de- 
scription of the Ionic visitors presented to us in this hymn $ 
splendid and imposing: the number of their ships, the display of 
their finery, the beauty of their women, the athletic exhibitions as 
well as the matches of song and dance,—all these are represented as 
making an ineffaceable impression on the spectator :! “the asscm- 
bled lonians look as if they were beyond the reach of old ane or 
death." Such was the magnificence of which Délos was the 
periodical theatre, and which called forth the voices and poetical 
genius not merely of itinerant bards, but also of the Delian 
maidens in the temple of Apollo, during the century δυσουδέιν 
360 Β. c. At that time it was the creat central festival of line 
fonians in Asia and Europe; frequented by the twelve Ionic 
cities, in and near Asia Minor, as well as by Athens and Chalkis 
in Europe: it had not yet been superseded by the Ephesia Ἢ 
the exclusive festival of the former, nor had the Pansthenwa of 
Athens reached the importance which afterwards came to belong 
io them during the plenitude of the Athenian power. ἡ 
We find both Polykratés of Samos, and Peisistratus of Athens 
taking a warm interest in the sanctity of Délos and the celebrity 
of this festival? But it was partly the rise of these two great 


‘ Hoin. Hymn. Apoll. Del. 146-176; Thucyd. iii, 104 :— 


dain κ᾽ ἀϑανάτους καὶ ἀγήρως ἔμμεναι αἰεὶ, 

Ὃς τότ᾽ ἐπαντιάσει᾽ ὅτ᾽ ᾿Ιαόνες ἄϑροοι eiev: 
Ἰδάντων γάρ nev ἔδοιτο χάριν, τέρψαιτο δὲ ϑυμὸν, 
Avdpag τ᾽ εἰσορόων, καλλιζώνους τε γυναῖκας, 
Νῆάς τ᾽ ὠκείας, 78 αὐτῶν χρήματα πολλά. 

® Thacyd. iii, 104, 


EARLY IONIC FESTIVAL AT DELOS 169 


fonian despots, partly the conquests of the Persians in Asia 
Minor, which broke up the independence of the numerous petty 
Ionian cities, during the last half of the sixth century before the 
Christian era; hence the great festival at Délos gradually de- 
elined in importance. Though never wholly intermitted, it was 
shorn of much of its previous ornaments, and especially of that 
which constituted the first of all ornaments, — the crowds of Joyous 
visitors. And Thucydidés, when he notices the attempt made by 
the Athenians during the Peloponnesian war, in the height of 
their naval supremacy, to revive the Delian festival, quotes the 
Homeric Hymn to Apollo, as a certificate of its foregone and 
long-forgotten splendor. We perceive that even Ae could find 
no better evidence than this hymn, for Grecian transactions of a 
century anterior to Peisistratus, — and we may, therefore, judge 
how imperfectly the history of this period was known to the men 
who took part in the Peloponnesian war. The hymn is exceed- 
ingly precious as an historical document, because it attests to us 
a transitory glory and extensive association of the Ionic Greeks 
on both sides of the ASgean sea, which the conquests of the 
Lydians first, and of the Persians afterwards, overthrew, — a 
time when the hair of the wealthy Athenian was decorated with 
golden ornaments, and his tunic made of linen,! like that of the 
Milesians and Ephesians, instead of the more sober costume and 
woollen clothing which he subsequently copied from Sparta and 
Peloponnesus, — a time too when the Ionic name had not yet 
contracted that stain of effeminacy and cowardice, which stood 
imprinted upon it in the time of Herodotus and Thucydidés, and 
which grew partly out of the subjugation of the Asiatic Tonians 
by Persia, partly out of the antipathy of the Peloponnesian Do- 
rians to Athens. The author of the Homeric Hymn, in describ- 
ing the proud Ionians who thronged, in his day, to the Delian 
festival, could hardly have anticipated a time to come, when the 
name Jonian would become a reproach, such as the European 
Greeks, to whom it really belonged, were desirous of disclaiming.* 


ι Thucyd. i, 6. διὰ τὸ ἁβροδίαιτον, etc. 

3 Herodot. i, 143. Οἱ μέν νυν ἄλλοι Ἴωνες καὶ of ᾿Αϑηναῖοι ἔφυγον τὰ 
οὔνομα. οὐ βουλόμενοι ἤωνες κεκλῆσϑαι, ---- τι assertion quite unquestionable 
with reference to the times immediately preceding Herodotus, but not equally 


VAL. UL 8 


170 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


2 Another illustrative fact, in reference both to the Jonians 
generally, and to Chalkis and Eretria in particular, during the 
century anterior to Peisistratus, is to be found in the war between 
these two cities respecting the fertile plain Lelantum, which tay 
between them. In general, it appears, these two important 
towns maintained harmonious relations; but there were some oc- 
easions of dispute, and one in particular, wherein a formidable 
war ensued between them. Several allies joined with each, and 
it is remarkable that this was the only war known to Thucydidés, 
anterior to the Persian conquest, which had risen above the dig- 
nity of a mere quarrel between neighbors; and in which so many 
different states manifested a disposition to interfere, as to impart 
to it a semi-Hellenic character.! Of the allies of each party on 
this occasion we know only that the Milesians lent assistance to 
Eretria, and the Samians, as well as the Thessalians and the 
Chalkidic colonies in Thrace, to Chalkis. A column, still visible 
during the time of Strabo, in the temple of the Amarynthian 
Artemis near Eretria, recorded the covenant entered into mu- 
tually by the two belligerents, to abstain from missiles, and to 
employ nothing but hand-weapons. The Eretrians are said to 
have been superior in horse, but they were vanquished in the 
battle; the tomb of Kleomachus of Pharsalus, a distinguished 
warrior who had perished in the cause of the Chalkidians, was 
erected in the agora of Chalkis. We know nothing of the date, 
the duration, or the particulars of this war;2 but it seems that 


admissible in regard to the earlier times. Compare Thucyd. i, 124 (with 
the Scholium), and also v, 9; viii, 25. 

'Thucyd. i, 15. The second Messenian war cannot have appeared 
to Thucydidés as having enlisted so many allies on each side as Pausanias 


represents. 

? Strabo, viii, p. 448; Herodot. v, 99; Plutarch, Amator, p. 760,— valua 
ble by the reference to Aristotle. 

Hesiod passed over from Askra to Chalkis, on the occasion of the funeral 
games celebrated by the sons of Amphidamas in honor of their deceased 
father, and gained a tripod as prize by his song or recital (Opp. Di. 656) 
According to the Scholia, Amphidamas was king of Chalkis, who perished 
‘n the war against Eretria respecting Lelantum. But it appears that Plu 
tarch threw out the lines as spurious, though he acknowledges Amphidama! 
as a vigorous champion of Chalkis in this war. See Septem Sapient 
Conviv. c. 10, p. 153. 

This visit of Hesiod to Chalkis was represented as the scene of his poeticaJ 


EUBOIC SCALE OF MONEY AND WEIGHT. 17) 


the Eretrians were worsted, though their city always maintained 
its dignity as the second state in the island. Chalkis was de 
cidedly the first, and continued to be flourishing, populous, and 
commercial, long after it had lost its political importance, througb 
out all the period of Grecian independent history.! 

3. Of the importance of Chalkis and Eretria, during the 
weve.th and part of the eighth century before the Christian era, 
we gather other evidences,— partly in the numerous colonies 
fuunded by them, which 1 shall advert to in a subsequent chap- 
ter, — partly in the prevalence throughout a large portion of 
Greece, of the Euboic scale of weight and money. What the 
quantities and proportions of suis scale were, has been first shown 
by M. Boeckh in his “ Metrologie.” It was of Eastern origin, 
and the gold collected by Dareius in tribute throughout the vast 
Persian empire, was ordered to be delivered in Euboic talents. 
Its divisions, — the talent equal to sixty mina, the mina equal to 
one hundred drachms, the drachm egal to six obols, — were the 
same as those of the scale called Agirean, introduced by Phet- 
don of Argos; but the six obols of the Buboic drachm contained 
a weight of silver equal only to five ginwan obols, so that the 
Euboiec denominations,— drachm, mina, and talent, — were 
equal only to five-sixths of the same denominations in the A%gi- 
nean scale. It was the Euboic scale which prevailed at Athens 
before the debasement introduced by Solon; whi-h debasement, 
— amounting to about twenty-seven per cent., as hos been men- 
tioned in a previous chapter, — created a third scale, called the 
Attic, distinct both from the AZginzan and Euboic, — #anding to 
the former in the ratio of 3 : 5, and to the latter, in the Taio of 
18:25. It seems plain that the Euboic scale was adopted by the 
Ionians through their intercourse with the Lydians,? and other 
Asiatics, and that it became naturalized among their cities υη 
the name of the Euboic, because Chalkis and Eretria were th 
most actively commercial states in the Augean, — just as the su 
perior commerce of Agina among the Dorian states, had given 


competition with and victory over Homer. (See the Certamen Hom. et Hea, 
p. 315, ed. Gottl.) 

1 See the striking description of Chalkis given by Dikmarchus in the Bia 
Ἑλλάδος (Fragment. p. 146, ed. Fuhr). 

3 Herodot. i, 94. 


172 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


to the scale introduced by Pheid6én of Argos, the name of Atgin. 
wan. The fact of its being so called indicates a time when t 1686 
two Eubcean cities surpassed Athens in maritime power and ex- 
tended commercial relations, and when they stood among the 
foremost of the Ionic cities throughout Greece. The Euboic 
scale, after having been debased by Solon, in reference to coinage 
and money, still continued in use at Athens for merchandise: the 
Attic mercantile mina retained its primitive Euboic weight.! 


CHAPTER AIIl. 
ASIATIC IONIANS. 


THERE existed at the commencement of historical Greece, in 
776 B. C., besides the Ionians in Attica and the Cyclades, twelve 
Ionian cities of note on or near the coast of Asia Minor, besides 
a few others less important. Enumerated from south to north, 
they stand,— Milétus, Myus, Priéné, Samos, Ephesus, Kolophon, 
Lebedus, Teds, Erythra, Chios, Klazomenz, Phokza. 

That these cities, the great ornament of the Ionic name, were 
founded by emigrants from European Greece, there is no reason 
to doubt. How, or when, they were founded, we have no history 
to tell us ; the legend, which has already been set forth in a pre- 
ceding chapter, gives us a great event called the Ionic migration, 
referred by chronologists to one special year, one hundred and 
forty years after the Trojan war. This massive grouping belongs 
to the character of legend, — the Aolic and Ionic emigrations, as 
well as the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus, are each invested 
with unity, and imprinted upon the imagination as the results of 
a single great impulse. But such is not the character of the 
historical colonies: when we come to relate the Italian and Sici- 
lian emigrations, it will appear that each colony has its own sep- 
arate nativity and causes of existence. In the case of the Ioni¢ 


See Boeckh’s Metrologie, c. 8 and 9. 


EMIGRANTS TO IONIA. 178 


emigration, this large scale of legendary conception is more than 
usually conspicuous, since to that event is ascribed the foundation 
or repeopling both of the Cyclades and of the Asiatic Ionian 


cities. 

Euripidés treats Ion,! the son of Kreusa by Apollo, as the 
planter of these latter cities: but the more current form of the 
legend assigns that honor to the sons of Kodrus, two of whom 
are especially named, corresponding to the two greatest of the 
ten continental Ionic cities: Androklus, as founder of Ephesus, 
Neileus of Milétus. These two towns are both described as 
founded directly from Athens. The others seem rather to be 
separate settlements, neither consisting of Athenians, nor emanat- 
ing from Athens, but adopting the characteristic Ionic festival 
of the Apaturia, and, in part at least, the Ionic tribes, — and re- 
ceiving princes from the Kodrid families at Ephesus or Milétus, 
as a condition of being admitted into the Pan-Ionic confederate 
festival. The poet Mimnermus ascribed the foundation of his 
native city Kolophén to emigrants from Pylus, in Peloponnesus, 
under Andrzem6n: Teds was settled by Minyz of Orchomenus, 
under Athamas: Klazomene by settlers from Klednz and Phli- 
us, Phokwa, by Phocians, Priené in large portion by Kadmeians 
from Thebes. And with regard to the powerful islands of Chios 
and Samos, it does not appear that their native authors, — the 
Chian poet Ion, or the Samaian poet Asius, — ascribed to them a 
population emanating from Athens: Pausanias could not make 
out from the poems of Ion how it happened that Chios came to 
form a part of the Ionic federation.2 Herodotus, especially. 
dwells upon the number of Grecian tribes and races, who con- 
tributed to supply the population of the twelve Ionic cities, — 
Minyz, from Orchomenus, Kadmeians, Dryopians, Phocians, 
Molossians, Arkadian Pelasgians, Dorians from Epidaurus, and 
“several other sections” of Greeks. Moreover, he particularly 


' Euripid. Ion, 1546. κτίστορ᾽ ᾿Ασιάδος χϑονός. 

2 Pausan. vii, 4,6. Τοσαῦτα εἰρηκότα ἐς Χίους Ἴωνα εὑρίσκω" ob μέϊ τοι 
ἐκεῖνός γε εἴρηκε, Kady’ ἥντινα αἰτίαν Χῖοι τελοῦσιν ἐς ᾿Ιῶνας. 

Respecting Samos, and its primitive Karian inhabitants, displaced by Pa 
jrokléo and Tembri6n at the head of Grecian emigrants, see Et, «ol. Mag. v 
Αστυπάλαια. 


174 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


singles out the Milesians, as claiming for themselves the truest 
[onic blood, and as having started from the prytaneium, at 
Athens; thus plainly implying his belief that the majority, at 
least, of the remaining settlers did not take their departure from 
the same hearth. ' 

But the most striking information which Herodotus conveys to 
us is, the difference of language, or dialect, which marked these 
twelve cities. Milétus, Myids, and Priéné, all situated on the 
soil of the Karians, had one dialect: Ephesus, Kolophén, Lebe- 
dus, Teds, Klazomenx, and Phoékza, had a dialect common to 
all, but distinct from that of the three preceding: Chios and 
Ervthra exhibited a third dialect, and Samos, by itself, a fourth. 
Nor does the historian content himself with simply noting such 
quadruple variety of speech; he employs very strong terms to 
express the degree of dissimilarity. The testimony of Herodo- 
tus as to these dialects is, of course, indisputable. 

Instead of one great Ionic emigration, then, the statements 


' Herod. i, 146. ἐπεὶ, ὧς ye ἔτι μᾶλλον οὗτοι (i. 6. the inhabitants of the 
¢ 

uwpin πολλῆ λέγειν" τῶν ἽΛβαντες ἐξ Εὐβοίης εἰσὶν οὐκ ἐλαχίστη μοῖρα, τοῖσι 
Ἰωνίης μέτα οὐδὲ τοῦ ὀνόματος οὐδέν" Μίνυαι δὲ ᾿Ορχομένιοι ἀναμεμίλαται, 
καὶ Καδμεῖοι, καὶ Δρύοπες, καὶ Φωκέες ἀποδάσμιοι, καὶ Μολοσσοὶ, καὶ ᾿Αρκάδες 
Πελασγοὶ, καὶ Δωριέες ᾿Επιδαύριοι, ἀλλα τε ἔϑνεα πολλὰ ἀναμεμίχαται. Οἱ 
δὲ αὐτέων, ἀπὸ τοῦ Πρυτανηΐου τοῦ ᾿Αϑηναὶων ὁρμηϑέντες, καὶ νομίζοντες 
γενναιότατοι εἶναι Ἰώνων, οὗτοι δὲ οὐ γυναῖκας ἤγαγον εἰς ἀποικίην, ἀλλὰ 
Καείρας ἔσχον, τῶν ἐφόνευσαν τοὺς γονέας... Ταῦτα δὲ ἣν γινόμενα ἐν Μι- 


Pan-lonic Dodekapolis) ᾿Ιωνὲς εἰσι τῶν ἄλλων ᾿Ιώνων, ἢ κἀλλιόν τι γεγόνασι, 


Λήτῳ. 

The polemical tone in which this remark of Herodotus is delivered is ex 
plained by Dahlmann on the supposition that it was destined to confute 
certain boastful pretensions of the Milesian Hekatseus (see Bahr, ad /oc., and 
Kiausen ad Hekatw#i Frag. 225). 

The test of Jonism, according to the statement of Herodotus, is, that a city 
should derive its orixin from Athens, and that it should celebrate the solem 
nity of the Apaturia (i. 147). But we must construe both these tests with 
indulgence. Ephesus and Kolophon were Tonic, though neither of them 
celebrated the Apaturia. And the colony might be formed under the auspices 
of Athens, though the settlers were neither natives, nor even of kindred race 
with the natives, of Attica. 

® Herod. i, 142. Ephesus, Kolophén, Lebedus, Teds, Klazomenze, Phokss 
-- αὗται αἱ πύλεις τῇσι πρότερον λεχϑείσῃσι ὁμολογέουσι κατὰ γλῶσσαν οὐδὲν 


ea dé ὁμοφωνέουσι. 


cs a re «τὸ 


MIXED POPULATION OF IONIC CITIES. 178 


above cited conduct us rather to the supposition of many separate 
and successive settlements, formed by the Greeks of different 
sections, mingling with and modified by preéxisting Lydians 
and Karians, and subsequently allying themselves with Milétus 
and Ephesus into the so-called Ionic amphiktyony. As a con- 
dition of this union, they are induced to adopt among their 
chiefs princes of the Kodrid gens or family ; who are called sons 
of Kodrus, but who are not for that reason to be supposed neces- 
sarily contemporary with Androklus or Neileus. 

The chiefs selected by some of the cities are said to have been 
Lykians,' of the heroic family of Glaukus and Bellerophon: in 
some causes, the Kodrids and the Glaukids were chiefs con- 
jointiy. Respecting the dates of these separate settlements, we 
-annot give any account, for they lie beyond the commencement 
of authentic history: there is ground for believing that most of 
them existed for some time previous to 776 B. C., but at what 
date the federative solemnity uniting the twelve cities was com- 
menced, we do not know. 

The account of Herodotus shows us that these colonies were 
composed of mixed sections of Greeks,— an important circum- 
stance in estimating their character. Such was usually the case 
more or less in respect to all emigrations, and hence the estab- 
lishments thus planted contracted at once, generally speaking, 
both more activity and more instability than was seen among 
those Greeks who remained at home, and among whom the old 
habitual routine had not been counterworked by any marked 
change of place or of social relations. ‘or in a new colony it be- 
came necessary to adopt fresh classifications of the citizens, to 
range them together in fresh military and civil divisions, and to 
adopt new characteristic sacrifices and religious ceremonies as 
bonds of union among all the citizens conjointly. At the first 
outset of a colony, moreover, there were inevitable difficulties to 
be surmounted, which imposed upon its leading men the necessity 
of energy and forethought, — more especially in regard to mari- 
time affairs, on which not only their connection with the country- 
men whom they had left behind, but also their means of establish- 
mg advantageous relations with the population of the interior, 


-- 


1 Herodot. i, 146. 


176 HISTORY OF GREECF. 


depended. At the same time, the new arrangements indispens 
able among the colonists were far from working always harmo 
niously: dissension and partial secessions were not unfrequent 
occurrences. And what has been called the mobility of the 
Ionic race, as compared with the Doric, is to be ascribed in a 
great measure to this mixture of races and external stimulus 
arising out of expatriation: for there is no trace of it in Attica 
anterior to Solon; and on the other hand, the Doric colonies of 
Korkyra and Syracuse exhibit a population not less excitable 
than the Ionic towns generally,! and much more so than the 
Ionic colony of Massalia. The remarkable commercial enter- 
prise, which will be seen to characterize Milétus, Samos, and 
Phokza, belongs but little to anything connected with the Ionic 
temperament. 

All the Ionic towns, except Klazomenze and Phokza, are rep- 
resented to have been founded on some preéxisting settlements 
of Karians, Lelegians, Kretans, Lydians, or Pelasgians.2 In 
some cases these previous inhabitants were overcome, slain, or 
expelled; in others they were accepted as fellow-residents, and 
the Grecian cities thus established acquired a considerable tinge 
of Asiatic customs and feelings. What is related by Herodotus 
respecting the first establishment of Neileus and his emigrants at 
Milétus is in this point of view remarkable. They took out with 
them no women from Athens (the historian says), but found 
wives in the Karian women of the place, whose husbands and 
fathers they overcame and put to death; and the women, thus 
violently seized, manifested their repugnance by taking a solemn 
oath among themselves that they would never eat with their new 
husbands, nor ever call them by their personal names. This 
same pledge they imposed upon their daughters; but how long 
the practice lasted, we are not informed: it rather seems from 
the Janguage of the historian that traces of it were visible even 
in bis day in the family customs of the Milesians. The popula- 
tion of this greatest of the Tonic towns must thus have been 
hal? of Karian breed. It is to be presumed that what is true 


> Mhucyd. vi, 17, about the Sicilian Greeks — ὄχλοις Te yap ξυμμικτοῖς ro 
λνευδροῦσιι αἱ πόλεις, καὶ ῥᾳδίας ἔχουσι τῶν πολιτειῶν τὰς μεταβολὰς καὶ 


ῥκ-“Δογάς. 
2 See Raoul Rochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecques, b. iv, c. 10, p. 93 


PAN-IONIC FESTIVAL. 177 


of Neileus and his companions wonld be found true, alse, respect 
ing most of the maritime colonies of Greece, and that the vessels 
whieh took them out would be scantily provided with women. 
But on this point, unfortunately, we are left without information 
The worship of Apollo Didymeeus, at Branchidw, near Milétus, 
—that of Artemis, near Ephesus,—and that of the Apoilo 
Klarius, near Kolophén,—seems to have existed among the 
native Asiatic population before the establishment of either of 
these three cities. To maintain these preéxisting local rites 
was not less congenial to the feelings, than beneficial to the 
interests, of the Greeks: all the three establishments acquired 
increased celebrity under Ionic administration, and contributed in 
their turn to the prosperity of the towns to which they were 
attached. Miletus, Myis, and Priéné were situated on or near 
the productive plain of the river Mander; while Ephesus was, 
in like manner, planted near the mouth of the Kaister, thus 
immediately communicating with the productive breadth of land 
separating Mount Tmdlus on the north from Mount Messdgis 
on the south, through which that river runs: Kolophdén is only 
a very few miles north of the same river. Possessing the 
best means of communication with the interior, these three 
towns seem to have thriven with greater rapidity than the rest; 
and they, together with the neighboring island of Samos, con- 
stituted in early times the strength of the Pan-Ionic amphikty- 
ony. The situation of the sacred precinct of Poseidén (where 
this festival was celebrated), on the north side of the promontory 
of Mykalé, near Priéné, and between Ephesus and Milétus, 
seems fo show that these towns formed the primitive centre to 
which the other Ionian settlements became gradually aggregated. 
For it was by no means a centrical site with reference to all the 
twelve; so that Thalés of Milétus, — who at a subsequent period 
recommended a more intimate political union between the twelve 
Ionic towns, and the establishment of a common government to 
manage their collective affairs, — indicated Teds,!' and not Priéné, 
as the suitable place for it. Moreover, it seems that the Pan 
Ionic festival? though still formally continued, had lost its 


' Herodot. i, 170. 
* Both Diodorus (xv, 49) and Dionysius of Halikarnassus (A. R. iv, 25! 


VOL. III. R* Sac 


= = 


“πὰς ὦ «αν 


178 HISTORY ΟΕ GREECE. 


importance before the time of Thucydides, and had become 
practically superseded by the more splendid festival of the 
Ephesia, near Ephesus, where the cities of Ionia found a more 
attractive place of meeting. 

An island close adjoining to the coast, or an outlying tongue of 
land connected with the continent by a narrow isthmus, and pre- 
senting some hill sufficient for an acropolis, seems to have been 
considered as the most favorable situation for Grecian colonial 
settlement. ‘To one or other of these descriptions most of the 
Ionic cities, conform.! The city of Milétus at the height of its 
power had four separate harbors, formed probably by the aid of 
the island of Ladé and one or two islets which lay close off against 
it: the Karian or Kretan establishment, which the Ionic colonists 
found on their arrival and conquered, was situated on an eminence 
overhanging the sea, and became afterwards known by the name 
of Old Miletus, at a time when the new Ionic town had been 
extended down to the water-side and rendered maritime.2. The 
territory of this important city seems to have comprehended both 
the southern promontory called Poseidium and the greater part of 
the northern promontory of Mykalé,? reaching on both sides ut the 
river Meander : the inconsiderable town of Myus‘ on the southern 
bank of the Mzander, an offset seemingly formed by the secession 
of some Milesian maicontents under a member of the Neleid gens 
named Kydrélus, maintained for a long time its autonomy, but was 


speak as if the convocation or festival had been formally ὟΝ 
sus, in consequence of the insecurity of the meetings near Mykale: ! trabe 
on the contrary speaks of the Pan-Ionia as if they still in his ΜᾺ gg 
in the original spot (xiv, pp. 636-638), under the care of the I Ronen Ί 10 
formal transfer is not probable: Thucydidés (iii, 104) proves that in his time 
the festival of Ephesia was practically the Pan-fonie readesvous, though 
Herodotus does not seem to have conceived it as such. See Gehl, Ephesiaca, 
part iii, p. 117, and K. F. Hermann, Gottesdienstliche AlterthOmer der Gnie- 
"cs on of ν létus is best indicated by Arrian, 1, 19-20; see tha: of 
Phékza, Erythre, Myonnésus, Klazomenx, Kolophon, Teds (Strabo, xiv, [|p 
644-645 ; Pausan. vii, 3, 2; Livy, xxxvii, 27-31; Thucyd. viii, 31). 

* Strabo. xiv, p. 635. 

Strabo, xiv, p. 633; Herod. ix, 97-99. 


Strabo, xiv, p. 651. bn y 
4 Strabo, xiv, p. 636; Vitruvius, iv, 1; Polysen. vi, 35. 


Td Ποσείδιον τῶν MiAqews 


MAGNESIA. 179 


at length absorbed into the larger unity of Milétus; its swampy 
territory having been rendered uninhabitable by a plague of gnats. 
Priéné acquired an importance greater than naturally belonged 
to it, by its immediate vicinity to the holy Pan-Ionic temple and 
its function of administering the sacred rites,! —a dignity which 
it probably was only permitted to enjoy in consequence of the 
jealousies of its greater neighbors Milétus, Ephesus, and Samos.? 
The territories of these Grecian cities seem to have been inter- 
spersed with Karian villages, probably in the condition of subjects 
It is rare to find a genuine Greek colony established at any 
distance from the sea; but the two Asiatic towns called Magnésia 
form exceptions to this position, — one situated on the south side 
of the Meander, or rather on the river Letheus, which runs into 
the Meander; the other more northerly, adjoining to the AZolic 
Greeks, on the northern declivity of Mount Sipylus, and near to 
the plain of the river Harmus. ‘The settlement of both these 
towns dates before the period of history : the tale’ which we read 
affirms them to be settlements from the Magnétes in Thessaly, 
formed by emigrants who had first passed into Kréte, under the 
orders of the Delphian oracle, and next into Asia, where they are 
said to have extricated the Ionic and olic colonists, then recently 
arrived, from a position of danger and calamity. By the side of 
this story, which can neither be verified nor contradicted, it is 
proper to mention the opinion of Niebuhr, that both these towns of 
Magnésia are remnants of a primitive Pelasgic population, akin 
to, but not emigrants from, the Magnétes of Thessaly, — Pelas- 
gians whom he supposes to have occupied both the valley of the 
Hermus and that of the Kaister, anterior to the AZolic and Ionic 
migrations. In support of this opinion, it may be stated that there 
were towns bearing the Pelasgic name of Larissa, both near the 
Hermus and near the Mxander: Menekratés of Elza considered 
the Pelasgians as having once occupied most part of that coast; 


* Thucyd. i, 116. 


' Strabo, xiv, pp. 636-638. 

* Conon, Narrat. 29; Strabo, xiv, pp. 636-647. 

The story in Parthenius about Leukippus, leader τῶν δεκατευϑέντων ba 
Φέρης ὑπ᾽ ᾿Αὐμήτου, who came to the Ephesian territory and acquired pos 
session of the place called Kretingon, by the treachery of Leukc phryé, daugh- 
ter of Mandrolytos, whether truth or romance, is oné of the notices of Thes 
salian migration into those parts (Parthen. Narrat. 6). 


180 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


and Ὁ. Muller even conceives the Tyrrhenians to have been 
Pelasgians from Tyrrha, a town in the interior of Lydia south 
of Tmolus. The point is one upon which we have not sufficient 
evidence to advance beyond conjecture.! 

Of the Ionic towns, with which our real knowledge of Asia 
Minor begins, Milétus 2 was the most powerful; and its celebrity 
was derived not merely from its own wealth and population, but 


also from the extraordinary number of its colonies, established 
principally in the Propontis and Euxine, and amounting, as we 
ure told by some authors, to not less than seventy-five or eighty. 
Respecting these colonies I shall speak presently, in treating of 
the general colonial expansion of Greece during the eighth and 


seventh centuries B. C.: at present, it is sufficient to notice that 
the islands of Ikarus and Lerus,’ not far from Samos and the 
Ionic coast generally, were among the places planted with 
Milesian settlers. 

The colonization of Ephesus by Androklus appears to be con- 
nected with the Ionic occupation of Samos, so far as the confused 
statements which we find enable us to discern. Androklus is said 


! Strabo, xiii, p. 621. See Niebuhr, Kleine Historische Schriften, p. 371, 
O. Miller, Etrusker, Einleitung ii, 5, p. 80. The evidence on which Miiller’s 
conjecture is built seems, however, unusually slender, and the identity cf 
Tyrrhénos and Torrhébos, or the supposed confusion of the one with the 
other, is in no way made out. Pelasgians are spoken of in Trallés and 
Aphrodisias as well| as in Ninoé (Steph. Byz. v, Nevon), but this name seems 
destined to present nothing but problems and delusions. 

Respecting Magnésia on the Mander, consult Aristot. ap. Athen. iv, p. 
173, who calls the town a colony from Delphi. But the intermediate settle- 
ment of these colonists in Kréte, or even the reality of any town called 
Magnésia in Kréte, appears very questionable: Plato’s statement (Lecg. 
iv, 702; xi, 919) can hardly be taken as any evidence. Compare (Ὁ. Maller, 
History of the Dorians, book ii, ch. 3; Hoeckh, Kreta, book iii, vol. ii, p. 413. 
Miiller gives these * Sagen” too much in the style of real facts: the worship 
of Apollo at Magnésia on the Mander (Paus. x, 32, 4) cannot be thought 
to prove much, considering how extensively that god was worshipped along 
the Asiatic coast, from Lykia to Troas. 

The great antiquity of this Grecian establishment was recognized in the 
time of the Roman emperors; see Inscript. No. 2910 in Boeckh, Corp. Ins. 

2 Ἰωνίης πρόσχημα (Herodot. ν, 28). 

3 Strabo, xiv, p. 635. Ikarus, or Ikaria, however, appears in later times a» 
belonging to Samos, and used only for pasture (Strabo, p. 639; x, p. 488). 


6 Vo 3 


GROWTH OF EPHESUS. 181 


to have lingered upon that island for a long time, antil the oracle 
vouchsafed to indicate to him what particular spot to occupy on 
the continent; at length the indication was given, and he planted 
his colonists at the fountain of Hypelwon and on a portion of the 
hill of Koréssus, within a short distance of the temple and sanc- 
tuary of Artemis; whose immediate inhabitants he respected 
and received as brethren, while he drove away for the most part 
the surrounding Lelegians and Lydians. The population of the 
new town of Ephesus was divided into three tribes, — the pre- 
existing inhabitants, or Ephesians proper, the Bennians, and the 
Eudénymeis, so named (we are told) from the deme Euonymus in 
Attica.) So much did the power of Androklus increase, that he 
was enabled to conquer Samos, and to expel from it the prince 
Leégorus: of the retiring Samians, a part are said to have gone 
to Samothrace and there established themselves, while another 
portion acquired possession of Marathésium near Ephesus, on the 
adjoining continent of Asia Minor, from whence, after a short 
time, they recovered their island, compelling Androklus to return 
to Ephesus. It seems, however. that in the compromise and treaty 
which ensued, they yielded possession of Marathésium to Andro- 
klus,2 and confined themselves to Anaa,a more southerly district 
farther removed from the Ephesian settlement, and immediately 
opposite to the island of Samos. Androklus is said to have per- 
ished in a battle fought for the defence of Priéné, which town he 
had come to aid against an attack of the Karians. His dead 
body was brought from the field and buried near the gates of 
Ephesus, where the tomb was yet shown during the days of Pau- 
sanias; but a sedition broke out against his sons after him, and 
the malcontents strengthened their party by inviting reinforce- 
ments from Teds and Karina. The struggle which ensued termi- 
nated in the discontinuance of the kingly race and the establish- 
ment of a republican government, — the descendants of Androklus 
being allowed to retain both considerab.e honorary privileges and 
the hereditary priesthood of the Eleusirian Démétér. The newly- 
received inhabitants were enrolled in two new tribes, making in 


‘ Kreophylus ap. Athen. viii, p. 361; Ephor. Fragm. 32,ed Marx; Ste 
phan. Byz. v. Bévva: see Guhl, Ephesiaca, p 29 
3 Pausan. vii, 4, 3. 


1:2 HISTORY OF GKEECKE., 


all five tribes, which appear to have existed throughout the hu. 
torical times at Ephesus.! It appears too that a certain number 
of fugitive proprietors from Samos found admission among the 


Ephesians and received the freedom of the city; and the part of 
the city in which they resided acquired the name of Samorna, or 
Smyrna, by which name it was still known in the time of the 
satirical poet Hipponax, about 5350 B. c.2 

Such are the stories which we find respecting the infancy of 
the Ionic Ephesus. ‘The fact of its increase and of its considerable 
acquisitions of territory, at the expense of the neighboring Lydi- 
ans,’ is at least indisputable. It does not appear to have been 
ever very powerful or enterprising at sea, and few maritime colo- 
nies owed their origin to its citizens; but its situation near the 
mouth and the fertile plain of the Kaister was favorable both to 
tne multiplication of its inland dependencies and to its trade with 
the interior. A despot named Pythagoras is said to have sub- 
verted by stratagem the previous government of the town, at some 
period before Cyrus, and to have exercised power for a certain 
time with great cruelty.4 It is worthy of remark, that we find no 
trace of the existence of the four Ionic tribes at Ephesus; and 
this, when coupled with the fact that neither Ephesus nor Kolo- 
phon solemnaized the peculiar Ionic festival of the Apaturia, is one 
among other indications that the Ephesian population had little 


- The account of Ephorus ap. Steph. Byz. ν. Bévva, attests at least the 
existence of the five tribes at Ephesus, whether his account of their orivin 
and primitive history be well founded or not. See also Strabo, xiv. p. 638: 
Steph. Byz. ν, Εὐωνυμίᾳ. Karéné or Kariné is in AMolis, near Pitana and 
Gryneium (Herod. vii, 42, Steph. Byz. Καρήνη). 

* Stephan Byz.v, Yagoora; Hevseh. Lauovia; Athenaus, vi, p. 267 
Hipponax, Fragm. 32, Schneid.; Strabo, xiv, p. 633. Some, however, ssid 
that the wieus of Ephesus, called Smyrna, derived its name from an Amazon 

* Strabo, xiv, p. 620. 

* Bato ap. Snidas, v, Πυϑαγόύόρας. In this article of Suidas, however, it is 
stated that “the Ephesian Pythagoras put down, by means of a crafty plot, 
the government of those who were called the Basilide.”’ Now Aristotle 
talks (Polit. v, 5,4) of the oligarchy of the Basilide at Erythre. It is 
hardly likely that there should have been an oligarchy called by that same 
name both at Erythre and Ephesus ; there is here some confusion between 
Erythre and Ephesus which we are unable to clear up. Bato of Sindpé 
erote a book περὲ τῶν ἐν “peo, τυράννων (Athengeus, vii, p. 289). 


h ULOPHON. 188 


community of race with Athens, though the cekist may have 
been of heroic Athenian family. Guhl attempts to show, on mis- 
taken grounds, that the Greek settlers at Ephesus were mostly of 
Arkadian origin.! 

Kolophén, about fifteen miles north of Ephesus, and divided 
from the territory of the latter by the precipitous mountain rang. 
called Gallésium, though a member of the Pan-lIonic amphik- 
tyony, seems to have had no Ionic origin: it recognized neither 
an Athenian cekist nor Athenian inhabitants. The Kolophonian 
poet Mimnermus tells us that the ekist of the place was the 
Pylian Andremén, and that the settlers were Pylians from Pelo- 
ponnesus. “ We quitted (he says) Pylus, the city of Neleus, and 
passed in our vessels to the much-desired Asia. There with the 
insolence of superior force, and employing from the beginning 
eruel violence, we planted ourselves in the tempting Kolophon.”? 
This description of the primitive Kolophonian settlers, given with 
Homeric simplicity, forcibly illustrates the account given by He 
redotus of the proceedings of Neileus at Milétus. The establish- 
ment of Andrewmén must have been effeeted by force, and by the 
dispossession of previous inhabitants, leaving probably their wives 
and daughters as a prey to the victors. The city of Kolophén 
seems to have been situated about two miles inland, but it had ὦ 
fortified. port called Notium, not joined to it by long walls as the 
Peirreus was to Athens, but completely distinct. There were 


' Guhl, Ephesiaca, cap. ii, s. 2, p. 28. The passage which he cites in 
Aristeidés (Or. xlii, p. 523) refers, not to Ephesus, but to Pergamus, and to 
the mythe of Augé and Télephus: compare ἐῤέα. p. 251 

3 Mimnerm. Fragm. 9, Schneid. ap. Strab. xiv, p. 634:— 

Ἡμεῖς & αἰπὺ Πύλον Νηλήϊον ἄστυ λιπόντες 
Ἱμερτὴν ᾿Ασίην νηυσὶν ἀφικόμεϑα" 

Ἐς δ᾽ ἐρατὴν Κολοφῶνα, βίην ὑπέροπλον ἔχοντες, 
Ἑζόμεϑ᾽ ἀργαλέης ὕβριος ἡγεμόνες. 

Mimnermus, in his poem called Nanro, named Andremén as founder 
(Strabo, p. 633). Compare this behavior with the narrative of Odysseus in 
Hiomer (Odyss. ix, 40) : -- 

Ἰλιοϑέν με φέρων ἄνεμος Κικόνεσσι πέλασσεν 
Ἰσμάρῳ ἔνϑα δ᾽ ἐγὼ πόλιν ἔπραϑον, ὥλεσα δ᾽ αὐτούς" 
Ἔκ πόλιος δ᾽ ἀλόχους καὶ κτήματα πολλὰ λαβόντες 
Δάσσαμεϑ᾽, ete. 
Mimnermus comes in point of time a littie before Solon, B. C. 620-600 


Seem ee Oe es, 


Ἔ 


184 HISTORY OF GREECt 


times in which this port served the Kolophonians as a refuge, 
when their upper town was assailed by Persians from the interior ; 
but the inhabitants of Netium occasionally manifested inclinations 
to act as a separate community, and dissensions thus occurred 
between them and the people in Kolophén,' — so difficult was it 
in the Greek mind to keep up a permanent feeling of political 
amalgamation beyond the circle of the town walls. 

\% is much to be regretted that nothing beyond a few lines of 
Mimnermus, and nothing at all of the long poem of Xenophanés 
(composed seemingly near a century after Mimnermus) on the 
foundation of Kolophén, has reached us. ‘The short statements 
of Pausanias omit all notice of that violence which the native 
Kolophonian poet so emphatically signalizes in his ancestors : they 
are derived more from the temple legends of the adjoining Kla- 
rian Apollo and from morsels of epic poetry referring to that holy 
place, which connected itself with the worship of Apollo in Kréte, 
at Deiphi, and at ‘Thebes. The old Homeric poem, called ‘The- 
bais, reported that Manté, daughter of the Theban prophet Tei- 
resias, had been presented to Apollo at Delphi as a votive offering 
by the victorious epigoni: the god directed her to migrate to Asia, 
and she thus arrived at Klarus, where she married the Kretan 
Rhakius. The offspring of this marriage was the celebrated 


prophet Mopsus, whom the Hesiodic epic described as having 
y 


gained a victory in prophetic skill over Kalchas ; the latter having 
come to Klarus after the Trojan war in company with Amphilo- 
chus son of Amphiaraus.? Such tales evince the early importance 
of the temple and oracle of Apollo at Klarus, which appears to 
have been in some sort an emanation from the great sanctuary of 
Branchidw near Milétus; for we are told that the high priest of 
Klarus was named by the Milesians.*  Pausanias states that 
Mopsus expell2d the indigenous Karians, and established the city 
of Kolophén; and that the Ionic settlers under Promethus and 
Damasichthén, sons of Kodrus, were admitted amicably as addi- 
tional inhabitants :* a story probably emanating from the temple, 


' Aristot. Polit. v, 2,12; Thucyd_ iii, 34. 

* Hesiod. ap. Strab. xiv, p. 643; Conon, Narrat. € ; Argument of the poem 
ralled Nooro: (apud Diintzer), Epice. Greec. Frag. p. 23; Pausan. ix, 35, . 

* Tacit Anal. ii, 54. 4 Pausan. vii, 3, 1. 


LEBEDUS, fEOS, KLAZOMENA, ETC. 185 


and very different from that of the Kolophonian townsmen in the 
time of Mimnermus. It seems evident that not only the Apollinic 
sanctuary at Klarus, but also the analogous establishments on the 
south of Asia Minor at Phasélis, Mallus, etc., had their own foun- 
dation legends (apart from those of the various bands of emigrant 
settlers), in which they connected themselves by the best thread 
which they could devise with the epic glories of Greece. ! 
Passirg along the Ionian coast in a north-westerly direction from 
Kolcphon, we come first to the small but independent Ionic settle- 
ment of Lebedus — next, to Teds, which occupies the southern 
face of a narrow isthmus, Klazomenz being placed on the north- 
ern: this isthmus, a low narrow valley of about six miles across, 
forms the eastern boundary of a very considerable peninsula, 
containing the mountainous and woody regions called Mimas and 
Korykus. Teds is said to have been first founded by Orchome- 
nian Minyz under Athamas, and to have received afterwards by 
consent various swarms of settlers, Orchomenians and others, under 
the Kodrid leaders Apoekus, Nauklus, and Damasus.2 The valu- 
able Teian inscriptions published in the large collection of Boeckh, 
while they mention certain names and titles of honor which con- 
nect themselves with this Orchomenian origin, reveal to us at the 
same time some particulars respecting the internal distribution 
of the Teian citizens. The territory of the town was distributed 
amongst a certain number of towers, to each of which corresponded 
a symmory or section of the citizens, having its common altar and 
sacred rites, and often its heroic eponymus. How many in num- 
ber the tribes of Teds were, we do not know: the name of the 
Geleontes, one of the four old Ionic tribes, is preserved in an 
inscription; but the rest, both as to names and number, are un- 
known. ‘The symmories or tower-fellowships of Teds seem to be 
analogous to the phratries of ancient Athens, — forming each a 
factitious kindred, recognizing a common mythical ancestor, and 
bound together by a communion at once religious and political. 
‘The individual name attached to each tower is in some casea 
Asiatic rather than Hellenic, indicating in Teos the mixture not 


1 See Welcker, Epischer Kyklus, p 285. 
2Stepk Byz. v, Τέως; Pausan. vii, 3,3; Strabo, xiv, p. 633. 
called the town ᾿Αϑαμαντίδα Τέω. (Strab.¢. c.) 


rm] 


—_— τος —— - 5 


186 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


merely of Ionic and Zolic, but also of Karian or Lydian inhab 
itants, of which Pausanias speaks.! Gerrhwide, or Cherreidx, 


' Pausan. vii, 3,3. See the Inserip. No. 3064 in Boeeckh’s Corp. Ius., 
which enumerates twenty-eight separate πύργοι: it is a list of earchons, with 
the name and civil designation of each: I do not observe that the name of 
the same πύργος ever occurs twice, —’Aptéuwy, rot Φιλαίου πύργου, Φιλαΐδης, 
etc: there are two πύργοι, the names of which are effaced on the inscription. 
In two other inscriptions (Nos. 3065, 3066 ) there occur "Exivov συμμορία --’ 
"Ey:vadae— as the title of ἃ civil division without any specification of an 
"Eyivov πύργος ; but it is reasonable to presume that the πύργος and the συμ- 
pfopla are coincident divisions. The ®cAaiov TUN) o¢ occurs also in another 
Insc. No. 3081. Philzus is the Athenian hero, son of Ajax, and eponym of 
the deme or gens Philaide in Attica, who existed. as we here see. in Téos 
also. In Inscription, No. 3082, a citizen is complimented as νέον ᾿Αϑάμαντα, 
after the name of the old Minyan hero. In No. 3078, the Ionic tribe of the 
Peaéovrec is named as existing at Tos. 

Among the titles of the towers we find the following, — τοῦ Kidvoc πύρ- 
you, τοῦ Κιναβάλου πύργου, τοῦ ‘lépvoc πύρ ov, τοῦ Δάδδου πύργον, τοῦ 
Σίντυος πύργου: these names seem to be rather foreign than Hellenic 
Kiduc, Ἱέρυς. Σίντυς. Δάδδος, are Asiatic, perhaps Karian or Lydian: re 
specting the name Adddoc, compare Steph. Bvz. ν. Τρέμισσος whine Aadac 
appears as a Karivn name: Boeckh (p. 651) expresses his opinion that Add- 
doc is Karian or Lyilian. Then Κινώβαλος seems plainly not Hellenie: it is 
rather Phoenician ( Anniba!, Asdrubal, ete.), though Boeckh (in his Introdue- 
tory Comment to the Sarmatian Inscriptions, part xi. p. 109) tells us that 
Gasog is also Thracian or Getic, — “ βαλος haud dubie Thracica aut Getica 
est radix finalis, quam tenes in Dacico nomine Decebalus, et in nomine 
populi Triballorum.” The name rod Κόϑον πύργου, Ko¥idnc, is Tonic: 
4ékius and Kothus are represented as Ionic wkists in Euboa. Another name 
5 pina τοῦ Σϑενέλου πύργου, Xainideiog — affords an instance in which 
the local or gentile epithet is not derived from the tower: for Χαλκιδεῖς 
Χηλκιδεύς was the denomination of a village i — casey τ 

8: : rritory. Ir 
regard to some persons. the centile epithet is derived from the tower, — Tot 
Φιλαίου πύργου, Φιλαΐδης --οτοῦ Ταλαίσου πύργου, Τ᾿αλαισίδης ---- τοῦ Δάδδοι 
πύργου, Δαδδεῖος - τοῦ πύργου τοῦ Κιζῶνος, Kiev: in other cases not - 
τοῦ ‘Exadiov πύργου, Σκηβηΐδης --τ τοῦ Μηράδους πύργου, Βρυσκίδης ---- τοῦ 
᾿Ισϑπκίου πύργου, Λεωιίδης, etc. In the Inscrip. 3065, 3066, there is a formal 
vote of the "Ey/vov συμμορία or ‘Eyivada: (both names oceur): mention is 
also made of the @ouoc τῆς συμμορίας, also the annual solemnity called 
Leukathea, seemingly a gentile solemnity of the Echinad, which connects 
itself with the mythical family of Athamas. As an analogy to these Teian 
towers, we may compare the πύργοι in the Greek settlement of Olbia in the 
Eaxine (Boeckh, Inser. 2058), πύργος Πόσιος, πύργος ᾿Επιδαύρου,--- they were 
portions of the fortifications See also Dio Chrysostom, Orat. xxxv, pp 


ERYTHRA AND CHIC 8 187 


lhe port on the west side of the town of Teds, had for its epony- 
mous hero Gerés the Boeotian, who was said to hav. wcompanied 
the Kodrids in their settlement. 

The worship of Athéné Polias at Erythre may probably be 
traceable to Athens, and that of the Tyrian Héraklés (of which 
Pausanias recounts a singular legend) would seem to indicate ar 
intermixture of Phoenician inhabitants. But the close neighbor- 
hood of Erythra to the island of Chios, and the marked analogy 
of dialect which Herodotus! attests between them, show that the 
elements of the population must have been much the same in 
both. The Chian poet Ién mentioned the establishment of Aban- 
tes from Eubcea in his native island, under Amphiklus, intermixed 
with the preexisting Karians: Hektor, the fourth descendant from 
Amphiklus, was said to have incorporated this island in the Pan- 
[onic amphiktyony. It is to Pherekydés that we owe the men- 
tion of the name of Egertius, as having conducted a miscellaneous 
colony into Chios; and it is through Egertius (though I6n, the 
native poet, does not appear to have noticed him) that this logo- 
prapher made out the connection between the Chians and the 
other group of Kodrid settlements. In Erythre, Knépus or 
Kleopus is noted as the Kodrid cekist, and as having procured 
for himself, partly by force, partly by consent, the sovereignty of 
the preéxisting settlement of mixed inhabitants. The Erytarean 
historian Hippias recounted how Knépus had been treacherously 
put to death on ship-board, by Ortygés and some other false adhe 
rents: who, obtaining some auxiliaries from the Chian king Am 


, 


phiklus, made themselves masters of Erythra and established in 
it an eppressive oligarchy. They maintained the government, 
with a temper at once licentious and cruel, for some time, admit- 
ting none but a chosen few of the population within the walls of 
the town ; until at length Hippotés the brother of Knopus, arriving 
from without at the head of some troops, found sufficient support 
from the discontents of the Erythrzans to enable him to overthrow 
thr, tyranny. Overpowered in the midst of a public festival, 


76-77 A large tower, belonging toa private individual named Aglomachas 
is mentioned in Kyréné (Herod. iv, 164). 

1 Herod. i, 142: compare Thucyd. viii, 5. 

3 Strabo, xiv, p- 633. 


188 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Ortygés and his companions were put to death with cruel torture 
and the same tortures were inflicted upon their innocent aki 
and children,! -— a degree of cruelty which would at no time have 
found place amidst a community of European Greeks : even in 
the murderous party dissensions of Korkyra during the Pelopon- 
hesian war, death was not aggravated by preliminary sangha 
Aristotle? mentions the oligarchy of the Basilids as having euinted 
in Erythrx, and as having been overthrown by a despmcwatiosl 
revolution, although prudently managed: to what period this is 
to be referred we do not know. | 
? Klazomenx is said to have been founded by a wandering part 
either of Ionians or of inhabitants from Kleone and “Phlius, 
under Parphorus or Paralus: and Phokea by a band of Phoki- 
ans under Philogenés and Damon. This last-mentioned town 
was built at the end of a peninsula which formed part of the ter- 
ritory of the AXolic Kymé: the Kymzans were induced to aide it 
amicably, and to permit the building of the new tows The 
Phokzans asked and obtained permission to enrol hnnares in 
the Pan-lonic amphiktyony ; but the permission is said to have 
been granted only on condition that they should adopt maachove 
of the Kodrid family as their ekists ; and they accordingly invita 
from Erythrz and Teds three chiefs belonging to that family 
gens, — Decetés, Periklus, and Abartus.3 τ , ΓΤ 
| Smyrna, originally an /Kolic colony, established from Kymé 
fell subsequently into the hands of the Ionians of Kolophén Γ Α 
party of exiles from the latter city, expelled during an bubesting 
dispute, were admitted by the Smyrnzans into their is 
favor which they repaid by shutting the gates and seizing the 


" Hippias ap. J : ry 956 : Poly iii i ΜΕ 
ἽΝ ἀρ I κεν n. Vi, Ρ. 259; Polyzen. viii, 44, gives another story about 
nopus. Erythra, called Κνωπούπολις. (Steph. Byz. v.) 
men - νὰ... : i ᾿ 
rhe story told by Polyznus about the dictum of the oracle, and the con 
Te > > atace are , er . , ᾿ 
sequent ὌΝ whereby Knépus made himself master of Erythrx 
represents that town as powerful anteri a 
a rful anterior to the Ionic oc 
apne + occupa * 
eae pation (Polyzn. 
® Aristot. Polit. v, 5, 4. 
3 "ὦ a. ° 
hikeaigen vil, 3, 3. In Pausanias the name stands Abartus: but it 
. a ‘ 
αν ably ought to be Abarnus. the eponymus of Cave Abarnis in the Phd 
δε ἢ territory: see Steph: ζ. ν. ᾿Αβαρνίς. Rao ' 
ι phan. Byz.v. ᾿Αβαρνίς. Raoul Rochette puts Abar 


nus without making any remark (Histoi ἮΝ 
. i istoire d Ἴ : 
13, p. 95). — es Colonies Grecques, ὃ, iv, ¢ 


SMYRNA. 189 


place for themselves, at a moment when the Smyrnzans had 
gone forth in a body to celebrate a religious festival. The other 
ZKolic towns sent auxiliaries for the purpose of reéstablishing 
their dispossessed brethren; but they were compelled to submit 
to an accommodation, whereby the Ionians retained possession of 
the τόν, restoring to the prior inhabitants all their movables. 
Thess exiles were distributed as citizens among the other /Kolic 
cities.! 

Smyrna after this became wholly Ionian; and the inhabitants 
in later times, if we may judge by Aristeidés the rhetor, appear 
to have forgotten the Aolic origin of their town, though the fact 
is attested both by Herodotus and by Mimnermus.2 At what 
time the change took place, we do not know; but Smyrna ap- 
pears to have become Ionian before the celebration of the 23d 
Olympiad, when Onomastus the Smyrnean gained the prize 
Nor have we information as to the period at which the city was 
received asa member into the Pan-Ionic amphiktyony, for the 
assertion of Vitruvius is obviously inadmissible, that it was ad- 
mitted at the instance of Attalus, king of Pergamus, in place of 
a previous town called Melité, excluded by the rest for misbeha- 
vior.4 As little can we credit the statement of Strabo, that the 
city of Smyrna was destroyed by the Lydian kings, and that the 
inhabitants were compelled to live in dispersed villages until its 
restoration by Antigonus: A fragment of Pindar, which speaks 
of “the elegant city of the Smyrnaans, ” indicates that it must 
have existed in his time.6 The town of Er, near Lebedus, 
though seemingly autonomous,® was not among the contributors 
to the Pan-Ionian: Myonnésus seems to have been a dependency 
of Teds, as Pygela and Marathésium were of Ephezus. Notium, 
after its recolonization by the Athenians during the Peloponne- 
sian war, seems to have remained separate trom and independent 
of Kolophén: at least the two are noticed by Skylax as distinct 


towns.’ 


1 Herod. i. 150; Mimnermus, Fragm. — 
Θεῶν βουλῇ Σμύρνην εἵλομεν Αἰολίδα. 
2 See Raoul Rochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecques, b. iv. ch. 5, p. 43 


Aristeidés, Orat. xx-xxi, pp. 260, 267. 


3 Pausan. v, 8, 3. 
5 Strabo, xiv, p. 646; Pindar, Frag. 155, Dissen. 
9 Thacydid. viii, 19. 7 Skylax, c. 97: Thucyd. iii. 84. 


4 Vitruvius, iv, 1. 


HISTORY OF GREECE. 


CHAPTER XIV. 
EOLIC GREEKS IN ASIA. 


On the coast of Asia Minor to the north of the twelve Ionic 
confederated cities, were situated the twelve Aolic cities, appar- 
ently united in a similar manner. Besides Smyrna, the fate of 
which has already been described, the eleven others were. — 
Temnos, Larissa, Neon-Teichos, Kymé, A2gs, Myrina, Gryneinm, 
Killa, Notium, /Egiro®ssa, Pitané. These twelve are especially 
noted by Herodotus as the twelve ancient continental A&olic 

cities, and distinguished on the one hand from the insular AXolie 
Greeks, in Lesbos, Tenedos, and Hekatonnesoi, — and on the 
other hand from the /Kolie establishments in and about Mount 
Ida, which seem to have been subsequently formed and derived 
from Lesbos and Kymé.'! 

Of these twelve /Eolic towns, eleven were situated very near 
together, clustered round the Elzitie gulf: their territories, all of 
moderate extent, seem also to have been conterminous with each 
other. Smyrna, the twelfth, was situated to the south of Mount 
Sipylus, and at a greater distance from the remainder, — one 
reason why it was so soon lost to its primitive inhabitants. 
These towns occupied chiefly a narrow but fertile strip of terri- 
tory lying between the base of the woody mountain-range called 
Sardéné and the sea.2 Gryneium, like Kolophén and Milétus, 
possessed a venerated sanctuary of Apollo, of older date than the 
/Eolic emigration. Larissa, Témnos, and Lee were at some 
little distance from the sea: the first at a short distance north of 
the Hermus, by which its territory was watered and occasionally 
inundated, so as to render embankments necessary 13 the last two 


' Herodot. i. 149. Herodotus does not name ΕἸ σα, at the mouth of the 
Ka:kus: on the other hand, no other author mentions JEgiroéssa (see Man- 
net, Geogr. der Gr. und Romer, Ὁ. viii, p 396). 


* Herod: ut sup.; Pseudo-Herodot Vit. Homeri ec. 9. Lapdm ge woes 


στῶν tw 'κόμοιο. 


' Strabo, xiii, p. 621. 


KYME. 191 


upon rocky mountain-sites, 50 inaccessible to attack that the in- 
habitants were enabled, even during the height of the Persian 
power, to maintain constantly a substantial independence.' Elia, 
situated at the mouth of the river Kaikus, became in later times 
the port of the strong and flourishing city of pis coment gions 
Pitana, the northernmost of the twelve, was placed moter t Ν 
mouth of the Kaikus and the lofty promontory of sane, — 
closes in the Elwitic gulf to the northward. A small ΝΜ. 
Kan, close to that promontory is said to have once existed.° | 
It has already been stated that the legend ascribes the origin 
of these colonies to a certain special event called the Aolic emi 


ἱ ’ whi ὋΙ rs profess to know the precise date 
gration, of which chronologers protess to knov he ἢ | ane 
telline us how many years it happened after the Trojan war, co : 

se a “ - = ‘ "Th, ie 1 go 
siderably before the Ionic emigration.* Phat the Acolic as we 
sin Sane i ‘Asia were emigrants from Greece, we ma 
as Ionic inhabitants of Asia were emigrants from G ; sh ᾽ 

iev as he time or circumstances of the 
reasonably believe, but as to the time or ὁ : ee 
emicration we can pretend to no certain knowledge. ie 

h ‘haps that of Magnésia on Mount 
of the town Larissa, and perhaps that of Magnésia o 


is “ὦ Hellen iv, 8,5. The rhetor Aristeidés (Orat. Sacr. xXvil, p. 
τὴν ἵ - : λδυενι " 
347, p. 535 D.) describes in detail his journey from Smyrna to Pergamus, 
Cc fon the Hermus, and passing through Larissa, Kymé, Myrina, Gryneium, 
ros: 5 τες ΤΠ ἀν Ν 
Elaea ” He seems not to have passed through Témnos, at least he does not 
is it: moreover, we know from Pausanias (v, 13, 3) that Témnos was on 
th north bank of the Hermus. In the best maps of this district 10 15 placed, 
ἡ * Φ 2 " » ἣν 
erroneously, both on the south bank, and as if it were on the high road ne 
Smyrna to ‘Kymé We may infer from another passage of Aristeidés 5 r. 
. = ἡ > 7 
xlviii p. 351, p. 468 D.) that Larissa was nearer to the mouth of oe τὰ 
; : - ᾿ Ὺ 88 ζ 9 i 
mus than the maps appear to place it. According to a a ( xiii, a : ; 
5 s; but th 
ariss: 3 the south bank of the Hermus; 
would seem that Larissa was on nee = 
better testimony of Aristeidés proves the contrary ; Skylax (c. 94) ra not 
name ‘Témnos ‘which scems to indicate that its territory was at some distance 
᾽ 
from the sea. ὡ 
i Ἔ re, as thrown little light 
The-investigations of modern travellers have, as yet, n ns, 
upon the situation of Témnos or of the other AZolic towns: see 
Discoveries in Asia Minor, vol. ii, pp. 292-298. 
2 Pliny, H. N. v, 30. é 
᾿ Strabo xiii, pp. 582-621, compared with Pseudo-Herodotus, Vit. a, a 
ἷν Σ ἢ . : 
c. 1-38 who says that Lesbos was occupied by the /Zolians a ae an 
' ͵ ἣν : a ‘ ; Sm 
thirty years after the Trojan war: Kymé, twenty years after Lesbos ; Smyrna 
eighteen years after Kymé. . Nl 
“The chronological statements of different writers are callected ia Mz 


Clinton’s Fast. Hellen. c. 5, pp. 104. 105. 


192 HISTORY OF GREECE 


Sipylus (according to what has been observed in the preceding 
passage), has given rise to the supposition that the anterior in 
habitants were Pelasgians, who, having once occupied the fertile 
banks of the Hermus, as well as those of the Kaister near Eph- 
esus, employed their industry in the work of embankment.! 
Kymé was the earliest as well as the most powerful of the twelve 
fEolic towns, Neon-Teichos having been originally established 
by the Kymzans as a fortress for the purpose of capturing the 
Pelasgic Larissa. Both Kymé and Larissa were designated by 
the epithet of Phrikénis: by some this was traced to the moun- 
tain Phrikium in Lokris, from whence it was alleged that the 
4Eolic emigrants had started to cross the /Egean ; by others it 
seems to have been connected with an eponymous hero Phrikén.2 
It was probably from Kymé and its sister cities on the Elxitic 
gulf that Hellenic inhabitants penetrated into the smaller towns 
in the inland plain of the Kaikus, — Pergamus, Halisarna, Gam- 
breion, etc. In the more southerly plain of the Hermus, on the 
northern declivity of Mount Sipylus, was situated the city of 
Magnésia, called Magnésia ad Sipylum, in order to distinguish it 
from Magnésia on the river Meander. Both these towns called 
Magnésia were inland, — the one bordering upon the Ionic Greeks, 
the other upon the olic, but seemingly not included in any 
amphiktyony either with the one or the other. Each is referred 
to a separate and early emigration either from the Magnétes 
in Thessaly or from Kréte. Like many other of the early towns, 
Magnésia ad Sipylum appears to have been originally established 
higher up on the mountain, — in a situation nearer to Smyrna, 
from which it was separated by the Sipylene range, — and to 
have been subsequently brought down nearer to the plain on the 
north side as well as to the river Hermus. The original site, 
Pale-Magnésia,* was still occupied as a dependent township, even 


' Strabo, xiii, p. 621. 


* Strabo, xiii, 621; Pseudo-Herodot.c. 14. Aa Φρίκωνος, compared with 
ce. 38, 


Φρίκων appears, in later times, as an Atolian proper name; Ppixog as a 
Lokrian. See Anecdota Delphica, by E Curtius, Inscript. 40, p. 75 (Berlir 
1843). 


* Xenoph. Hellen. iii, 1,6; Anabas. vii, 8, 24. 
* There is a valuable inscription in Boeckh’s collection, No. 3137, con 


= . 


᾿ 
᾿ 
Ὶ 
Ἷ 


LESBOS. 192 


the Attalid and Seleukid kings. A like 
transfer of situation, from a height difficult of <— to — 
lower and more convenient position, took place bie: 4 ot er 8 
in and near this region; such as Gambrewn were _ ; 
had their Pale-Gambreion and Palie-Skepsis not far dis a ἂς 
Of these twelve /Kolic towns, it appears that all are mead 
were small and unimportant. Thucydidés, in — - me - 
dependent allies of Athens at the peer υόόμν δ τῷ pune 
ponnesian war, does not account them worthy of one. = 
ated.! Nor are we authorized to conclude, because a _ 
the general name of ZEolians, that καῇ pry ss cage . τὸν 
ired ri hough a large proportion sd 
te aa a the feeling of fraternity satis ἜΝ 
and Lesbians was maintained throughout the age -l " ; 
one etymology of the name Ἂ indeed, — sg si ti 
hat they were of miscellaneous origin.? 
ceil 2 of a considerable poets produced by the ane 
tinental towns; in this respect Lesbos stood gies aor Η “" 
said to have been the earliest of all the ZEolic sett ἘΌΝ “i 
rior even to Kymé. Six towns were originally pee di 
Lesbos, — Mityléne, Méthymna, Eresus, ὌΝ δὴν vs 
Arisbé: the last-mentioned town was subsequently irae te 
destroyed by the Methymnezeans, so that bneee ee ἀρ . 
towns in all.3 According to the political ins anaes nae 
Greece, the island had thus, first πὸ ear NEN ve = 
rernments, of which, however, Mitylene, situated 
a quarter and facing the promontory pipe cesta ἜΝ 
the first, while Méthymna, on the north of the islan 8 si 


; imes of 
during the times 


taining the convention between the inhabitants of Smyrna and Magnésia. 
Pale Magnésia seems to have been a strong and important = πὰ 
" Magnétes a Sipylo,” Tacit. Annal. ii, 47; Pliny, H. N. v, 29; Pausan. 
ay ; = = sr 
24, 2. πρὸς βόῤῥαν τοῦ Σιπύλου. 
Stephan. Byzantinus notices only 
ad Sipylum. 
' Thucyd. ii, 9. A νον 
® Strabo ἰχ, p. 402; Thucyd. viii, 100; esorsrtaayeaapsertdegnnasc 3 : 
Ἐπεὶ yap f πάλαι Αἰολιῶτις Κύμη ἐκτίζετο, συνῆλϑοι ἐν ταῦτῳ μὰ ; 
( ᾿ n. 
ἰϑνεα "aevina. καὶ δή καὶ ἐκ Μαγνησίας, ete. Etymolog ag 


Αἰολεῖς. rs 
3 Herodot. i, 151; Strabo, xiii, p. 590. 


9 1308 
VOL. Ill. 


Magnésia ad Mwandrum, not Magnésia 


194 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Cape Lekton, was the second. Like so many other Grecian «οἷον 
nies, the original city of Mityléné was founded upon an islet divieled 
from Lesbos by a narrow strait; it was subsequently extensled 
on to Lesbos itself, so that the harbor presented two distinct on- 
trances.! 

It appears that the native poets and fabulists who professed 
to deliver the archeology of Lesbos, dwelt less upon the Kolie 
settlers than upon the various heroes and tribes who were al- 
leged to have had possession of the island anterior to that settie- 
ment, from the deluge of Deukalion downwards, — just as the 
Chian and Samian poets seem to have dwelt principally upon the 
ante-Ionie antiquities of their respective islands. After the Pe- 
lasgian Xanthus son of Triopas, comes Makar son of Krinakus, 
the great native hero of the island, supposed by Plehn to be the 
eponym of an occupying race called the Makares: the Homerie 
Hymn to Apollo brings Makar into connection with the /Zolic 
inhabitants by calling him son of AZolus, and the native historian 
Myrsilus also seems to have treated him as an /olian.? To 
dwell upon such narratives suited the disposition of the Greeks; 
but when we come to inquire for the history of Lesbos, we find 
ourselves destitute of any genuine materials, not only for the 
period prior to the £Zolie occupation, but also for a long time 
after it: nor can we pretend to determine at what date that oecu- 
pation took place. We may reasonably believe it to have occurred 
before 776 B. c., and it therefore becomes a part of the earliest 
manifestations of real Grecian history: both Kymé, with its 
eleven sister towns on the continent, and the islands Lesbos and 
[enedos, were then folic; and T have already remarked that 
the migration of the father of Hesiod the poet, from the Kolie 
Kymé to Askra in Beeotia, is the earliest authentic fact known to 
us on contemperary testimony, — seemingly between 776 and 700 
B. 0. 


1 Tyodor. xiii, 79; Strabo, xiii, p. 617; Thucyd. iii, 6. 

2 Hymn. ad Apollin. v, 37. Λέσβος τ᾽ ἠγαϑέη, Μάκαρος ἔδος Αἰολίωνος. 
Myrsilus ap. Clemen. Alexandr. Protreptie. p. 19 ; Diodor. v, 57-82; Dionys. 
Halik. A. R. i, 18; Stephan. Byz. v, Μυτιλήνη. 

Ptehn (Lesbiaca, c. 2. pp. 25-37) has collected all the principal fables re- 
spectine this Leshian srchwrlory: compare also Raoul Rochette ( Histoire 


Jes Colonies Grecques, t. i, c 5, p. 182 ete.) 


EOLIC GREEKY NEAR MOUNT IDA. 199 


But besides these islands, and the strip of the continent between 
Kymé and Pitané (which constituted the territory proper] called 
JEolis), there were many other /Xolic establishments in the region 
near Mount Ida, the Troad, and the Hellespont, and even in 
European Thrace. All these establishments seem to have ema- 
nated from Lesbos, Kymé, and Tenedos, but at what time they 
were formed we have no information. Thirty different towns are 
said to have been established by these cities,' and nearly all the 
region of Mount Ida (meaning by that term the territory west of 
a line drawn from the town of Adramyttion northward to Priapos 
on the Propontis) came to be AZolized. A new /Kolis? was thus 
formed, quite distinct from the Aolis near the Elzitic gulf, and 
severed from it partly by the territory of Atarneus, partly by the 
portion of Mysia and Lydia, between Atarneus and Adramyttium, 
including the fertile plain of Thébé: a portion of the lands on this 
eoast seem indeed to have been occupied by Lesbos, but the far 
larger part of it was never AKolic. Nor was Ephorus accurate 
when he talked of the whole territory between Kymé and Abydos 
as known under the name of /X‘olis.3 

The inhabitants of Tenedos possessed themselves of the strip 
of the Troad opposite to their island, northward of Cape Lekton, 
_those of Lesbos founded Assus, Gargara, Lampénia, Antan- 
drus,4 etc., between Lekton and the north-eastern corner of the 
Adramyttian gulf, — while the Kymzans seem to have established 
themselves at Kebrén and other places in the inland Idzan dis- 


' Strabo, xiii, pp. 621,622. Μέγιστον δέ ἐστι τῶν Αἰολικῶν καὶ ἀρίστη 
Κύμη, καὶ σχεδὸν μητρόπολις αὐτή τε καὶ ἡ Λέσβος τῶν ἄλλων πόλεων τριά- 


κοντά που τὸν ἀριϑμὸν, ete. 

3 Xenophon, Hellen. iii, 1, 10. μέχρι τῆς Φαρναβάζου Αἰολίδος --- ἡ Αἰολὶς 
αὐτὴ hv μὲν Φαρναβάζου. 

Xenophon includes the whole of the Troad under the denomination of 
Kolis. Skylax distinguishes the Troad from olis : he designates as the 
Troad the coast towns from Dardanus seemingly down to Lekton: under 
XMolis he includes Kebrén, Sképsis, Neandreia, and Pityeia, thouch how 
these four towns are to be called ἐπὶ ϑαλώσσῃ itis not easy to see (Skylax, 
94-95). Nor does Skylax notice either the Persea of Ter.edos, or Assos and 


Gargara. 
3 Strabo, xiii, p. 583. 
4 Thucyd. iv, 52; viii, 108; Strabo, xiii, p. 610; Stephan. Byz. “Accor 


Pansan. vi. 4. 5. 


196 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


trict. As far as we can make out, this north-western corner 
(west of a line drawn from Smyrna to the eastern corner of the 
Propontis) seems to have been occupied, anterior to the Hellenic 
settlements, by Mysians and Teukrians,— who are mentioned 
together, in such manner as to show that there was no great ethni- 
eal difference between them.2 The elegiac poet Kallinus, in the 
middle of the seventh century B. C., was the first who mentioned 
the Teukrians: he treated them as emigrants from Kréte, though 
other authors represented them as indigenous, or as having cmnae 
from Attica: however the fact may stand as to their avian, we 
may gather that, in the time of Kallinus, they were still the great 
occupants of the Troad3 Gradually, the south and west enna, 
as well as the interior of this region, became penetrated by suc- 
cessive colonies of A®olic Greeks, to whom the iron and ship timber 
of Mount Ida were valuable acquisitions; and thus the small 
Peukrian townships (for there were no considerable cities) became 
/Eolized ; while on the coast northward of Ida, along the Helles- 
pont and Propontis, Ionic establishments were formed from Milétus 
and Phoékza, and Milesian colonists were received into the inland 
town of Sképsis.4 In the time of Kallinus, the Teukrians seem 
to have been in possession of Hamaxitus and Kolone, with the 


worship of the Sminthian Apollo, in the south-western region of 
the Troad: a century and a half afterwards, at the time of the 
Ionic revolt, Herodotus notices the inhabitants of Gergis, occu- 
pying a portion of the northern region of Ida in the line eastward 
from Dardanus and Ophrynion, as “the remnant of the ancient 
Yeukrians.”5 We also find the Mityleneans and Athenians con- 


' Pseudo-Herod. Vit. Hom. ο. 20 :— 
Ἴδης ἐν κορυφῇσι πολυπτύχου ἠνεμόεσσης, 
Ἔνϑα σίδηρος Ἄρηος ἐπιχϑονίοισι βρότοισι 
"Eooerai, εὖτ᾽ ἄν μιν Κεβρήνιοι dvdpec ἔχωσι. 
Τὰ δὲ KeBpivea τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον κτίζειν παρεσκευάζοντο οἱ Κυμαῖοι πρὸ 
τῇ Ἴδῃ, καὶ γίνεται αὐτόϑι σίδηρος. 
3 Herodot. vii, 20. 
3 Kallinus ap. Strabo, xiii, p. 604: compare p. 613, od¢ 7 ρῶτος παρέ- 
δωκε Καλλῖνος, ete 
4 Strabo, xiii, pp. 607-635. 
5 Herodot. v, 122, cide μὲν Αἰολέας πάντας, ὅσοι τὴν ᾿Ιλιάδα νέμονται, elAs 
δὲ Γέργιϑας, τοὺς ὑπολειφθέντας τῶν ἀρχαίων Τευκρῶν, ete. 


TEUKRIANS OF GERGIS.—MITYLENE. 197 


tending by arms about 600-580 B. Ὁ. for the possession of St 
geium at the entrance of the Hellespont :! probably the Lesbian 
settlements on the southern coast of the Troad, lying as they do 
go much nearer to the island, as well as the Tenedian settlements 
on the western coast opposite Tenedos, had been formed at some 
time prior to this epoch. We farther read of Zolic inhabitants 
as possessing Sestos on the European side of the Hellespont.’ 
The name Teukrians gradually vanished out of present use, and 
came to belong only to the legends of the past; preserved either 
‘n connection with the worship of the Sminthian Apollo, or by 
writers such as Hellanikus and Kephalén of Gergis, from whence 
it passed to the later poets and tothe Latin epic. It appears that 
the native place of Kephalén was a town called Gergis or Ger- 
githes near Kymé: there was also another place called Gergétha 
on the river Kaikus, near its sources, and therefore higher up in 
Mysia. It was from Gergithes near Kymé (according to Strabo), 
that the place called Gergis in Mount Ida was settled :3 probably 
the non-Hellenic inhabitants, both near Kymé and in the region 
of Ida, were of kindred race, but the settlers who went from Kymé 
to Gergis in Ida were doubtless Greeks, and contributed in this 
manner to the conversion of that place from a Teukrian to an 
Hellenic settlement. In one of those violent dislocations of inhab- 
itants, which were so frequent afterwards among the successors 
of Alexander in Asia Minor, the Teukro-Hellenic population of 
the Idan Gergis is said to have been carried away by Attalus 
of Pergamus, in order to people the village of Gergétha near the 
river Kaikus. 

We are to regard the /Eolic Greeks as occupying not only their 
twelve cities on the continent round the Eleitic gulf, and the 
neighboring islands, of which the chief were Lesbos and Tenedos, 
but also as gradually penetrating and Hellenizing the Idan 
region and the Troad. This lasc process belongs probably to a 
period subsequent to 776 B. ο., but Kymé and Lesbos doubtless 


count as AZolic from an earlier period. 


The Teukrians, in the conception of Herodotus, were the Trojans de 
scribed in the Iliaa, —the Tevxpic γῆ seems the same as Ἰλιὰς γῆ (ii, 118). 
} Herodot. v, 94. 3 Herodot. ix, 115. 


ἃ Strabo, xiii, 589-616. 


198 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Of Mityléné, the chief city of Lesbos, we hear some facts be- 
tween the 40th and 50th Olympiad (620-580 5. c.), which un- 
fortunately reach us only ina faint echo. That ety then num- 
bered as its own the distinguished names of Pittakus Sappho 
and Alkzeus: like many other Grecian communities of that oe 
it suffered much from intestine commotion, and experienced aes 
thar one violent revolution. The old oligarchy called the Pen- 
thilid: (seemingly a gens with heroic origin), rendered sheenandeen 
intolerably obnoxious by misrule of the most reckless εὐμοσοδίον ; 
their brutal use of the bludgeon in the public streets was avenged 
by Megaklés and his friends, who slew them and put down 
their government.! About the 42d Olympiad (612 B. c.) we 
hear of Melanchrus, as despot of Mityleéne, who was slain the 
se nei Pt Pittakus, Kikis, and Antimenidés, — the last two 
veing brothers of Alkzeus the r despots 
Megalagyrus, and the =a ass ena a og 
: age ΠΝ m we know only by 
name, and who appear to have been immortalized chiefly by the 
bitter stanzas of Alkzus, acquired afterwards the sovereignty of 
Mitylene. Among all the citizens of the town, however the most 
fortunate, and the most deserving, was Pittakus the nomad ἥδ». 
hadus, — a champion trusted by his countrymen alike in foreign 
war and in intestine broils.? ἢ 
| The foreign war in which the Mityleneans were engaged, and 
in which Pittakus commanded them, was against the sAthacinne 

on the continental coast opposite to Lesbos, in the Troad sais 
Sigeium. The Mityleneans had already established παρα seale- 
ments along the Troad, the northernmost of which was ‘Achiiiticiaes 
they laid claim to the possession of this line of coast, and when 
Athens (about the 43d Olympiad, as it is sald®) attempted to plant 


' Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 13. 

᾿ ' —— bg i, 74; Suidas, v, Κίκις, Πίττακος: Strabo, xiii, p-. 617 
ious Feae thal eaalion Mame aomeoca ieee 

‘nd Pittakus, in ἃ third fragment (73 a Sct oid ἣν " ei να nit 
MS ee g 73, ed. Schneid.), is brought into connec- 

Myrsilus. 
εν regard to the chronology of this war, see a note near the end of πὶ 
| revious chapter on the Solonian legislation. I have there noticed what 1 
‘elieve to be a chronological mistake of Herodotus in regard to tle period 
between 600-560 8. c. Herodotus considers this war between the Mityl 
tas and Athenians. in which Pi::akus and Alkseus were concerned > have 
’ 


ALKEUS AND PITTAKUS. 199 


a settlement at Sigeium, they resisted the establishment by force. 
At the head of the Mitylenean troops, Pittakus engaged in singh 
combat with the Athenian commander Phrynén, and had the good 
fortune to kill him. ‘The general struggle was, however, carried 
on with no very decisive result. On one memorable occasion the 
Mityleneans fled, and Alkswus the poet, serving as an hoplite in 
their ranks, commemorated in one of his odes both his flight and 
‘he humiliating loss of his shield, which the victorious Athenians 
suspended as a trophy in the temple of Athéné at Sigeium. His 
predecessor Archilochus, and his imitator Horace, have both been 
frank enough to confess a similar misfortune, which Tyrtzus 
perhaps would not have endured to survive.! It was at length 
agreed by Mityléné and Athens to refer the dispute to Periander 
of Corinth. While the Mityleneans laid claim to the whole line 
of coast, the Athenians alleged that inasmuch as a contingent 
from Athens had served in the host of Agamemn6n against Troy, 
their descendants had as good a right as any other Greeks to share 
in the conquered ground. It appears that Periander felt unwilling 
to decide this delicate question of legendary law. He directed 
that each party should retain what they possessed, and his verdict 
was still remembered and appealed to even in the time of Aris- 
totle, by the inhabitants of Tenedos against those of Sigeium. 
Though Pittakus and Alkeus were both found in the same line 
of hoplites against the Athenians at Sigeium, yet in the domestie 
of their native city, their bearing was that of bitter ene- 
mies. Alkseus and Antimenidas his brother were worsted in this 
party-feud, and banished : but even as exiles they were strong 


pol ities 


nee until 568 


been directed by Peisistratus, whose government did not comme 
B. c. (Herod. v, 94, 95). 
My suspicion is, that the 
— one in the time of Alkzus and Pittakus; ἃ second, much afterwards, un- 
dertaken by order of Peisistratus, whose illegitimate son Hegesistratus be- 
despot of Sigeiam. Herodotus appears to me to have 


re were two Athenian expeditions to these regions 


came, in consequence, 


merged the two into one. 
! See the difficult fragment of Alkseus (Fr. 24, ed. Schneidewin), preserved 


in Strabo, xiii, p. 600; Herodot. v, 94, 95; Archilochus, Eleg. Fr. i, 5, ed. 
Schneidewin; Horat. Carm. ii, 7, 9; perhaps also Anakreon, but not certain- 
ly (see Fr. 81, ed. Schneidewin), is to be regarded as having thrown away 


tis shield. 
2 Aristot. Rhetoric. i, 16, 2, where ἔναγχος marks the date. 


200 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


enough seriously to alarm and afflict their fellow-citizens, while 
their party at home, and the general dissension within the walls, 
reduced Mityléné to despair. In this calamitous condition, the 
Mityleneans had recourse to Pittakus, who with his great rank 
in the state (his wife belonged to the old gens of the Penthilids), 
courage in the field, and reputation for wisdom, inspired greater 
confidence than any other citizen of his time. He was by uni- 
versal consent named AZsymnete or dictator for ten years, with 
unlimited powers:' and the appointment proved eminently suc- 
cessful. How effectually he repelled the exiles, and maintained 
domestic tranquillity, is best shown by the angry effusions of Al- 
kzeus, whose songs (unfortunately lost) gave vent to the political 
hostility of the time, in the same manner as the speeches of the 
Athenian orators two centuries afterwards, and who in his vigor- 
ous invectives against Pittakus did not spare even the coarsest 
nicknames, founded on alleged personal deformities.2 Respecting 
the proceedings of this eminent dictator, the contemporary and 
reported friend of Solon, we know only in a general way, that he 
succeeded in reéstablishing security and peace, and that at the 
end of his term he voluntarily laid down his authority,3 — an evi- 
dence not only of probity superior to the lures of ambition, but 
also of that conscious moderation during the period of his dicta- 
torship which left him without fear as a private citizen afterwards 
He enacted various laws for Mityléné, one of which was sufficiently 
curious to cause it to be preserved and commented on, — for it 
prescribed double penalties against offences committed by men in 
a state of intoxication.4 But he did not (like Solon at Athens) 


' Aristot. Polit. iii, 9, 5,6; Dionys. Halik. Ant. Rom. v, 73: Plehn, Les: 
biaca, pp. 46-50. 

* Diogen. Laért. i, 81. 

* Strabo, xiii, p. 617; Diogen. Laért. i, 75: Valer. Maxim. vi, 5. 1 

* Aristot. Polit. ii, 9,9; Rhetoric ii, 27, 2. 

A ditty is said to have been sung by the female grinding-slaves in Lesbos, 
when the mill went heavily: “Ade:, μύλα, ἄλει " καὶ γὰρ Πιττακὸς ἀλεῖ, Τὰς 
ιεγάλας Μιτυλάναϊς βασιλεύων, --- " Grind, mill, grind; for Pittakus also 
grinds, the master of great Mityléné.” This has the air of a genuine com- 
position of the time, set forth by the enemies of Pittakus, and imputing to 
him (through a very intelligible metaphor) tyrannical con ποῦ ; though μοι 
Plutarch (Sept Sap. Conv. c. 14, p. 157) and Diogenes Laért. (i, 81) con 


ASIATIC DORIANS. 201 


mtroduce any constitutional changes, nor provide any new formal 
securities for public liberty and good government:! which. illus- 


trates the remark previously made, that Solon in doing this was 
beyond his age, and struck out new lights for his successors, — 
since on the score of personal disinterestedness Pittakus and he 
are equally unimpeachable. What was the condition of Mityléné 
afterwards, we have no authorities to tell us. Pittakus is said, if 
the chronological computers of a later age can be trusted, to have 
died in the 52d Olympiad (8. c. 572-568). Both he and Solon 
are numbered among the Seven Wise Men of Greece, respecting 
whom something will be said in a future chapter. The various 
anecdotes current about him are little better than uncertified 
exemplifications of a spirit of equal and generous civism: but his 
songs and his elegiac compositions were familiar to literary Gre ks 
in the age of Plato. 


CHAPTER XV. 
ASIATIC DORIANS. 


Tue islands of Rhodes, Kés, Symé, Nisyros, Kasus, and Ks. 
pathus, are represented in the Homeric Catalogue as furnishing 
troops to the Grecian armament before Troy. Historical Rhodes, 
and historical Kés, are occupied by Dorians, the former with its 
three separate cities of Lindus, Jalysus, and Kameirus. Two 
other Dorian cities, both on the adjacent continent, are joined with 
these four so as to constitute an amphiktyony on the Triopian 
promontory or south-western corner of Asia Minor, — thus con- 
stituting an hexapolis, including Halikarnassus, Knidus, Kés, 
Lindus, Jalysus, and Kameirus. Knidus was situated on the 


strue it literally, as if Pittakus had been accustomed to take bodily exercise 


at the hand-mill. 
' Aristot. Polit. ii, 9,9. ἐγένετο δὲ καὶ Πιττακὸς νόμων δημιουργὸς, ἀλλ᾽ of 


τολιτείας. 99 


202 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Triopian promontory itself; Halikarnassas more to the northward 
on the northern coast of the Keramic gulf: neither of the twe 
are named in Homer. 

The legendary account of the origin of these Asiatic Dorians 
has already been given, and we are compelled to accept their 
hexapolis as a portion of the earliest Grecian history, of which 
no previous account can be rendered. The circumstance of Rhedes 
and Kés being included in the Catalogue of the Iliad leads us tc 
suppose that they were Greek at an earlier period than the Ionic 
or AXolic settlements. It may be remarked that both the brothers 
Antiphus and Pheidippus from Kos, and Tlépolemus from Rhodes, 
are Herakleids,— the only Herakleids who figure in the Iliad: 
and the deadly combat between ‘Tlépolemus and Sarpédon may 
perhaps be an heroic copy drawn from real contests, which doubt- 
less often took place between the Rhodians and their neighbors 
the Lykians. That Rhodes and Kos were already Dorian at the 
period of the Homeric Catalogue, I see no reason for doubting. 
They are not called Dorian in that Catalogue, but we may well 
suppose that the name Dorian had not at that early period come 
to be employed as a great distinctive class-name, as it was after- 
wards used in contrast with Ionian and A£olian. In relating the 
history of Pheidén of Argos, I have mentioned various reasons 
for suspecting that the trade of the Dorians on the eastern coast 
of the Peloponnesus was considerable at an early period, and there 
may well have been Doric migrations by sea to Kréte and Rhodes, 
anterior to the time of the Iliad. 

Herodotus tells us that the six Dorian towns, which had estab- 
lished their amphiktyony on the Triopian promontory, were care- 
ful to admit none of the neighboring Dorians to partake of it. Of 
these neighboring Dorians, we make out the islands of Astypala, 
and Kalymnez,! Nisyrus, Karpathus, Symé, Télus, Kasus, and 
Chalkia, — on the continental coast, Myndus, situated on the same 
peninsula with Halikarnassus, — Phasélis, on the eastern coast 
of Lykia towards Pamphylia. The strong coast-rock of Iasus, 
midway between Milétus and Halikarnassus, is said to have been 


' Seo the Inscriptions in Boeckh’s collection, 2483-2671: the latter is 88 
Iasian Inscription, reciting a Doric decwee by the inhabitants of Kalymng 
also Ahrens, De Dialewto Dorica, pp. 15, 553; Diodor. v, 53-54 


NATIVES OF ASIA MINOR. 203 


originally founded by Argeians, but was compelled in consequence 
of destructive wars with the Karians to admit fresh settlers and 
a Neleid ckist from Milétus.! Bargylia and Karyanda seem 
to have been Karian settlements more or less Hellenized. There 
probably were other Dorian towns, not specially known to us, 
upon whom this exclusion from the Triopian solemnities was 
brought to operate. ‘The six amphiktyonized cities were in course 
of time reduced to five, by the exclusion of Halikarnassus: the 
reason for which (as we are told) was, that a citizen of Halikar- 
nassus, who had gained a tripod as prize, violated the regulation 
which required that the tripod should always be consecrated as 
an offering in the Triopian temple, in order that he might carry 
it off to decorate his own house.2. The Dorian amphiktyony was 
thus contracted into a pentapolis: at what time this incident took 
place, we do not know, nor is it perhaps unreasonable to conjec- 
ture that the increasing predominance of the Karian element at 
Halikarnassus had some effect in producing the exclusion, as well 
as the individual misbehavior of the victor Agasiklés. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


NATIVES OF ASIA MINOR WITH WHOM THE GREEKS BECAME 
CONNECTED. 


From the Grecian settlements on the coast of Asia Minor, and 
gn the adjacent islands, our attention must now be turned to those 
non-Hellenic kingdoms and people with whom they there came 
m contact. 

Our information with respect to all of them is unhappily very 
scanty. Nor shall we improve our narrative by taking the cata- 
logue, presented in the Iliad, of allies of Troy, and construing it 
as if it were a chapter of geography: if any proof were wanting 


! Polyb. xvi, 5. * Herodot. i, 144. 


204 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


of (he unpromising results of such a proceeding, we may find 1 
in the confusion which darkens so much of the work of Strabo, 
— who perpetually turns aside from the actual and ascertainable 


condition of the countries which he is describing, to conjectures. 


on Homeric antiquity, often announced as if they were unques- 
tionable facts. Where the Homeric geography is confirmed by 
other evidence, we note the fact with satisfaction ; where it stands 
unsupported or difficult to reconcile with other statements, we 
cannot venture to reason upon it as in itself a Substantial testi- 
mony. ‘The author of the Iliad, as he has congregated together 
a vast body of the different sections of Greeks for the attack 
of the consecrated hill of Ilium, so he has also summoned all the 
various inhabitants of Asia Minor to cooperate in its defence, and 
he has planted portions of the Kilikians and Lykians, whese his- 
torical existence is on the southern coast, in the immediate vicinity 
of the Troad. Those only will complain of this who have accus- 
tomed themselves to regard him as an historian or geographer : 
if we are content to read him only as the first of poets, we shall 


no more quarrel with him for a geographical misplacement, then 


with his successor Arktinus for bringing on the battle-field of 
flium the Amazons or the /&thiopians. 

The geography of Asia Minor is even now very imperfectly 
known,! and the matters ascertained respecting its ancient divis- 
ions and boundaries relate almost entirely either to the later periods 
of the Persian empire, or to times after the Macedonian and even 
after the Roman conquest. To state them as they stood in the 
time of Croesus king of Lydia, before the arrival of the conquer- 
ing Cyrus, is a task in which we find little evidence to sustain us. 
The great mountain chain of Taurus, which begins from the Che- 
lidonian promontory on the southern coast of Lykia, and strikes 


| For the general geography of Asia Minor, see Albert Forbiger, Hand- 
buch der Alt. Geogr. part ii, sect. 61, and an instructive little treatise, Fiinf 
Inschriften und fanf Stidte in Klein Asien, by Franz and Kiepert, Berlin, 
1840, with a map of Phrygia annexed. The latter is particularly valuable 
as showing us how much yet remains to be made out: it is too often the 
practice with the compilers of geographical manuals to make a show of full 
knowledge, and to disguise the imperfection of their data. Nor do they 
always keep in view the necessity of distinguishing between the terri‘oria! 
names and divisions of one age and those of another. 


NATIONS IN ASIA MINOR. 205 


north-eastward as far as Armenia, formed the most noted boundary. 
line during the Roman times,— but Herodotus does not once 
mention it; the river Halys is in his view the most important 
geographical limit. Northward of Taurus, on the upper portions 
of the rivers Halys and Sangarius, was situated the spacious and 
lofty central plain of Asia Minor. To the north, west, and south 
of this central plain, the region is chiefly mountainous, as it ap- 
proaches all the three seas, the Euxine, the A®gean, and the 
Pamphylian, — most mountainous in the case of the latter, per 
mitting no rivers of long course. ‘The mountains Kadmus, Messd- 
zis, Tmélus, stretch westward towards the Atgean sea, but leaving 
extensive spaces of plain and long valleys, so that the course of 
the Meander, the Kaister, and the Hermus is of considerable 
length. The north-western part includes the mountainous regions 
of Ida, Témnus, and the Mysian Olympus, yet with much admix- 
ture of fertile and productive ground. The elevated tracts near 
the Euxine appear to have been the most wooded, — especially 
Kytorus: the Parthenius, the Sangarius, the Halys, and the Iris, 
are all considerable streams flowing northward towards that sea 
Nevertheless, the plain land interspersed through these numerous 
elevations was often of the greatest fertility ; and as a whole, the 
peninsula of Asia Minor was considered as highly productive by 
the ancients, in grain, wine, fruit, cattle, and in many parts, oil; 
though the cold central plain did not carry the olive.' 

Along the western shores of this peninsula, where the various 
bands of Greek emigrants settled, we hear of Pelasgians, Teu- 
krians, Mysians, Bithynians, Phrygians, Lydians or Mezonians, 
Karians, Lelegians. Farther eastward are Lykians, Pisidians, 
Kilikians, Phrygians, Kapadokians, Paphlagonians, Mariandyn- 
ians, ete. Speaking generally, we may say that the Phrygians, 
Teukrians, and Mysians appear in the north-western portion, 
between the river Hermus and the Propontis, — the Karians and 
Lelegians south of the river Mwander, — and the Lydians in the 
central region between the two. Pelasgians are found here and 


1 Cicero, Pro Lege Manilid, c. 6; Strabo, xii, p. 572; Herodot. v, 32. See 
the instructive account of the spread and cultivation of the olive-tree, in 
Ritter, Erdkunde, West-Asien, b iii, Abtheilung iii: Abschn. i, 8. 50. pp 
522-537 


206 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


there, seemingly both in the valley of the Hermus and in that o: 
the Kaister: even in the time of Herodotus, there were Pelasgiaz 
settlements at Plakia and Skylaké on the Propontis, westward οἱ 
Kyzikus : and O. Muller would even trace the Tyrrhenian Pelas- 
gians to ‘yrrha, an inland town of Lydia, from whence he imag- 
ines, though without much probability, the name Tyrrhenian tc 
be derived. 

One important fact to remark, in respect to the native popula- 
tion of Asia Minor at the first opening of this history, is, that 
they were not aggregated into great kingdoms or confeder- 
ations, nor even into any large or populous cities, — but distrib- 
uted into many inconsiderable tribes, so as to present no over- 
whelming resistance, and threaten no formidable danger, to the 
successive bodies of Greek emigrants. The only exception to 
this is, the Lydian monarchy of Sardis, the real strength of which 
begins with Gygés and the dynasty of the Mermnadz, about 700 
B.c. Though the increasing force of this kingdom ultimately 
extinguished the independence of the Greeks in Asia, it seems 
to have noway impeded their development, as it stood when they 
first arrived, and for a long time afterwards. Nor were either 
Karians or Mysians united under any one king, so as to possess 
facilities for aggression or conquest. 

As far as can be made out from our scanty data, it appears 
that all the nations of Asia Minor west of the river Halys, were, 
in a large sense, of kindred race with each other, as well as with 
the Thracians on the European side of the Bosphorus and Hel- 
lespont. East of the Halys dwelt the people of Syro-Arabian 
or Semitic race, — Assyrians, Syrians, and Kappadokians, — as 
well as Kilikians, Pamphylians, and Solymi, along its upper 
course and farther southward to the Pamphylian sea. Weat- 
ward of the Halys, the languages were not Semitic, but belonging 
to a totally different family,'— cognate, yet distinct one from an- 


' Herodot. i, 72: Heeren, Ideen iiber den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part i 
abth. i, pp. 142-145. It may be remarked, however, that the Armenians, east- 
ward of the Halys, are treated by Herodotus as colonists from the Phrygians 
(vii, 73): Stephanus Byz. says the same, v, ‘Apuevia, adding also, καὶ τῇ 
φωνῇ πολλὰ φρυγίζουσι, The more careful researches of πὶ odern linguists 
after much groundless assertion on the part of those whc preceded them 
have shown that the Armenian language belongs in its structure to the Indo 


NATIONS IN ASIA MINOR. 907 


ther, perhaps not mutually intelligible. The Karians, Lydians, 
and Mysians recognized a certain degree of brotherhood with 
each other, attested by common religious sacrifices in the temple 
of Zeus Karios, at Mylasa.! But it is by no means certain that 
each of these nations mutually comprehended each other’s speech ; 
and Herodotus, from whom we derive the knowledge of these com- 
mon sacrifices, acquaints us at the same time that the Kaunians in 
the south-western corner of the peninsula had no share in them, 
though speaking the same language as the Karians; he does not, 
however, seem to consider identity or difference of language as a 
test of national affinity. 

Along the coast of the Euxine, from the Thracian Bosphorus 
eastward to the river Halys, dwelt Bithynians or Thynians, Mari- 
andynians and Paphlagonians, — all recognized branches of the 
widely-extended Thracian race. The Bithynians especially, in the 
north-western portion of this territory, and reaching from the 
Euxine to the Propontis, are often spoken of as Asiatic Thra- 
cians, — while on the other hand various tribes among the 
Thracians of Europe, are denominated Thyni, or Thynians,? — so 
little difference was there in the population on the two sides of 
the Bosphorus, alike brave, predatory, and sanguinary. The 
Bithynians of Asia are also sometimes called Bebrykians, under 
which denomination they extend as far southward’ as' the gulf of 
Kios in the Propontis.? ‘They here come in contact with Myg- 


Germanie family, and is essentially distinct from the Semitic: see Kitter, 
Erdkunde, West-Asien, Ὁ. iii, abth. iii; Abschn. i, 5, 36, pp. 577-582. He- 
rodotus rarely takes notice of the language spoken, nor does he on this 
occasion, when speaking of the river Halys as a boundary. 

1 Herodot. i, 170-171. 

2 Strabo, vii, pp. 295-303; xii, pp. 542, 564, 565, 572; Herodot. i, 28; vii, 
74-75; Xenophon. Hellenic. i, 8, 2; Amabasis, vii, 2, 22-32. Manncrt, 
Geographie der Gr. und Romer, b. viii, ch. ii, p. 403. 

ὃ Dionys. Periegét. 805; Apollodérus, i, 9, 20. Theokritus puts the 
Bebrykians on the coast of the Euxine —Id. xxii, 29; Syneell. p. 340, Bonn. 
The story in Appian, Bell. Mithridat. init. is a singular specimen of Grecian 
fancy, and anxiety to connect the antiquities of a nation with the Trojan 
war: the Greeks whom he followed assigned the origin of the Bithynians to 
Thracian followers of Rhésus, who fied from Troy after the latter had been 
killed by Diomédes: Dolonkus, eponym of the Thracians in the Chersoncsug, 
is called brother of Bithynus (Steph. Byz. Δύλογκος — Βιϑυνία). 

The name Μαοιαν-δυνοὶ, like Βε- ϑυνοὶ, may probably be an extension ot 


208 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


donians, Mysians, and Phrygians. Along the southern coast of 
the Propontis, between the rivers Rhyndakus and /Esépus, in 
immediate neighborhood with the powerful Greek colony of Ky- 
zikus, appear the Doliones; next, Pelasgians at Plakia and 
Skylaké; then again, along the coast of the Hellespont near 
Abydus and Lampsakus, and occupying a portion of the Troad, 
we find mention made of other Bebrykians.! In the interior of 
the Troad, or the region of Ida, are Teukrians and Mysians: the 
latter seem to extend southward down to Pergamus and the 
region of Mount Sipylus, and eastward to the mountainous re- 
gion called the Mysian Olympus, south of the lake Askanius, 
near which they join with the Phrygians.? 

As far as any positive opinion can be formed respecting nations 
of whom we know so little, it would appear that the Mysians and 
Phrygians are a sort of connecting link between Lydians and 
Karians on one side, and Thracians (European as well as 
Asiatic) on the other, — a remote ethnical affinity pervading the 
whole. Ancient migrations are spoken of in both directions 
across the Hellespont and the Thracian Bosphorus. It was the 
opinion of some that Phrygians, Mysians, and Thracians had 
emigrated into Asia from Europe, and the Lydian historian Xan- 
thus referred the arrival of the Phrygians to an epoch subsequent 
to the Trojan war. On the other hand, Herodotus speaks of a 
vast body of Teukrians and Mysians, who, before the Trojan 
war, had crossed the strait from Asia into Europe, expelled many 
of.the European Thracians from their seats, crossed the Stry- 
mon and the Macedonian rivers, and penetrated as far southward 
as the river Peneus in Thessaly, — as far westward as the Ionic 


compound of the primitive Θυνοΐ; perhaps, also, Βέβρυκες stands in the 
same relation to Βριεγὲς, or Φρυγές. Hellanikus wrote θΘύμβριον Δύμβριον 
(Steph. Byz. in v). 


Kios is Mysian in Herod tus, v, 122: according to Skylax, the coast from 
the gulf of Astakus to that of Kios is Mysia (c. 93). 

' Charon of Lampsakus, Fr. 7, ed. Didot. Χάρων δὲ φησὶ καὶ τὴν Aapuwpa- 
κηνῶν χῶραν προτέραν Βεβρυκίαν καλεῖσϑαι ἀπὸ τῶν κατοικησάντων aurny 
ὑεβρύκων - τὸ δὲ γένος αὐτῶν ἠφάνισται διὰ τοὺς γενομένους πολέμους. Sta ἔν 
xiii, p. 586; Conon, Narr. 12; Dionys. Hal. i, 54. 

* Hekateeus, Frag. 204, ed. Dido’; Apallodér. i, 9, 18; Strabo, χὰ pp 
564-575. 

* Xaath. Fragm. 5, ed. Didot. 


ETHNICAL AFFINITIES AND MIGRATIONS. 209 


gulf. This Teukro-Mysian migration, he tells us, brought about 
two consequences: first, the establishment near the river Strymén 
of the Paonians, who called themselves Teukrian colonists ;! 
next, the crossing into Asia of many of the dispossessed Thracian 
tribes from the neighborhood of the Strymén, into the north- 
western region of Asia Minor, by which the Bithynian or Asiatic 
Thracian people was formed. The Phrygians also are supposed 
by some to have originaily occupied an European soil on the 
borders of Macedonia, near the snow-clad Mount Bermion, at 
which time they were called Briges,—an appellative name in 
the Lydian language equivalent to freemen, or Franks:? while 
the Mysians are said to have come from the north-eastern portions 
of European Thrace south of the Danube, known under the 
Roman empire by the name of Meesia.3 But with respect to the 
Mysians there was also another story, according to which they 
were described as colonists emanating from the Lydians; put 
forth according to that system of devoting by solemn vow a tenth 
of the inhabitants, chosen by lot, to seek settlements elsewhere, 
which recurs not unfrequently among the stories of early emi- 
erations, as the consequence of distress and famine. And this 
last opinion was supported by the character of, the Mysian lan- 
ruage, half Lydian and half Phrygian, of which both the Lydian 
historian Xanthus, and Menekratés of Elxa,1—by whom the 
opinion was announced,— must have been very competent 
judges. 

From such tales of early migration both ways across the 
Hellespont and the Bosphorus, all that we can with any certainty 
infer is, a certain measure of affinity among the population of 
Thrace and Asia Minor, — especially visible in the case of the 
Phrygians and Mysians. The name and legends of the Phrygian 
hero Midas are connected with different towns throughout the 


' Herodot. vii, 20-75. 

Strabo, vii, p. 295; xii, p. 550; Herodot. vii, 73; Hesych. v, Bpiya. 

3 Strabo, vii, p. 295; xii, pp. 542, 564, 571, where he cites the geographes 
Artemidérus. In the passage of the Iliad (xiii, 5), the Μυσοὶ ἀγχέμαχοι 
appear to be conceived by the poet in European Thrace ; but Apollodérug 
does not seem to have so construed the passage. Niebuhr (Kleine Schriften 
p. 370) expresses himself more confidently than the evidence warrarts 

4 Strabo, xii, p. 572; Herodot. vii, 74. 

VOL. II. 1 40c. 


210 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


extensive region of Asiatic Phrygia, — Kelenz, Pessinis, An 
kyra,! Gorditm,—as well as with the neighborhood of Mount 
Bermion in Macedonia: the adventure whereby Midas got pos- 
session of Silenus, mixing wine with the spring of which he 
drank, was localized at the latter place as well as at the town of 
Thymbrion, nearly at the eastern extremity of Asiatic Phrygia. 
The name Mygdonia, and the eponymous hero Mygdon, belong 
:ot less to the European territory near the river Axius, — after- 
yards a part of Macedonia, —than to the Asiatic coast of the 
eastern Propontis, between Kios and the river Rhyndakus.3 
Otreus and Mygddén are the commanders of the Phrygians in 
the Iliad; and the river Odrysés, which flowed through the terri- 
tory of the Asiatic Mygdonians, into the Rhyndakus, affords an- 
other example of homonymy with the Odrysian Thracians‘ in 
Europe. And as these coincidences of names and legends con- 
duct us to the idea of analogy and affinity between Thracians and 
Phrygians, so we find Archilochus, the earliest poet remaining to 
us who mentions them as contemporaries, coupling the two in the 


415. We may also notice the town of Κοτυάειον near Μιδάειον in Phrygia, 
as connected with the name of the Thracian goddess Kotys (Strabo, x, p. 
470; xii, p. 576). 

2 Herodot. viii, 138; Theopompus, Frag. 74, 75, 76, Didot (he introduced 
a long dialogue between Midas and Silenus,— Dionys. Halik. Vett. Seript. 
Censur, p. 70: Theon. Progymnas. c. 2); Strabo, xiv, p. 680; Xenophon, 


Anabas. i, 2, 13. 
3 Strabo, xii. pp. 575-576: Steph. Byz. Mvydovia; Thucyd. ii, 99. The 


territory Mygdonia and the Mygdonians, in the distant region of Mesopota- 
mit, eastward of the river Chaboras (Plutarch, Lucullus, 32; Polyb. v, 51; 
Xenophon, Anab. iv, 3,4) is difficult to understand, since it is surprising to 
find a branch of these more westerly Asiatics in the midst of the Syro- 
Arabian population. Strabo (xv, p. 747) supposes it to date only from the 
times of the Macedonian conquest of Asia, which is disproved by the men 
tion of the name in Xenophon; though this reading in the text of Xenophon 
is by some called in question. See Forbiger, Handbuch der Alten Geogra- 
phie, part ii, sect. 98, p. 628. 

' 4 liad, iii, 188; Strabo, xii, p. 551. The town of Otrosa, of which Otreur 
seems to be the eponymus, was situated in Phrygia, just on the borders of 
Bithynia (Strabo, xii, p. 566). 

5. Arehiloch. Fragm. 28 Schneid., 26 Gaisf. — 
ὥσπερ αὔλῳ βρῦτον ἢ Θρῆϊξ ἀνὴρ 
Ἢ Pov’ ἔβρυζε, ete. 


PHRYGIANS. 213 


the two sides of the Hellespont appears to have presented simi- 
larity of feature and customs. 

To settle with any accuracy the extent and condition of these 
Asiatic nations during the early days of Grecian settlement 
among them is impracticable ; the problem was not to be solved 
even by the ancient geographers, with their superior means of 
knowledge. ‘The early indigenous distribution of the Phrygian 
population is unknown to us, and the division into the Greater 
and Lesser Phrygia belongs to a period at least subsequent to 
the Persian conquest, like most of the recognized divisions of 
Asia Minor; it cannot, therefore, be applied with reference tu 
the period earlier than Croesus. It appears that the name Phry- 
gians, like that of Thracians, was a generic designation, and 
comprehended tribes or separate communities who had also spe- 
cific names of their own. We trace Phrygians at wide distances: 
on the western bank of the river Halys,— at Kelene, in the 
interior of Asia Minor, towards the rise of the river Meander, — 
and on the coast of the Propontis near Kios ;—#in both of these 
latter localities there is a salt lake called Askanius, which is the 
name both of the leader of the Phrygian allies of Troy, and of 
the country from whence they are said to come, in the Iliad.t 
They thus occupy a territory bounded on the south by the Pisid- 
ian mountains, on the west by the Lydians (indicated by a termi- 
nal pillar set up by Croesus at Kydrara),? —on the east by the 
river Halys, on the other side of which were Kappadokians or 
Syrians, on the north by Paphlagonians and Mariandynians. 
But it seems, besides this, that they must have extended farther 
to the west, so as to occupy a great portion of the region cf 
Mount Ida and the Troad. For Apollodérus considered that 


The passage is too corrupt to support any inference, except the near approx 
imation in the poet’s mind of Thracians and Phrygians. 

' Tliad, ii, 873; xiii, 792; Arrian, i, 29; Herodot. vii, 30. The boundary 
the Phrygians southward towards the Pisidians, and westward as well as 
north-westward towards the Lydians and Mysians, could never be distine'ty 
traced (Strabo. xii, pp. 564, 576, 628): the voleanice region called Katake 
kaumené is referred in Xenophon’s time to Mysia (Anabas. i, 2, 1D): com- 
pare the remarks of Kiepert in the treatise above referred to, Fiinf Inschriften 
und fiinf Stadte, p. 27. 

2 Herodot. i, 72; vii, 30. 


212 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


both the Doliones and the Bebrykians were included in the grea 
Phrygian name ;! and even in the ancient poem called “ Phoré- 
nis.” which can hardly be placed later than 600 B. c., the Dak- 
tyls of Mount Ida, the great discoverers of mieeaBbintey 3 ‘ore 
expressly named Phrygian.2 The custom of the ἀμ taste 
poets to call the inhabitants of the road Phrygians, does not 
necessarily imply any translation of inhabitants, but an employ- 
ment of the general name, as better known to the audience whom 
iney addressed, in preference to the less notorious specific name 
— Just as the inhabitants of Bithynia might be described dither 
as Bithynians or as Asiatic Thracians. ae 

If, as the language of Herodotus and Ephorus? would seem 
to imply, we suppose the Phrygians to be at a considerable dis- 
tance from the coast and dwelling only in the interior, it will be 
difficult to explain to ourselves how or where the early Greek 
colonists came to be so much influenced by them; aretha the 
supposition that the tribes occupying the Troad and the region 
of Ida were Phrygians elucidates this point. And the fact 18 
incontestable, that both Phrygians and Lydians did not oe 
modify the religious manifestations of the Asiatic Greeks, ia 
through them of the Grecian world generally, — but also ren- 
dered important aid towards the first creation of the Grecian 
musical scale. Of this the denominations of the seale afford a 
proof. 

Three primitive musical modes were employed by the Greek 
poets, in the earliest times of which later authors «δὰ find ἜΝΙ 
account, — the Lydian, which was the most acute, — the Posen 
which was the most grave,—and the Phrygian, latiemmediiie 
between the two; the highest note of the Lydian being one tone 
higher, that of the Dorian one tone lower, than the highest note 
of the Phrygian scale.4 Such were the three modes or scales, 

* Strabo, xiv, p. 678: compare xiii, p. 586. The legend makes Dolién 
son of Silénus, who is so much connected with the Phrygian Midas (Alex- 
and. AXtolus ap. Strabo, xiv, p 681) 

3 Phorénis, Fragm. 5, ed. Diintzer, ἢ. 57- 

ἔνϑα γόητες 
Ἰδαῖοι Φρυγὲς ἀνδρες, ὀρέστεροι. oixad’ ἔναιον, ete. 

+ Ephorus ap. Strabo, xiv, 678; ierodot. y, 49. 

4 See the learne’l and valuable Dissertation of Boeckh, De Metris Pindan. 
iii, 8, pp. 235-239 


1 Yo, ὃ 


ἹΠΊΞΙΟ OF PHRYGIA. 913 


each including only a tetrachord, upon which the earliest G: eek 
masters worked: many other scales, both higher and lower, were 
subsequently added. It thus appears that the earliest Greek 
was, in large proportion, borrowed from Phrygia and 
Lydia: and when we consider that, in the eighth and seventh 
centuries before the Christian era, music and poetry conjoined 
often also with dancing or rhythmical gesticulation — was 
the only intellectual manifestation known among the Greeks, — 
and moreover that, in the belief of all the ancient writers, every 
musical mode had its own peculiar emotional influences, power- 
fully modified the temper of hearers, and was intimately con 
nected with the national worship,—we shall see that this 
transmission of the musical modes implies much both of com- 
cation and interchange between the Asiatic Greeks and the 


music 


muni 


indigenous population of the continent. Now the fact of com 


munication between the Ionic and ®olic Greeks, and their 
eastern neighbors, the Lydians, is easy to comprehend generally, 
though we have no details as to the way in which it took place; 
but we do not distinctly see where it was that the Greeks came 
<o much into contact with the Phrygians except in the region of 
Ida. the Troad, and the southern coast of the Propontis. To 
this region belonged those early Phrygian musicians (under the 
heroic names of Olympus, Hyagnis, Marsyas), from whom the 
Greeks borrowed.! And we may remark that the analogy be- 
tween Thracians and Phrygians seems partially to hold in re- 
spect both to music and religion, since the old mythe in the Iliad, 


! Plutarch, De Musica, ὁ. 5, 7, p. 1182; Aristoxenus ap. Athena. xiv. p. 
624; Alkman, Frag. 104, ed. Bergk. 
Aristoxenus seems to have considered the Phrygian Olympus as the great 
enius who gave the start to Grecian music (Plutarch, 7. pp. 
ed almost entirely for hymns to the gods, 
5, in honor of the Great Mother 


inventive g 
1135-1141): his music was employ 
religious worship, the Métréa, or ceremonie 
(p. 1140). Compare Clemen. Alexand. Strom. i, p. 306. 

Μαρσύας may perhaps have its etymology in the Karian or Lydian lan- 


Σούας was in Karian equivalent to τάφος (see Steph. Byz. v, Lovayé& 


guage. 
v, Macravpa) 


λα): Ma was one of the various names of Rhea (Steph. Byz. 
The word would have been written Mapova¢ by an FEolic Greek. 

Marsyas is represented by Telestés the dithyrambist as a satyr, son of a 
nymph, — νυμφαγενεῖ χειροκτύπῳ φηρὶ Mapovg κλέος (Telestés ap. Athens 


giv. p 617). 


214 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


wherein the Thracian bard Thamyris, rashly contending in sony 
. " “ . Ἶ Θ Ἢ ye 9 
with the Muses, is conquered, blinded, and stripped of his art 
" ΓΕ * * i . 
seems to be the prototype of the very similar story respecting the 
contention of Apollo with the Phrygian Marsyas,! — the cithara 
against the flute; while the Phrygian Midas is farther charac- 
terized as the religious disciple of Thracian Orpheus 
In m vi thapter relati ¥ 
ti y previous chapter relating to the legend of Troy,2 men- 
ae has been already made of the early fusion of the A£olic 
é reeks with the indigenous population of the Troad; and it is from 
" i i » " il . . | 
1ence probably that the Phrygian music with the flute as its instru- 
ae — employed in the orgiastic rites and worship of the Great 
F m * , ἣ i Ἴ 
othe r in Mount Ida, in the Mysian Olympus, aud other moun- 
_ regions of the country, and even in the Greek city of Lam- 
sakus.3 — pas » Greek ὁ Ἵ ᾿ 
Ps ) ‘ passed to the Greek composers. Its introduction is 
or with the earliest facts respecting Grecian music, and 
must have take ac ir dns 
psn : taken place during the first century of the recorded 
Olympiads. In the Homeric poems we find no allusion to it. but 
¢ " « ΄ ¥ ; " ; ' ͵ 
“oe probably have contributed to stimulate that development 
με lyric and elegiac composition which grew up among the post: 
omeric A¢olians and Ionians, t δυμδμον ᾿ 
i Ss oO « ¢ > on 
i gt eel » to the gradual displacement of 
pic. nother instance of the fusion of Phrygians witk 
rreeks is to be found in the religious ceremoni Y vei 
oie | the religious ceremonies of Kyzikus, 
μι Ss, and Frusa, on the southern and south-eastern coasts of the 
ee at the first of the three places, the worship of the 
ge of the gods was celebrated with much solemnity on 
1e hi : 2ari > δὲ 
sehen οἵ 1 indymon, bearing the same name as that mountain 
in the interior, near Pessinus, from whence Cybelé derived her 
εν, Ἢ ® ¢ ‘ ᾿ | 
Xenoph. Anab. i, 2, 8; Homer, Iliad, ii, 595: Strabo, xii, p. 578: the 
nso connects Olympus with Kelanz as well as Marsyas. Justin, xi, 7: 
* Mida, qui ab Orpheo sacrorum solemni initi vain eieaiien 
i sacrorum solemnibus initiatus, Phrygi: ligioni 
ferent. , Phrygiam religionibus 
The — of Midacion, Kadi, and Prymnéssus, in the more northerly 
portion of Phrygia, bear the impress of the Phrygian hero Midas (Eckhel 
Doctrina Nummorum Vet. iii, pp. 143-168). , 
* Part i, ch. xv, p. 453. 
i ei li ο iia 
The fraement of Hipp6énax mentioning an eunuch of Lampsak ic 
and well-fed, reveals to us the Asiati ip i aoe 
i, 8 to us the Asiatic worship ir. that place (Fragm. 26. ed 
Bergk) :— ͵ 
Θύνναν τε καὶ μυττωτὸν ἡμέρας πάσας 
Δαινύμενος, ὥσπερ Λαμψακηνὸς εὐνοῦχος, ete. 


PHRYGIANS, LYDIANS, MYSIANS. 215 


surname of Dindyméné.! The analogy between the 
igious practices has been often noticed, 
and confusion occurs not unfrequently between Mount Ida in 
Kréte and the mountain of the same name in the Troad; while 
the Teukrians of Gergis in the Troad, — who were not yet Hel- 
at the time of the Persian invasion, and who were 
egiac poet Kallinus to have emigrated from 


— differed so little 


principal 
Kretan and Phrygian rel 


lemized even 
affirmed by the el 
Kreté, —if they were not really Phrygians, 
from them as to be called such by the poets. 

The Phrygians are celebrated by Herodotus for the abundance 
both of their flocks and their agricultaral produce 2 the excellent 
wool for which Milétus was always renowned came in part from 
the upper valley of the river Meeander, which they inhabited. 
He contrasts them in this respect with the Lydians, among whom 
capacities of persons dwelling in cities are 
ir view: much gold and silver, retail trade, 
unchastity of young women, yet combined 
Phrygian cheese and salt-provisions, 
hoes, acquired notoriety. 


Both Phrygians and Lydians are noticed by Greek authors sub- 
nt to the establishment of the Persian empire as a people 
industrious, and useful as slaves, — an attribute 
sians.> who are usually described as brave 
and hardy mountaineers, difficult to hold in subjection: nor even 
true respecting the Lydians, during the earlier times anterior ta 
the complete overthrow of Croesus by Cyrus; for they were then 
esteemed for their warlike prowess. Nor was the different char- 


the attributes and 
chiefly brought to ot 


indigenous games, 


with thrift and industry. 
Lydian unguents,* carpets and colored 8 


seque 
timid, submissive, 
not ascribed to the My 


‘ Strabo, xii, pp. 564-575 ; Herodot. iv, 76. 
2 Herodot. v, 49. πολυπροβατώτατοι καὶ πολυκαρπότατοι. 


3 Herodot. i, 93-94. 
ὁ Τάριχος Φρύγιον (Kupolis, Marik. Fr. 23, p. 506, Meincke), --τυρος, 


Athene. xii, 516.---ἰσχάδες, Alexis ap. Athene. iii, 75: some Phrygians, 


however, had never seen a fig-tree (Cicero pro Flacco, ¢. 17). 
Carpets of Sardis (Athen2. v, 197); φοινικίδες Σαρδιανικαὶ (Plato, Com- 


icus ap. Athenm. ii, 48); ᾿Αεὶ φιλόμυρον πᾶν τὸ Σάρδεων γένος (Alexis ap. 
Athenz. xv, p. 691, and again ἐδ. p. 690); Πόδας dé Ποέκιλ᾽ς μάσϑλης 
ἐκάλυπτε Λύδιον καλὸν ἔργον (Sappho, Fragm. 54, ed. Schneidewin; Schol 


Aristoph. Pac. 1174). ᾿ 
* Xenophon, Anabas. i, 6, 7; iii, 2, 23; Memorab. iii, 5, 20. axovTieras 


Μυσοὶ, Aschyl. Pers. 40. ἁβροδίαιτοι Λύδοι. 


216 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


acter of these two Asiatic people yet effaced even in the second 
eentury after the Christian era, For the same Mysians, who in 
the time of Herodotus and Xenophon gave so much trouble to 
the Persian satraps, are described by the rhetor Aristeidés as 
seizing and plundering his property at Laneion near Hadriani, 
— while on the contrary he mentions the Phrygians as habitually 
ming from the interior towards the coast-regions to do the work 
af the olive-gathering.! During the times of Grecian autonomy 
and ascendency, in the fifth century B. C., the conception of a 
Phrygian or a Lydian was associated in the Greek mind with 
ideas of contempt and servitude,? to which unquestionably these 
Asiatics became fashioned, since it was habitual with them under 
the Roman empire to sell their own children into slavery,’ — 
a practice certainly very rare among the Greeks, even when they 
too had become confounded among the mass of subjects of impe- 
rial Rome. But we may fairly assume that this association of 
contempt with the name of a Phrygian ora Lydian did not pre- 
vail during the early period of Grecian Asiatic settlement, or 
even in the time of Alkman, Mimnermus, or Sappho, down to 
600 B. c. We first trace evidence of it in a fragment of Hippo- 
nax, and it began with the subjection of Asia Minor generally, 


' Aristeid. Orat. xxvi, p. 346. The λόφος ‘Arvog was very near to this 
place Laneion, which shows the identity of the religious names throughout 
Lydia and Mysia (Or. xxv, p. 318). About, the Phrygians, Aristeidés, Orat. 
xlvi, p. 308, Τῶν δὲ πλουσίων ἕνεκα εἰς τὴν ὑπερορίαν ἀπαίρουσιν, ὥσπερ or 
Φρυγὲς τῶν ἐλαῶν ἕνεκα τῆς συ, λογῆς. 

The declamatory prolixities of Aristeidés offer little reward to the reader, 
except these occasional valuable evidences of existing custom. 

3 Hermipnus ap. A*hene. i, p. 27. ᾿Ανδράποδ᾽ ἐκ Φρυγίας, etc., the saying 
ascribed to Sokratés in lian, V. H. x, 14; Euripid. Alcest. 691; Strabo, 
vii, p. 304; Polyb. iv, 38. The Thracians sold their children into slavery, 
— (Herod. v, 6) as the Circassians do at present (Clarke’s ‘Travels, vol. i, p. 
878). 

Δειλότερος λάγω Φρυγὸς was a Greek proverb ‘Strabo, i, p. 86: compare 
Cicero pro Flacco, ο. 27). 

3 Philostrat. Vit. Apollon. viii, 7, 12, p. 346. The slave-merchants seem 
to have visited Thessaly, and to have bought slaves at Pugasz ; these were 
either Penests sold by their masters out of the country, or perhaps non- 
Greeks procured from the borderers in the interior (Aristoph. Plutus, 52 ; 
Hermippus ap. Athen. i, p. 27. Αἱ Παγασαὶ δούλους καὶ στιγματι Ἢ 
καοέχουσι). 


MID AS. 217 


first under Croesus! and then under Cyrus, and with the sentiment 
of comparative pride which grew up afterwards in the minds 
of European Greeks. The native Phrygian tribes along the 
Propontis, with whom the Greek colonists came in contact, - 
Bebrykians, Doliones, Mygdonians, etc,— seem to have been 
agricultural, cattle-breeding and horse-breeding, yet more vehe- 
ment and warlike than the Phrygians of the interior, as far at 
least as can be made out by their legends. The brutal but 
gigantic Amykus son of Poseidon, chief of the Bebrykians, with 
whom Pollux contends in boxing, and his brother Mygddén to 
whom Héraklés is opposed, are samples of a people whom the 
Greek poets considered ferocious, and not submissive ;2 while 
the celebrity of the horses of Erichthonius, Laomedén, and 
Asius of Arisbé, in the Iliad, shows that horse-breeding was a 
distinguishing attribute of the region of Ida, not less in the mind 
of Homer than in that of Virgil.8 

According to the legend of the Phrygian town of Gordium on 
the river Sangarius, the primitive Phrygian king Gordius was 
originally a poor husbandman, upon the yoke of whose team, 
as he one day tilled his field, an eagle perched and posted him- 
self. Astonished at this portent, he consulted the Telmissean 
augurs to know what it meant, and a maiden of the prophetic 
breed acquainted him that the kingdom was destined to his family. 
He espoused her, and the offspring of the marriage was Midas. 
Seditions afterwards breaking out among the Phrygians, they 
were directed by an oracle, as the only means of tranquillity, to 
choose for themselves as king the man whom they should first 


' Phrygian slaves seem to have been numerous at Milétus in the time of 


Hippénax, Frag. 36, ed. Bergk : — 
Καὶ τοὺς σολοίκους, ἣν λάβωτι, περνῶσιν, 
Φρυγὰς μὲν ἐς Μίλητον ἀλφιτεύσοντας. 

3 Theocrit. Idyll. xxii, 47-133; Apollon. Rhod. i, 937-954; ii, 5-140 
Valer. Flacc. iv, 100; Apollodor. ii, 5, 9. 

3 Jliad, ii, 138; xii, 97; xx, 219: Virgil, Georgic, iii, 270: — 

“Tilas ducit amor (equas) trans Gargara, transque sonantem 
Ascanium,” etc. 

Klausen (AEneas und die Penaten, vol. i, pp. 52-56, 102-107) has por 
together with great erudition all the legendary indications respecting these 
regions. 

VOL. UI. 19 


218 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


see upproaching in a wagon. Gordius and Midas happened 


to be then coming into the town in their wagon, and the crown 


was conferred upon them: their wagon was consecrated in the 
citadel of Gordium to Zeus Basileus, and became celebrated 
from the insoluble knot whereby the yoke was attached, and the 
severance of it afterwards by the sword of Alexander the Great. 
Whosoever could untie the knot, to him the kingdom of Asia was 
portended, and Alexander was the first whose sword both fulfilled 
the condition and realized the prophecy.! 

A these legendary Phrygian names and anecdotes we can 
make no use for historical purposes. We know nothing of any 
Phrygian kings, during the historical times,— but Herodotus 
tells us of a certain Midas son of Gordius, king of Phrygia, who 
was the first foreign sovereign that ever sent offerings to the 
Delphian temple, anterior to Gygés of Lydia. This Midas ded- 
icated to the Delphian god the throne on which he was in the 
habit of sitting to administer justice. Chronologers have referred 
the incident to a Phrygian king Midas placed by Eusebius in 
the 10th Olympiad, —-a supposition which there are no means of 
verifying.2 There may have been a real Midas king of Gordium ; 
but that there was ever any great united Phrygian monarchy, 
we have not the least ground for supposing. The name Gordius 
son of Midas agam appears in the legend of Creesus and Solon 
told by Herodotus, as part of the genealogy of the ill-fated prince 
Adrastus : here too it seems to represent a legendary rather than 
areal person.3 

Of the Lydians, I shall speak in the following chapter. 

} Arrian, ii, 3; Justin, xi, 7. 
According to another tale, Midas was son of the (jreat Mother herself 
(Plutarch, Cesar, 9; Hygin. fab. 191). 
* Herodot. i, 14, with Wesseling’s note. 
Herodot. i, 34. 


LYDIANS. MEDEs, CIMMERIANS, SCYTHIANS. 


CHAPTER XVII. 
LYDIANS. — MEDES. — CIMMERLANS. — SCYTHIANS. 


Tur early relations between the Lydians and the Asiatic 
Greeks, anterior to the reign of Gygés, are not better known to 
us than those of the Phrygians. ‘Their native music became 
partly incorporated with the Greek, as the Phrygian music was; 
to which it was very analogous, both in instruments and in char- 
acter, though the Lydian mode was considered by the aacients 
as more effeminate and enervating. The flute was used alike by 
Phrygians and Lydians, passing from both of them to the Greeks ; 
but the magadis or pectis (a harp with sometimes as many as 
twenty strings, sounded two together in octave) is said to have 
been borrowed by the Lesbian Terpander from the Lydian ban- 
quets.| The flute-players who acquired esteem among the early 
Asiatic Greeks were often Phrygian or Lydian slaves; and even 
the poet Alkman, who gained for himself permanent renown 
among the Greek lyric poets, though not a slave born at Sardis, 
as is sometimes said, was probably of Lydian extraction. 

It has been already mentioned that Homer knows nothing of 
Lydia or Lydians. He names Mzonians in juxtaposition with 
Karians, and we are told by Herodotus that the people once called 
Mzonian received the new appellation of Lydian from Lydus 
son of Atys. Sardis, whose almost inexpugnable citadel was 
situated on a precipitous rock on the northern siae of the ridge 
of Tmélus, overhanging the plain of the river Hermus, was the 
capital of the Lydian kings: it is not named by Homer, though 
he mentions both Tmdlus and the neighboring Gygzan lake: 
the fortification of it was ascribed to an old Lydian king named 
Mélés, and strange legends were told concerning it.2_ Its posses- 
sors were enriched by the neighborhood of the river Paktélus, 


\ Pindar. ap. Atheng. xiv, p. 635: compare Telestés ap. Athens. xiv. » 


626; Pansan. ix, 5, 4. 
* Herodot. i, 84, 


— + 


- 


Oe ge Em elle 


—=— 


ΕΠ ἝἜ 


---- 


220 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


which flowed down from Mount Tmdlus towards the Hermus, 
and brought with it considerable quantities of gold in its sands. 
To this cause historians often ascribe the abundant treasure be- 
longing to Croesus and his predecessors; but Croesus possessed, 
besides, other mines near Pergamus ;! and another cause of wealth 
is also to be found in the general industry of the Lydian people, 
which the circumstances mentioned respecting them seem to attest. 
They were the first people, according to Herodotus, who ever 
carried on retail trade; and the first to coin money of gold and 
silver.? 
The archzxologists of Sardis in the time of Herodotus, a century 
afier the Persian conquest, carried very far back the antiquity 
of the Lydian monarchy, by means of a series of names which 
are in great part, if not altogether, divine and heroic. Herodotus 
gives us first, Manés, Atys, and Lydus, — next, a line of kings 
beginning with Héraklés, twenty-two in number, succeeding each 
other from father to son and lasting for 505 years. The first of 
this line of Herakleid kings was Agron, descended from Héraklés 
in the fourth generation, — Héraklés, Alkzeus, Ninus, Bélus, and 
Agron. ‘The twenty-second prince of this Herakleid family, after 
an uninterrupted succession of father and son during 505 years, 
was Kandaulés, called by the Greeks Myrsilus the son of Myr- 
sus: with him the dynasty ended, and ended by one of those 
curious incidents which Herodotus has narrated with his usual 
dramatic, yet unaffected, emphasis. It was the divine will that 
Kandaulés should be destroyed, and he lost his rational judgment: 
having a wife the most beautiful woman in Lydia, his vanity could 
not be satisfied without exhibiting her naked person to Gygés 
son of Daskylus, his principal confidant and the commander of his 
guards. In spite of the vehement repugnance of Gygés, this reso- 
lution was executed ; but the wife became aware of the inexpiable 
affront, and took her measures to avenge it. Surrounded by her 
most faithful domestics, she sent for Gygés, and addressed him: 
“'Two ways are now open to thee, Gygés: take which thou wilt. 
Either kill Kandaulés, wed me, and acquire the kingdom of Lydia, 
—-or else thou must at once perish. For thou hast seen forbidden 
things, and either thou, or the man who contrived it for thee must 


1 Aristot. Mirabil. Auseultat. 52. 3 Herodot. i, 94. 


GYGES. 221 


die.” Gygés in vain entreated to be spared so terrible an δυο ΓΒ» 
tive: he was driven to the option, and he chose that which prom- 
ised safety to himself! The queen planted him in ambush behind 
the bed-chamber door, in the very spot where Kandaulés had 
placed him as a spectator, and armed him with a dagger, which 
he plunged into the heart of the sleeping king. 

Thus ended the dynasty of the Herakleids; but there was a 
large party in Lydia who indignantly resented the death of Kan- 
daulés, and took arms against Gygés. A civil war ensued, which 
both parties at length consented to terminate by reference to the 
Delphian oracle. The decision of that holy referee was given in 
favor of Gygés, and the kingdom of Lydia thus passed to his 
dynasty, called the Mermnadz. But the oracle accompanied its 
verdict with an intimation, that in the person of the fifth descend- 
ant of Gygés, the murder of Kandaulés would be avenged, —a 
warning of which, Herodotus innocently remarks, no one pai 
any notice, until it was actually fulfilled in the person of Croesus. 

In this curious legend, which marks the commencement of the 
dynasty called Mermnade, the historical kings of Lydia, — we 
cannot determine how much, or whether any part, is historical. 
Gygés was probably a real man, contemporary with the youth 
of the poet Archilochus; but the name Gygés is also an heroic 
name in Lydian archeology. He is the eponymus of the Gygean 
lake near Sardis; and of the many legends told respecting him, 
Plato has preserved one, according to which Gygés is a mere 
herdsman of the king of Lydia: after a terrible storm and earth- 
quake, he sees near him a chasm in the earth, into which he 
descends and finds a vast horse of brass, hollow and partly open, 

wherein there lies a gigantic corpse with a golden ring. This 
ring he carries away, and discovers unexpectedly that it possesses 
the miraculous property of rendering him invisible at pleasure. 
Being sent on a message to the king, he makes the magic ring 
available to his ambition: he first possesses himself of the person 


! Herodot. i, 11. αἱρέεται αὐτὸς περιεῖναι, --- a phrase to which Gibbon has 
ascribed an intended irony, which it is difficult to discover in Herodotus. 
3 Herodot. i, 13. τούτου τοῦ ἕἔπεος «λόγον οὐδένα ἐποιεῦντο, πρὶν δὰ 


ἐπετελέσϑη. 


9292 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


of the queen, then with her aid assassinates the king, and finally 
seizes the scepire.! ὴ 
The legend thus recounted by Plato, different in almost all 


points from the Herodotean, has this one circumstance in common, ἡ 


that the adventurer Gygés, through the favor and help of the 
queen, destroys the king and becomes his successor. Feminine 
preference and patronage is the cause of his prosperity. Klausen 
has shown? that this “aphrodisiac influence” runs in a neculin: 
manner through many of the Asiatic legends, both divine "ὦ 
heroic. The Phrygian Midas, or Gordius, as before recounted 
acquires the throne by marriage with a divinely privileged maid- 
on: the favor shown by Aphrodité to Anchisés, wan wien the 
με ag hen igi le lai γα 
an g ξ ybelé has always her favored and 
self-devoting youth Atys, who is worshipped along with her, and 
who serves as a sort of mediator between her and τρονδδμ, “The 
feminine element appears predominant in Asiatic mythes: Mids: 
Sardanapalus, Sandon, and even Héraklés,3 are described as eloth- 
ed in women’s attire and working at the loom; while on the 
other hand the Amazons and Semiramis achieve great conquests 
Admitting therefore the historical character of the Lydian μων» 
called Mermnade, beginning with Gygés about 715-690 Β. δ. 
and ending with Croesus, we find nothing but legend to explai ' 
to us the circumstances which led to heir seccmsiein Sti _ 
accession. Still less 

can we make out anything respecting the preceding kings, or 
determine whether Lydia was ever in former tines. danseasted 
with or dependent upon the kingdom of Assyria, as Ktésias 
affirmed.+ Nor can we certify the reality or dates of the old 
Lydian kings named by the native historian Xanthus — Alki- 
mus, Kamblés, Adramytés.5 One piece of valuable Sudstemation, 


’ Plato Republ i . 360 ; Cicero Offic. iii εἶν ς 
to, - li, p. : ero, c. ii, 9. Plato (x, p. 615 « ξ 
“7 suitably the ring of Gygés to the helmet of ty : wipes 
See Klausen, Aineas und die Penaten 3 ‘ 
Ϊ “ * .κ 4, κ ὶ 
ua ek pp. 34, 110, ete: compare Menke 
᾿ ' " 
᾿ See the article of O. Miiller in the Rheinisch. Museum fir Philologie 
ahrgang, iii, Pp. 22-38 ; also Movers, Die Phonizier, ch. xii, pp. 452-470 
Diodor. ii, 2. Niebuhr also conceives that Lydia was in early days a 
ὍΝ κε the Assyrian empire (Kleine Schriften, p. 371) ; 
anthi Fragment. 10, 12, 19, ed. Didot; A 
= ? 9 By : th ° ; i 
Damasc. p. 36, Orelli. a ee 


GY GES. 223 


however, we acquire from Xanthus, —the distribution of Lydis 
‘nto two parts, Lydia proper and Torrhébia, which he traces te 
the two sons of Atys, — Lydus and Torrhébus; he states that the 
dialect of the Lydians and Torrhebians differed much in the same 
degree as that of Doric and Ionie Greeks.! Torrhébia appears 
to have included the valley of the Kaister, south of Tmélus, and 
near to the frontiers of Karia. 

With Gygés, the Mermnad king, commences the series of ag- 
cressions from Sardis upon the Asiatic Greeks, which ultimately 
ended in their subjection. Gygés invaded the territories of Mi- 
lctus and Smyrna, and even took the city, probably not the cita- 
del, of Kolophén. ‘Though he thus, however, made war upon the 
Asiatie Greeks, he was munificent in his donations to the Grecian 
vod of Delphi, and his numerous as well as costly offerings were 
seen in the temple by Herodotus. Elegiac compositions of the 
poet Mimnermus celebrated the valor of the Smyrnzans in their 
battle with Gygés.2 We hear also, in a story which bears the 
impress of Lydian more than of Grecian fancy, of a beautiful 
youth of Smyrna named Magnés, to whom Gygés was attached, 
and who incurred the displeasure of his countrymen for having 
composed verses in celebration of the victories of the Lydians 
over the Amazons. ‘To avenge the ill-treatment received by this 
youth, Gygés attacked the territory of Magnésia (probably Mag- 
nésia on Sipylus) and after a considerable struggle took the city.3 

How far the Lydian kingdom of Sardis extended during the 
reign of Gygés, we have no means of ascertaining. Strabo 
alleges that the whole Troad* belonged to him, and that the 
Greek settlement of Abydus on the Hellespont was established 
by the Milesians only under his auspices. On what authority 
this statement is made, we are not told, and it appears doubtful, 
especially as so many legendary anecdotes are connected with the 
name of Gygés. This prince reigned (according to Herodotus) 
thirty-eight years, and was succeeded by his son Ardys,who reign- 
ed forty-nine years (about B. C. 678-629). We learn that he 


! Xanthi Fragm. 1, 2; Dionys. Halik. A. R. i, 28; Stephan. Byz. v, Tép- 


jinBoc. ‘The whole genealogy given by Dionysius is probably borrowed from 
Xanthus, — Zeus, Manés, Kotys, Asiés and Atys, Lydus and Torrhébus. 


3 Herod. i, 14; Pausan. ix, 29, 2. 
8 Nikolaus Damase. p. 52, ed. Orelli. 4 Strabo. xiii ἢ. 590 


224 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


attacked the Milesians, and took the Ionic city of Priéné, but 
this possession cannot have been maintained, for the city appears 
afterwards as autonomous.! His long reign, however, was signal- 
ized by two events, both of considerable moment to the Asiatic 
Greeks; the invasion of the Cimmerians,— and the first ap- 
proach to collision, at least the first of which we have any his- 
torical knowledge, between the inhabitants of Lydia and those of 
Upper Asia under the Median kings. 

It is affirmed by all authors that the Medes were originally 
numbered among the subjects of the great Assyrian empire, of 
which Nineveh — or Ninos, as the Greeks call it —was the chief 
town, and Babylon one of the principal portions. ‘That the pop- 
ulation and power of these two great cities, as well as of several 
others which the Ten Thousand Greeks in their march found 
ruined and deserted in those same regions, is of high antiquity,” 
there is no room for doubting ; but it is noway incumbent upon a 
historian of Greece to entangle himself in the mazes of Assyrian 
chronology, or to weigh the degree of credit to which the conflict- 


ine statements of Herodotus, Ktésias, Berosus, Abydénus, ete. 


. 


are entitled. With the Assyrian empire,? — which lasted, accord- 
ing to Herodotus, five hundred and twenty years, according to 


Ktésias, thirteen hundred and sixty years, — the Greeks have no 
ascertainable connection: the city of Nineveh appears to have 
been taken by the Medes a little before the year 600 B. ©. (in so 
far as the chronology can be made out), and exercised no influence 


* Herodot. 1, 15. ? Xenophon, Anabas. iii, 4, 7; 10, 11. 

3 Herodot. i, 95; Ktésias, Fragm. Assyr. xiii, p. 419, ed. Bahr; Diodor. ii, 
21. Ktésias gives thirty generations of Assyrian kings from Ninyas to Sar- 
danapalus: Velleius, 33; Eusebius, 35; Syncellus, 40; Castor, 27; Cepha- 
lion, 23. See Bahr ad Ctesiam, p. 428. The Babylonian chronology of 
Berosus (a priest of Belus, about 280 B. c.) gave 86 kings and 34,000 years 
from the Deluge to the Median occupation of Babylon; then 1,453 years 
down to the reign of Phul king of Assyria (Berosi Fragmenta, p. 8, ed. 
Richter). 

Mr. Clinton sets forth the chief statements and discrepancies respecting 
Assyrian chronology in his Appendix, c.4. But the suppositions to which 
he resorts, in order to bring them into harmony, appear to me uncertified and 
gratuitoazs. 

Compare the different, but not more successful, track followed by Larches 


(Chronologie, c. 3, pp. 145-157). 


ASSYRIANS AND MEDES. 995 


upon Grecian affairs. Those inhabitants of Upper Asia, with 
whom the early Greeks had relation, were the Medes, and the 
Assyrians or Chaldzans of Babylon, — both originally subject to 
the Assyrians of Nineveh, — both afterwards acquiring independ- 
ence, —and both ultimately embodied in the Persian empire. 
At what time either of them became first independent, we do 
not know :! the astronomical canon which gives a list of kings of 


~_ 


Here again both Larcher and Mr. Clinton represent the time, at which 
the Medes made themselves independen: οἱ Assyria, as perfectly ascertained, 
though Larcher places it in 748 B.v., and Mr. Clinton in 711 B. c. * L’épo- 
que ne me paroit pas douceuse,” (Chronologie, c. iv, p. 157,) says Larcher. 
Mr. Clinton treats the epoch ot 711 B. c. for the same event, as fixed upon 
‘the authority of Scripture,” and reasons upon it in more than one place as 8 
fact altogether indisputable (Appendix, c. iii, p. 259): “ We may collect from 
Scripture that the Medes did not become independent till after the death of 
Sennacherib; and accordingly Josephus (Ant. x, 2), having related the 
death of this king, and the miraculous recovery of Hezekiah from sickness, 
adds — ἐν τούτῳ τῷ χρόνῳ συνέβη τὴν τῶν ᾿Ασσυρίων ἀρχὴν ὑπὸ Μήδων κατα- 
λυϑῆναι. But the death of Sennacherib, as will be shown hereafter, is de- 
termined to the beginning of 711 B. c. The Median revolt, then, did not 
accur before B. c. 711; which refutes Conringius, who raises it to B. c. 715. 
and Valckenaer, who raises it to B.c. 741. Herodotus, indeed, implies an 
interval of some space between the revolt of the Medes and the election of 
Déiokés to be king. But these anni ἀβασίλευτοι could not have been prior 
to the fifty-three years of Déiokés, since the revolt is limited by Scripture 
to B. c. 711.” Again, p. 261, he says, respecting the four Median kings men- 
tioned by Eusebius before Déiokés: “If they existed at all, they governed 
Media during the empire of the Assyrians, as we know from Scripture.” And 
again, p. 280: “ The precise date of the termination (of the Assyrian empire) 
in B. ©. 711 is given by Scripture, with which Herodotus agrees,” ete. 

Mr. Clinton here treats, more than once, the revolt of the Medes as fixed 
to the year 711 B. c. by Scripture ; but he produces no passage of Scripture 
to justify his allegation: and the passage which he cites from Josephus 
alludes, not to the Median revolt, but to the destruction of the Assyrian 
empire by the Medes. Herodotus represents the Medes as revolting from 
the Assyrian empire, and maintaining their independence for some time 
(tcadefined in extent) before the election of Déiokés as king; but he gives 
“as no means of determining the date of the Median revolt ; and when flr. 
Clinton says (p. 280, Note O.): “I suppose Herodotus to place the revolt 
of the Medes in Olymp. 17, 2, since he places the accession of Déiokés im 
Olymp. 17, 3,’— this is a conjecture of his own: and the narrative of 
Herodotus seems plainly to imply that he conceived an interval far greases 
than one year between these two events. Diodorus gives the same interva: 
as lasting “for many gererations.” (Diod. ii, 32.) 

VOL. ΠΙ. 10» 1δοο. 


426 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Babylon, beginning with what is called the cra of Nabenassar, 
or 747 B. αν, does not prove at what epoch these Babylonian 


We know — both from Scripture and from the Pheenician annals, as cited 
by Josephus — that the Assyrians of Nineveh were powerful conquerors in 
Syria, Judza, and Pheenicia, during the reigns of Salmaneser and Sennach- 
erib : the statement of Josephus farther implies that Media was subject to 
Salmaneser, who took the Israelites from their country into Media and 
Persis, and brought the Cuthzans out of Media and Persis into the lande of 
the Israelites (Joseph. ix, 14, 1}; x, 9, 7). We know farther, that after Sen 
nacherib, the Assyrians of Nineveu cre no more mentioned as invaders or 
distarbers of Syria or Judza; the Chaldzans or Babylonians become then 
the enemies whom those countries have to dread Josephus tells us, that at 
this epoch the Assyrian empire was destroyed by the Medes, — or, as he 
savs in another place, by the Medes and Babylonians (x, 2, 2; x, 5, 1). 
This is good evidence for believing that the Assyrian empire of Nineveh 
sustained at this time a great shock and diminution of power; but as to the 
nature of this diminution, and the way in which it was brought about, it ap- 
pears to me that there is a discrepancy of authorities which we have no means 
of reconciling, — Josephus follows the same view as Ktésias, of the destrue- 
tion of the empire of Nineveh by the Medes and Babylonians united, while 
Herodotus conceives successive revolts of the territories dependent upon 
Nineveh, beginning with that of the Medes, and still leaving Nineveh 
flourishing and powerful in its own territory: he farther conceives Nineveh 
as taken by Kyaxarés the Mede, about the year 600 B. c., without any men- 
tion of Babylonians, — on the contrary, in his representation, Nitokris the 
queen of Babylon is afraid of the Medes (i, 185), partly from the general 
increase of their power, but especially from their having taken Nineveh 
(though Mr. Clinton tells us, p. 275, that “ Nineveh was destroyed B. Cc. 606, 
as we have seen from the united testimonies of the Scripture and Herodotus, 
by the Medes and Babylonians.” ) 

Construing fairly the text of Herodotus, it will appear that he conceived 
the relations of these Oriental kingdoms between 800 and 560 B. c. differently 
on many material points fromm Ktésias, or Berosus, or Josephus: and he 
himself expressly tells us, that he heard “ four different ta es” even respecting 
Cyrus (i, 95) ; much more, respecting events anterior to Cyrus by more than 
a century. 

The chronology of the Medes, Babylonians, Lydians, and Greeks in Asia, 
when we come to the seventh century Β. 6. acquires some fixed points which 
give us assurance of correctness within certain limits; but above the year 
700 B. δ. no such fixed points can be detected. We cannot discriminate the 
historical from the mythical in our authorities, — we cannot reconcile them 
with each other, except by violent changes and conjectures, — nor can we 
determine which of them onizht to be set aside in favor «f the other. The 
names and dates of the Babvlonian kings down from Nabonassar, in the 
Canon of Ptolemy, aro doubtless authentic, bat they are names and dates 


MEDLANS.— FIRST KING DIOKLES. 297 


chiefs became independent of Nineveh: and the catalogue of 
Median kings, which Ieredotus begins with Déiokés, about 709- 
711 4. c., is commenced by Ktésias more than a century earlier, 
_— moreover, the names in the two lists are different almost from 
first to last. 

For the historian of Greece, the Medes first begin to acquire 
importance about 656 B. c., under a king whom Herodotus calls 
Phraortés, son of Déiokés. Respecting Déiokés himself, He- 
rodotus recounts to us how he came to be first chosen king.! The 
seven tribes of Medes dwelt dispersed in separate villages, with- 
out any common authority, and the mischiefs of anarchy were 
painfully felt among them: Deiokés having acquired great repu- 
tation in his own village as a just man, was invoked gradually 
by all the adjoining villages to settle their disputes. As soon as 
lis efficiency in this vocation, and the improvement which he 
brought about, had become felt throughout all the tribes, he art- 
lully threw up his post and retired again into privacy, — upon 
which the evils of anarchy revived in a manner more intolerable 
than before. The Medes had now no choice except to elect a 
king, —the friends of Déiokés expatiated warmly upon his 
virtues, and he was the person chosen.? The first step of the 


only: when we come to apply them to illustrate real or supposca matters of 
fact. drawn from other sources, they only create a new embarrassment, for 
even the names of the kings as reported by different authors do not agree, 
and Mr. Clinton informs us (p. 277): “In tracing the identity of Eastern kings, 
the times and the transactions are better guides than the names ; for these, 
from many well-known causes (as the changes which they undergo in passing 
through the Greek language, and the substitution of a title or an epithet for 
the name), are variously reported, so that the sume king frequently appears 
under many different appellations.” Here, then, is a new problem: we are to 
employ “the times and transactions” to identify the kings: but unfortunately 
the times are marked only by the succession of kings, and the transactions are 
known only by statements always scanty and often irreconcilable with each 
uther. So that our means of identifying the kings are altogether insufficient, 
and whoever will examine the process of identification as it appears in Mr. 
Clinton’s chapters, will see that it is in a high degree arbitrary ; more arbi- 
trary still are the processes which he employs for bringing about a forced 
Sarmony between discrepant authorities. Nor is Volney (Chronologie d’- 
Hé-odote, vol. i, pp. 383-429) more satisfactory in his chrcnological resalts 


Σ Herodot. i, 96--190. 
? Herodot. i, 97. ὡς δ᾽ ἐγὼ δυκέω, μάλιστα ἔλεγον of τοῦ Δηϊόκεω φίλοί eta 


228 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


new king was to exact from the people a body of guards selected 
by himself; next, he commanded them to build the city of Ekba- 
tana, upon a hill surrounded with seven concentric circles of walls, 
his own palace being at the top and in the innermost. He farther 
organized the scheme of Median despotism ; the king, though his 
person was constantly secluded in his fortified palace, inviting 
written communications from all aggrieved persons, and admin- 
istering to each the decision or the redress which it required, — 
informing himself, moreover, of passing events by means of ubi- 
quitous spies and officials, who seized all wrong-doers and brought 
them to the palace for condign punishment. Déiokés farther con- 
strained the Medes to abandon their separate abodes and concun- 
traie themselves in Ekbatana, from whence all the powers of 
government branched out; and the seven distinct fortified circies 
in the town, coinciding as they do with the number of the Me- 
dian tribes, were probably conceived by Herodotus as intended 
each for one distinct tribe, — the tribe of Deiokés occupying the 
innermost along with himselt.! 

Except the successive steps of this well-laid political plan, we 
hear of no other acts ascribed to Deéiokeés: he is said to have 
held the government for fifty-three years, and then dying, was 
succeeded by his son Phraortes. Of the real history of Déiokés, 
we cannot be said to know anything. For the interesting narra- 
tive of Herodotus, of which the above is an abridgment, presents 
to us in ali its points Grecian society and ideas, not Oriental: it 
is like the discussion which the historian ascribes to the seven 
Persian conspirators, previous to the accession of Darius, — 
whether they shall adopt an oligarchical, a democratical, or a 
monarchical form of government ;* or it may be compared, per- 
Laps more aptly still, to the Cyropzedia of Xenophon, who beau- 


“”) 


κης πρῶτός ἐστιν ὁ καταστησάμενος" μῆτε ἐσιέναι παρὰ βασιλέα μηδένα, di 
ἀγγέλων δὲ πάντα χρέεσίναι, ὁρᾶσϑαι δὲ βασιλέα ὑπὸ μηδενός" πρὸς δὲ τού- 
τοισι ἔτι γελᾷν τε καὶ πτύειν ἄντιον, καὶ ἅπασι εἶναι τοῦτό γε αἰσχρόν, ete 
and... .οἱ κατάσκοποί τε καὶ κατήκοοι ἦσαν ἀνὰ πᾶσαν τὴν χώρην τῆς ἦρχε. 

* Herodot. iii, 80-82. Herodotus, while he positively asserts the genuine 
aess of these deliberations. lets drop the intimatior that many of his contem 
poraries regarded them as of Grecian coinage. 


HSER, 
᾿ 


— 


VENUS OF 


MEDICI 


WWW 


Greece, vol. three, 


MEDIANS —FIRST KING DEIOKES. 229 


exhibits in brief outline. The story of Déiokés describes what 
may be called the despot’s progress, first as candidate, and. after- 
wards as fully established. Amidst the active political discussion 
carried on by intelligent Greeks in the days of Herodotus, there 
were doubtless many stories of the successful arts of ambitious 
despots, and much remark as to the probable means conducive te 
their success, of a nature similar to those in the Politics of Aris- 
totle. one of these tales Herodotus has employed to decorate the 
birtt and infancy of the Median monarchy. His Déiokés begins 
like a clever Greek among other Greeks, equal, free, and disor- 
derly. He is athirst for despotism from the beginning, and is 
forward in manifesting his rectitude and justice, “as beseems a 
candidate for command ;”! he passes into a despot by the public 
vote, and receives what to the Greeks was the great symbol and 
instrument of such transition, a personal body-guard ; he ends 
by organizing both the machinery and the etiquette of a despot- 
ism in the Oriental fashion, like the Cyrus of Xenophon,? only 
that both these authors maintain the superiority of their Grecian 
ideal over Oriental reality by ascribing both to ['/,4%és and Cy- 


' Herodot. i, 96. ᾿Εόντων δὲ αὐτονόμων πάντων ἀνὰ τὴν ¢ reipov, ὧδε αὖτις 
ἐς τυραννίδας περιῆλϑον. ᾿Ανὴρ ἐν τοῖσι Μήδοισι ἐγένεν" σοφὸς͵ τῷ οὔνομα 
nv Δηϊόκης.... Οὗτος ὁ Δηϊόκης, ἐρασϑεὶς τυραννίδος, éruiee τοίαδε, etc.... 
Ὁ δὲ δὴ, οἷα μνεώμενος ἀρχὴν, ἰϑύς τε καὶ δίκαιος ἦν. 

* Compare the chapters above referred to in Herodotus with the eighth 
book of the Cyropxdia, wherein Xenophon describes the manner in which 
the Median despotism was put in effective order and turned to useful account 
by Cyrus, especially the arrangements for imposing on the imagination of 
his subjects (karayonrevecy, viii, 1,40) — (it is a small thing, but marks the 
cognate plan of Herodotus and Xenophon). Détokés forbids his subjects to 
laugh or spit in his presence. Cyrus also directs that no one shall spit, or 
wipe his nose, or turn round to look at anything, when the king is present 
(Herodot. i, 99; Xen. Cyrop. viii, 1, 42). Again, viii, 3, 1, about the pom- 
pous procession of Cyrus when he rides out, — καὶ yap αὐτῆς τῆς ἐξελάσεως 
ἡ σεμνότης ἡμῖν δοκεῖ μία τῶν τεχνῶν εἶναι τῶν μεμηχανῆμενων, τὴν ἀρχὴν 
μὴ εὐκαταφρόνητον εἶναι --- analogous to the Median Détokés in Herodotus 
— Taira δὲ περὶ ἑωυτὸν ἐσέμνυνε τῶνδε εἵνεκεν, etc. Cyrus — ἐμφανίζων δὲ 
ταὶ τοῦτο ὅτι περὶ πολλοῦ ἐποιεῖτο, μηδένα μῆτε φίλον ἀδικεῖν μῆτε σύμμαχον, 
ἐλλὰ τὸ δίκαιον ἰσχύρως ὁρῶν (Cyrop. viii, 1, 36). Dé:okes — ἣν τὸ δίκαιον 
prAacowy χαλεπός (Herodot. i, 100). Cyrus provides numerous persons whe 
serve to him as eyes and ears throughout the country (Cyrop. viii. 2, 12) 
Détokés has many κατάσκοποι and κατήκοοι. (Herodot. i.) 


230 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


rus a just, systematic, and laborious administration, such as their 
own experience did not present to them in Asia. Probably Lie- 
rodotus had visited Ekbatana (which he describes and measures 
like an eye-witness, comparing its circuit to that of Athens), and 
there heard that Deiokés was the builder cf the city, the earliest 
known Median king, and the first author of those public customs 
which struck him as peculiar, after the vevelt from Assyria: the 
interval might then be easily filled up, between Median auton- 
omy and Median despotism, by intermediate incidents, such as 
would have accompanied that transition in the longitude of 
Greece. The features of these inhabitants of Upper Asia, for a 
thousand years forward from the time at which we are now ar- 
rived, — under the descendants of Déiokés, of Cyrus, of Arsakés, 
and of Ardshir, — are so unvarying,! that we are much assisted 
in detecting those occasions in which Herodotus or others infuse 
into their history indigenous Grecian ideas. 

Phraortés (658-656 B. C.), having extended the dominion of 
the Medes over a large portion of Upper Asia, and conquered 
both the Persians and several other nations, was ultimately de- 
feated and slain in a war against the Assyrians of Nineveh: who, 
though deprived of their external dependencies, were yet brave 
and powerful by themselves. His son Kyaxarés (636-595 B. c.) 
followed up with still greater energy the same plans of conquest, 
and !s said to have been the first who introduced any organiza- 
tion into the military force ; — before his time, archers, spearmen, 


and cavalry had been confounded together indiscriminately, until 


this monarch established separate divisions for each. He ex- 
tended the Median dominion to the eastern bank of the Halys, 
which river afterwards, by the conquests of the Lydian king 
Creesus, became the boundary between the Lydian and Median 
empires; and he carried on war for six years with Alyattés king of 
Lydia, in consequence of the refusal of the latter to give up a 


' When the Roman emperor Claudius sends the young Parthian prince 
Meherdatés, who had been an hostage at Rome, to occupy the kingdom 
which the Parthian envoys tendered to him, he gives him some good advice, 
conceived in the school of Greek and Roman politics: “ Addidit pre 
eepta, ut non dominationem ac servos, sed rectorem et cives, cogitaret : clem 
entiamgq”e ac justitiam quanto ignara barbaris, tanto toleratiora, capesserei. 
(Tacit Annal. xii, 11.) 


PHRAORTES. —KYAXARES 231 


band of Scythian nomads, who, having quitted the territory of 
Kyaxarés in order to escape severities with which they were 
menaced, had sought refuge as suppliants in Lydia.! The war, 
indecisive as respects success, was brought to its close by a re- 
markable incident: in the midst of a battle between the Median 
and Lydian armies, there happened a total eclipse of the sun, 
which occasioned equal alarm to both parties, and induced them 
immediately to cease hostilities.2 The Kilikian prince Syennesis, 
and the Babylonian prince Labynétus, interposed their mediation, 
and effected a reconciliation between Kyaxarés and Alyattés, one 
of the conditions of which was, that Alyattés gave his daughter 
Aryénis in marriage to Astyagés son of Kyaxarés. In this man- 
ner began the connection between the Lydian and Median kings 
which afterwards proved so ruinous to Creesus. It is affirmed 
that the Greek philosopher Thalés foretold this eclipse; but we 
may reasonably consider the supposed prediction as not less apo- 
cryphal than some others ascribed to him, and doubt whether at 
that time any living Greek possessed either knowledge or scientific 
capacity sufficient for such a calculation. The eclipse itself, and 


' The passage of sach nomadic hordes from one government in the East 
to another, has been always, and is even down to the present day, a frequemt 
cause of dispute between the different governments: they are valuable both 
as tributaries and as soldiers. The Turcoman Ilats—so these nomadic tribes 
are now called —in the north-east of Persia frequently pass backwards and 
forwards, as their convenience suits, from the Persian territory to the Usbeks 
of Khiva and Bokhara: wars between Persia and Russia have been in like 
munner occasioned by the transit of the Ilats across the frontier from Persia 
into Georgia: so also the Kurd tribes near Mount Zagros have caused by 
their movements quarrels between the Persians and the Turks. 

See Morier, Account of the Iliyats, or Wandering Tribes of Persia, in the 
Journal of the Geographical Society of London, 1837, vol. vii, p. 240, and 
Carl Ritter, Erdkunde von Asien, West-Asien, Band ii, Abtheilung ii, 
Abschnitt ii, sect. 8, p. 387. 

3 Herodot. i, 74-103. 

3 Compare the analogous case of the prediction of the coming olive crop 
ascribed to Thalés (Aristot. Polit. i, 4,5; Cicero, De Divinat.i, 3). Amnax 
agoras is asserted to have predicted the fall of an aérolithe (Aristot. Meteorol 
i, 7; Pliny, H. N. ii, 58; Plutarch, Lysand. c. 5). 

Thalés is said by Herodotus to have predicted that the eclipse would take 
place “in the year in which it actually did occur.” — a statement so vague 
that it strengthens the grounds of doubt. 

The fondness of the Ionians for exhibiting the wisdom of their eminens 


232 HISTORY OF GREECE 


its terrific working upon the minds of the combatants, are facts 
not to be called in question; though the diversity of opinion 
among chronologists, respecting the date of it, is astonishing.! 


philosopher ‘Thalés, in conjunction with the history of the Lydian kings, 
may be seen farther in the story of Thalés and Croesus at the river Halys 
(Herod. i, 75), —a story which Herodotus himself disbelieves. 

’ Consult, for the chronological views of these events. Larcher ad Herodot. 
i, 74; Volney, Recherches sur |’Histoire Ancienne, vol. i, pp. 330-355; Mr. 
Fynes Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, vol. i, p. 418 (Note ad 8. c. 617, 2); Des 
Vignoles, Chronologie de |’Histoire Sainte, vol. ii, p. 245; Ideler, Handbuch 
der Chronologie, vol. i, p. 209. 

No less than eight different dates have been assigned by different chronol- 
ogists for this eclipse, — the most ancient 625 B. c., the most recent 583 B. Ὁ. 
Volney is for 625 Β. ¢.; Larcher for 597 B. c.; Des Vignoles for 585 B. c.; 
Mr. Clinton for 603 8. c. Volney observes, with justice, that the eclipse on 
this occasion “ n’est pas l’accessoire, la broderie du fait, mais le fait principal 
lui-méme,” (p. 347:) the astronomical calculations concerning the eclipse 
are, therefore, by far the most important items in the chronological reckon- 
ing of this event. Now in regard to the eclipse of 625 B.c., Volney is 
obliged to admit that it does not suit the case; for it would be visible only 
at half-past five in the morning on February 3, and the sun would hardly be 
risen at that hour in the latitude of Media and Lydia (p. 343). He seeks to 
escape from this difficulty by saying that the data for the calculation, accord- 
ing to the astronomer Pingre, are not quite accurate for these early eclipses; 
bat after all, if there be error, it may just as well be in one direction as in 
another, i. e. the true hour at which the eclipse would be visible for those 
latitudes is as likely to have been earlier than half-past five a. M. as to have 
been later, which would put this eclipse still more out of the question. 

The chronology of that period presents difficulties which our means of 
knowledge hardly enable us to clear up. Volney remarks, and the language 
of Herodotus is with him, that not merely the war between Kyaxarés and 
Alyattés (which lasted five years, and was terminated by the eclipse), but 
also the conquest made by Kyaxarés of the territory up to the river Halys 
took place anterior (Herodot. i, 103: compare i, 16) to the first siege of 
Nineveh by Kyaxarés,— that siege which he was forced to raise by the 
inroad of the Scythians. ‘This constitutes a strong presumption in favor of 
Volney’s date for the eclipse (625 Β. c.) if astronomical considerations would 
admit of it, which they will not. Mr. Clinton, on the other hand, puts the 
first siege of Nineveh in the very first year of the reign of Kyaxarés, which is 
not to be reconciled with the language of Herodotus. In placing the eclipse, 
therefore, in 603 B.c, we depart from the relative arrangement of events 
which Herodotus conceived, in deference to astronomical reasons: and 
Herodotus is our only authority in regard to the general chronology. 

According to Ideler, however (and his authority upon ἐπ ἢ a point is con 
shusive, in my judgment), astronomical censiderations lecisively fix this 


THE SCYTHIANS. 238 


It was after this peace with Alyattés, as far as we can make 
out the series of events in Herodotus, that Kyaxarés collected all 
his forces and laid siege to Nineveh, but was obliged to desist by 
the unexpected inroad of the Scythians. Nearly at the same 
time that Upper Asia was desolated by these formidable nomads, 
Asia Minor too was overrun by other nomads, — the Cimmeri- 
ans, — Ardys being then king of Lydia; and the two invasions, 
both spreading extreme disaster, are presented to us as indirectly 
connected together in the way of cause and effect. 

The name Cimmerians appears in the Odyssey, — the fable 
describes them as dwelling beyond the ocean-stream, immersed in 
darkness and unblessed by the rays of Helios. Of this people as 
existent we can render no account, for they had passed away, or 


lost their identity and become subject, previous to the commence- 
ment of trustworthy authorities: but they seem to have been the 
chief occupants of the Tauric Chersonesus “Crimea) and of the 
territory between that peninsula and the river Tyras , Dniester), 
at the time when the Greeks first commenced their permanent 
settlements on those coasts in the seventh century B. c. The 


eclipse for the 30th September 610 B. c., and exclude all those other eclipses 
which have been named. Recent and more trustworthy calculations made 
by Oltmanns, from the newest astronomical tables, have shown that the 
eclipse of 610 B. c. fulfils the conditions required, and that the other eclipses 
named do not. For a place situated in 40° N. lat. and 36° E. long. this 
eclipse was nearly total, only one-eightieth of the sun’s disc remaining 
luminous: the darkness thus occasioned would be sufficient to cause great 
terror. (Ideler, Handbuch, /. c.) 

Since the publication of my first edition, I have been apprized that the 
late Mr. Francis Baily had already settled the date of this eclipse to the 30th 
of September 610 B. c., in his first contribution to the Transactions of the 
Ruyal Society as long ago as 1811,— much before the date of the publica- 
tion of Ideler’s Handbuch der Chronologie. Sir John Herschel (in his 
Memoir of Mr. Francis Baily, in the Transactions of the Royal Astronom- 
ical Society, vol. xv, p. 311), after completely approving Mr. Baily’s calcula- 
tions, and stating that he had been the first to solve the disputed question, 
expresses his surprise that various French and German astronomers, writing 
on the same subject afterwards, have taken no notice of ‘ that remarkable 
paper.” Though a fellow-countryman of Mr. Baily, I am sorry that I have 
to plead guilty to a similar ignorance, until the point was specially brought 
to my notice by a friend. Had I been aware of the paper and the Memoir 
it would have been unnecessary to cite any other authority than that of Mr 
Baily and Sir John Herschel. 


234 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


numerous localities which bore their name, even in the time ot 
Herodotus,' after they had ceased to exist as a nation, as well 
as the tombs of the Cimmerian kings then shown near the Tyras, 
— sufficiently attest this fact; and there is reason to believe that 
they were —like their conquerors and successors the Seythians — 
a nomadic people, mare-milkers, moving about with their tents and 
herds, suitably to the nature of those unbroken steppes which thei 
territory presented, and which offered little except herbage in pro- 
fusion. ' Strabo tells us? —on what authority we do not know — 
that they, as well as the Tréres and other Thracians, had der- 
olated Asia Minor more than once before the time of Ardys, and 
even earlier than Homer. 

The Cimmerians thus belong partly to legend partly to history ; 
but the Scythians formed for several centuries an important 
section of the Grecian contemporary world. Their name, un- 
noticed by Homer, oecurs for the first time in the Hesiodie poems. 
When the Homeric Zeus in the Iliad turns his eye away from 
Troy towards Thrace, he sees, besides the Thracians and My- 
sians, other tribes, whose names cannot be made out, but whom 
the poet knows as milk-eaters and mare-milkers 33 and the same 
characteristic attributes, coupled with that of “having wagons 
for their dwelling-houses,” appear in Hesiod connected with the 
name of the Scythians.4 The navigation of the Greeks into the 
Euxine, evadually became more and more frequent, and during 
the last half of the seventh century B. c. their first settlementa 
en its coasts were established. The foundation of Byzantium, as 


.................. .......-..ὦἝὮἷἝ]]͵..... “-κὦ 


1 Herodot, iv, 11-19, Hekatzeus also spoke of a town Κιμμερίς (Strabo 


vii, p. 294). | | | 
Respecting the Cimmerians, consult Ukert, Skythien, p. 360, segg 
3 Strabo, i, pp. 6, 59, 61. 
ὃ Homer, Iliad, xiii, 4. -— | 
Αὐτὸς δὲ πάλιν τρέπεν doce φαεινὼ, 


Νόσφιν ἐφ᾽ ἱπποπόλων Θρῃκῶν καϑορώμενος αἷαν 
Μυσῶν τ᾽ ἀγχεμάχων, καὶ ἀγαυῶν Ἱππημολγῶν, 
Τλακτοφάγων, ᾿Αβίων τε, δικαιοτάτων ἀνθρώπων 
Compare Strabo, xii, p. 553. 
* Hesiod, Fragm. 63-64, Marktscheffel : — 
Τ'λακτοφάγων εἰς alav, ἀπήναις οἴκι᾽ ἐχόντων... .. 


Αἰϑίοπας, Λίγνάς τε, ἰδὲ Σκύϑας ἑππημολγούς. 
Strabo, vii, pp. 300-302. 


GRECIAN SETTLEMENTS ON THE EUXINE. 235 


well as of the Pontic Herakleia, at a short distance to the east of 
the Thracian Bosphorus, by the Megarians, is assigned to the 30th 
Olympiad, or 658 B. c.;! and the succession of colonies founded 
by the enterprise of Milesian citizens on the western coast of the 
Euxine, seem to fall not very long after this date, — at least 
within the following century. Istria, Tyras, and Olbia, or 
Borysthenes, were planted respectively near the mouths of the 
three great rivers Danube, Dniester, and Bog: Kruni, Odéssus, 
Tomi, Kallatis, and Apollonia, were also planted on the south- 
western or Thracian coast, northward of the dangerous land of 
Salmydessus, so frequent in wrecks, but south of the Danube. 
According to the turn of Grecian religious faith, the colonists 
took out with them the worship of the hero Achilles (from whom, 
perhaps, the ekist and some of the expatriating chiefs professed 
to be descended), which they established with great solemnity 
both in the various towns and on the small adjoining islands: and 
the earliest proof which we find of Scythia, as a territory fa- 
miliar to Grecian ideas and feeling, is found in a fragment of the 
poet Alkzeus (about B. c. 600), wherein he »ddresses Achilles? as 
“sovereign of Scythia.” There were, besides, several other Mi- 
lesian foundations on or near the Tauric Chersonese (Crimea) 
which brought the Greeks into conjunction with the Scythians, 


' Raoul Rochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecques, tom. iii, ch. xiv, p. 297. 
The dates of these Grecian settlements near the Danube are very vague and 
unirustworthy. 

* Skymnus Chius, v, 730, Fragm. 2-25. 

* Alkzeus, Fragm. 49, Bergk ; Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg. 306. — 

᾿Αχιλλεῦ, ὃ τᾶς (γᾶς. Schneid.) Σκυϑικᾶς μέδεις. 
Alkman, somewhat earlier, made mention of the Issédones (Alkm. Frag. 
129, Bergk ; Steph. Byz. v, ‘Iloojdovec,—he called them Assédones) and of 
the Rhipzan mountains (Fr. 80). 

In the old epic of Arktinus, the deceased Achilles is transported to an 
elysium in the λευκὴ νῆσος (see the argument of the ZEthiopis in Duntzer’s 
Collection of Epicc. Poet. Gree. p. 15), but it may well be doubted whether 
λευκὴ νῆσος in his poem was anything but a fancy, — not yet localized upon 
the little island off the mouth of the Danube. 

For the early allusions to the Pontus Euxinus and its neighboring inhab- 
itants, found in the Greek poets, see Ukert, Skythien, pp. 15-18, 78; thongh 
he puts the Ionian colonies in the Pontus nearly a century too early, in my 


judgment. 


238 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


— Herakleia, Chersonésus, and Theodosia, on the scvuthern coast 
and south-western corner of the peninsula, — Pantikapzeum and 
the Teian colony of Phanagoria (these two on the European 
and Asiatic sides of the Cimmerian Bosphorus respectively), 
and Képi, Hermdnassa, etc. not far from Phanagoria, on the Asi- 
atic coast of the Euxine: last of all, there was, even at the 
extremity of the Palus Meotis (Sea of Azof), the Grecian set- 
tlement of Tanais.! All or most of these seem to have been 
founded during the course of the sixth century B. c., though the 
precise dates of most of them cannot be named; probably Bev 
eral of them anterior to the time of the mystic poet Aristeas of 
Prokonnésus, about 540 Β. c. His long voyage from the Palus 
Mvotis (Sea of Azof) into the interior of Asia as far as the 
country of the Issédones (described in a poem, now lost, called 
the Arimaspian verses), implies an habitual intercourse between 
Scythians and Greeks which could not well have existed without 
Grecian establishments on the Cimmerian Bosphorus. 

Hekatzus of Milétus,2 appears to have given much geograph- 
ical information respecting the Scythian tribes; but Herodotus, 
who personally visited the town of Olbia, together with the 
inland regions adjoining to it, and probably other Grecian settle- 
ments in the Euxine (at a time which we may presume to have 
been about 450-440 B. c.), — and who conversed with both Scy- 
thians and Greeks competent to give him information, — has lett 


' Compare Dr. Clarke’s description of the present commerce between 
Taganrock — not far from the ancient Greek settlement of Tanais — and 
the Archipelago: besides exporting salt-fish, corn, leather, etc. in exchange 
for wines, fruit, etc. it is the great deposit of Siberian productions: from 
Orenburg it receives tallow, furs, iron, etc; this is, doubtless, as old as 
Herodotus (Clarke’s Travels in Russia, ch. xv, p. 330). 

3 Hekatei Fragment. Fr. 153, 168, ed. Klausen. Hekatwus mentioned 
the Issédones (Fr. 168; Steph. Byz. v, Ἰσσήδονες) ; both he and Damastés 
seem to have been familiar with the poem of Aristeas: see Klausen, ad ‘oc.; 
Steph. Byz. v, Ὑπερβόρειοι. Compare also Aéschyl. Prometh. 409, 710, 
805. 

Hellanikus, also, seems to have spoken about Scythia in a manner gen- 
erally conformable to Herodotus (Strabo, xii, p. 550). It does little credit 
to the discernment of Strabo that he treats with disdain the valuable Scythian 
chapter of Herodotus, -- ἅπερ Ἑλλάνικος καὶ Ἡρόδοτος καὶ Εὔδοξος κατε 
ὀλνυάρησαν ἡμῶν (id) 


TRIBES OF SCYTHIANS. 937 


us tar more valuable statements respecting the Scythian people, 
dominion, and manners, as they stood in his day. His conception 
of the Scythians, as well as that of Hippokratés, is precise 
and well-defined, — very different from that of the later authors, 
who use the word almost indiscriminately to denote all barbarous 
nomads. His territory, called Scythia, is a square area, twenty 
days’ journey or four thousand stadia (somewhat less than five 
hundred English miles) in each direction, — bounded by the Dan- 
ube (the course of which river he conceives in a direction from 
N. W. to S. E.), the Euxine, and the Palus Mzotis with the 
river Tanais, on three sides respectively, — and on the fourth or 
north side by the nations called Agathyrsi, Neuri, Androphagi, 
and Melanchleni.! However imperfect his idea of the figure of 
this territory may be found, if we compare it with a good modern 
map, the limits which he gives us are beyond dispute: from the 
lower Danube and the mountains eastward of Transylvania to the 
lower Tanais, the whole area was either occupied by or sub- 
ject to the Scythians. And this name comprised tribes differing 
materially in habits and civilization. The great mass of the 
people who bore it, strictly nomadic in their habits, — neither 
sowing nor planting, but living only on food derived from an- 
imals, especially mare’s milk and cheese, — moved from place to 
place, carrying their families in wagons covered with wicker and 
leather, themselves always on horseback with their flocks and 
herds, between the Borysthenés and the Palus Meotis; they hardly 
even reached so far westward as the Borysthenés, since a river (not 


* Herodot. iv, 100-101. See, respecting the Scythia of Herodotus, the 
excellent dissertation of Niebuhr, contained in his Kleine Historische 
Schriften, “ Ueber die Geschichte der Skythen, Geten, und Sarmaten,” p. 
360, alike instructive both as to the geography and the history. Also the 
two chapters in Volcker’s Mythische Geographie, ch. vii-viii, sects. 23-26, 
respecting the geographical conceptions present to Herodotus in his descrip- 
tion of Scythia. 

Herodotus has*much in his Scythian geography, however, which no cum- 
ment can enable us to understand. Compared with his predecessors, his 
geographical conceptions evince very great improvement; but we shail have 
occasion, in the course of this history, to notice memorable examples of 
extreme misapprehension in regard to distance and bearings in these remote 
regions, common to him not only with his contemporaries, but also with his 
successors. 


238 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


easily identified) which Herodotus calls Pantikapés, flowing into 
the Borysthenés from the eastward, formed their boundary. 
These nomads were the genuine Scythians, possessing the 
marked attributes of the race, and including among their number 
the regal Scythians,'! —- hordes so much more populous and more 
effective in war than the rest, as to maintain undisputed ascen- 
deney, and to account all other Scythians no better than their 
slaves. It was to these that the Scythian kings belonged, by 
whom the religious and political unity of the name was main- 
tained, each horde having its separate chief, and to a certain 
extent separate worship and customs. But besides these nomads, 
there were also agricultural Seythians, with fixed abodes, living 
more or less upon bread, and raising corn for exportation, along 
the banks of the Borysthenés and the Hypanis.2 And such had 


' Herodot. iv, 17-21, 46-56; Hippokratés, De Aére, Locis et Aquis, c. vi 
Aischyl. Prometh. 709; Justin, ii, 2. 

It is unnecessary to multiply citations respecting nomadic life, the same 
ander such wide differences both of time and of latitude, — the same with the 
“armentarius Afer” of Virgil (Georgic, iii, 343) and the “ campestres 
Scythe” of Horace (Ode iii, 24,12), and the Tartars of the present day ; 
see Dr. Clarke’s Travels in Russia, ch. xiv, p. 310. 

The fourth book of Herodotus, the Tristia and Epistole ex Ponto of 
Ovid, the Toxaris of Lucian (see c. 36, vol. i, p. 544 Hemst.), and the 
Inseription of Olbia (No. 2058 in Boeckh’s Collection), convey a genuine 
picture of Scythian manners as seen by the near observer and resident, 
very different from the pleasing fancies of the distant poet respecting 
the innocence of pastoral life. The poisoned arrows, which Ovid so much 
complains of in the Sarmatians and Getz (‘Trist. iii, 10, 60, among other 
passages, and Lucan, iii, 270), are not noticed by Herodotus in the Scythians. 

The dominant Golden Horde among the Tartars, in the time of Zinghis 
Khan, has been often spoken of; and among the different Arab tribes now 
in Algeria, some are noble, others enslaved ; the latter habitually, and by 
inheritance, servants of the former, following wherever ordered (Tableau 
de la Situation des Etablissemens Francais en Algérie, p. 393, Paris, Mar. 
1846). 

Ὁ Ephorus placed the Karpidw immediately north of the Danube (Fragm 
78, Marx ; Skymn. Chius, 102). 1 agree with Niebuhr that this is probably 
an inaccurate reproduction of the Kallippids of Herodotus, though Boeckh 
is of a different opinion (Introduct. ad Inscriptt. Sarmatic. Corpus Inseript 
part xi, p. 81). ‘The vague and dreamy statements of Ephorus, so far as we 
know them from the fragments, contrast unfavorably with the comparative 
precision of Herodotus. The latter expressly separates the Androphag’ 


MANNERS OF THE SCYTHIANS. 939 


been the influence of the Grecian settlement of Olbia at the mouth 
of the 'atter river in creating new tastes and habits, that two 
tribes on its western banks, the Kallippidx and the Alazénes, had 
lecome completely accustomed both to tillage and to vegetable 
food, and had in other respects so much departed from their 
Scythian rudeness as to be called Hellenic-Scythians, many 
Gqreeks being seemingly domiciled among them. Northward of 
the Alazones, lay those called the agricultural Scythians, who 
sowed corn, not for food but for sale.! 

Such stationary cultivators were doubtless regarded by the 
predominant mass of the Seythians as degenerate brethren; anu 
some historians maintain that they belonged to a foreign race, 
standing to the Scythians merely in the relation of subjects,2— an 


from the Scythians, — ἔϑνος ἐὸν ἴδιον καὶ οὐδαμῶς Σκυϑικὸν (iv, 18), whereas 
when we compare Strabo vii. p. 302 and Skymn. Chi. 105-115, we see that 
Ephorus talked of the Androphagi as a variety of Scythians, — ἔϑνος 
Cvdpogayarv Σκυϑῶν, 

The valuable inscription from Olbia (No. 2058 Boeckh) recognizes Μιξὲλ- 
Anvec near that town. 

' Herod. iv, 17. We may illustrate this statement of Herodotus by an 
extract from Heber’s journal as cited in Dr. Clarke’s Travels, ch. xv, p. 237: 
“The Nagay Tartars begin to the west of Marinopol: they cultivate a good 
deal of corn, yet they dislike bread as an article of food.” 

ὁ Niebuhr (Dissertat. ut sup. p. 360), Boeckh (Introd. Inscrip. ut sup. p. 
110), and Ritter (Vorhalle der Geschichte, p. 316) advance this opinion 
But we ought not on this occasion to depart from the authority of Herodotus, 
whose information respecting the people of Scythia, collected by himself ὁ 
the spot, is one of the most instructive and precious portions of his whole 
work. He is very careful to distinguish what is Scythian from what is not: 
and these tribes, which Niebuhr (contrary to the sentiment of Herodotus) 
imagines not to be Scythian, were the tribes nearest and best known to him; 
probably he had personally visited them, since we know that he went up the 
civer Hypanis (Bog) as high as the Exampzus, four days’ journey from the 
sca (.v, 52-81). 

That some portions of the same ἔϑνος should be ἀροτῆρες, and other por- 
tions vouades, is far from being without parallel; such was the case with the 
Persians, for example (Herodot. i. 126), and with the Iberians between the 
Euxine and the Caspian (Strabo, xi, p. 500). 

The Pontic Greeks confounded Agathyrsus, Gelénus, and Scythés im the 
same genealogy, as being three brethren, sons of Héraklés by the uctomap- 
ϑενος "Εχιδνα of the Hylwa (iv, 7-10). Herodocs is more precise he 
distinguishes both the Agathyrsi and Geléni from Scythians. 


240 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


hypothesis contradicted implicitly, if not directly, by the words 
of Herodotus, and no way necessary in the present case. It is - 
not from them, however, that Herodotus draws his vivid picture 
of the people, with their inhuman rites and repulsive personal 


features. It is the purely nomadic Scythians whom he depicts 
the earliest specimens of the Mongolian race (so it seems proba 
ble)! known to history, and prototypes of the Huns and bulga 


' Both Niebuhr and Boeckh account the ancient Scythians to be of Mon- 
golian race (Niebuhr in the Dissertation above mentioned, Untersuchungen 
Uber die Geschichte der Skythen, Geten, und Sarmaten, among the Kleine 
Historische Schriften, p. 362; Boeckh, Corpus Inscriptt. Gracarum, Intro- 
ductio ad Inscriptt. Sarmatic. part xi, p. 81). Paul Joseph Schafarik, in his 
elaborate examination of the ethnography of the ancient people described as 
inhabiting northern Europe and Asia, arrives at the same result (Slavische 
AlterthOmer, Prag. 1843, vol. i, xiii, 6, p. 279). 

A striking illustration of this analogy of race is noticed by Alexander von 
Humboldt, in speaking of the burial-place and the funeral obsequies of the 
Tartar Tchinghiz Khan : — 

“Les cruautés lors de la pompe funébre des grands-khans ressemblent 
entitrement ἃ celles que nous trouvons décrites par Hérodote (iv, 71) environ 
1700 ans avant la mort de Tchinghiz, et 65° de longitude plus ἃ l’ouest, chez 
les Scythes du Gerrhus οἱ du Borysthene.” (Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. 
i, p. 244.) 

Nevertheless, M. Humboldt dissents from the opinion of Niebuhr and 
Boeckh, and considers the Scythians of Herodotus to be of Indo-Germanic, 
not of Mongolian race: Klaproth seems to adopt the same view (see Hum- 
boldt, Asie Centrale, vol. i, p. 401, and his valuable work, Kosmos, p. 491 
note 383). He assumes it as a certain fact, upon what evidence I do not 
distinctly see, that no tribe of Turk or Mongol race migrated westward out 
of Central Asia until considerably later than the time of Herodotus. To 
make out such a negative, seems to me impossible: and the marks of ethno- 
graphical analogy, so far as they go, decidedly favor the opinion of Niebuhr 
Ukert also (Skythien, pp. 266-280) controverts the opinion of Niebuhr. 

At the same time it must be granted that these marks are not very conclu- 
sive, and that many nomadic hordes, whom no one would refer to the same 
race, may yet have exhibited an analogy of manners and characteristics 
equal to that between the Scythians and Mongols. 

The pricciple upon which the Indo-European family of the human race is 
lefined acd parted off, appears to me inapplicable to any particular case 
wherein the /anguage of the people is unknown to us. The nations consti- 
tuting that family have no other point of affinity except in the roots and 
structure of their language ; on every other point there is the widest difference. 
To enable us to affirm that the Massagete, or the Scythians, or the Alani, 


MANNERS O¥ THE SCYTHIANS. 24) 


mans of later centuries. The sword, in the literal sense of the 
word, was their chief god,'\— an iron seymetar solemnly elevated 
upon a wide and lofty platform, which was supported on masses 
of fagots piled underneath, — to whom sheep, horses, and a por. 
tion of their prisoners taken in war, were offered up in sacrifice: 
Herodotus treats this sword as the image of the god Arés, thus 
putting an Hellenic interpretation upon that which he describes 
literally as a barbaric rite. The scalps and the skins of slain en- 
emies, and sometimes the skull formed into a drinking-cup, con- 
stituted the decoration of a Scythian warrior : whoever had not 
slain an enemy, was excluded from participation in the annual 
— bowl of wine prepared by the chief of each separate 
iorde. ‘The ceremonies which took place durin icknes 
and funeral obsequies of the evans kings (whe ety me 
at Gerrhi, at the extreme point to which navigation extended u 
the Borysthenés), partook of the same sanguinary dispositi : 
| guiné sposition. It 
was the Scythian practice to put out the eyes of all their slaves; 
and the awkwardness of the Scythian frame, often overloaded with 
fat, together with extreme dirt of body, and the absence of all 
discriminating feature between one man and another, complete 
the brutish portrait.2 Mare’s milk (with cheese made from it) 


a to the Indo-European family, it would be requisite that we should 
vow something of their language. But the Scythian lancuac. : 
said to be wholly unknown; and the very few verti which psy tient ὦ με 
our knowledge do not tend to aid the Indo-European hypothesis. 

' See the story of the accidental discovery of this Scythian sword when 
lost, by Attila, the chief of the Huns (Priscus ap. Jornandem de Rebus 
Geticis, c. 35, and in Eclog. Legation. p. 50). 

Lucian in the Toxaris (c. 38, vol. ii, p. 546, Hemst.) notices the worship 
bf the akinakes, or scymetar, by the Seythians in plain terms without inter- 
posing the idea of the god Arés: compare Clemen. Alexand. Protrept. p. 
25, Syl Ammianus Marcellinus, in speaking of the Alani (xxxi, 2), as 
well as Pomponius Mela (ii, 1) and Solinus (c. 90), copy Herodotus. Am. 
mianus is more literal in his description of the Sarmatian sword-worship 
(xvii, 12), “ Eductisque mucronibus. quos pro numinibus colunt,” ete. 

* Herodot. iv, 3-62, 71-75; Sophoklés, CEnsmaus, — ap. Athenee. ix Ρ 
410; Hippokratés, De Aére, Locis et Aquis, ch. vi, s. 91-99, ete. 

It is seldom that we obtain, in reference to the modes of life of an ancient 
population, two such excellent witnesses as Herodotus and Hippokratés 
about the Scythians. 

Hippokratés was accustomed to see the naked figure in its highest per 


VOL. II. 2] 16cc. 


242 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


seems to have been their chief luxury, and probably served the 
same purpose of procuring the intoxicating drink called Avwriss, 
as at present among the Lashkirs and the Kalmucks.! . 

If the habits of the Scythians were such as to create in the 
near observer no other feeling than repugnance, their force at 
least inspired terror. ‘They appeared in the eyes of Thucydidés 
so numerous and so formidable, that he pronounces them irresist- 
ible, if they could but unite, by any other nation within his knowl- 
edge. Herodotus, too, conceived the same idea of a race among 
whom every man was a warrior and a practised horse-bowman, 
and who were placed by their mode of life out of all reach of an 
enemy’s attack.2, Moreover, Herodotus does not speak meanly 
of their intelligence, contrasting them m favorable terms with the 
general stupidity of the other nations bordering on the Euxine. 
li this respect ‘Thucydidés seems to differ from him. 

On the east, the Scythians of the time of Herodotus were sep- 
arated only by the river Tanais from the Sarmatians, who oceu- 
pied the territory for several days’ journey north-east of the 
Palus Medtis: on the south, they were divided by the Danube 
from the section of Thracians called Getz. Both these nations 
were nomadic, analogous to the Seythians in habits, military 
efficiency, and fierceness: indeed, Herodotus and Hippokratés 
distinctly intimate that the Sarmatians were nothing but a branch 
of Scythians,* speaking a Scythian dialect, and distinguished 


fection at the Grecian games: henee, perhaps, he is led to dwell more 
emphatically on the corporeal defects of the Scythians. : 
‘See Pallas, Reise durch Russland, and Dr. Clarke, Travels in Russia, 
ii, p. 238. 
μ — Σ ii, 95; llerodot. ii, 46-47: his idea of the formidable power of 
the Scythians seems also to be implied in his expression (c. 81), καὶ ὀλίγους, 
ὡς Σκύϑας εἶναι. : 
Herodotus holds the same language about the Tnracians, nowever, 88 
Thucydidés about the Scythians,— irresistible, if they could but act with 
i 3). 
gr of Heredotas to this effect ( iv, 110-1 17) seems elear and 
positive, especially as to the language Hippokratés also calls the Sauromatss 
ἔϑνος Σκυϑικόν (De Aére, Locis et Aquis, c. vi, secs. 89, Petersen). 
I cannot think that there is any sufficient ground for the marked ethnical] 
distinction which several authors draw (contrary to Herodotus) between the 
&cythians and the Sarmatians. Boeckh considers the latter to be of Median 


SARMATIANS. 24% 


trom their neighbors on the other side of the Tanais, chiefly by 
his peculiarity, — that the women among them were warriors 
hardly less daring and expert than the men. This attribute of 
Sarmatian women, as a matter of fact, is woll attested, — though 
Herodotus has thrown over it an air of suspicion not properly be- 


longing to it, by his explanatory genealogical mythe, deducing 
the Sarmatians from a mixed breed between the Seythians and 
the Amazons. 

The wide extent of steppe eastward and north-eastward of 
the Tanais, between the Ural mountains and the Caspian, and 
beyond the possessions of the Sarmatians, was traversed by Gre- 
cian traders, even to a good distance in the direction of the 
Altai mountains, — the rich produce of gold, both in Altai and 
Ural, being the great temptation. First, according to Herodotus, 
tame the indigenous nomadic nation called Budini, who dwelt to 
ihe northward of the Sarmatians,' and among whom were es- 


or Persian origin, but to be, also, the progenitors of the modern Sclavonian 
tumily: “Sarmate, Slavorum haud dubie parentes,” (Introduct. ad Inser. 
Sarmatie. Corp. Inser. part xi, p. 83.) Many other authors have shared this 
ppinion, whieh identifies the Sarmatians with the Slavi; but Paul Joseph 
Schafarik (Slavische Alterthiimer, vol. i, ὁ. 16) has shown powerful reasons 
against it. 

Nevertheless, Schafarik admits the Sarmatians to be of Median origin, and 
radically distinet from the Scythians. But the passages which are quoted to 
prove this point from Diodorus (ii, 43), from Mela (i, 19), and from Pliny 
(IL N. vi. 7), appear to me of much less authority than the assertion of 
Herodotus. In none of these authors is there any trace of inquiries made 
in or near the actual spot from neighbors and competent informants, such 
as we find in Herodotus. And the chapter in Diodorus, on which both 
Boeckh and Schafarik lay especial stress, appears to me one of the most 
untrustworthy in the whole book. To believe in the existence of Scythian 
kings who reigned over all Asia from the eastern ocean to the Caspian, and 
sent out large colonies of Medians and Assyrians, is .urely impossible; and 
Wesseling speaks much within the truth when he says, “ Verum hee dubia 
admodum atque incerta.” It is remarkable to see Boeckh treating this pas- 
tage as conclusive against Herodotus and Hippokratés. M. Boeckh has 
also given a copious analysis of the names found in the Greek inscriptions 
from Scythian, Sarmatian, and Meotie localities (ut sup. pp. 107-117), and 
he endeavors to establish an analogy between the two latter classes and 
Median names. But the analogy holds just as much with regard to the 
Scythian names. 


' The locality which Herodotus assigns to the budini creates difficulty 


244 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


tablished a colony of Pontic Greeks, intermixed with natives, and 
called Geléni; these latter inhabited a spacious town built 
Beyond the Budini eastward dwelt the Thys 


entirely of wood. 


According to his own statement, it would seem that they ought to be near to 
the Neuri (iv, 105), and so in fact Ptolemy places them (v, 9) near about 
Volhivnia and the sources of the )niester. 

Mannert (Geographie der Griech. und Romer, Der Norden der Erde, v, 
iv, p. 138) conceives the budini to be a Teutonic tribe; but Paul Joseph 
Schafarik (Slavische Alterthamer, i, 10, pp. 185-195) has shown more plau- 
sible grounds for believing both them and the neuri to be of Slavic family. 
It seers that the names budini and neuri are traceable to Slavic roots; thai 
the wooden town described by Herodotus in the midst of the budini is an 
exact parallel of the primitive Slavic towns, down even to the twelfth cen- 
tury; and that the description of the country around, with its woods and 
marshes containing beavers, otters, etc. harmonizes better with southern 
Poland and Russia than with the neighborhood of the Ural mountains. 
From the color ascribed to the budini, no certain inference can be drawn: 
γλαυκόν te πᾶν ἰσγυρῶς ἐστὶ καὶ πυῤῥόν (iv, 108). Mannert construes it in 
favor of Teutonic family, Schafarik in favor of Slavic ; and it is to be 
remarked, that Hippokratés talks of the Scythians generally as extremely 
tv ppoi (De Aére, Locis et Aquis, c. vi: compare Aristot. Prob. xxxviil, 2). 

These reasonings are plausible; yet we can hardly venture to alter the 
position of the budini as Herodotus describes it, eastward of the Tanais. 
For he states in the most explicit manner that the route as far as the Argip- 
pei is thoroughly known, traversed both by Scythian and by Grecian traders, 
and all the nations in the way to it known (iv, 24): μέχρι μὲν τούτων πολλὴ 
περιφώνεια τῆς χώρης ἐστὶ Kal τῶν ἔμπροσϑεν ἐϑνέων " Kai yap Σκυϑέων τινες 
ἀπικνέονται ἐς αὐτοὺς, τῶν οὐ χαλεπὸν ἐστὶ πυϑέσϑαι, καὶ 'EAAnvwr τῶν ἐκ 
Βορυσϑένεός τε ἐμπορίου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ποντικῶν ἐμπορίων. These Greek 
and Scythian traders, in their journey from the Pontic seaports into the inte- 
rior, employed seven different languages and as many interpreters. 

Vileker thinks that Herodotus or his informants confounded the Don with 
the Volga (Mythische Geographie, sect. 24, p. 190), supposing that the 
higher parts of the latter belonged to the former; a mistake not unnatural, 
since the two rivers approach pretty near to each other at one particular 
point, and since the iower parts of the Volga, together with the northern 
shore of the Caspian, where its embouchure is situated, appear to have been 
Jittle visited and almost unknown in antiquity. There cannot be a more 
striking evidence how unknown these regions were, than the persuasion, so 
general in antiquity, that the Caspian sea was a gulf of the vcean, to which 
Herodotus, Aristotle, and Ptolemy are almost the only exceptions. Alex- 
ander von Humboldt has some valuable remarks on the tract laid down by 
Herodotus from the Tanais to the Argippsi (Asie Centrale, vol. 1, ΡῈ 
390--400). 

8 Vol. 3 


TAURIC CHERSONESE. 245 


sagete and the Jurke, tribes of hunters, and even a bc ἐγ of 
Scythians who had migrated from the territories of the regal 
Scythians. The Issédones were the easternmost people respect. 
ing whom any definite information reached the Greeks ; beyond 
them we find nothing but fable,|— the one-eyed Arimaspians, 
the gold-guarding Grypes, or Griffins, and the bald-headed Argipe 
pxi. It is impossible to fix with precision the geography of these 
different tribes, or to do more than comprehend approximatively 
their local bearings and relations to each other. 

But the best known of all is the situation of the Tauri (per- 
haps a remnant of the expelled Cimmerians), who dwelt in the 
southern portion of the Tauric Chersonesus (or Crimea), and who 
immolated human sacrifices to their native virgin goddess, — 
identified by the Greeks with Artemis, and serving as a basis for 
the affecting legend of Iphigeneia. The Tauri are distinguished 
by Heroduus from Scythians,2 but their manners and state of 
civilization seem to have been very analogous. It appears also 
that the powerful and numerous Massagete, who dwelt in Asia 
on the plains eastward of the Caspian and southward of the 
Issédones, were so analogous to the Scythians as to be reckoned 
as members of the same race by many of the contemporaries of 
Herodotus.? 

This snort enumeration of the various tribes near the Euxine 
and tue Caspian, as well as we can make them out, from the 
seventh to the fifth century B. C., is pecessary for the comprehen- 
sion of that double invasion of Seythians and Cimmerians which 
laid waste Asia between 630 and 610 B. c. We are not to 
expect trom Herodotus, born a century and a half afterwards, any 
very clear explanations of this event, nor were all his informants 
unanimous respecting the causes which brought it about. But it 
is a fact perfectly within the range of historical analogy, that 
acciden.al aggregations of number, development of aggressive 


' Herouot. iv, 80. 

? He-odot. iv, 99-101. Dionysius Periégétés seems to identify Cimme- 
rians and Tauri (v, 168: compare v, 680, where the Cimmerians are placed 
on the Asiatic side of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, adjacent to the Sindi). 

8 Herodot. i, 202. Strabo compares the inroads of the Sake, which was 
the na:re applied by the Persians to the Scythians, to those of the Citmme 
rians and the Tréres (xi, pp. 311-512). 


246 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


spirit, or failure in the means of subsistence, amony the nomadic 
tribes of the Asiatic plains, have brought on the civilized nations of 
southern Europe calamitous invasions, of which the prime moving 
cause was remote and unknown. Sometimes a weaker tribe, 
flying before a stronger, has been in this manner precipitated upon 
the territory of a richer and less military population, so that an 
impulse originating in the distant plains of Central Tartary has 
been propagated until it reached the southern extremity of 


Europe, through successive intermediate tribes, a phenomenon 


especially exhibited during the fourth and fifth centuries of the 
Christian era, in the declining years of the Roman empire. A 
pressure so transmitted onward is said to have brought down the 
Cimmerians and Scythians upon the more southerly regions of 
Asia. The most ancient story in explanation of this incident 
seems to have been contained in the epic poem (now lost) called 
Arimaspia, of the mystic Aristeas of Prokonnésus, composed 
apparently about 540 B. c. This poet, under the inspiration of 
Apollo,' undertook a pilgrimage to visit the sacred Hyperbore- 
ans (especial votaries of that god) in their elysium beyond the 
Rhipzan mountains ; but he did not r ach farther than the Issé- 
dones. According to him, the movement, whereby the Cimme- 
rians had been expelled from their possessions on the Euxine sea, 
began with the Grypes or Griffins in the extreme north, — the 
sacred character of the Hyperboreans beyond was incompatible 
with aggression or bloodshed. The Grypes invaded the Arimas- 
pians, who on their part assailed their neighbors the Issédones ;* 
these latter moved southward or westward and drove the Scythi- 
ans across the Tanais, while the Scythians, carried forward by 
this onset, expelled the Cimmerians from their territories along 
the Palus Mzotis and the Euxine. 

We see thus that Aristeas referred the attack of the Scythians 
upon the Cimmerians to a distant impulse proceeding in the first 
instance from the Grypes or Griffins ; but Herodotus had heard 
it explained in another way, which he seems to think more cor- 
rect, — the Scythians, originally occupants of Asia, or the regions 
east of the Caspian, had been driven across the Araxés, in 


' Herodot. iv, 13. φοειβολαμπτὸς γενομένες. 
8 Herodot. iv, 13. 


CIMMERIANS EXPELLED BY SCYTHIANS. 247 


consequence of an unsuccessful war with the Massagete, and 
precipitated upon the Cimmerians in Europe.! 

When the Seythian host approached, the Cimmerians were 
not agreed among themselves whether to resist or retire: the 
majority of the people were dismayed and wished to evacuate 
the territory, while the kings of the different tribes resolved to fight 
and perish at home. ‘Those who were animated with this fierce 
despair, divided themselves along with the kings into two equal 
bodies and perished by each other’s hands near the river Tyras, 
where the sepulchres of the kings were yet shown in the time of 
Herodotus.2 The mass of the Cimmerians fled and abandoned 
their country to the Scythians; who, however, not content with 
possession of the country, followed the fugitives across the Cim- 
merian Bosphorus from west to east, under the command of their 
prince Madyés son of Protothyés. ‘The Cimmerians, coasting 
along the east of the Euxine sea and passing to the west οἱ 
Mount Caucasus, made their way first into Kolchis, and next into 
Asia Minor, where they established themselves on the peninsula 
on the northern coast, near the site of the subsequent Grecian city 
of Sindpé. But the Scythian pursuers, mistaking the course 
taken by the fugitives, followed the more circuitous route east of 
Mount Caucasus near to the Caspian sea;3 which brought them, 
not into Asia Minor, but into Media. Both Asia Minor and 
Media became thus exposed nearly at the same time to the ray- 
ages of northern nomades. 

These two stories, representing the belief of Herodotus and 
Aristeas, involve the assumption that the Scythians were com- 
paratively recent emigrants into the territory betwen the Ister 
and the Palus Mzotis. But the legends of the Scythians them- 
selves, a3 well as those of the Pontic Greeks, imply the contrary 
of this assumption; and describe the Scythians as primitive and 
indigenous inhabitants of the country. Both legends are so 
framed as to explain a triple division, which probably may have 
prevailed, of the Scythian aggregate nationality, traced up to 
three heroic brothers: both also agree in awarding the predomi- 


' Herodot. iv, 11. "Eore δὲ καὶ ἄλλος λόγος, ἔχων ὧδε, τῷ μάλιστα λεγομένῳ 
αὐτὸς προσκεῖμαι. 
* Herodot. iv, 11. 8 Herodot. iv, 1-12. 


248 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


nance to the youngest brother of the three,' tlough in other re 
spects, the names and incidents of the two are altogether different, 
The Scythians call themselves Skoloti. 

Such material differences, in the various accounts given to He- 
rodotus of the Scythian and Cimmerian invasions of Asia, are by 
no means wonderful, seeing that nearly two centuries had elapsed 
between that event and his visit to the Pontus. ‘That the Cim- 
merians — perhaps the northernmost portion of the great Thra- 
cian name, and conterminous with the Getew on the Danube — 
were the previous tenants of much of the territory between the 
Ister and the Palus Mzotis, and that they were expelled in the 
seventh century B. C., by the Scythians, we may follow Herodo- 
tus in believing; but Niebuhr has shown that there is great in- 
trinsic improbability in his narrative of the march of the Cimme- 
rians into Asia Minor, and in the pursuit of these fugitives by 
the Scythians. That the latter would pursue at all, when an ex- 
tensive territory was abandoned to them without resistance, is 


hardly supposable : that they should pursue and mistake their 


way, is still more difficult to believe: nor can we overlook the 


great difficulties of the road and the Caucasian passes, in the 


route ascribed to the Cimmerians.2. Niebuhr supposes the latter 


! Herodot. iv, 5-9. At this day, the three great tribes of the nomadic 


Turcomans, on the north-eastern border of Persia near the Oxus,— the 


Yamud, the Gokla, and the Tuka,—assert for themselves a legendary 


genealogy deduced from three brothers (Frazer, Narrative of a Journey in 


Khorasan, p. 258). 

3 Read the description of the difficult escape of Mithridates Eupator, with 
* men, from Pontus to Bosphorus by this route, between 
Caucasus and the Euxine (Strabo, xi, pp. 495-496), — 
rapazia,—all piratical and barbar- 


a mere handful of 
the western edge of 
ἡ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν καὶ Ζυγῶν καὶ Ἡνεύχων 
παραλίᾳ χαλεπῶς ἤει, τὰ πολλὰ ἐμβαΐνων ἐπὶ τὴν ϑάλασοαν: 


ous tribes, — τῇ 
Pompey thought the route unfit for his 


compare Plutarch, Pompeius, c. 34. 
march. 

‘To suppose the Cimmerian tribes with their wagons passing along such 8 
track would require strong positive evidence. According to Ptolemy, how- 
ever, there were two passes over the range of Caucasus, — the Caucasian or 
Albanian gates, near Derbend and the Caspian, and the Sarmatian gates, 
considerably more to the westward (Ptolemy, Geogr. v, 9; Forbiger, Hand- 
buch der Alten Geegraphie, vol. ii, sect. 56, p. 55). It is not impossible that 
the Cimmerians may have followed the westernmost, and the Scythians the 


CIMMERIANS IN ASIA MINOR. 


to have marched into Asia Minor by the western side of the 
Euxire, and across the Thracian Bosphorus, after having been 
defeaied ina decisive battle by the Scythians near the river 
Tyras, where their last kings fell and were interred.! Though 
this 1s both an easier route, and more in accordance with the 
analogy of other occupants expelled from the same territory, we 
must, im the absence of positive evidence, treat the point as un- 
authenticated. 

The inroad of the Cimmerians into Asia Minor was doubtless 
connected with their expulsion from the northern coast of the 
Euxine by the Scythians, but we may well doubt whether it was 
at al! -onnected, as Herodotus had been told that it was, with the 
invasion of Media by the Scythians, except as happening near 
about the same time. The same great evolution of Scythian 
powe., or propulsion by other tribes behind, may have occasioned 
both events, — brought about by different bodies of Scythians, 
but nearly contemporaneous. 

Herodotus tells us two facts respecting the Cimmerian emi- 
grants into Asia Minor. They committed destructive, though 
transient, ravages in many parts of Paphlagonia, Phrygia, Lydia, 
ana Ionia, — and they occupied permanently the northern penin- 
sula,” whereon the Greek city of Sindpé was afterwards planted. 
Had the elegies of the contemporary Ephesian poet Kallinus 
bees vreserved, we should have known better how to appreciate 
thes2 trying times: he strove to keep alive the energy of his 
countrymen against the formidable invaders. From later au- 


easternmost, of these two passes; but the whole story is certainly very 
imrvobahle. 

‘ See Niebuhr’s Dissertation above referred to, pp. 366-367. A reason for 
supnssing that the Cimmerians came into Asia Minor from the west and not 
iron the east, is, that we find them so much confounded with the Thracian 
Trees, indicating seemingly a joint invasion. 

* Herodot. i, 6-15; iv, 12. φαίνονται δὲ of Κεμμέριοι, φεύγοντες ἐς τὴν 
‘Ac nv τοὺς Σκύϑας, kal τὴν Χερσόνησον κτίσαντες, ἐν τῇ viv Σινώπη πόλις 
"EA ηνὶς οἴκισται. 

* Kallinus, Fragment. 2, 3, ed. Bergk. Νῦν δ᾽ ἐπὶ Κιμμερίων στρατὸς 
Foy ται ὀβριμοέργων (Strabo, xiii, p. 627; xiv, 633-647). ©. Maller (His- 
tory of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. x, 8. 4) and Mr. Clinton 
(Fa-ti Hellenici, 8. c. 716-635) may be consulted about the obscure chro- 
nology of these events. The Scythico-Cimmerian invasion of Asia, te 


1i* 


HISTORY OF GREECE. 


thors, wh, probably, had these poems before them, we learn that 
the Cimmerian host, having occupied the Lydian chief town 


waich Herodotus alludes, appears fixed for some date in the reign of Ardys 
the Lydian, 640-629 B. c., and may stand for 635 B. ©. as Mr. Clinton puts 
it; and I agree with O. Miiller that the fragment of the poet Kallinus 
above cited alludes to this invasion ; for the supposition of Mr. Clinton, that 
Kallinus here alludes to an invasion past and not present, appears to be 
excluded by the word νῦν. Mr. Clinton places both Kallinus and Archilo- 
chus (in my judgment) half a century too high; for 1 agree with O. Maller 
in disbelieving the story told by Pliny of the picture sold by Bularchus to 
Kandaulés. ©. Maller follows Strabo (i, p. 61) in calling Madys a Cimme- 
rian prince, who drove the Tréres out of Asia Minor; whereas Herodotus 
mentions him as the Scythian prince, who drove the Cimmerians out of their 


own territory into Asia Minor (i, 103). 

The chronology of Herodotus is intelligible and consistent with itself: 
that of Strabo we cannot settle, when he speaks of many different invasions. 
Nor does his language give us the smallest reason to suppose that he was in 
possession of any means of determining dates for these early times, — nothing 


at all caleulated to justify the positive chronology which Mr. Clinton deduces 
from him: compare his Fasti Hellenici, B. ο. 635, 629, 617. Strabo says, 
after affirming that Homer knew both the name and the reality of the Cim- 
merians (i, p. 6; iii, p. 149),— καὶ yap Kav’ Ὅμηρον, ἢ πρὸ αὐτοῦ μικρὸν 
λέγουσι τὴν τῶν Κιμμερίων ἔφοδον γενέσϑαι τὴν μέχρι τῆς Αἰολίδος καὶ τῆς 
*lwviac. —“ which places the first appearance of the Cimmerians in Asia 
Minor a century at /east before the Olympiad of Coreebus,” (says Mr. Clin- 
ton.) But what means could Strabo have had to chronologize events as 
happening at or a little before the time of Homer? No date in the Grecian 
world was so contested, or so indeterminable, as the time of Homer: nor 
will it do to reason, as Mr. Clinton does, #. 6. to take the latest date fixed for 
Homer among many, and then to say that the invasion of the Cimmerians 
must be at least B. c. 876: thus assuming it as a certainty that, whether the 
date of Homer be a century earlier or later, the invasion of the Cimmerians 
must be made to fit it. When Strabo employs such untrustworthy chrono 
logical standards, he only shows us — wat everything else confirms — that 
there existed no tests of any value for events of that early date in the 
Grecian world. 

Mr. Clinton announces this ante-Homeric calculation as a chronological 
certainty : “ The Cimmerians first appeared in Asia Minor about a century 
before B.c. 776. An irruption is recorded in B. c.782. Their last inroad was 
in B. c. 635. The settlement of Ambrén (the Milesian, at Sindpé) may be 
placed at about B. c. 782, twenty-six yezrs before the era assigned to (the 
Milesian or Sindpic settlement of ) Trapezus.” 

On what authority does Mr. Clinton assert that a Cimmerian irruption 
was recorded in B. c. 782% Simply on the following passage of Orosius, 


MAGNESIA SACKED BY THE CIMMERIANS. 951 


Sardis (its inaccessible acropolis defied them), poured with theiz 
wagons into the fertile valley of the Kaistes, took and sacked 
Magnésia on the Mzander, and even threatened the temple of 
Artemis at Ephesus. But the goddess so well protected her own 
town and sanctuary,' that Lygdamis the leader of the Cimme- 


which he cites at B. c. 635: “ Anno ante urbem conditam tricesimo, — Tune 
etiam Amazonum gentis et Cimmeriorum in Asiam repentinus incursus pluri- 
mum diu lateque vastationem et stragem intulit.” If Ὁ Ὁ authority of 
Orosius is to be trusted, we ought to say that the invasion of the Amazons 
was a recorded fact. ‘To treat a fact mentioned in Orosius, an author of the 
fourth century after Christ, and referred to B. Cc. 782, as a recorded fact, con- 
founds the most important boundary-lines in regard to the appreciation of 
historical evidence. 

In fixing the Cimmerian invasion of Asia at 782 B. c., Mr. Clinton has 
the statement of Orosius, whatever it may be worth, to rest upon; but in 
fixing the settlement of Ambron the Milesian (at Sindpé) at 782 Β. c., I 
know not that he had any authority at all. Eusebius does, indeed, place the 
foundation of Trapezus in 756 B. c., and Trapezus is said to have been a 
colony from Sindpé; and Mr. Clinton, therefore, is anxious to find some 
date for the foundation of Sindpé anterior to 756 B. c.; but there is nothing 
to warrant him in selecting 782 B. c., rather than any other year. 

In my judgment, the establishment of any Milesian colony in the Euxine 
at so early a date as 756 B. c. is highly improbable: and when we find that 
the same Eusebius fixes the foundation of Sinépé (the metropolis of Trape- 
zus) as low down as 629 B. C., this is an argument with me for believing that 
the date whieh he assigns to Trapezus is by far too early. Mr. Clinton treate 
the date which Eusebius assigns to Trapezus as certain, and infers from it, 
that the date which the same author assigns to Sindpé is one hundred and 
thirty years /ater than the reality: I reverse the inference, considering the 
date which he assigns to Sindpé as the more trustworthy of the two, and 
ieducing the conclusion, that the date which he gives for Trapezus is one 
hundred and thirty years at least earlier than the reality. 

On all grounds, the authority of the chronologists is greater with regard 
to the later of the two periods than to the earlier, and there is, besides, the 
additional probability arising out of what is a suitable date for Milesian 
settlement. To which I will add, that Herodotus places the settlement of 
the Cimmerians near “that spot where Sindpé is now settled,” im the reigz 
of Ardys, soon after 635 B. c. Sindpé was, therefore, not founded at the time 
when the Cimmerians went there, in the belief of Herodotus. 

' Strabo ἡ. p. 61; Kallimachus, Hymn. ad Dianam, 251~260 

weeee-HAaivwy ἀλαπάζεμεν ἠπείλησε (Ἔφεσον) 
Αὐύγδαμις ὑβριστὴς, ἐπὶ δὲ στρατὸν ἱππημόλγων 
"Hyaye Κιμμερίων, ψαμάϑῳ ἴσον, of ῥα παρ᾽ αὐτὸν 
Κεκλίμενοι ναίουσι βοὸς πόρον ᾿Ιναχεώνης. 


252 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


rians, whose name marks him for a Greek, after a season of pros 
perous depredation in Lydia and Ionia, conducting his host inte 
the mountainous regions of Kilikia, was there overwhelmed and 
slain. But though these marauders perished, the Cimmerian 
settlers in the territory near Sindpe remained ; and Ambron, the 
first Milesian ockist who tried to colonize that spot, was slain by 
them, if we may believe Skymnus. They are not mentioned af- 
terwards, but it seems not unreasonable to believe that they ap- 
pear under the name of the Chalybes, whom Herodotus mentions 
along that coast between the Mariandynians and Paphlagonians, 
and whom Mela notices as adjacent to Sindépé and Amisus.! 
Oiher authors place the Chalybes on several different points, 
more to the east, though along the same parallel of latitude, — 
between the Mosyneeki and Tibaréni, — near the river Thermé- 
dén,—and on the northern boundary of Armenia, near the 
sources of the Araxés; but it is only Herodotus and Mela who 
recognize Chalybes westward of the river Halys and the Paph- 
lygonians, near to Sindpé. ‘These Chalybes were brave moun 
taineers, though savage in manners ; distinguished as producer 
and workers of the iron which their mountains afforded. In the 
conceptions of the Greeks, as manifested in a variety of fabulous 
notices, they are plainly connected with Seythians or Cimmerians: 
whence it seems probable that this connection was present to the 
mind of Herodotus in regard to the inland population near 
Sindpé.? 


" ὌΝ sul ‘ "ἢ 1 4 
A δειλὸς ασιλέων ὕσον ἤλιτεν" ov γὰρ ἔμελλε 
‘ y, f j ΄ 


“ων Ti ‘4 . . . ἐν nnn “ καὶ ν “nr 
Οὐτ᾽ αὐτὸς Σκυϑίηνδε παλίμπετες, οὗτε τις ἄλλος 


Ts 
rr * , Ν r ° - 
Ὀσσων ἐν λειμῶνι Καὐστρίῳ ἧσαν ἅμαξαι, 


"Aw ἁπονοστησειν 
In the explanation of the proverb Σκυϑῶν ἐρημία, allusion is made to a sud- 
den panic and flight of Seythians from Ephesus (Hesychius, v, Σκυϑῶὼν ἐρημία), 
— probably this must refer to some story of interference on the part of 
Artemis to protect the town against these Cimmerians. The confusion 
between Cimmerians and Scythians is very frequent. 

! Herodot. i, 28; Mela, i, 19,9; Skymn. Chi. Fragm. 207. 

The ten thousand Greeks in their homeward march passed through 8 
people called Chalybes between Armenia and the town of Trapezus, ana 
also again after eight days’ march westerly from Trapezus, between the 
Tibaréni and Mosyneeki: compare Xenophon, Anabas. iv, 7, 153; v, 5, 1; 
probably different sections of the same people The last-mentioned Cha 


VARIOUS INVASIONS OF ASIA MINOR. 953 


Herodotus seems to have conceived only one invasion of Asia 
by the Cimmerians, during the reign of Ardys in Lydia. Ardys 
was succeeded by his son Sadyattés, who reigned twelve years; 
and it was Alyattés, son and successor of Sadyattés, according to 
Herodotus, who expelled the Cimmerians from Asia.! But 
Strabo seems to speak of several invasions, in which the Tréres, 
a Thracian tribe, were concerned, an@ which are not clearly dis- 
eriminated ; while Kallisthénes affirmed that Sardis had been 
taken by the Tréres and Lykians.° We see only that a large 
and fair portion of Asia Minor was for much of this seventh 
century B. C. in possession of these destroying nomads, who, 
while on the one hand they afilicted the Ionic Greeks, on the 
other hand indirectly befriended them by retarding the growth 
of the Lydian monarchy. 

The invasion of Upper Asia by the Scythians appears to have 
been nearly simultaneous with that of Asia Minor by the Cim- 
merians, but more ruinous and longer protracted. 


been the best known, from their iron works, and their 
k ports: Ephorus recognized them (see Ephori 
hether he knew of the more easterly Chalybes, 
so also Dionysius Periégétés, v, 768: 


lybes seem to have 
creater vicinity to the Gree 
Fragm. 80-82, ed. Marx); w 
north of Armenia, is less certain: 
compare Eustathius, ad loe. 

The idea which prevailed among ancient writers, of a connection between 
and the Scythians or Cimmerians (Χάλυβος 


the Chalybes in these regions 
729; and Hesiod. ap. Clemen. 


Σκυϑῶν ἄποικος, Aschyl. Sept. ad Thebas, 
Alex. Sr. i, p. 132), and of which the supposed residence of the Amazons 
on the river Therméd6n seems to be one of the manifestations, is discussed 
in Hoeckh, Kreta, book i, pp. 294-305; and Mannert, Geographie der 
8-416: compare Stephan. Byz. v, Χάλυβες. 


Griechen und Rémer, vi, 2, pp. 4 
into these regions. The 


Mannert believes in an early Scythian emigration 
ten thousand Greeks passed through the territory of a people called Skythi- 
ni, immediately bordering on the Chalybes to the north; which region some 
identify with the Sakaséné of Strabo (xi, 511) occupied, according to that 
geographer, by invaders from Eastern Scythia. 

It seems that Sindpé was one of the most considerable places for the 
export of the iron used in Greece : the Sinopic as well as the Chalybdic (or 
Chalybic) iron had a special reputation (Stephan. Byz. v, Λακεδαίμων). 

About the Chalybes, compare Ukert, Skythien, pp. 521-523. 

' Herodot. i, 15-16. 

3 Strabo, xi, p. 511; xii, Ρ. 552; xiii, p. 627. 

The poet Kallinus mentioned both Cimmerians and Tréres (Fr. 2, 3, ed 


Bergk Strabo, xiv, pp. 633-647). 


954 HISTORY OF 3REECE 


king Kyaxarés, called away from the siege of Nineveh to oppose 
them, was totally defeated ; and the Scythians became full mas- 
ters of the country. ‘They spread themselves over the whole of 
Upper Asia, as far as Palestine and the borders of Egypt, where 
Psammetichus the Egyptian king met them, and only redeemed 
his kingdom from invasion by prayers and costly presents. In 
their return, a detachment of them sacked the temple of Aphrodité 
at Askalon ; an act of sacrilege which the goddess avenged beth 
upon the plunderers and their descendants, to the third and fourth 
generation. Twenty-eight years did their dominion in Upper Asia 
continue,! with intolerable cruelty and oppression ; until, at length, 
Kyaxarés and the Medes found means to entrap the chiefs into a 
banquet, and slew them in the hour of intoxication. The Scyth- 
ian host once expelled, the Medes resumed their empire. Tle- 
rodotus tells us that these Scythians returned to the Tauric Cher- 
sonese, where they found that, during their long absence, their 
wives had intermarried with the slaves, while the new offspring 
which had grown up refused to readmit them. A deep trench 
had been drawn across a line? over which their march lay, and 
the new-grown youth defended it with bravery, until at length— 
so the story runs,—the returning masters took up their whips 
instead of arms, and scourged the rebellious slaves into sub- 
mission. 

Little as we know about the particulars of these Cimmerian 
and Scythian inroads, they deserve notice as the first — at least 
the first historically known — among the numerous invastons of 
cultivated Asia and Europe by the nomades of Tartary. Huns, 


Avars, Bulgarians, Magyars, Turks, Mongols, Tartars, etc., are 


1 Herodot. i, 105. The account given by Herodotus of the punishment 
inflicted by the offended Aphrodité on the Scythian plunderers, and on their 
children’s children down to his time, becomes especially interesting when we 
combine it with the statement of Hippokratés respecting the peculiar inca- 
pacities which were so apt to affect the Scythians, and the religious interpre- 
tation put upon them by the sufferers (De Aére, Locis, et Aquis, ς. vi, 8. 
106-109). 

* See, in reference to the direction of this ditch, Vélcker, in the work 
above referred to on the Scythia of Herodotus (Mythische Geographie, ch. 
vii, p. 177). 

That the ilitch existed, there can be no reasonable doubt; though the tale 
given by Herodotus is highly improbable. 


EXPULSION OF NOMADS FROM ASIA MINOR 955 


fund in subsequent centuries repeating the same infliction, and 
establishing a dominion both more durable, and not less destruo- 
tive, than the transient scourge of tne Scythians during the 
reign of _Kyaxarés. 

After the expulsion of the Scythians from Asia, the full ex- 
tent and power of the Median empire was reéstablished ; and 
Kyaxarés was enabled again to besiege N ineveh. He took that 
great city, and reduced under his dominion all the Assyrians eX- 
cept those who formed the kingdom of Babylon. ‘This conquest 
was achieved towards the close of his reign, and he bequeathed 
the Median empire, at the maximum of its grandeur, to his son 
Astyagés, in 599 B. C.! 

As the dominion of the Scythians in Upper Asia lasted twenty 
eight years before they were expelled by Kyaxarés, 80 aiso the 
‘nroads of the Cimmerians through Asia Minor, which had be- 
gun during the reign of the Lydian king Ardys, continued 
through the twelve years of the reign of his son Sadyattés (629- 
617 B. c.), and were finally terminated by Alyattés, son of the 
latter.2 Notwithstanding the Cimmerians, however, Sadyattés 
was in a condition to prosecute a war against the Grecian city of 
Milétus, which continued during the last seven years of his reign, 
and which he bequeathed to his son and successor. Alyattés 
continued the war for five years longer. So feeble was the sen- 
timent of union among the various Grecian towns on the Asiatic 
coast, that none of them would lend any aid to Milétus except 
the Chians, who were under special obligations to Miletus for 
previous aid in a contest against Erythre: and the Milesians un- 
assisted were no match for the Lydian army in the field, though 
their great naval strength placed them wut of all danger of a 
blockade; and we must presume that tne erection of those 
mounds of earth against the walls, whereby the Persian Harpa- 
gus vanquished the Ionian cities half a century afterwards, was 


1 Herodot. i, 106. Mr. Clinton fixes the date of the capture of Nineveh at 
606 8. c. (F. H. vol. i, p. 269), upon grounds which do not appear to me 
conclusive: the utmost which can be made out is, that it was taken during 


the last ten years of the reign of Kyaxarés. 
? From whom Polysenus borrowed his statement, that Alyattés employed 


with effect savage dogs against the Cimmerians, I do not know (Polyan 
vii, 2, 1). 


256 HISTORY OF GREECE, 


then unknown to the Lydians. For twelv2 successive years the 
Milesian territory was annually overrun and ravaged, previous te 
the gathering in of the crop. The inhabitants, after having been 
defeated in two ruinous battles, gave up all hope of resisting the 
devastation, so that the task of the invaders became easy, and 
the Lydian army pursued their destructive march to the sound 
of flutes and harps. They ruined the crops and the fruit-trees, 
but Alyattés would not allow the farm-buildings or country-houses 
to be burnt, in order that the means of production might still be 
preserved, to be again destroyed during the following season. 
By such unremitting devastation the Milesians were reduced to 
distress and famine, in spite of their command of the sea; and 
the fate which afterwards overtook them during the reign of 
Croesus, of becoming tributary subjects to the throne of Sardis, 
would have begun half a century earlier, had not Alyattés unin- 
tentionally committed a profanation against the goddess Athéné. 
Her temple at Asséssus accidentally took fire, and was consumed, 
when his soldiers on a windy day were burning the Milesian 
standing corn. Though no one took notice of this incident at the 
time, yet Alyattés on his return to Sardis was smitten with pro 
longed sickness. Unable to obtain relief, he despatched envoys 
to seek humble advice from the god at Delphi; but the Pythian 
priestess refused to furnish any healing suggestions until he 
should have rebuilt the burnt temple of Athéné, — and Perian- 
der, at that time despot of Corinth, having learned the tenor of 
this reply, transmitted private information of it to Thrasybulus, 
despot of Milétus, with whom he was intimately allied. Presently 
there arrived at Milétus a herald on the part of Alyattés, pro- 
posing a truce for the special purpose of enabling him to rebuild 
the destroyed temple, — the Lydian monarch believing the Mile- 
sians to be so poorly furnished with subsistence that they would 
gladly embrace this temporary relief. But the herald on his ar- 
éival found abundance of corn heaped up in the agora, and the 
citizens engaged in feasting and enjoyment: for Thrasybulus had 
caused all the provision in the town, both public and private, to 
be brought out, in order that the herald might see the Milesians 
in a condition of apparent plenty, and carry the news of it to his 
master. ‘The stratagem succeeded. Alyattés, under the persua- 
sion that his repeated devastations inflicted upon the Milesians ne 


CRESUS, SON OF ALYATTES. . 957 


sensible privations, abandoned his hostile designs, and concluded 
with them a treaty of amity and alliance. It was his first pro 
ceeding to build two temples to Athéné, in place of the one which 
had been destroyed, and he then, forthwith, recovered from his 
protracted malady. His gratitude for the cure was testified by 
the transmission of a large silver bowl, with an iron footstand 
welded together by the Chian artist Glaukus, —the inventor of 
the art of thus joining together pieces of iron.! 

Alyattés is said to have carried on other operations against 
some of the Ionic Greeks: he took Smyrna, but was defeated in 
an inroad on the territory of Klazomene.? But on the whole, 
his long reign of fifty-seven years was one of tranquillity to the 
Grecian cities on the coast, though we hear of an expedition which 
he undertook against Karia.3 He is reported to have been during 
youth of overweening insolence, but to have acquired afterwards 
a just and improved character. By an Ionian wife he became 
father of Croesus, whom, even during his lifetime, he appointed 
satrap of the town of Adramyttium, and the neighboring plain 
of Thébé. But he had also other wives and other sons, and one 
of the latter, Adramytus, is reported as the founder of Adramyt- 
tium.4 How far his dominion in the interior of Asia Minor ex- 
tended, we do not know, but very probably his long and compar- 


atively inactive reign may have favored the accumulation of those 
treasures which afterwards rendered the wealth of Croesus so 
proverbial. His monument, an enormous pyramidal mound upon 
a stone base, erected near Sardis, by the joint efforts of the 
whole Sardian population, was the most memorable curiosity in 
Lydia during the time of Herodotus ; it was inferior only to the 
gigantic edifices of Egypt and Babylon.5 


' Herodot. i, 20-23. 

* Herodot. i, 18. Polyznus (vii, 2,2) mentions a proceeding of Alyattés 
against the Kolophonians. 

3 Nikolaus Damasken. p. 54, ed. Orelli; Xanthi Fragment. p. 243 


Creuzer. 
Mr Clinton states Alyattés to have conquered Karia, and also Holiq, 


for neither of which do I find sufficient authority (Fasti Hellen. ch. xvii, p 
293). 

* Aristoteles ap Stephan. Byz. v, ᾿Αδραμιττεῖον. 

δ Herodot. i, 92-93. 

VOL. Il. 


258 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Croesus obtained the throne, at the death of his father, by ap 
pointment from the latter. But there was a party among the 
Lydians who had favored the pretensions of Lis brother Pauita- 
leon; one of the richest chiefs of which party was put to death 
afterwards by the new king, under the cruel torture of a spiked 
cardiny- machine, -— his property confiscated.! ‘The aggressive 
reign of Croesus, lasting fourteen years (599-545 B. c.), formed a 
marked contrast to the long quiescence of his father during a 
reign of fifty-seven years. 

Pretences being easily found for war against the Asiatic Greeks, 
Croesus attacked them one after the other. Unfortunately, we 
know neither the particulars of these successive aggressions, nor 
the previous history of the Ionic cities, so as to be able to explain 
how it was that the fifth of the Mermnad kings of Sardis met 
with such unqualified success,in an enterprise which his prede- 
cessors had attempted in vain. Milétus alone, with the aid of 
Chios, had resisted Alyattés and Sadyattés for eleven years, — 
and Croesus possessed no naval force, any more than his father 
and grandfather. But on this occasion, not one of the towns can 
have displayed the like individual energy. In regard to the Mi- 
lesians, we may perhaps suspect that the period now under con- 
sideration was comprised in that long duration of intestine con- 
flict which Herodotus represents (though without defining exactly 
when) to have crippled the forces of the city for two generations, 
and which was at length appeased by a memorable decision of 
some arbitrators invited from Paros. These latter, called in by 
mutual consent of the exhausted antagonist parties at Milétus, 
found both the city and her territory in a state of general neglect 
and ruin. But om surveying the lands, they discovered some 
which still appeared to be tilled with undiminished diligence and 
skill; to the proprietors of these lands they consigned the gov- 
2rnment of the town, in the belief that they would manage the 
rublic affairs with as much success as their own.2 Such a state 


1 Herodot. i, 92. 

3 Herodot. v, 28. κατύπερϑε δὲ τουτέων, ἐπὶ δύο γενέας ἀνδρῶι νοσήσασα 
τὰ μάλιστα στάσει. 

Alyattés reigned fifty-seven years, and the vigorous resistance which the 
Milesians offered to hiva took place in the first six years of his reign. The 


‘two generations of intestine dissension” may well have succeeded after the 
“ =_ 


CRESUS CONQUERS THE ASIATIC GREEKS. 259 


of intestine weakness would partly explain the easy subjugation 
of the Milesians by Croesus; while there was little in the habits 
of the Ionic cities to present the chance of united efforts against 
a common enemy. These cities, far from keeping up any effec- 
tive political confederation, were in a state of habitual jealousy of 
each other, and not unfrequently in actual war.!| The common 
religious festivals, — the Deliac festival as well as the Pan-Ionia, 
and afterwards the Ephesia in place of the Delia, — seem to 
have been regularly frequented by all the cities throughout 
the worst of times. But these assemblies had no direct political 
function, nor were they permitted to control that sentiment of 
separate city-autonomy which was paramount in the Greek mind, 
— though their influence was extremely precious in calling forth 
social sympathies. Apart from the periodical festival, meetings 
for special emergencies were held at the Pan-Ionic temple; but 
from such meetings any city, not directly implicated, kept aloof.? 
As in this case, so in others not less critical throughout the his- 
torical period, the incapacity of large political combination was 
the source of constant danger, and ultimately proved the cause of 
ruin, to the independence of all the Grecian states. Herodotus 
warmly commends the advice given by Thalés to his Ionic 
countrymen, —- and given, to use his remarkable expression, “ be- 
fore the ruin of Ionia,”3— that a common senate, invested with 
authority over all the twelve cities, should be formed within the 
walls of Teds, as the most central in position; and that all the 
other cities should account themselves mere demes of this aggre- 


reign of Thrasybulus. This, indeed, is a mere conjecture, yet it may be ob- 
served that Herodotus, speaking of the time of the Tonic revolt (500 B. c.), 
and intimating that Milétus, though then peaceable, had been for two gener- 
ations at an earlier period torn by intestine dissension, could hardly have 
meant these “two generations” to apply to a time earlier than 617 B. c. 

1 Herodot. i, 17; v, 99; Athenz. vi, p. 267. Compare K. F. Hermann, 
Lehrbuch der Griech. Staats Alterthiimer, sect. 77, note 28. 

? See the remarkable case of Milétus sending no deputies to a Pan-Ionie 
meeting, being safe herself from danger (Herodot. i, 141). 

3 Herodot. i, 141-170. χρηστὴ δὲ καὶ πρὶν ἢ διαφϑαρῆναι "Iwviny, Θάλεω 
ἀνδρὸς Μιλησίου γνώμη ἐγένετο, etc. 

About the Pan-Ionia and the Ephesia, see Thucyd. πὶ, 104; Dionys. Hahk 
iv, 25; Herodot. i, 143-148. Compare also Whitte, De Rebus Ctiorum 


Publicis, sect. vii, pp. 22-26. 


260 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


gate commonwealth, or polis. Nor can we doubt that such was 
the unavailing aspiration of many a patriot of Milétus or Ephesus, 
even before the final operations of Croesus were opened against 
them. i 
That prince attacked the Greek cities successively, finding or 
making different pretences for hostility against each. He began 
with Ephesus, which is said to have been then governed by a 
despot of harsh and oppressive character, named Pindarus, whose 
father Melas had married a daughter of Alyattés, and who was, 
therefore, himself nephew of Croesus.! The latter, having in 
vain invited Pindarus and the Ephesians to surrender the town, 
brought up bis forces and attacked the walls: one of the towers 
being overthrown, the Ephesians abandoned all hope of defend- 
ing their town, and sought safety by placing it under the guard- 
ianship of Artemis, to whose temple they carried a rope from the 
walls, —a distance not less than seven furlongs. They at the 
same time sent a message of supplication to Creesus, who is said 
to have granted them the preservation of their liberties, out of 
reverence to the protection of Artemis; exacting at the same 
time that Pindarus should quit the place. Such is the tale of 
which we find a confused mention in AXlian and Polyznus; but 
Herodotus, while he notices the fact of the long rope whereby 
the Ephesians sought to place themselves in contact with their 
divine protectress, does not indicate that Croesus was induced to 
treat them more favorably. Ephesus, like all the other Grecian 
towns on the coast, was brought under subjection and tribute to 
him.2 How he dealt with them, and what degree of coercive 


' If we may believe the narrative of Nikolaus Damaskenus, Croesus had 
been in relations with Ephesus and with the Ephesians during the time when 
he was hereditary prince, and in the lifetime of Alyattés. He had borrowed 
a large sum of money from a rich Ephesian named Pamphaés, which was 
essential to enable him to perform a military duty imposed upon him by his 
lather. The story is given ir. some detail by Nikolaus, Fragm. p. 54, ed. 
Orell., —I know not upon what authority. | 

* H>rodot. i, 26; ABlian, V. H. iii, 26; Polywn. vi, 50. The story con- 
tained in Alian and Polys#nus seems to come from Batén of Sinope; 806 
Guhl, Ephesiaca. ii, 3, p. 26, and iv, 5, p. 150. 

The article in Suidas, v, ‘Apicrapyoc, is far too vague to be interwoven as 
& positive fact into Ephesian history, as Guhl ic orweaves it, immediately 
eonsequent on the retirement of Pindurus 


| ISP eee ee a 


ΜΚ. be 
ἀ. —" 


— 


Ree ee «% & 


jONIC GREEKS. 261 


precaution he employed either to insure subjection or collect 
tribute, the brevity of the historian does not acquaint us. But 
they were required partially at least, if not entirely, to raze their 
fortifications ; for on occasion of the danger which supervened a 
few years afterwards from Cyrus, they are found practically un- 


fortified.! 
Thus completely successful in his aggressions on the continen- 


tal Asiatic Greeks, Croesus conceived the idea of assembling a 
fleet, for the purpose of attacking the islanders of Chios and Sa- 
mos, but was convinced, — as some said, by the sarcastic remark 
of one of the seven Greek sages, Bias or Pittakus — of the im- 
practicability of the project. He carried his arms, however, with 
full success, over other parts of the continent of Asia Minor, un- 
til he had subdued the whole territory within the river Halys, 
excepting only the Kilikians and the Lykians. The Lydian 
empire thus reached the maximum of its power, comprehending, 
besides the AZolic, Ionic, and Doric Greeks on the coast of Asia 
Minor, the Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandynians, Chalybes, Papb- 
lagonians, Thynian and Bithynian Thracians, Karians, and 
Pamphylians. And the treasures amassed by Croesus at Sardis, 
derived partly from this great number of tributaries, partly from 
mines in various places as well as the auriferous sands of the 
Paktdlus, exceeded anything which the Greeks had ever before 
known. 

We learn, from the brief but valuable observations of Herod- 
otus, to appreciate the great importance of these conquests of 
Croesus, with reference not merely to the Grecian cities actually 
subjected, but also indirectly to the whole Grecian world. 

“ Before the reign of Croesus, observes the historian, all the 
Greeks were free; it was by him first that Greeks were subdued 
into tribute.” And he treats this event as the initial phenom- 
enon of the series, out of which grew the hostile relations 


— 


In reference to the rope reaching from the city to the artemision, we may 
quote an analogous case of the Kylonian suppliants at Athens, who sought 
to maintain their contact with the altar by means of a continuous cord, -~ 
unfortunately, the cord broke (Plutarch, Solon, c. 12). 

1 Herodot. i, 141 Ἴωνες δὲ, we ἤκουσαν -- τείχεά TE περιε Ἰάλλοντο éxao 
ro. etc: compare also the statement respecting Phokza, c. 168. 


262 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ἀν the Greeks on one side, and Asia as represented by the 
‘ersians on the other, which were uppermost in the minds of 
himself and his contemporaries. : 
It was in the case of Croesus that the Greeks were first called 
u ᾿ « ἢ ν4“1 ων ] : ; i 
sar deal with a tolerably large barbaric aggregate under a 
ar ot and enterprising prince, and the result was such as to 
m m ΓΙ mt . “ ω ω . * , . i Wi 
mani est the inherent weakness of’ their political system, from its 
incapacity of large combination. The separated autonomous 
cities could only maintain their independence either through si 
ilar disunion on the p: | Τὰ, 
> part ot barbaric adversaries, or by superior 
i 5 - ᾿ . . ᾿ . ἢ] Hie ᾿ ἢ 
ty on their own side of military organization as well as of 
Qos γέ Tt" Ὕ' : ’ ae | 
ti ra position, The situation of Greece proper and of 
the islands was favorable 
islands was favorable to the maintenance of such a system 
—— not so the shores of Asia wi ide j be: 
ἥν Ρ 9 the shores of Asia with a wide interior country behind 
1e " mea aye ὶ ll . . ν Ἵ τ ; 
Ἄ é onic Greeks were at this time different from what they be- 
ae during the ensuing century, little inferior in enerey to 
Athens ane de 
— : or to the general body of European Greeks, and could 
( ἕω i ᾿ ᾽ ἡ . * . : 
ou : = have maintained their independence, had they cordially 
combined. it wi ΐ | x 
sae ᾿ But it will be seen hereafter that the Greek colonies 
— plante 8 isol: - indi 
: Ρ as isolated settlements, and indisposed to political 
nion, ev on nei 8 ] ( νῶσιν 
» even when neighbors, —all of them fell into dependence 
80 8 ck fre interi , 
ene as attack from the interior came to be powerfully or 
ra Ze ΠΗ 5 i it « me Ϊ ἷ : 
ganized ; especially it that organization was conducted by leaders 
partially improved through contact with the Greeks them | | 
— ὧν. onta seks themselves. 
a autonomous cities maintain themselves so lone as they 
ave only enemies of the like s | ie | 
} 2mies_ of { ike streng ith : 
eg Banca tem ngth to deal with: but to resist 
om Spategates requires such a concurrence of favorable cir 
cumstances as ¢ aridly i ‘ ; 
a ot es as can hardly remain long without interruption. And 
€ ultimate subjection of entire Greece, under the kines f Mac 
edon, was only an exemplificatic ) > an 
as only an exemplification on the widest scale of this 
same principle. ‘ 
‘yy 
| y 1 « . ῃ 
‘ The Lydian monarchy under Creesus, the largest with which the 
areeks had come into contact down to tha 
get cp ; t moment, was very 
adsorbed into 8 still larger,—the Persian; of which t¢! 
a ae al : Ι Pan ee 
= . Greeks, after unavailing -esistance, became the subjects 
-he partial sympathy and aid which they obtained from the i 
dependent or European G ir y salina ae 
de suropean Greeks, their western neighbors, fol 
iowed by the fruitless attemr ἡ ἕω, 
παρ, ss attempt on the part of the Persian king to 
aad these latter to his empire, gave an entirely new turn to Gre 


ALTERATION OF THE HELLENIC WORLD. 265 


cian history and proceedings. First, it necessitated a degree of 

centzal action against the Persians which was foreign to Greek 

political instinct ; next it opened to the noblest and most enter- 
prising section of the Hellenic name,—the Athenians, — an 
opportunity of placing themselves «t the head of this centraliz- 
ing tendency: while a concurrence of circumstances, foreign and 
domestic, imparted to them at the same time that extraordinary 
and many-sided impulse, combining action with organization, 
which gave such brilliancy to the period of Herodotus and Thu- 
eydidés. It is thus that most of the splendid phenomena of 
Grecian history grew, directly or indirectly, out of the reluctant 
dependence in which the Asiatic Greeks were held by the inland 
barbaric powers, beginning with Croesus. 

These few observations will suffice to intimate that a new 
phase of Grecian history is now on the point of opening. Down 
to the time of Croesus, almost everything which is done or suffered 
by the Grecian cities bears only upon one or other of them 
separately : the instinct of the Greeks repudiates even the mod- 
ified forms of political centralization, and there are no circum- 
stances in operation to force it upon them. Relation of power 
and subjection exist, between a strong and a weak state, but 
no tendency to standing political coérdination. From this time 
forward, we shall see partial causes at work, tending in this di- 
rection, and not without considerable influence; though always 
at war with the indestructible instinct of the nation, and fre 
quently counteracted by selfishness and misconduct on the pew 


of the leading cities. 


WISTORY OF GREECE. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 
PHENICIANS. 


Or the Phenicians, Assyrians, and Egyptians, τὲ is necessary 
for me to speak so far as they acted upon the condition, or occu- 
pied the thoughts, of the early Greeks, without undertaking to 
investigate thoroughly their previous history. Like the Lydi- 
ans, all three became absorbed into the vast mass of the Persian 
empire, retaining, however, to a great degree, their social char- 
acter and peculiarities after having been robbed of their political 
independence. 

The Persians and Medes, — portions of the Arian race, and 
members of what has been classified, in respect of language, as 
the great Indo-European family, — occupied a part of the vast 
space comprehended between the Indus on the east, and the line 
of Mount Zagros (running eastward of the Tigris and nearly 
parallel with that river) on the west. The Phenicians as well as 
the Assyrians belonged to the Semitic, Aramzan, or Syro-Arabian 
family ; comprising, besides, the Syrians, Jews, Arabians. and in 
part the Abyssinians. To what established family of the human 
race the swarthy and curly-haired Egyptians are to be assigned, 
—_ been much disputed; we cannot reckon them as members of 
either of the two preceding, and the most careful inquiries 
render it probable that their physical type was something purely 
African, approximating in many points to that of the negro.' 


' See the discussion in Dr. Prichard, Natural History of Man, sect. xvii 
p. 152 

Μελα) ypoec καὶ οὐλότριχες ( Herodot. ii, 104: compare Ammian. Marcell. 
xxii, 16, “subfusculi, atrati.” etc.) are certain attributes of the ancient 
Egyptians, depending upon the evidence of an eye-witness. 

“ In their complexion, and in many of their physical peculiarities (observes 
Dr. Prichard, p. 138), the Egyptians were an African race. In the eastern 
and even in the central parts of Africa, we shall trace the existence of various 
tribes in physical characters nearly resembling the Egyptians; and it would 
not be difficult to observe among mapy nations of that continent a gradual 


PHENICIANS. 265 


it has already been remarked that the Phenician merchant and 
trading vessel figures in the Homeric poems as a well-known 
visitor, and that the variegated robes and golden ornaments fabri- 
cated at Sidon are prized among the valuable ornaments belong- 
ing to the chiefs.!. We have reason to conclude generally, that 
in these early times, the Phenicians traversed the Augean sea 
habitually, and even formed settlements for trading and mining 
purposes upon some of its islands: on Thasos, especially, near the 
coast of Thrace, traces of their abandoned gold-mines were vis- 
ible even in the days of Herodotus, indicating both persevering 
labor and considerable length of occupation. But at the time 
when the historical era opens, they seem to have been in 
course of gradual retirement from these regions,? and their com- 
merce had taken a different direction. Of this change we can 


deviation from the physical type of the Egyptian to the strongly-marked 
character of the negro, and that without any very decided break or interrup- 
tion. The Egyptian language, also, in the great leading principles of its 
grammatical construction, bears much greater analogy to the idioms of Africa 
than to those prevalent among the people of other regions.” 

1 Homer, Iliad, vi, 290: xxiii, 740; Odyss. xv, 116:— 


.. πέπλοι παμποίκιλοι, ἔργα γυναικῶν 


Tyre is not named either in the Iliad or Odyssey, though a passage in 
Probus (ad Virg. Georg. ii, 115) seems to show that it was mentioned in 
one of the epics which passed under the name of Homer: “ Tyrum Sarram 
appellatam esse. Homerus docet: quem etiam Ennius sequitur cum dicit, 


Peenos Sarra oriundos.” 

The Hesiodic catalogue seems to have noticed both Byblus and Sidon: 
see Hesiodi Fragment. xxx, ed. Marktscheffel, and Etymolog. Magnum, 
VY, Βύβλος. 

1 The name Adramyttion or Atramyttion — very like the Africo-Phenician 
name Adrumétum—is said to be of Phenician origin (Olshausen, De 
Origine Alphabeti, p. 7, in Kieler Philologische Studien, 1841). There 
were valuable mines afterwards worked for the account of Croesus near 
Pergamus, and these mines may have tempted Phenician settlers to those 
regions (Aristotel. Mirab. Auscult. ο. 52). 

The African Inscriptions, in the Monumenta Pheenic. of Gesenius, recog: 
nize Makar as a cognomen of Baal: and Mévers imagines that the hero 
Makar, who figures conspicuously in the mythology of Lesbos, Chios, 
Samos, Kés, Rhodes, etc, is traceable to this Phenician god and Phenicias 
early settlements in those islands (Movers, Die Religion der Phonikey 


p. 420) 
VOL. ITI. 12 


266 HISTORY OF GREECE 


furnish no particulars ; but we may easily understand that the in 
crease of the Grecian marine, both warlike and commercial, 
would render it inconvenient for the Phenicians to encounter 
such enterprising rivals,— piracy (or private war at sea) being 
then an habitual proceeding, especially with regard to foreigners. 


The Phenician towns occupied a narrow strij > coas 
Syria and Palestine, about τὰ ΤΣ ᾿ 

ὸ ᾿ é ΠῚ S 1n 
length, never more, and generally much less, than twenty miles 
in breadth, — between Mount Libanus and the sez. Aradus — on 
an islet, with Antaradus and Marathus ovez against it on the 
main land — was the northernmost, and Tyre the southernmost 
(also upon a little island, with Palw-Tyrus and a fertile adjacent 
plain over against it), Between the two were situated Sidon, 
Berytus, Tripolis, and Byblus, besides some smaller towns! at- 


' Strabo, xiv, pp. 754-758; Skylax, Peripl. c. 104; Justin, xviii,3; Arrian 
Exp. Al. ii, 16-19; Xenophon, Anab. i, 4, 6. | 
Unfortunately, the text of Skylax is here extremely defective, and Strabo’s 
account is in many points perplexed, from his not having travelled in person 
through Phenicia, Ceelo-Syria, or Judwa: see Groskurd’s note on p. 755 
and the Einleitung to his Translation of Strabo, sect. 6 
Respecting the original relation between Pala-Tyrus and Tyre, there is 
some difficulty in reconciling all the information, little as it is, which we 
possess. The name Pale-Tyrus (it has been assunied as a matter of course: 
compare Justin, xi, 10) marks that town as the original foundation from 
which the Tyrians subsequently moved into the island: there was, aiso. on 
the main land a place named Palx-Byblos (Plin. H. N. v, 20; Ptolem. v, 15) 
which was in like manner construed as the original seat from whence the 
town properly called Byblus was derived. Yet the account of Herodotus 
plainly represents the insular Tyrus, with its temple of Héraklés, as the 
original foundation (ii, 44), and the Tyrians are described as living in an 
island even in the time of their king Hiram, the contemporary of Solomon 
(Joseph. Ant. Jud. viii, 2,7). Arrian treats the temple of Héraklés in the 
island-Tyre as the most ancient temple within the memory of man (Exp. AL 
ii, 16). The Tyrians also lived on their island during the invasion of Salma- 
neser king of Nineveh, and their position enabled them to hold out against 
him. while Pale-Tyrus on the terra firma was obliged to yield itself (Joseph. 
ib. ix, 14,2). The town taken (or reduced to capitulate), after a long siege, 
by Nebuchadnezzar, was the insular Tyrus, not the continental or Pale- 
Tyrus, which had surrendered without resistance to Salmaneser. It is ποὲ 
correct, therefore, to say — with Volney (Recherches sur I’Hist. Anc. ch. xiv, 
Ρ. 249), Heeren (Ideen tiber den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part i, abth. 2, p. 
11), and cthers — thet the insular Tyre was called new Tyre, and that the 


SITUATION OF THE PHENICIAN TOWNS. 967 


tuched to one or other of these last mentioned, and several islands 
elose to the coast occupied in like manner; while the colony ol 
Myriandrus lay farther north, near the borders of Kilikia, 
Whether Sidon or Tyre was the most ancient, seems not determi- 
nuable: if it be true as some authorities aflirmed, that Tyre was 
originally planted from Sidon, the colony must have grown so 


tite of Tyre was changed from continental to insular, in consequence of the 
taking of the continental Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar: the site remained 
unaltered, and the insular Tyrians became subject to him and his successors 
until the destruction of the Chaldzan monarchy by Cyrus. Hengstenberg’s 
Dissertation, De Rebus Tyriorum (Berlin, 1832), is instructive on many of 
these points: he shows sufficiently that Tyre was, from the earliest times 
traceable, an insular city; but he wishes at the same time to show, that it 
was also, from the beginning, joined on to the main land by an isthmus (pp. 
10-25), which is both inconsistent with the former position and unsup- 
ported by any solid proofs. It remained an island strictly so called, until 
the siege by Alexander: the mole, by which that conqueror had stormed it, 
continued after his day, perhaps enlarged, so as to form a permanent con- 
nection from that time forward between the island and the main land (Plin. 
H. N. v, 19; Strabo, xvi, p. 757), and to render the insular Tyrus capable of 
being included by Pliny in one computation of circumference jointly with 
Pala-T'yrus, the mainland town. 

It may be doubted whether we know the true meaning of the word which 
the Greeks called Παλαι- Τύρος. It is plain that the Tyrians themselves did 
not call it by that name: perhaps the Phenician name which this continental 
adjacent town bore, may have been something resembling Pale-Tyrus in 
sound, but not coincident in meaning. 

The strength of Tyre lay in its insular situation ; for the adjacent main- 
land, whereon Pale-Tyrus was placed, was a fertile plain, thus described by 
William of Tyre during the time of the Crusaders :— 

“ Erat predicta civitas non solum munitissima, sed etiam fertilitate pree- 
cipw et ameenitate quasi singularis: nam licet in medio mari sita est, ct in 
modum insulg τοῖα fluctibus cincta; habet tamen pro foribus latifundiam 
per omnia commendabile, et planitiem sibi continuam divitis glebse et opimi 
soli, multas civibus ministrans commoditates. Qu licet modica videatur 
respectu aliarum regionum, exiguitatem suam multa redimit ubertate, et 
infinita jugera multiplici feecunditate compensat. Nec tamen tantis arctatur 
angustiis. Protenditur enim in Austrum versus Ptolemaidem usque ad eum 
locum, qui hodie vulgo dicitur districtum Scandarionis, milliaribus quatuor 
aut quinque: e regione in Septentrionem versus Sareptam et Sidouem 
iterum porrigitur totidem milliaribus. In latitudinem vero ubi minimum ad 
duo, abi plurimum ad tria, habens milliaria.” (Apud Hengstenberg, ut sup, 
p. 5.) Compare Manundrell, Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, p. 50. cd 
1749; and Volney, Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol. ii, pp. 210-226. 


268 HISTORY OF GREECx. 


rapidly as to surpass its metropolis in power and consideration 
for it became the chief of all the Phenician towns.! Aradus the 
next in importance after these two, was founded by exiles fii 
Sidon, and all the rest either by Tyrian or Sidonian settlers, 
W ithin this confined territory was concentrated a greater degree 
of commercial wealth and enterprise, and manufacturing ingenuity, 
than could be found in any other portion of the contemporary wasid 
Each town was an independent community, having its own sur- 
rounding territory and political constitution and its own hereditary 
prince,? though the annals of Tyre display many instances of 
princes assassinated by mex who succeeded them on the throne. 
Tyre appears to have enjoyed a certain presiding, perhaps a com 
trolling authority, over all of them, which was not always will- 
ingly submitted to; and examples occur in which the inferior 
towns, when ‘T'yre was pressed by a foreign enemy? took the op 
portunity of revolting, or at least stood aloof. The same difficulty 
of managing satisfactorily the relations between a presiding town 
and its confederates, which Grecian history manifests. fig Se 
also to prevail in Phenicia, and will be hereafter remarked in 
regard to Carthage; while the same effects are also perceived 
of the autonomous city polity, in keeping alive the individual ἀν 
ergies and regulated aspirations of the inhabitants. The pre- 
dominant sentiment of jealous town-isolation is forcibly illustrated 
by the circumstances of Tripolis, established jointly by Tyre, 
Sidon, and Aradus. It consisted of three distinct towns, each 
one furlong apart from the other two, and each with its own sep- 
arate walls; though probably constituting to a certain extent one 
political community, and serving as a place of common meeting 
and deliberation for the entire Phenician name.4 The outlying 

' Justin (xvVili, 3) states that Sidon was the metropolis of Tyre, but the 
series of events which he recounts is confused and unintelligible. Strabo 
also, in one place, calls Sidon the μητρύπολις τῶν Φοινίκων a p. 40); in 
another place he states it as a point disputed between the two cities which 
of them was the μητρόπολις τῶν Φοινίκων (Xvi, p. 756), | 

Quintus Curtius affirms both Tyre and Sidon to have been founded by 
Agénor (iv. 4, 15) 

* See the interesting citations of Josephus from Dius and Menander, whe 
had access to the Tyrian ἀναγραφ τὶ, or chronicles (Josephus cont. Apion. i 
δ. 17, 18, 21; Antiq. J. x, 11, }. 

ὁ Joseph. Antiq. J. ix, 14, 2 4 Diodor. xvi, 4. ; Skylax, c. . 04. 


TYRIAN HERAKLES. 269 


promontories of Libanus and Anti-Libanus touched the sea along 
the Phenician coast, and those mountainous ranges, while they 
rendered a large portion of the very confined area unfit for cul- 
tivation of corn, furnished what was perhaps yet more indispen 
sable, — abundant supplies of timber for ship-building: the 
entire want of all wood in Babylonia, except the date-palm, 
restricted the Assyrians of that territory from maritime trafiic on 
the Persian gulf. It appears, however, that the mountains of 
Lebanon also afforded shelter to tribes of predatory Arabs, who 
continually infested both the Phenician territory and the rich 
neighboring plain of Ceelo-Syria.! 

The splendid temple of that great Phenician god (Melkarth) 
whom the Greeks called Héraklés,? was situated in Tyre, and the 
Tyrians atlirmed that its establishment had been coeval with the first 
foundation of the city, two thousand three hundred years before the 


time of Herodotus. This god is the companion and protector of 


their colonial settlements, and the ancestor of the Pheenico-Lib- 
yan kings: we find him especially at Carthage, Gadés, and Tha- 
Some supposed that they had migrated to their site on the 
Mediterranean coast, from previous abodes near the mouth of the 


Euphrates, or on islands (named Tylus and Aradus) of the 


» 


. 
ΝΟ" 


1 Stroho. XVI, p- 756. 

2 A maltese inscription identifies the Tyrian Melkarth with Ἡρακλης 
i Gesenius, Monument. Pheenic. tab. v1). 

3 Herodot. ii, 44; Sallust, Bell. Jug.c. 18; Pausan. x, 12, 2; Arrian, Exp. 
Al. ii, 16; Justin, xliv, 5: Appian, vi, 2. 

4 Herodot. i, 2; Ephorus, Fragm. 40, ed. Marx ; Strabo, xvi, pp. 766-7864 ; 
Justin, xviii, 3: In the animated discussion carried on among the Homeric 
critics and the great geographers of antiquity, to ascertain where it was 


that Menelaus actually went during his eight years’ wandering (Odyss 


ἢ yap πολλὰ παϑὼν καὶ TOAD’ ἐπαληϑεὶς 
"Hyayounv ἐν νηυσὶ, καὶ ὀγδοάτῳ ἔτει ἧλϑον, 
Κύπρον, Φοινίκην τε, καὶ Αἰγυπτίους ἐπαληϑ εὶς, 
Αἰϑίοπας τ᾽ ἱκόμην, καὶ Σιδονίους, καὶ ᾿Ἐρεμβοὺς, 
Καὶ Λιβύην, ete. 
one idea started was, that he had visited these Sidonians in the Persian gulf, 
or in the Erythraan sea (Strabo, i. p. 42). The various opinions which 
Btrabo quotes, incmding those of Eratosthenés and Kratés, as well as his 
own comments, are very curious. Kratés supposed that Menelaus had 
passed the straits of Gibraltar and circumnavigated Libya to /thiopia and 


970 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Persian gulf, while others treated the Mediterranean Phenicians 
as original, and the others as colonists. Whether such be the 
fact or not, history knows them in no other portion of Asia earlier 
than in Phenicia proper. 

Though the invincible industry and enterprise of the Pheni- 
vians maintained them as a people of importance down to the 
period of the Roman empire, yet the period of their widest 
range and greatest efficiency is to be sought much earlier, —an- 
terior to 700 B. c. In these remote times they and their colonists 
were the exclusive navigators of the Mediterranean: the rise of 
the Greek maritime settlements banished their commerce to a 
great degree from the A®gean sea, and embarrassed it even in 
the more westerly waters. Their colonial establishments were 
formed in Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, the Balearic Isles, and Spain: 
the greatness as well as the antiquity of Carthage, Utica, and Gadés, 
attest the long-sighted plans of Phenician traders, even in days 
anterior to the lst Olympiad. We trace the wealth and industry 


India, which voyage would suffice, he thought, to fill up the eight years 
Others supposed that Menelaus had sailed first up the Nile, and then into 
the Red sea, by means of the canal (διωρὺξ) which existed in the time of the 
Alexandrine critics between the Nile and that sea; to which Strabo replies 
that this canal was not made until after the Trojan war. Eratosthenés 
started a still more remarkable idea: he thought that in the time of Homer 
the strait of Gibraltar had not yet been burst open, so that the Mediterra- 
nean was on that side a closed sea; but, on the other hand, its level was 
then so mach higher that it covered the isthmus of Suez, and joined the 
Red sea. It was, he thought, the disruption of the strait of Gibraltar which 
first lowered the level of the water, and left the isthmus of Suez dry ; 
though Menelaus, in Ais time, had sailed from the Mediterranean into the 
Red sea without difficulty. This opinion Eratosthenés had imbibed from 
Stratén of Lampsakus, the successor of Theophrastus : Hipparchus contro- 
verted it, together with many other of the opinions of Eratosthenés (see 
Strabo, i, pp. 38, 49, 56; Seidel, Fragmenta Eratosthenis, p. 39). 

In reference to the view of Kratés,— that Menelaus had sailed round 
Africa, — it is to be remarked that all the geographers of that day formed to 
themselves a very insufficient idea of the extent of that continent, believing 
that it did not even reach so far southward as the equator. 

Strabo himself adopts neither of these three opinions, but construes the 
Homeric words describing the wanderings of Menelaus as applying only to 
the coasts of Egypt, Libya, Phenicia, etc; he suggests various reasons, more 
carious than convincing, to prove that Menelaus may easily have spent 
sight vears in these visits of mixed friendship and piracy- 


UTICA. — CARTHAGE. — GADES. 271 


of Tyre, and tke distant navigation of her vessels through the 
Red sea and along the coast of Arabia, back to the days of David 
and Solomon. And as neither Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, nor 
Indians, addressed themselves to a seafaring life, so it seems thar 
both the importation and the distribution of the products of India 
and Arabia into Western Asia and Europe, was performed by 
the _Idumzan Arabs, between Petra and the Red sea, — by the 
Arabs of Gerrha on the Persian gulf, joined as they were in later 
times by a body of Chaldxan exiles from Babylonia, and by 
the more enterprising Phenicians of Tyre and Sidon in these two 
seas as well as in the Mediterranean.! 

The most ancient Phenician colonies were Utica, nearly on the 
northernmost point of the coast of Africa, and in the same gulf, 
(now known as the gulf of Tunis) as Carthage, over against 
eape Lilybzeum in Sicily, — and Gadés, or Gadeira, on the 
south-western coast of Spain; a town which, founded perhaps near 
one thousand years before the Christian era, has maintained a con- 
tinuous prosperity, and a name (Cadiz) substantially unaltered, 
longer than any town in Europe. How well the site of Utica 
was suited to the circumstances of Phenician colonists may be 
inferred from the fact that Carthage was afterwards established 
in the same gulf and near to the same spot, and that both the two 
cities reached a high pitch of prosperity. The distance of Gadéa 
from Tyre seems surprising, and if we caleulate by tame instead 
of by space, the Tyrians were separated from their Tartéssian 
colonists by an interval greater than that which now divides an 
Englishman from Bombay ; for the ancient navigator always coasted 


along the land, and Skylax reckons seventy-five days’ of voyage 


1 See Ritter, Erdkunde von Asien, West-Asien, Buch iii, Abtheilung iii, 
Abschnitt i, s. 29, p. 50. ” 

* Strabo, speaks of the earliest settlements of the Phenicians in Africa 
and Iberia as μικρὸν τῶν Τρωϊκῶν ὕστερον (i, p. 48). Utica is affirmed to 
have been two hundred and eighty-seven years earlier than Carthage ( Aristot 
Mirab. Auscult. c. 134): compare Velleius Paterc. i, 2. 

Archaleus, son of Phenix, was stated as the founder of Gadés im the 
Phenician history of Claudius Julius, now lost (Etymolog. Magn. Υ, Tadeipa) 
Archaleus is a version of the name Hercules, in the opinion of Movers. 

3 Skylax, Periplus,c.110. “ Carteia, ut quidam patant, aliquando Tar 
lessas; et quam transvecti ex Africa Phcenices habitant, atque unde nos 
sumus, Tingentera.” (Mela, ii, 6,75.) The expression, transvecti er Afriva 


972 HISTORY OF GREXCE. 


from the Kanépic (westernmost) mouth of the Nile to the Pillars 
of Héraklés (strait of Gibraltar); to which some more days must 
be added to represent the full distance between Tyre and Gadés, 
But the enterprise of these early mariners surmounted all diffi- 
culcies consistent with the principle of never losing sizht of the 
coast. Proceeding along the northern coast of Libya, at a time 
when the mouths of the Nile were still closed by Egyptian jeal- 
ousy against all foreign ships, they appear to have found little 
temptation to colonize! on the dangerous coast near to the two 
gulfs called the great and little Syrtis,— in a territory for the 
most part destitute of water, and occupied by rude Libyan no- 
mades, who were thinly spread over the wide space between the 
western Nile? and cape Herma, now called cape Bona. The 
subsequent Grecian towns of Kyréné and Barca, whose well- 
chosen site formed an exception to the general character of 
the region, were not planted with any view to commerce,? and 
the Phenician town of Leptis, near the gulf called the great 
Syrtis, was founded by exiles from Sidon, and not by deliberate 
colonization. ‘The site of Utica and Carthage, in the gulf im- 


applies as much to the Phenicians as to the Carthaginians: “ uterque Panus ἢ 
Horat. Od. ii, 11) means the Carthaginians, and the Phenicians of Gadés. 

' Strabo, xvii, p. $36. 

* Cape Soloeis, considered by Herodotus as the westernmost headland of 
Libya, coincides in name with the Phenician town Soloeis in western Sicily, 
also, seemingly, with the Phenician settlement Suel (Mela, ii, 6, 65) in 
southern Iberia or Tartéssus. Cape Herma was the name of the north- 
eastern headland of the gulf of Tunis, and also the name of a cape in Libya, 
two days’ sail westward of the Pillars of Héraklés (Skylax, c. 111). =) 

Probably, all the remarkable headlands in these seas received their names 
from the Phenicians. Both Mannert (Geogr. d. Gr. und Rém. x, 2, p. 495) 
and Forbiger (Alte Geogr. sect. 111, p. 867) identify cape Soloeis with what 
is now called cape Cantin; Heeren considers it to be the same as cape 
Blanco; Bougainville as cape Boyador. 

* Sallust, Beli. Jug. c. 78. It was termed Leptis Magna, to distinguish it 
from. another Leptis, more to the westward and nearer to Carthage, called 
Tnptis Parva; but this latter seems to have been generally known by the 
name Leptis (Forbiger, Alte Geogr. sect. 109, p. 844). In Leptis Magna, 
the proportion of I’henician colonists was so inconsiderable that the Pheni- 
cian language had been lost, and that of the natives, whom Sallust calls 
Numidians, spoken: but these people had embraced Sidonian institutiors 
and civilization. (Sall. 2.) 


UTICA. — CARTHAGE. — GADES. 273 


mediately westward of cape Bona, was convenient for commerce 
with Sicily, Italy, and Sardinia; and the other Phenician colonies, 
Adrumétum, Neapolis, Hippo (two towns so called), the lesser 
Leptis, ete., were settled on the coast not far distant from the 
eastern or western promontories which included the gulf of Tunis, 
common to Carthage and Utica. 

These early Phenician settlements were planted thus in the 
territory now known as the kingdom of Tunis and the western 
portion of the French province of Constantine. From thence to 
the Pillars of Héraklés (strait of Gibraltar), we do not hear of 
auy others; but the colony of Gadés, outside of the strait, form- 
ed the centre of a flourishing and extensive commerce, which 
reached on one side far to the south, not less than thirty days’ 
sail along the western coast of Africa,!— and on the other side 
to Britain and the Scilly Islands. ‘There were numerous Pheni- 
cian factories and small trading-towns along the western coast of 
what is now the empire of Morocco; and the island of Kerne, 
twelve days’ sail along the coast from the strait of Gibraltar, 
formed an established dépét for Phenician merchandise in trading 
with the interior. ‘There were, moreover, towns not far distant 
from the coast, of Libyans or Ethiopians, to which the inhabitants 


of the central regions resorted, and where they brought their 
leopard skins and elephants’ teeth, to be exchanged against the 
unguents of Tyre and the pottery of Athens.? So distant a trade, 


! Strabo, xvii, pp. 825-826. He found it stated by some authors that there 
had once been three hundred trading establishments along this coast, reach- 
ing thirty days’ voyage southward from Tingis or Lixus (Tangier); but 
that they had been chiefly ruined by the tribes of the interior, — the Pharu- 
sians and Nigritew. He suspects the statement of being exaggerated, but 
there seems nothing at all incredible in it. From Strabo’s language we 
gather that Eratosthenés set forth the statement as in his judgment a true 
one. 

3 Compare Skylax, ὁ. 111, and the Periplus of Hanno, ap. Hudson, 
Geogr. Gree. Min. vol. i, pp. 1-6. I have already observed that the τάριχος 
(salt provisions) from Gadeira was currently sold in the markets of Athens, 
from the Peloponnesian war downward. — Eupolis, Fragm. 23; Mapixde, p 
506, ed. Meincke, Comic. Gree. 

Πότερ᾽ ἣν τὸ τάριχος; Φρύγιον 7 Ταδεερικόν ; 
Compare the citations from the other comic writers, Antiphanés and Νίκον 


7a. 
o om " - 


TOL. Il. 12* I 


274 HISTORY OF GREECE 


with the limited navigation of that day, could not be made to em. 
brace very bulky goods. 

But this trade, though seemingly a valuable one, constituted 
only a small part of the sources of wealth open to the Pheni. 
cians of Gadés. The Turditanians and Turduli, who occupied 
the south-western portion of Spain, between the Anas river 
(Guadiana) and the Mediterranean, seem to have been the most 
“ivilized and improvable section of the Iberian tribes, well suited 
[ων commercial relations with the settlers who occupied the isle of 
Leon, and who established the temple, afterwards so rich and fre- 
quented, of the Tyrian Héraklés. And the extreme productive- 
ness of the southern region of Spain, in corn, fish, cattle, and wine, 
as well as in silver and iron, is a topic upon which we find Lut 
one language among ancient writers. The territory round Ga- 
dés, Carteia, and the other Phenician settlements in this district, 
was known to the Greeks in the sixth century B. C. by the name 
of Tartéssus, and regarded by them somewhat in the same light 
as Mexico and Peru appeared to the Spaniards of the sixteenth 
century. Tor three or four centuries the Phenicians had pos- 
sessed the entire monopoly of this Tartéssian trade, without any 
rivalry on the part of the Greeks ; probably, the metals there pro- 
cured were in these days their most precious acquisition, and the 
tribes who occupied the mining regions of the interior found a 
new market and valuable demand, for produce then obtained with 
a degree of facility exaggerated into fable.! It was from Gadé* 
as a centre that these enterprising traders, pushing their coasting 
voyage yet farther, established relations with the tin-mines of 
Cornwall, perhaps also with amber-gatherers from the coasts of 
the Baltic. It requires some effort to carry back our imaginations 
to the time when, along all this vast length of country, from Tyre 
and Sidon to the coast of Cornwall, there was no merchant-ship 
to buy or sell goods except these Phenicians. The rudest tribes 
find advantage in such visitors; and we cannot doubt, that the 
men, whose resolute love of gain braved so many hazards and dif- 


tratus ap. Athenz. iii, p.118. The Phenician merchants bought in exchange 
Attic pottery for their African trade. | 

* About the productiveness of the Spanish mines, Polybius (xxxiv, 9, 8 
ap. Strabo, iii, p. 147; Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. c 135. 


PHLNICIANS SUPPLANTED BY GREFKS. 974 


ficulties, must have been rewarded with profits on the largest 
scale of monopoly. 

The Phenician settlers on the coast of Spain became gradually 
more and more numerous, and appear to have been distributed, 
either in separate townships or intermingled with the native pop- 
ulation, between the mouth of the Anas (Guadiana) and the town of 
Malaka (Malaga) on the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, we are 
very little informed about their precise localities and details, but we 
find no information of Phenician settlements on the Mediterranean 
coast of Spain northward of Malaka ; for Carthagena,or New Car- 
thage, was a Carthaginian settlement, founded only in the third cen- 
tury B. C., after the first Punic war-.' The Greek word Pheni- 
cians being used to signify as well the inhabitants of Carthage as 
those of Tyre and Sidon, it is not easy to distinguish what belongs 
to each of them ; nevertheless, we can discern a great and important 
difference in the character of their establishments, especially in 
Iberia. The Carthaginians combined with their commercial pro- 
jects large schemes of conquest and empire: it is thus that the 
independent Phenician establishments in and near the gulf of 
Tunis, in Africa, were reduced to dependence upon them, — while 
many new small townships, direct from Carthage itself, were 
planted on the Mediterranean coast of Africa, and_ the whole of 
that coast from the great Syrtis westward to the Pillars of Her- 
aklés (strait of Gibraltar) is described as their territory in the 
Periplus of Skylax (B. c. 360). In Iberia, during the third cen- 
tury B. C., they maintained large armies,? constrained the imland 
tribes to subjection, and acquired a dominion which nothing but 
the superior force of Rome prevented from being durable: 1 
Sicily, also, the resistance of the Greeks prevented a similar con- 
summation. But the foreign settlements of Tyre and Sidon were 
formed with views purely commercial. In the region of Tartés- 
sus as well as in the western coast of Africa outside of the strait 
of Gibraltar, we hear only of pacific interchange and metallurgy ; 
and the number of Phenicians who acquired gradually settle- 
ments in the interior was so great, that Strabo describes these 
towns — not less than two hundred in number —as altogether 


' Strabo, iii, pp. 156, 158. 161; Polybius, iii, 10, 3-10 
2 Polyb. i, 10; ii, 1 


276 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Phenicized.'_ In his time, the circumstances favorable to new 
Phenician emigrations had been long past aid gone, and there 
ean be little hesitation in ascribing the preponderance, which: this 
foreign element had then acquired, to a period several centuries 
earlier, beginning at a time when Tyre and Sidon enjoyed both 
undisputed autonomy at home, and the entire monopoly of Ibe- 
rian commerce, without interference from the Greeks. 

The earliest Grecian colony founded in Sicily was that of 
Naxos, planted by the Chalkidians in 735 B. c.: Syracuse fol- 
lowed in the next year, and during the succeeding century many 
flourishing Greek cities took root on the island. These Greeks 
found the Phenicians already in possession of many outlying 
islets and promontories all around the island, which served them 
in their trade with the Sikels and Sikans who occupied the inte 
rior. The safety and facilities of this established trade were to 
s0 great a degree broken up by the new-comers, that the Pheni- 
cians, relinquishing their numerous petty settlements round the 
island, concentrated themselves in three considerable towns at 
the south-western angle near Lilybweum,2— Motyé, Soloeis, and 
Panormus, — and in the island of Malta, where they were least 
widely separated from Utica and Carthage. The Tyrians of that 
day were hard-pressed by the Assyrians under Salmaneser, and 
the power of Carthage had not yet reached its height ; otherwise 
probably this retreat of the Sicilian Phenicians before the Greeks 
would not have taken place without a struggle. But the early 
Phenicians, superior to the Greeks in mercantile activity, and not 
disposed to contend, except under circumstances of very superior 
force, with warlike adventurers bent on permanent settlement, 
took the prudent course of circumscribing their sphere of opera- 
tions. A similar change appears to have taken place in Cyprus, 
the other island in which Greeks and Phenicians came into close 
contact. If we may trust the Tyrian annals consulted by the his- 
torian Menander, Cyprus was subject to the Tyrians even in the 
time of Solomon.’ We do not know the dates of the establish 


* Strabo, iii, pp. 141-150. Οὐτοι yap Φοίνιξιν οὕτως ἐγένοντο ὑποχείριοι, 
ὥστε τὰς πλείους τῶν ἐν ty Τουρδιτανίᾳ πολέων καὶ τῶν πλήσιον τόπων ὑπ' 
ἐκείνων νῦν οἰκεῖσϑαι. 

5 Thucyd. vi, 3; Diodor. v, 12. 

See the reference in Joseph. Antiq. Jud. viii, 5, 3, and Joseph. cont 


᾿ Vol. 3 


SPREAD OF GREEK SETTLEMENTS. 277 


ment of Paphos, Salamis, Kitium, and the other Grecian cities 
there planted, — but there can be no doubt that they were poste. 
rior to this period, and that a considerable portion Δ the soil and 
trade of Cyprus thus passed from Phenicians to Greeks ; who on 
their part partially embraced and diffused the rites, sometimes 
eriiel, sometimes voluptuous, embodied in the Phenician religion.! 
in Cilicia, too, especially at Tarsus, the intrusion of Greek a 
tiers appears to have gradually Hellenized a town originally I he- 
uician and Assyrian ; contributing, along with the other Grecian 
settlements — Phasélis, Aspendus, and Sidé —on the southera 
ecast cf Asia Minor, to narrow the Phenician range of adventure 
in that direction.* | 

Such was the manner in which the Phenicians found thene 
selves affected by the spread of Greek settlements; and if the 
[onians of Asia Minor, when first conquered by Harpagus and 
the Persians, had followed the advice of the Prienean Bias to 
emigrate in a body, and found one great Pan-lIonic colony = the 
‘<land of Sardinia, these early merchants would have experienced 
the like hinderance® carried still farther westward, — perhaps, 
indeed, the whole subsequent history of Carthage might nae 
been sensibly modified. But Iberia, and the golden region of 
Tartéssus, remained comparatively little visited, and still less 
colonized, by the Greeks ; nor did it even become known to them 
until more than a century after their first settlements had peen 
formed in Sicily. Easy as the voyage trom Corinth to Cadiz 
may now appear to us, to a Greek of the seventh or sixth centu- 


ries B. Ὁ, it was a formidable undertaking. He was under the 


Apion. i 18; an allusion is to be found in Virgil, neid, i, 642, in the mouth 


of Dido. — 


“ Genitor tum Belus opimam 
Vastabat Cyprum, et late ditione tenebat.” (t. v-) 

' Respecting the worship at Salamis (in Cyprus) and Paphos, see Lac 
, i, 21; Strabo, xiv, p. 683. 
gol i chabiak τῆν Dio Chrysostom as a colony from the Phenician 
Aradus ‘Orat. Tarsens. ii, p. 20, ed. Reisk), and Herodotus makes Kilix 
brother of Phoenix and son of Agénér (vii, 92). 

Phenician coins of the city of Tarsus are found, of a date towards the end 
of the Persian empire: see Movers, Die Pidnizier, 1, p. 13. 

ὁ Herodot. i. 170. 


278 HISTORY uF GREECr. 


necessity of first coasting along Akarnania and Epirus, ther 
crossing, first to the island of Korkyra, and next to the oulf of 
Tarentum ; he then doubled the southernmost cape of Italy and 
followed the sinuosities of the Mediterranean coast. by T'vrr- 
henia, Liguria, southern Gaul, and eastern Iberia, to the Pillars 
of Héraklés or strait of Gibraltar: or if he did not ἂν δὰ he 
had the alternative of crossing the open sea from Kréte - Pelo 
onnesus to Libya, and then coasting westward along the βδου 
coast of the Syrtes until he arrived at the same point. Both 
voyages presented difficulties hard to be encountered; but the 
most serious hazard of all, was the direct transit across the open 
sea from Kréte to Libya. It was about the year 630 Β. ο aa 
the inhabitants of the island of Théra, starved out by a a 
years’ drought, were enjoined by the Delphian god to ee a 
colony in Libya. Nothing short of the divine ἈΚ ΝΗΜΗΒΗΣ com 
have induced them to obey so terrific a sentence of banishment : 
for not only was the region named quite unknown to them, but thane 
could not discover, by the most careful inquiries among nitions 
Greek navigators, a single man who had ever intentionally made 
the voyage to Libya.! One Kretan only could they find Lo 
fisherman named Kordbius, — who had been driven thither soci. 
dentally by violent gales, and he served them as guide. 
At this juncture, Egypt had only been recently opened to 
Greek commerce, — Psammetichus having been the first king 
who partially relaxed the jealous exclusion of ships from the en- 
trance of the Nile, enforced by all his predecessors; and sie in- 
ee με . profitable a traffic emboldened some Jonian traders 
o make the direct voyage from Kréte 2 hat tives 
It was in the prosecution of one lies cede ay staat 
| : | : se voyages, and in connec. 
tion with the foundation of Kyréné (to be recounted in a future 
chapter). that we are made acquainted with the memorable ad- 
venture of the Samian merchant Kéleus. While bound for 
Egypt, he had been driven out of his course by cantina winds 
and had found shelter on an uninhabited islet called Platea off 
the coast of Libya,— the spot where the emigrants lotended for 
Kyréné first established themselves, not long sberwavde, From 
hence he again started to proceed to Egypt, but again without 


ites 


---- — 


* Herodot. iv. 15] 


FIRST ACCIDENTAL VJYAGE BY KOLEUS 979 


success ; violent and continuous east winds drove him continually 
to the westward, until he at length passed the Pillars of Héraklés, 
and found himself, under the providential guidance of the gods,! 
an unexpected visitor among the Phenicians and Iberians of Tar- 
tassus. What the cargo was which he was transporting to Egypt, 
we are not told; but it sold in this yet virgin market for the most 
exorbitant prices: he and his crew (says Herodotus)? “ realized 
a profit larger than ever fell to the lot of any known Greek ex- 
ὁ Sostratus the AZginetan, with whom no one else can com- 
pete.” The magnitude of their profits may be gathered from the 
votive offering which they erected on their return, in the sacred 
precinct of Héré at Samos, in gratitude for the protection of that 
goddess during their voyage, — a large bronze vase, ornamented 
with projecting griffins’ heads, and supported by three bronze 
kneeling figures of colossal stature : it cost six talents, and rep- 
The aggregate of sixty talents? 


ce] 


resented the tithe of their gains. 
(about sixteen thousand pounds, speaking roughly), corresponding 
to this tithe, was a sum which not many even of the rich men of 
Athens in her richest time, could boast of possessing. 

To the lucky accident of this enormous vase and the inscrip- 
tion doubtless attached to it, which Herodotus saw in the Hérzon 


at Samos, and to the impression which such miraculous enrich- 


1 Herodot. iv, 1 Θειῇ πομπῇ χρεώμενος. 

2 Herodot. iv, 1 Τὸ δὲ ἐμπόριον τοῦτο (Tartéssus) ἦν ἀκήρατον τοῦτον 
τὸν χρόνον" ὥστε ἀπονοστῆσαντες οὗτοι ὀπίσω μέγιστα δὴ Ἑλλήνων πάντων, 
τῶν ἡμεῖς ἀτρέκεως ἴδμεν, ἐκ φορτίων ἐκέρδησαν, μετά γε Σώστρατον τὸν 
Λαοδάμαντος, Αἰγινήτην" τούτῳ γὰρ οὐκ οἷα τε ἐρίσαι ἀλλον. 

Allusions to the prodigious wealth of Tartéssus in Anakreon, Fragm. 8, 
ed. Bergk; Stephan. Byz. Ταρτησσός ; Eustath. ad Dionys. Periégét. 332, 
᾿Ανακρέων φησὶ πανευδαίμονα ; Himerius ap. Photium, 
nav ὅσον εὐδαιμονίας 


52. 
52. 


Ταρτησσὸς, ἣν καὶ ὃ 
Cod. 243, p. 599, --- Ταρτησσοῦ βίον, ᾿Αμαλϑείας κέρας, 


κεφαλαῖον. 
3 These talents cannot have been Attic talents; for the Attic talent first 


arose from the debasement of the Athenian money-standard by Solon, which 
did not occur until a generation after the voyage of Kolzus. They may 
have been either Euboic or Aginzan talents; probably the former, seeing 
that the case belongs to the island of Samos. Sixty Euboic talents would be 
about equivalent to the sum stated in the text. For the proporticm of the 
various Greek monetary scales, see above, vol. ii, part 2, ch. iv, p 425. and 


ch wii p. 227 in the present volume. 


280 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ment made upon his imagination,—we are indebted for out 
knowledge of the precise period at which the secret of Pheniciat 
ecommerce at Tartéssus first became known to the Greeks The 
voyage of Kolzus opened to the Greeks of that day Men world 
hardly less important — regard being had to their previous agere. 
gate of knowledge —than the discovery of America to the Be. 
Fopeans of the last half of the fifteenth century. Sut Kélreus 
did little more than make known the existence of this distant nad 
lucrative region: he cannot be said to have shown the way to it: 
nor do we find, in spite of the foundation of Kyréné and ‘Barka, 
which made the Greeks so much more familiar with the coast of 
Libya than they had been before, that the route by which be had 
been carried against his own will was ever deliberately ΠΡΌ 
by Greek traders. 
Probably the Carthaginians, altogether unscrupulous in pro 
ceedings against commercial rivals,! would have ieee its 
natural maritime difficulties by false information and hostile ee 
ceedings. The simple report of such gains, however was well 
calculated to act as a stimulus to other enterprising sa | 
and the Phékezans, during the course of the leks tli copie. 
pushing their exploring voyages both along the Adriatic iad 
along the Tyrrhenian coast, and founding Massalia in the yeas 
600 B. c., at length reached the Pillars of Héraklés and Tartés- 
sus along the eastern coast of Spain. These men were the moat 
adventurous mariners? that Greece had yet produced, creating ἃ 
jealous uneasiness even among their Tonian neighbors 33 their 
voyages were made, not with round and bulky merehantal γ8 
calculated only for the maximum οὐ cargo, but with armad i 
tekonters,— and they were thus enabled to defy the privateers of 
the Tyrrhenian cities on the Mediterranean. which had hing ie. 
terred the Greek trader from any habitual traffic near the δέρας 


vce = i Mirab. Ausc. c. 84-132. 

- cb ndalinalpnaral ae ὲ Φωκαιέες οὗτοι ναυτιλίῃσι μακρῇσι πρῶτοι Ἑλλη- 
ww ἐχρήσαντο, καὶ τὸν ᾿Αδρίην καὶ τὴν Τυρσηνίην καὶ τὴν ᾿Ιϑηρίην καὶ τὸν 
Ταρτησσὸν οὗτοί εἰσιν οἱ καταδείξαντες " ἐναυτίλλοντο δὲ οὐ στρο γύλψσ: 
νηυσὶν, ἀλλὰ πεντηκοντέροισιν, --ο [6 expressions are remarkable. oer 

* Herodot. i, 164-165, gives an example of the jealousy of the Chians ἃ 
respect to the islands called C2nusse. j 


WEALTH OF TARTESSUS. 281 


of Messina.! There can be little doubt that the progress of the 
Phok:eans was very slow, and the foundation of Massalia ( Mar- 
seilles), one of the most remote of all Greek colonies, may for a 
time have absorbed their attention: moreover, they had to pick 
up information as they went on, and the voyage was one of dis- 
covery in the strict sense of the word. The time at which 
they reached ‘Tartéssus may seemingly be placed between 570- 
560 5.0. They made themselves so acceptable to Arganthdénius, 
—king of Tartéssus, or at least king of part of that region, — 
that he urged them to relinquish their city of Phékea and estab- 
lish themselves in his territory, offering to them any site which 
they chose to occupy. Though they declined this tempting 
offer, yet he still continued anxious to aid them against dangers 
at home, and gave them a large donation of money,— whereby 
they were enabled at a critical moment to complete their fortifi 
cations. Arganthdnius died shortly afterwards, having lived, we 
are told, to the extraordinary age of one hundred and twenty years, 
of which he had reigned eighty. The Phékszans had probably 
reason to repent of their refusal, since in no very long time their 
town was taken by the Persians, half their citizens became ex- 
iles, and were obliged to seek a precarious abode in Corsica, in 
place of the advantageous settlement which old Arganthénius 


kad offered to them in Tartéssus.? 
By such steps did the Greeks gradually track out the lines of 
Phenician commerce in the Mediterranean, and accomplish that 


vast improvement in their geographical knowledge,— the circum- 


” 
- 


navigation of what Eratostheneés and Strabo termed “our sea 
as distinguished from the external ocean.” Little practical ad- 
vantage, however, was derived from the discovery, which was 
only made during the last years of Ionian independence. ‘The 
Ionian cities became subjects of Persia, and Phokea especially, 
was crippled and half-depopulated in the struggle. Had the 
period of Ionian enterprise been prolonged, we should probably 
have heard of other Greek settlements in Iberia and Tartéssus, 
over and above Emporia and Rhodus, formed by the Massaliote 


Ephorus, Fragm. 52, ed. Marx ; Strabo, vi, p. 267. 


2? Herodot. i, 165. 
ὃ Ἢ caw’ ἡμᾶς ϑάλασσα (Strabo); τῆσδε τῆς ϑαλάττης (Herod iv, 41) 


282 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


between the Pyrenees and the Ebro, —as well as of increasing 
Grecian traffic with those regions. The misfortunes of Phékexa 
and the other Ionic towns saved the Phenicians of Tartéssus from 
Grecian interference and competition, such as that which their 
fellow-countrymen in Sicily had been experiencing for a century 
and a half. 

But though the Ephesian Artemis, the divine protectress of 
Phokzan emigration, was thus prevented from becoming conse 
erated in Tartéssus along with the Tyrian Héraklés, an impulse 
not the less powerful was given to the imaginations of philoso- 
phers like Thalés and poets like Stesichorus, — whose lives cover 
the interval between the supernatural transport of Kolaeus on the 
wings of the wind, and the persevering, well-planned explora- 
tion which emanated from Phékza. While, on the one hand, 
the Tyrian Héraklés with his venerated temple at Gadés fur- 
nished-a new locality and details for mythes respecting the Gre- 
cian Héraklés,— on the other hand, intelligent Greeks learned 
for the first time that the waters surrounding their islands and 
the Peloponnesus formed part of a sea circumscribed by assign- 
able boundaries ; continuous navigation of the Phdkzans round 
the coasts, first of the Adriatic, next of the gulf of Lyons to the 
Pillars of Héraklés and Tartéssus, first brought to light this im- 
portant fact. The hearers of Archilochus, Simonidés of Amorgus, 
and Kallinus, living before or contemporary with the voyage of 
ΚΟ], had known no sea-limit either north of Korkyra or west of 
Sicily: those of Anakreon and Hippénax, a century afterwards, 
found the Euxine, the Palus Mzotis, the Adriatic, the western 
Mediterranean, and the Libyan Syrtes, all so far surveyed as to 
present to the mind a definite conception, and to admit of being 
visibly represented by Anaximander ona map. However familiar 
sucii knowledge has now become to us, at the time now under 
discussion it was a prodigious advance. The Pillars of Héra- 
klés, especially. remained deeply fixed in the Greek mind, as a 
terminus of human adventure and aspiration: of the ocean be- 
ycnd, men were for the most part content to remain ignorant. 

It has already been stated, that the Phenicians, as coast ex- 
plorers, were even more enterprising than the Phdkzans ; but 
their jealous commercia spirit induced them to conceal tleir 


CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF AFRICA. 9S3 


track, — to give information designedly false,' respecting dangers 
and ditficulties, —— and even to drown any commercial rivais 
when they could do so with safety.2. One remarkable Phenician 
achievement, however, contemporary with the period of Phokzan 
It was somewhere about 


exploration, must not be passed over. 

600 5. c. that they cireumnavigated Africa; starting from the Red 
. " 5 . Γ , vT ω A ᾿ - [1 > i " 

sea. by direction of the Egyptian king Nekés, son of Psammet- 


ichus, — going round the cape of Good Hope to Gadés, — and 
from thence returning to the Nile. 

It appears that Nekos, anxious to procure a water communica- 
tion between the Red sea and the Mediterranean, began digging 
a canal from the former to the Nile, but desisted from the un- 
dJertaking after having made considerable progress. In prosecu- 
tion of the same object, he despatched these Phenicians on an 
experimental voyage round Libya, which was successfully ac- 
complished, though in a time not less than three years; for 
during each autumn, the mariners landed and remained on shore 
a sufficient time to sow their seed and raise a crop of corn. 
They reached Egypt again, through the strait of Gibraltar, in 
the course of the third year, and recounted ἃ. tale, — “ which 
Herodotus) others may believe if they choose, but I cannot 


(says 
’__ that, in sailing round Libya, they had the sun on their 


believe,’ 
rizht hand, ἡ, ὁ. to the north. 

The reality of this cireumnavigation was confirmed to Herod- 
otus by various Carthaginian informants,’ and he himself fully 


| The geographer Ptolemy, with genuine scientific zeal, complains bitterly 
of the reserve and frauds common with the old traders, respecting the coun- 
tries which they visited (Ptolem. Geogr. i, 11). 

2 Strabo, iii, pp. 175-176; xvii, p. 802. 

3 Herodot. iv, 42. Kai ἔλεγον, ἐμοὶ μὲν ob πιστὰ, ἄλλῳ dé δῆ τέῳ, ὡς περι- 
πλώοντες τὴν Λιβύην, τὸν ἠέλιον ἔσχον ἐς τὰ δεξιά. 

4 Herodot. Οὕτω μὲν αὐτὴ ἐ) νώσϑη τοπρῶτον᾽ (i.e ἡ Λιβύη ἐγνώσϑη 
ἐοῦσα περίῤῥυτος") μετὰ δὲ, Καρχηδόνιοι εἰσιν οἱ λέγοντες. These Cartha- 
ginians, to whom Herodotus here alludes, told him that Libya was circumnav- 
igable ; but it does not seem that they knew of any other actual circumnavi- 
gation except that of the Phenicians sent by Nekdés; otherwise, Herodotus 
would have mae some allusion to it, instead of proceeding, as he does 
immediately, to tell the story of the Persian Sataspés, who tried and failed. 

The testimony of the Carthaginians is so far valuable, as it declares thei 


persuasion of the truth of the statement made by those Phenicians. 


284 HISTORY OF GReEref. 


believes it. There seems ( 
it. There seems zood reason for sharing in his 
a pelea aring in his belief, 
a gh al able critics reject the tale as incredible. ‘The 
lenicians were expert and daring masters of coast navigatio 
and in going round Africa they had no « sites ser tae, 
: Ω ΒῚ Ο occasion ever to los 
sight of land: we may presume that their vessels wer oly 
is , > the ‘ssels were amp 
stored, 8 2V ca a 
: so that they could take their own time, and lie by in bad 
weather: we may: ; " 
ather; we may also take for granted that the reward cons« 
quent “cess Was consider: 1 ‘cian eb 
t upon success was considerable. For any other marine: 
> > a . " I " , ᾿ Γ 9 
eg existing, indeed, the undertaking might have been too hard 
i = g ‘ pen t art 
ut 1t was not so for them, and that was the r2ason why Nek | 
chose them. ‘To such reas ve aoe 
se them. such reasons, which show the story to present 
no intrinsic incredibility ( red 
- trinsic incredibility (that, indeed, is hardly allezed even by 
a : ssi ; tt « >* "" ) 
gg and others who disbelieve it), we may add one ot! 
Ww 11¢ (OES ‘ * ν᾿ γέ μ νὸν y : i 
: ch goes far to prove it positively true. They stated that, i: 
1e course of Pr Cireni , ᾿ angele li 
mage of their circuit, they had the sun on their right hand 
i. δ. to the ἢ γεγ γε. « thia | αν in 
( e northward); and this phenomenon, observable accord- 
ing to the season even when they were within the tropi , 
τ baie | the; are 16 tropics, coul: 
ἡμὴ fail to force itself on their attention as constant, after tl 
, ᾿ é nstant, aiter the 
1 Ἂς . » > ῴ . 
ad reached the southern temperate zone. But Herodotus ' 
once pronounces this part of , | | ils 
: a a this part of the story to be incredible, and so it 
sl x i Die wn o s « ho @ 
εἰς = ably appear to every Greek!, Phenician, or Egyptia 
not only of : ace of Neké hs ny ica 
he y of the age of Nekdés, but even of the time of Herodotu 
who hear . since ’ , ε" ἥ 
o heard it; since none of them possessed either actual exper! 
‘ aclu 7a. DCP i- 


ence of the ; 
of the phenomenon of a southern latitude, or a sufficiently 
correc iii | all aes - . 
ect theory of the relation between sun and earth. to und 
« * Tl 


stand the varying direction of the shadows; and few men would 
a ἃ ἱ ἂν ἥν VOuLd 


consent to set aside the received ideas with reference to the solar 
motions, trom pure confidence in the veracity of these Pheni oe 
narrators. Now that under such circumstances the Libis γέμα 
invent the tale, is highly improbable; and if they σῶν a rm 


Some critics hav 
.. © ci ΟἹ ᾿ ᾿ ὦ pone ce * ' 
Both rities have construed the words, in which Herodotus alludes to tl 
i acinians as his inform: He ius all es it 
pe ginians as his informants, as if what they told him was the ste of il 
ess attempt made by Sataspé iN as te story of the 
é Sataspés. But this is evi "ἢ 
. . Pai 5. 1s evidently not ι "λων 
of the historian: he brings forward the opinion of the Cartl wi ἘΝ ee 
firmatory of RS ne varthaginians as con 
, “58 ἀρνβιργαδορκταξτα nt made by the Phenicians employed by Neké 
{ whee M " ἣν Ὑ ae s 
Fon aig he 40) talks correct language about the direction of τὶ 
ou < >» Sate y Ὺ Ι ᾿ ᾿ ae 
- one mark Om of the tropic of Cancer (compare Pliny, H. N. vi min 
oO ATR Ὶ " ° ν᾿" " ἄν 9 ἀν ΠῚ 
lien tho't the exte nsion of geographical and astronomical observations 
our intervening centuries between him and Herodotu 


CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF AFRICA. 985 
ventors, they must have experienced the phenomenon during the 
southern portion of their transit. 

Some critics disbelieve this circumnavigation, from supposing 
that if so remarkable an achievement had really taken place 
once, it must have been repeated, and practical application must 
have been made of it. But though such a suspicion is not 
il, with those who recollect how great a revolution was 
was rediscovered during the fifteenth 
century, — yet the reasoning vill not be found applicable to the 
sixth century before the Christian era. 
in that age, counted for nothing: the 


unnaturs 
operated when the passage 


Pure scientific curiosity, 
motive of Nekos for directing t 
that which had prompted him to d 
st communication between the Mediterranean 


But, as it has been with the north-west pas- 
so it was with the circumnavigation of Africa 
racticability at the same time showed 
purposes of traffic or communication, 


his enterprise was the same as 
ig his cana, — in order that he 


might procure the be 
and the Red sea. 
sage in our time, 
in his, —the proot of its ] 
that it was not available for 
looking to the resources then at the command of navigators, — 
a fact, however, which could not be known until the experiment 
was made. ΤῸ pass from the Mediterranean to the Red sea by 
means of the Nile still continued to be the easiest way ; either by 
which in the times of the Ptolemies was 


aid of the land-journey, 
on the Nile to Bereniké on the Red 


usually made from Koptos 
sea, — or by means of the canal of Nekos, which Darius after- 
wards finished, though it seems to have been neglected during 
the Persian rule in Egypt, and was subsequently repaired and 
put to service under the Ptolemies. Without any doubt the suc 
cessful Phenician mariners underwent both severe hardship and 
still greater supposed perils, the 
apprehension of which so constantly unnerved the minds even of 
experienced and resolute men in the unknown ocean. Such was 
the force of these terrors and difficulties, to which there was no 
known termination, upon the mind of the Achaemenid Sataspés 
(upon whom the circumnavigation of Africa was imposed as ἃ 
peralty “ worse than death” by Xerxes, in commutation of a 
capital sentence), that he returned without having finished the 

he forfeited his life. He affirmed 


eircuit, though by so doing 
that he had sailed “until his vessel stuck fast, and could move 


great real perils, besides those 


286 HISTORY OF GREECE 
τ TERRORS OF THE UNKNOWN OCEAN. 287 


learn from hence that the enterprise, even by those 


Now we 


on no farther.” : 
—a persuasic | 
᾽ persuasion not uncommon in ancient times 
Eu 
. } τὰν 
who believed the narrative of Nekés 


/ SU umbu: 9 hat l€ re was a , [-- 


------.. — -...Ρ Ῥ. . “. oe ....ς.-΄-.-.-.-...-.--.-.-----. .-.....ς-. . 


u d 
, Ϊ i 1 , la | 9 fo Sy }»} 


accumulations 56: 
ations of sea-weed,— was no longer navigable.’ 


| Skylax, ὦ “a ᾿ . 
Sk ylax, after following the li [ 
ar fo r the line of coast ἢ i 
Pt iy ie ig σ Ἶ st from the Mediterranez 
trait of Gibraltar, and then south-westward alo perolegnny 


ἸΣ land of Kerné, foes on to Say € b yon¢ ] e! i Bec IS no longs er 
. . Γ " 


navigable from sh; ‘3 
shallows, and mud, and sea-weed:” Tre δὲ Ki j 
Soayi weed : Τῆς δὲ Κέρνης νήσου 
Kori δὲ τὸ φῦκος τῆς do χμῆς τὺ ae χύτητα σαλάττης καὶ πηλὸν Kai φῦκος 
᾿ > ς 0 TAC ν ων ΑΝ vf “i 
lax, c. 109). Nearchus, on undert eh Kat ἄνωθεν ὀξὺ, ὥστε κεντεῖν (Sky- 
: 8, ertaking his voyag frot 
thence ; g His voyage down the 5, ὦ Τ 
ence into the Persian gulf, is not certain wl 1 sonia geist son 
found navigable — εἰ ὃ ' * 


τὰ ἐπέκεινα OUKETI ἐστι τ λωτὰ διὰ 


ier the external sea wi 
ἤν 6 ΟΣ al sea will be 
ἢ πλωτύός γέ ἐσ ᾿ i ) ᾿ 

᾿ ς στιν ¢ Τ roc (Ne i i 
p. 2: compare p. 40, ap. Gec all pi li πόντος (Nearchi Periplus, 
i ; » ap. gr. nor. vol. i, ed. Huds | 
scribed the ne , "ἢ i . ἢ Ὁ, udson ). Pytheas ; 
80 d 0 neighborhood of Thulé as a sort of chaos Ϊ alg 

Pa. ὁ ΠΝ). δα... ᾿ m wOsS—— A | Ἂ ἂν τς ἣν 

ν and air, in which you could neither walk nor sail perl 
“ i 


ἤ Ρ ‘ “ 7" a a? , 
Uv ry pyev ουτε ϑάλασσα Ore ἀὴρ ἀλλὰ OUTE γὴ Καὶ αὐτὴν 
™ ᾽ vill 


ν ; σύγκριμώ τι ἐκ ' a 
oe Se Mu TL EK τούτων πλεύμο 0 
Λασσίω EQIKOC, ἔν ὼ Oya τὴν γὴν eat ol ͵ " ii AK OUTWY πλε vuovi Va- 
lig ¢ τὴν ϑάλασσαν αἰωρεῖσϑαι καὶ τὰ ci 
͵ 7 ile 


TaVT Zz, ἡ ) ‘ a " tl A whe ‘ / ‘ ‘ 
1 + 
[ [ AaL Ot OV WH ων δεσμὸν €iva Τῶι OAG 1 LL7) € Opel ω 477 7 ITOY 
4 - (Uy ‘ } ἐ δ A 
/ & 


ὑπάρχοντα" τὸ μὲν οὖν τῷ πλεύ ; 
δὲ λέω ΤΙ , it Vv Tid πλευμονι FOLKOC αὐτὸς (Pytheas) ᾿ 
léyerv ἐξ ἀκοὴ " oa ἐγ! ς “hh eas) ξωρακέναι, TUAA 
rel a μὴ Lagann il, p. 104). Again, the priests of Memphis as 
aa elr conquering hero Sesostris had equipped a - 
ian gulf, and made « voyage into the Ervt} quipped a fleet in the 
everywhere, “ until he οἱ ig rythrean sea, subjugating peo 
check wt ὮΝ ἘΠῚ ame to ἃ sea no longer navigable fron ‘sl le 208 
ἔτι πλωτὴν bre δ... ἡ “ὉΠ bili. γα 1 shallows,” — 
pose ἐμὲ ὁ δραχξωι (Herod. ll. 109) Ῥίον ." ' a 
16 Pillars ὁ ea ..... ' Ι presents the se: 
τ ἢ d Héraklés as impenetrable and unfit for navicati ou 
͵ “ 10 [Ὁ ; δῶ» ᾿ < ation, ἢ 
which had arisen in it Pl — of earth. mud, or vegetable poet vin ᾿ 
‘ : it from the disrupti ΠῚ ͵ εἶ 
cnn ion of the great is 
Atlantis (Timzus Or . i great island or contine 
eh { timzus, p. 25; and Kritias. p. 108); which pa itinent 
: ᾿ " ᾿ ib ᾿ ASSAGTEeS Are , : 
strated by the Scholiast. who seems to have read ΟΝ 
ω" 4 ave ad re 
of the character of this outer sea: 5 Og 
τες λέγουσιν, ὡς πάντα τε 


εἰμ αὶ αὶ raphical descriptions 
Tic, ἐπιπολάζοντος ὕδατος οὐ πολλοῦ καὶ ‘la ᾿ τέναγος dé ἐστὶν ἰλύς 
also Plutarch’s fancy of ΠῚ σοτανης ἐπιφαινομένης τούτῳ. ὦ 
days to the i te - shai earthy, and viscous Kronian aia Msc 
ee a το αμόδῳι i an), in which a ship could with difficulty ad- 
Facie in Orbe Lune, ¢ ci " severe pulling with the oars (Plutarch. De 
, » δ. 26, p. 941). aces Mea fog 


So Agr: 1 ; 
ie 2 So again in the tw λυ, ἢ 
ductions in verse by Rufus Festus the two geographical pro- 


i A viel 5 ( Ss Ge OUT } n¢ I vol V 

Descri »tio γῇ δι... 3 lu | Hud: on, 5 . Mi i i ᾶ 

I ἢ 1S Terre, i oi, and Ora Maritim ὶ 06 l ) i 5 th he 
ay ν, 4( —4 ῳ : nm ἵ € fir st 


of these two, th i i 
Ps , the density 2 Wi yf 
Se “ee of the water of the western ocean is ascrit ed to i 
δ " © wi Sz ‘ci ἢ >a : i μα Ἢ 
of sea-weed, and coe in the second, we have shallows large quanti 
. ra a6 ΝΣ Ἷ ἷ Mh ; : 
ater » a ud beasts swimming about, which the Cart} Pt io 
o affirmed himself to have seen: — _ re 
ὦ. Pla ὡἕ 
ee porro tenue tenditur salum 
Jt ΥΙχ arenas subjacent \ 
] es occulat ; 


Exsuperat autem gurgitem fucus frequens 
Atque impeditur zstus ex uligine : 

Vis vel ferarum pelagus omne internatat, 
Mutusque terror ex feris habitat freta. 
Heec olim Himilco Peenus Oceano saper 
Spectasse semet et probasse rettulit : 

Heee nos, ab imis Punicorum annalibus 
Prolata longo tempore, edidimus tibi.” 


130 of the same poem, where the author again quotes 


Compare also v, 115- 
o, who had been four months in the ocean outside 


from a voyage of Himilc 
of the Pillars of Hercules : — 
* Sic nulla late flabra propellunt ratem, 


Sic segnis humor sequoris pigri stupet. 
Adjicit et illud, plurimum inter gurgites 
Extare fucum, et seepe virgulti vice 
Retinere puppim,” etc. 
The dead calm, mud, and shallows of the external 
by Aristot. Meteorolog. ii, 1, 14, and seem to have be 
declamation with the rhetors of the Augustan age. 


ocean are touched upon 
en a favorite subject of 
See Seneca, Suasoriar. 


ΕῚ, 
Even the companions and contemporaries of Columbus, when navigation 
ained much of these fears re- 


had made such comparative progress, still ret 
rs and difficulties of the unknown ocean : “Le tableaa 


observes A. von Humboldt, Examen Critique de Histoire de la 
que la ruse des Phéniciens avait tracé des difficultés 
ation au deli des Colonnes d’Hercule, de Cerné, et 
us, le limon, le manque de fond, et le calme per- 
re frappante aux récits animés des 


specting the dange 
exagéré ( 
Géographie, τ. iii, Ρ. 95) 
qu’opposaient a la navig 
de l’Ile Sacrée (Ierné), le fac 
pétuel de la mer, ressemble d’une manié 


premiers compagnons de Colomb.” 
Columbus was the first man who traversed the sea of Sargasso, or area of 


the Atlantic ocean south of the Azores, where it is covered by an immense 
mass of sea-weed for a space six or seven times as large as France: the 
alarm of his crew at this unexpected spectacle was considerable. The sea- 
weed is sometimes so thickly accumulated, that it requires 8 considerabie 
wind to impel the vessel through it. The remarks and comparisons of M. von 
Humboldt, in reference to ancient and modern navigation, are highly inter- 
esting. (Examen, ut sup. pp- 69, 88, 91, etc.) 
J. M. Gesner (Dissertat. de Navigationibus extra Columnas Herculis, sects. 

6 and 7) has a good defence of the story told by Herodotus. Major Rennell 

also adopts the same view, and shows by many arguments how much easier 

the circumnavigation was from the East than from the West (Geograph. Sys 

tem of Herodotus, p. 680) ; compare Ukert, Geograph. der Griechen und 


288 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


at once desperate and unprofitable; but doubtless many persous 
treated it as a mere “ Phenician lie, ”! (to use an expression pro 


Romer, ¥ol. i 1; 
. ¥ol. 1, p. 61; Mannert, Geo. d. G : 
ert g. d. G. und Romer, vol. j 
~aeal Lda G er, vol. i, pp. 19-26. 
— ‘a (Recherches sur la Géogr. des Ane. i, p. 149) and ti both 
Θ ec > . , ow roy , ἡ ᾿ ᾿ a 
yect the story as not worthy of belief: Heeren defends it (Ideen at 
Verkehr der Alten Welt, i, 2, pp. 86-95) “" Ἔν" 
Agatharchides, i t sec , 
ὡ ὧν irchides, in the second century Β. c.. pronounces the eastern coast 
seg i” . ‘ Ps t astern coas 
ica, southward of the Red sea, to be as yet unexamined - he t 
as a matt ertai wey Ὁ δι» iat pty 
ti Pi certainty, however, that the sea to the south-westward is con 
inuous wi : Western ace: Ce gn πελνιχιτα 
th the Western ocean (De Rubro Mari, Geog. Minores 
sae 11). ΟΕ, 4 ores, ed. Huds. 
} Bivaho ti " : 
Strabo, iii, p. ataspé | 
pile » iil, p 170. Sataspés (the unsuccessful Persian circumnavigator 
va, me x1 just : re) i hy ᾿ 
sia Ἵ ob! 1entioned just above) had violated the daughter of another P r 
sian nobleman, 2 ‘rus 5 ‘ lt 
ah ng in, Zopyrus son of Megabyzus, and Xerxés had given I 
rat he 8 i ὦ fe oe 
hes 1ould be crucified for this act; his mother begzed him off | i 
wc , ᾿ rey O ry SULr- 
Ε' sting that he should be condemned to somethine “ worse than death.” h 
circumnavication of Liby: at ve arse than death,”— the 
in an — of Libya (Herod. iv,43). Two things are to be remarked 
respect to his voyage: 1. He tc igri 
yage: . He took with him a shi ; 
προ agli a ship and seamen fron 
“gypt; we are not told that they were Phenician: probably no oth . 
mers than Phenicians were c ai ee nh ie 
6 f 3 Phenicians were competent to such a voyage —and even if tl 
rew of Sataspés hi: ἢ Phenici ests nahh 
st ἊΝ pés had been Phenicians, he could not offer rewards for su 
πὸ es » dis : PN : é ΠΣ 
qua to those at the disposal of Nekés. 2. He began his enterprise ἢ ‘2 
2 cele nib ea wi srprise from th 
οἱ of Gibraltar instead of from the Red sea: now it seems th at tl : 
rent betwee adagascar : ia sate 
to ᾿ eg Madagascar and the eastern coast of Africa sets very stro " 
wards the cape of G “oe ‘ig oo ΤΥ oon sy 
ose — . ei Hope, so that while it greatly assists the south rly 
age, on the other hand, it makes la ν a 
yas and, it makes return by the 5 t 
€ same way very diffic 
(See Humboldt, Examen Critique de l’Histoi sag in oy cago 
Heed { 4 de l’Histoire de la Géographie, t i p 
pos : : : ὃ, : er, affirms that all those who had tried to cireumnayj t 
rica, both ..om the Red sea ; ; ἡ. 
od sea and from the strait of Gi 
"a : 7 + Strait of Gibraltar, had beer 
. 0 return without success (i, p. 32), so that most people believed εἰ ; 
ere Was ἃ conti $ is whi , | “agp 
: continaon isthmus which rendered it impracticable to go by si 
rom the one point to the other: he is himself. how pbs 
lal par ie ᾿ he i eit, however, persuaded that the 
με ββους on both sides of Africa, and therefore that circumnayigati 
is possible. He as well as Poseidonius (ii pp. 98-160) disbeli “ong 
ae rl pi » pp. 98-100) disbelieved the tale of 
cae “i sent τ Nekos. He must have derived his complete convi 
» that Libya might be circumnavi Ι ἷ leh 
5 cumnavigated, from geographic 
“heap alte le | g geographical theory, whict 
ag ᾧ contract the dimensions of that continent southward inas ᾿ 
16 thing 1 see) PAE νων ae  Ιδν, υρε τοῦ 
- ing in his belief never had been done, thouch often att 
i, i 
annert (Geog. d. G. und Rém. i, p. 24) errone wager 
ee » Ρ. 24) erroneously says that Strabo and 
d their belief’ on the narrative of Herodotus 
t is wortl ile remarki cs 2 : 
.Σ ὶ ᾿ 1 while remarking that Strabo cannot have read the story in H 
us W ah « an ty “ἢ ᾽ ' angi 2 
= rith much attention, since he mentions Darius as the kine who s ἱ 
» 1 ΤΥ _ y 4 wis ᾿ Τ ; ii 
wt aca round Africa, not Nekés; nor does he take noti f tl τι 
arkabdle statement of thes i st yng 
Ste vese navigators respecti iti 
gators respecting the position of 
vai — ng ting position of the sun, 
There oubtless maiy apocryphal narratives current in his time re 


CARAVAN-TRADE OF THE PHENICIANS. 289 


verbial in ancient times). The circumnavigation of Libya is 
said to have been one of the projects conceived by Alexander 
the Great, and we may readily believe that if he had lived longer, 
it would have been confided to Nearchus, or some other. officer 
of the like competence: nor can there be any reason why it 
should not have succeeded, especially since it would have been 
undertaken from the eastward, to the great profit of geograph- 
‘eal knowledge among the ancients, but with little advantage 
There is then adequate reason for admitting 


to their commerce. 
that these Phenicians rounded the cape of Good Hope from the 


East about 600 B. c., more than two thousand years earlier than 
Vasco de Gama did the same thing from the West: though the 


discovery was in the first ‘instance of no avail, either for com- 


merce or for geographical science. 

Besides the maritime range of Tyre and Sidon, their trade by 
land in the interior of Asia was of great value and importance. 
They were the speculative merchants who directed the march of 
the caravans laden with Assyrian and Egyptian products across 
the deserts which separated them from inner Asia,?— an opera 
tion which presented hardly less difficulties, considering the 
Arabian depredators whom they were obliged to conciliate and 
even to employ as carriers, than the longest coast-voyage. They 
seem to have stood alone in antiquity in their willingness to brave, 
and their ability to surmount, the perils of a distant land-tratfic 3 
and their descendants at Carthage and Utica were not less active 
in pushing caravans far into the interior of Africa. 


sful and unsuccessful, to circumnavigate Africa, as 
98; Cornel. Nep. ap. Plin 


specting attempts, succes 

we may see by the tale of Eudoxus (Strabo, il, 

H. N. ii, 67, who gives the story very differently ; and Pomp. Mela, iii, 9). 
1 Arrian, Exp. Al. vii, 1, 2. 
2 Herodot. i, 1. Φοίνικας 


rea. 
3 See the valuable chapter in Heeren (Ueber den Verkehr der Alten Welt 


i, 2, Abschn. 4, p. 96) about the land trade of the Phenicians. 
The twenty-seventh chapter of the prophet Ezekiel presents a striking 


picture of the general commerce of Tyre. 


, ΄ i . * ΄ 1] ‘a 
ἀπαγινέοντας φόρτια ’Acovpia Te καὶ Αἰγὺπ- 


VOL. III. 13 190c. 


HISTORY OF GREECE. 


CHAPTER XIX 
ASSYRIANS. — BABYLON. 


Tue name of the Assyrians, who formed one wing of this 
early system of intercourse and commerce, rests chiefly upon 
the great cities of Nineveh and Babylon. To the Assyrians of 
Nineveh (as has been already mentioned) is ascribed in early 
times a very extensive empire, covering much of Upper Asia, as 
well as Mesopotamia or the country between the Euphrates and 
the Tigris. Respecting this empire, — its commencement, its ex- 
tent, or even the mode in which it was put down, — nothing 
certain can be affirmed; but it seems unquestionable that many 
great and flourishing cities, — and a population inferior in enter- 
prise, but not in industry, to the Phenicians, — were to be found 
on the Euphrates and Tigris, in times anterior to the first Olym- 
piad. Of these cities, Nineveh on the Tigris and Babylon or 
the Euphrates were the chief ;'! the latter being in some sort of 
dependence, probably, on the sovereigns of Nineveh, yet gov- 
erned by kings or chiefs of its own, and comprehending an here- 
ditary order of priests named Chaldwans, masters of all the 
science and literature as well as of the religious ceremonies cur. 
rent among the people, and devoted, from very early times, to 
that habit of astronomical observation which their brilliant sky so 
much favored. 

The people called Assyrians or Syrians — for among the Greek 
authors no constant distinction is maintained between the two2— 


' Herodot. i,178. Τῆς δὲ ᾿Ασσυρίης ἐστὶ μέν κου καὶ ἄλλα πολίσματα μέ- 


γαλα πολλά" τὸ δὲ ὀνομαστότατον καὶ ἰσχυρότατον, καὶ ἔνϑα agi, τῆς Νίνον 
ἀναστάτου γενομένης, τὰ βασιλήϊα κατεστῆκεε, ἣν Βαβυλών. 

The existence of these and several other great cities is an important item 
to be taken in, in our conception of the old Assyria: Opis on the Tigris, and 
Sittaké on one of the canals very near the Tigris, can be identified ( Xenoph 
Anab. ii, 4, 13-25) : compare Diodor. ii, 11. 

* Herodot. i, 72; iii, 90-91; vii, 63; Strabo, xvi. p. 736, also ii, p. 84, im 
whieh he takes exception to the distribution of the οἰκουμένη (inhabited por 


ASSYRIANS. — BABYLON. 291 


were distributed over the wide territory bounded on the east by 
Mount Zagros and its north-westerly continuation toward Mount 
Ararat, by which they were separated from the Medes, — and 
extending from thence westward and southward tothe Euxine sea, 
the river Halys, the Mediterranean sea, and the Persian gulf, — 
thus covering the whole course of the Tigris and Euphrates 
south of Armenia, as well as Syria and Syria-Palestine, and the 
territory eastward of the Halys called Kappadokia. But the 
Chaldean order of priests appear to have been peculiar to Bab- 
ylon and other towns in its territory, especially between that city 
and the Persian gulf. ‘The vast, rich, and lofty temple of Bélus 
in that city, served them at once as a place of worship and an as 
tronomical observatory ; and it was the paramount ascendency 
of this order which seems to have caused the Babylonian people 
generally to be spoken of as Chaldeans, — though some writers 
have supposed, without any good proof, a conquest of Assyrian 
Babylon by barbarians called Chaldeans from the mountains 
near the Euxine.! 


tion of the globe) made by Eratosthenés, because it did not include in the 
sume compartment (σφραγὶς) Syria proper and Mesopotamia : he calls Ninus 
and Semiramis, Syrians. Herodotus considers the Armenians as colonists 
from the Phrygians (vii, 73). 

The Homeric. names ’Apiuot, ᾿Ερεμβοὶ (the first in the Iliad, ii, 783, the 
second in the Odyssey, iv, 84) coincide with the Oriental name of this race 
Aram ; it seems more ancient, in the Greek habits of speech, than Syrians (see 
Strabo, xvi, p. 785). 

The Hesiodic Catalogue too, as well as Stésichorus, recognized Arabus as 
the son of Hermés, by Thronié, daughter of Bélus (Hesiod, Fragm. 29, ed. 
Marktscheffel; Strabo, i, p. 42). 

1 Heeren, in his account of the Babylonians (Ideen Ober den Verkehr der 
Alten Welt, part i. Abtheilung 2, p. 168), speaks of this conquest of Baby- 
lon by Chaldzan barbarians from the northern mountains as a certain fact, 
explaining the great development of the Babylonian empire under Nabopo- 
lasar and Nebuchadnezzar from 630-580 B. c.; it was, he thinks, the new 
Chaldean conquerors who thus extended their dominion over Judea and 
Phenicia. 

I agree with Volney (Chronologie des Babyloniens, ch. x, p. 215) in 
thinking this statement both unsupported and improbable. Mannert seems 
to suppose the Chaldwans of Arabian origin (Geogr. der Gr. und Rom.., part 
v, s. 2, ch. xii, p. 419). The passages of Strabo (xvi, p. 739) are more fa 
rorable to this opinion than to that of Heeren; but we make out nothing 
distinct respecting the Chaldeans except that they were the priestly crder 


292 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Ὕ 
There were exagger: ΔΝ ΡΝΝΜΜΙΝΗΝΝ ans : ta 
Pre exaggerated statements respecting the antiquity of 


their astronomica! observations, which cannot be traced as of 
a . sitar ' ‘ " . : - a. 
definite and recorded date higher than the era of Nabonassar! 


among the Assyrians aby as they are expr i 
<a κεφ rer of ig lon, as they are expressly termed by Herodo- 
us --- ὡς λέγουσι οἱ Χαλδαῖοι, ἐόντες ἱρέες τούτου τοῦ ϑεοῦ (of Zeus Bélus) 
(Herodot. i, 181). : 

r ) Ὺ ‘ νἣ᾽ se ἐ ν᾿ ‘ “ ia 

The Chalybes and Chaldazi of the northern mountains seem to be known 


~ 


only through Xenophon (Anab. iv, 3, 4; v, 5,17; Cyrop. iii, 2, 1); they ar 
— barbarians, and of their exploits or history ne don wives ae ne il 
ane earliest Chal lean astronomical observation, known to the astrono- 
mer Ptolemy, both precise and of ascertained date to a degree sufficient for 
scientific use, was a lunar eclipse of the 19th March 721 B. «ΩΝ arth 
year of the era οἱ Nabonassar (Ideler, Ueber die Astronomischen Buictinel - 
tungen der Alten, p. 19, Berlin, 1806). Had Ptolemy known any ehder ols 
servations conforming to these conditions, he would not have ‘omitted t 
notice them: his own words in the Almagest testify how mach he valued tl ‘i 
knowledge and compurison of observations taken at distant ails ( cae. 
είς b. ᾿Ρ 62, ap Ideler, Fs δ. p. 1), and at the same time imply that he had 
more ancient than the era of Nabonassar (Alm. iii, p. 77, ap. Idel. p 
‘I hat the Chaldeans had been, long before this period, in the habit of οἱ 
serving the heavens, there is no reason to doubt; and the pate th aa 
eteervations cited by Ptolemy implies (according to the judgment of Mee 
ἰδ. p. 167) long previous practice. The period of two δα and ssrA 
three lunations, after which the moon reverts nearly to the sno OSIti " β 
reference to the apsides and nodes, and after which eclipses me ome Ἢ 
the same order and magnitude, appears to have been discovered by jin : ir 
dzeans i Defectus ducentis viginti tribus mensibus redire in ii orb ἢ ᾿ ie nit 
est, Pliny, H. N. ii, 13), and they deduced from Roda aks mean ee 
tions of the moon with a degree of accuracy which differ i . Ἴ i “ata 
seconds from modern lunar tables (Geminus, a in rua τ lh 
e. 15; Ideler, /. δ. pp. 153, 154, and in his Handbuch ὧν ΟἹ ᾿ ΠῚ" 
Absch. ii, p. 207). er Chronologie, vol. i, 
There seem to have been Chald:ean observations, both made and recorded 
of much greater anti uity than the era of Nabonassar : rene pied τ 
lay much stress on the date of 1903 years anterior to Nex ier Ἢ τ, 
which is mentioned by Simplicius (ad Aristot. de Cito ity mnie : fs 
earliest period of the Chaldean observations sent floes ‘Baby! mips τ 
thenés to Aristotle. Ileler thinks that the Chaldzan sdinaulialaia οὐ ae 
to the era of Nabonassur were useless to astronomers βου the Wi et 
fixed era, or definite cycle, to identify the date of each of them he eg 
mor civil year of the Chaldwans had been from the asin ey ὦ τω 
the Greeks) a lunar year, kept in a certain degree of hareacay. with tl 7 “ 
by cycles of lunar years and intercalation. Down to the era of Nal ; has 
the calender was in confusion, and there was nothing to verify eith ' fergscati 
g 7} ier the time 


CHALDEAN PRIESTS AT BABYLON. 29a 


(747 B. c.), as well as respecting the extent of their acquired 
argely blended with astrological fancies and occult 


knowledge, so | 
But however 


influences of the heavenly bodies on human affairs. 
dge may appear when judged by the 


incomplete their knowle 
be no doubt, that compared 


standard of after-times, there can 
with any of their contemporaries of the sixth century B. C.— 


either Egyptians, Greeks, or Asiatics — they stood preéminent, 


and had much to teach, not only to Thalés and Pythagoras, but 


of accession of the kings, or that of astronomical phenomena observed, ex 
lunar year. In the reign of Nabonassar, 


cept the days and months of this 
the astronomers at Babylon introduced (not into civil use, but for their own 


purposes and records) the Egyptian solar year,— of three hundred and sixty 
five days, or twelve months of thirty days each, with five added days, begin- 
ning with the first of the month Thoth, the commencement of the Egyptian 
year,— and they thus first obtained a continuous and accurate mode of mark- 
ine the date of events. It is not meant that the Chaldeans then for the first 
time obtained from the Egyptians the knowledge of the solar year of three 
lred and sixty-five days, but that they then for the first time adopted it in 
tronomical purposes, fixing the precise moment 
at which they began. Nor is there the least reason to suppose that the era 
of Nabonassar coincided with any political revolution or change of dynasty. 
Ideler discusses this point (pp. 146-173, and Handbuch der Chronol. pp. 
915-220). Syncellus might correctly say —’A70 Na Jovacapov τοὺς χρόνους 
ric τῶν ἄστρων παρατηρήσεως Χαλδαῖοι ἠκρίβωσαν (Chronogr. p. 207). 

We need not dwell upon the back reckonings of the Chaldzans for pe- 
riods of 720,000, 490,000, 470,000 years, mentioned by Cicero, Diodorus, and 
Pliny (Cicero, De Divin. ii, 46; Diod. ii, 31; Pliny, H. N. vii, 57), and 
seemingly presented by Berosus and others as the preface of Babylonian 


hun 
their notation of time for as 


- - 


history. 
It is to be noted that Ptolemy always cited the Chaldean observations 88 


made by “ the Chaldeans,” never naming any individual ; though in all the 
other observations to which he alludes, he is very scrupulous in particulariz- 
Doubtless he found the Chaldgean observa- 
a point which illustrates what is said 
of their civilization, and the 


ing the name of the observer. 
tions registered just in this manner ; 
in the text respecting the collective character 
want of individual development or prominent genius. 

The superiority of the Chaldzan priests to the Egyptian, as astronomica 
observers, is shown by the fact that Ptolemy, though living at Alexandria, 
never mentions the latter as astronomers. and cites no Egyptian observations 
while he cites thirteen Chaldean observations in the years B.c. 721, 720 
593. 502, 491, 383, 382, 245, 237, 229: the first ten being observations of 
lunar eclipses; the last three, of conjunctions of planets and fixed stars 
(Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i, Ab. ii, pp. 195-199). 


294 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


even to later inquirers, such as Eudoxus and Aristotle. ΤῚ 

conception of the revolving celestial sphere, the gnomes καὶ ῥα 
division of the day into twelve parts, are affirmed by eveiistest 
to have been first taught to the Greeks by the Babylonians ; and 


ve — observation of the heavens both by the Egyptian 
anc ¢ we “Howto ‘ i ; ; j age 
E haldzan priests, had determined with considerable exact 
oy both the duration of the solar year and other loneer periods 
of astronomical reeurr 3 ya 
surrence; thus impressi j 
SoG ee 5 i pressing upon intelligent 
ες perfection of their own calendars, and furnishine 
them with a basis not ly for ia 
| asis not only for enlarged observations of their own 
yut also for the dise ars Mr i i 
ut al for the discovery and application of those mathematical 
ie ) ν᾿ « € «< 
theories w hereby astronomy first became a science 
Γ " rc ae ᾿ I, » ® tp ὰ S αν ἡ ie 
Nor was it only the astronomical acquisitions of the priestly 
caste whic A 1 ἐμ: ᾿ ἡ 
a : which distinguished the early Babylonians The social 
eon » fertility Ἢ igi 
7 ition, the fe rtility of the country, the dense population, and 
the persevering ἃ Ὑ of the inhabi , | 
persevering industry of the inhabitants, were not less remark 
able. Res ect r Ni Lev 2 at ιν 
specting Nineveh,? once the greatest of 
} g ieveh,” once the greatest of the Assyrian 


' Herodot. ii, 109. ᾿ 
* The ancie vi ft ie Γ i 
“Ὁ ν᾿ nt Ninus or Nineveh was situated on the eastern bank of the 
eris, nearly ite j | ei 
μὲ : uly Opposite the modern town of Mousul or Mosul. Herodotu (i 
93) and Stral Ἵ 737 i nye aan. 
patie tho (Xvi, p. 737) both speak of it as being destroyed; but Τα. 
tus (Ann. x 3) i li ili liga 
alae μη 13) and Ammian. Marcell. (xviii, 7) mention it as subsisting 
ruins ha been long remarked (see Thevenot, Voyages. lib. ; | ε 
p. 176, and Niebuhr, Reisen, vol. ii 36 ‘a ee 
begin ! sen, vol. 1, p. 360), but have never been eXamined 
« “ιν r r Rs } ἮΝ 
— unti recently by Rich, Ainsworth, and others: sce Ritter. Wes 
d 2 n, b. iii, Abtheil. iii, Absehn. i, 5. 45, pp. 171-221 | iii 
tésias, according t ma {ἃ ) Nin 
aoe ; ceording to Diodorus (ii, 3), placed Ninus or Nineve] ] 
suphrates, which we must presume to be an i a. 
ee ee pres » to be an inadvertence,— probably of Di 
5 self, for Ktesias would be less likely 
ss likely than he to conf } 
yhrates anc ae ; "Ὁ Ὁ σηδδδ aida 
2 ΝΘ 1 the Ἵ igris. Compare Wesseling ad Diodor. ii, 3. and Bahr : 
tesiw Fragm. ii, Assyr. p. 392. iil ΓΝ 
Manner teographie δ ὃ 
᾿ς - : (Geographie der Gr. und Rém. part ν, ο. 14 pp. 439-448) di 
mutes the identity of these ruins wi ἐπέ 
; se ruins with the ancient city of Ni i 
eae ht city of Ninus or Nineveh 
ause, lis had been the fact, X an 
. act, Xenophon and the Ten T 
| ; ᾿ ; ὃ 10 Len Thousand Greeks 
must have passed d aOR ρον 
as: irectly over them in the re 
aay γ. 1€ retreat along the easter 
page tama Y g the eastern bank of 
g ard: and Xe i 
pli. τ ὌΝ pi who particularly notices the deserted 
arissa and Mesp says i 3 ) 
€splla, says nothing of the gre: 


flourishing Assyrian capital. it ruin of this που 


This argume e ὅ 
ble, that I came to the same Mtesben conte aang she igo 
— as to the real site of the city, never sinieas 
a 2 r ith ; 
~ ieee seta ty difficulty, by showing that the ruins Opposilg 
ety correspond to the situation of that deserted city which Xeno 


annert, though his con- 
ed to me satisfactory 


BABYLON. — CANALS. .- FORTIFICATIONS 29h 


cities, we have no good information, nor can we safely reason 
from the analogy of Babylon, inasmuch as the peculiarities of the 
latter were altogether determined by the Euphrates, while Nine- 
veh was seated considerably farther north, and on the east bank 
of the Tigris: but Herodotus gives us valuable particulars re- 
specting Babylon as an eye-witness, and we may judge by his ac- 
count respecting its condition after much suffering from the Per- 
sian conquest, what it had been a century earlier in the days of 
its full splendor. 

The neighboring territory receiving but little rain,! owed its 
fertility altogether to the annual overflowing of the Euphrates, on 
which the labor bestowed, for the purpose of limiting, regularizing, 
and diffusing its supply of water, was stupendous. Embankments 
along the river, __ artificial reservoirs in connection with it, to re- 
ceive an excessive increase, — new curvilinear channels, dug for 
the water in places where the stream was too straight and rapid, 
— broad and deep canals crossing the whole space between the 
Suphrates and the Tigris, and feeding numerous rivulets? or 
ditches which enabled the whole breadth of land to be irrigated, 
__all these toilsome applications were requisite to insure due 
moisture for the Babylonian soil; but they were rewarded with 
an exuberance of produce, in the various descriptions of grain, 


alls Mespila: the difference of name in this case is not of very great 


phon c 
). Consult also Forbiger, Handbuch der al- 


importance (Ritter, ut sup. p. 175 

ten Geographie, sect. 96, p. 612. 
The situation of Nineveh here pointed out is exactly what we should ex- 

e to the conquests of the Median kings : it lies in that part 


pect in referenc 
sts which 


of Assyria bordering on Media, and in the course of the conque 
the king Kyaxarés afterwards extended farther on to the Halys. (See Ap- 
pendix at the end of this chapter.) 

1 Herodot. i, 193. Ἡ γῆ τῶν ᾿Ασσυρίων ὕεται μὲν ὀλίγῳ --- while he speaks 
of rain falling at Thebes in Egypt as a prodigy, which never happened ex- 
cept just at the moment when the country was conquered by Cambysés, —o? 
yap δὴ ὕεται τὰ ἄνω τῆς Αἰγύπτου τὸ παρώπαν (iii, 10) It is ποῦ unimpor- 
tant to notice this distinction between the Jitile rain of Babylonia, and the no 
rain of Upper Egypt, —as a mark of measured assertion in the historian 
from whom so much of our knowledge of Grecian history is derived. 

It chanced to rain hard during the four days which the traveller Niebutt 
spent in going from the ruins of Babylon to Bagdad, at the end of Novera 
ber 1763 (Reisen, vol. ii, p. 292). 

2 Herodot. i, 193; Xenophon, Anab.i,7 15; ii, 4, 13-22. 


296 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


«uch as Herodotus hardly dares to particularize. The Country 


produced no trees except the date-palm, which was turned to ac 
count in many different ways, and from the fruit of which. both 
copious and of extraordinary size, wine as well 


a as bread were 
made.! Moreover, Babylonia was still more barren of stone than 


of wood, so that buildings as well as walls were constructed al- 


most entirely of brick, for which the earth was well adapted ; 
while a flow of mineral bitumen, found near the town and river 
of Is, higher up the Euphrates, served for cement. Such perse- 
vering and systematic labor, applied for the purpose of irriga- 
tion, excites our astonishment ; yet the description of what was 


done for defence is still more imposing. Babylon, traversed in 


the middle by the Euphrates, was surrounded by walls 


hundred feet in height, seventy-five feet in thickness, and compos- 
ing a square of which each side was one hundred 
stadia (or nearly fifteen English miles) in length: 


outside of the walls was a broad and deep mo: 


three 


and twenty 
around the 
ut from whence the 
material for the bricks composing them had been excavated; 
while one hundred brazen gates served for ingress and egress, 
Besides, there was an interior wall less thick, | 


out still very strong; 
and as a still farther obstruction to invaders 


from the north and 
north-east, another high and thick wall was built at 
from the city, across much of the space between the Euphrates 
and the Tigris, — called the wall of Media. seemingly a little to 
the north of that point where the two rivers most nearly approach 
to each other, and joining the Tigris on its west bank. Of the 
houses many were three or four stories high, and the broad and 
straight streets, unknown in a Greek town until the 


some miles 


distribution 


' About the date-palms (φοίνεκες)} in the ancient Babylonia, see Theo 
phrastus, Hist. Plant. ii, 6, 2-6: Xenoph. Cyrop. vii, 5,12; Anab. ii, 3. δ. 
Diodor. ii, 53: there were some which bore no fruit. but which afforded good 
wood for house-purposes and furniture 

Theophrastus gives the same general idea of the fertility and produce of 
the soi] in Babylonia as Herodotus, thouch the two hundred-fold, and some- 
times three hundred-fold, which was stated to the latter as the produce of the 
land in grain, appears in his statement cut down to fift 
fold (Hist. Plant. viii, 7, 4). 

Respecting the numerous useful purposes for which the date-palm was 
made to serve (a Persian song enumerated three hundred and sixty), seq 
Strabo, xiv, p. 742; Ammian Marcell. xxiv, 3. 


y-fold, or one hundred: 


TEMPLE OF BELUS. 297 


of the peireeus by Hippodamus, near the time of the Sruaut 
nesian war, were well calculated to heighten the eee 
raised by the whole spectacle in a visitor like eee: Ἷ ‘ 
royal palace, with its memorable terraces or hanging ΣῊΝ 
formed the central and commanding edifice in one half of the 
city, — the temple of Bélus in the other half. nae 
[hat celebrated temple, standing upon a basis of one square 
siadium, and inclosed in a precinct of two square stadia in di- 
mension, was composed of eight solid towers, built one above the 
other, and is alleged by Strabo to have been as much as a re 
or furlong high (the height is not specified by Herodotus) sit w " 
full of costly decorations, and possessed an extensive nt 
praperty Along the banks of the river, in its pasenge pega 
the city, were built spacious quays, and a bridge on stone p! a 
for the placing of which —as Herodotus was told — oe 
had caused the river Euphrates to be drained off into om arge 
side reservoir and lake constructed higher up its course.° 


ι Herodot. i, 178, Strabo, xiv, p. 738; Arrian, E. A. vil, 17, ᾧ — 
does not say that it was a stadium in perpendicular height: we ΜΣ ΜΕΙ δῇ 
that the stadium represents the entire distance in upward sec coger 
bottom to the top. He as well as Arrian say that Xerxes — he 
the temple of Bélus and all the other temples at Babylon ἐπ ihe . 
iii, 16, 6; vii, 17, 4); he talks of the intention ὁ sie ποι 
rebuild it, and of his directions given to level new ΠΕΒΙΑΒΟΙΟ, — ηιος 
away the loose earth and ruins. ‘This cannot be reconciled with eer ze 
tive of Herodotus, nor with the statement of Pliny ( vi, OO Tee sid “eaygl 
it to be true. Xerxés plundered the temple of much of μεν yproggle es 
ornaments, but that he knocked down the vast building an a ae 
Babylonian temples, is incredible. Babylon always continued one 0 


σκαψεῖ 


thief cities of the Persian empire. 
Wis sphere in the Ων respecting Babylon, is taken almost pip 
from Herodotus: I have given briefly the most prominent pees ἜΣ 
interesting narrative (i, 178-193), which well deserves to be read at length. 

Herodotus is in fact our only original witness, ene ΤῊΝ bet = 
observation and going into details, respecting the marvels © pester 
Ktésias, if his work had remained, would have been another origina ide ae 
but we have only a few extracts from him by Diodorus. oe ager μὰ 
to have visited Babylon, nor can it be affirmed that Kleitarc ταῦ rt 
Arrian had Aristobulus to copy, and is valuable as far as he ae 8 . 
does not enter into many particulars respecting the maguitade ; Bh ἘΝ 
its appurtenances. Berosus also, if we possessed his book, ἘΠ st ἝΝ 
an eye-witness of the state of Babylon more than a century and ¢ 

15* 


298 HISTORY OF GBEECE. 


Besides this great town of Babylon itself, there were through 
out the neighborheod, between the canals which united the . Eu- 


than Herodotus, but the few fragments remaining are hardly at all descriptive 
(see Berosi Fragm. pp. 64-67, ed. Richter). 

The magnitude of the works described by Herodotus naturally provokes 
suspicions of exaggeration; but there are good grounds for trusting him, in 


my judgment, on all points which fell under his own vision and means of 


verification, as distinguished from past facts, on which he could do no more 
than give what he heard. He had hestowed much attention on Assyria and 
its phenomena, as is evident from the fact that he had written (or prepared to 
write, if the suspicion be admissible that the work was never completed, — 
Fabricius, Biblioth. Greec. ii, 20, 5) a special Assyrian history, which has not 
reached us (᾿Ασσυρίοισι λόγοισι, i, 106-184). He is very precise in the 
measures of which he speaks; thus having described the dimensions of the 
walls in “royal cubits,” he goes on immediately to tell us how much that 
measure differs from an ordinary cubit. He designedly suppresses a part 
of what he had heard respecting the produce of the Babylonian soil, from 
the mere apprehension of not being believed. 

Τὸ these reasons for placing faith in Herodotus we may add another, not 
less deserving of attention. That which seems incredible in the construc- 
tions which he deseribes, arises simply from their enormous bulk, and the 
frichtful quantity of human labor which must have been employed to execute 
them. He does not tell us, like Berosus (Fragm. p. 66), that these wonder- 
ful fortifications were completed in fifteen days, — nor like Quintus Curtius, 
that the leneth of one stadium was completed on each suecessive day of the 
year (v, 1, 26). To bring to pass all that Herodotus has described, is a mere 
question of time, patience, number of laborers, and cost of maintaining them, 
—for the materials were both close at hand and inexhaustible. 

Now what would be the limit imposed upon the power and will of the old 
kines of Babylonia on these points? We can hardly assign that limit with 
60 much confidence as to venture to pronounce a statement of Herodotus 
incredible, when he tells us something which he has seen, or verified from 
eye-witnesses. The Pyramids and other works in Egypt are quite sufficient 
to make us mistrustful of oar own means of appreciation; and the great 
wall of China (extending for twelve hundred English miles along what was 
once the whole northern frontier of the Chinese empire,— from twenty to 
twenty-five feet hijh,— wide enough for six horses to run abreast, and 
furnished with a suitable number of gates and bastions) contains more material 
than all the buildings of the British empire put together, according to Barrow ’s 
estimate (Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. i, p. 7, ¢.v.; and 
Ideler, Ueber die Zeitrechnung der Chinesen, in the Abhandlungen of the 
Berlin Academy for 1837, ch. 3, p. 291) 

Ktésias gave the circuit of the walls of Babylon as three hundred and 
sixty stadia; Kleitarchus, three hundred and sixty-five stadia; Quintus 
Curtius, three hundred and six)y-eight stadia; and Strabo, three hundred 


BABYLONIAN  NDUSTRY. 299 


phrates and the Tigris, many rich and populous villages, while 
Borsippa and other considerable towns were situated lower down 


and eighty stadia, a square of one hundred and twenty stadia each side. 
Grosskurd (ad Strabon. xvi, p. 738), Letronne, and Heeren, all presume that 
the smaller number must be the truth, and that Herodotus must have been 
misinformed ; and Grosskurd further urges, that Herodotus cannot have seen 
the walls, inasmuch as he himself tells us that Darius caused them to be 
razed after the second siege and reconquest (Herodot. iii, 159). But upon 
this we may observe: First, the expression (τὸ τεῖχος περιεῖλε) does not 
imply that the wall was so thoroughly and entirely razed by Darius as to 
leave no part standing, — still less, that the great and broad moat was in all 
its circuit filled up and levelled. This would have been a most laborious 
operation in reference to such high and bulky masses, and withal not neces- 
sary for the purpose of rendering the town defenceless ; for which purpose 
‘he destruction of certain portions of the wall is sufficient. Next, Herodotus 
speaks distinctly of the walls and ditch as existing in his time, when he saw 
the place, which does not exclude the possibility that numerous breaches may 
have been designedly made in them, or mere openings left in the walls with- 
out any actual gates, for the purpose of obviating all idea of revolt. But, 
however this latter fact may be, certain it is that the great walls were either 
continuous, or discontinuous only to the extent of these designed breaches, 
when Herodotus saw them. He describes the town and its phenomena in the 
present tense: κέεται ἐν πεδίῳ μεγάλῳ, μέγαϑος ἐοῦσα μέτωπον ἕκαστον 120 
σταδίων, ἐούσης τετραγώνου " οὗτοι στάδιοι τῆς περιόδου τῆς πόλιος γίνονται 
συνώπαντες 480. Τὸ μὲν νῦν μέγαϑος τοσοῦτόν ἐστι τοῦ ἄστεος τοῦ Βαβυ- 
λωνίου. ᾿Ἑκεκόσμητο δὲ ὡς οὐδὲν ἄλλο πόλισμα τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν " ταφρὸς μὲν 
πρῶτά μιν βάϑεα τε καὶ evtpea καὶ πλέη ὕδατος περιϑέει" μετὰ δὲ, τεῖχος 
εντήκοντα μὲν πηχέων βασιληΐων ἐὸν τὸ εὗρος, ὕψος δὲ, διηκοσίων πηχέων, 
Ὁ δὲ βασιληΐος πηχὺς τοῦ μετρίου ἐστὶ πήχεως μέζων τρισὶ δακτυλίοισι (6. 
178). Again (c. 181),— Τοῦτο μὲν δὴ τὸ τεῖχος ϑώρηξ ἐστι" ἕτερον δὲ 
ἔσωϑεν τεῖχος περιϑεῖ, οὗ πολλῷ τέῳ ἀσϑενέστερον τοῦ ἑτέρου τείχους, 
στεινότερον δέ. Then he describes the temple of Zeus Béius, with its vast 
dimensions, — καὶ ἐς ἐμὲ τοῦτο ἔτι ἐὸν, δύο σταδίων πάντη, ἐὸν τετράγωνον, — 
in the language of one who had himself gone up to the top of it. After 
having mentioned the striking present phenomena of the temple, he specifies 
a statue of solid gold, twelve cubits high, which the Chaldzans told him had 
once been there, but which he did not see, and he carefully marks the dis- 
tinction in his language, — ἦν dé ἐν τῷ τεμένεϊ τούτῳ ἔτι τὸν χρόνον ἔκεινον 
καὶ ἀνδριὰς δυώδεκα πήχεων, χρύσεος στέρεος. Ἐγὼ μὲν μιν οὐκ εἶδον " τὰ de 
λέγεται ὑπὸ Χαλδαίων, ταῦτα λέγω (c. 183). 

The argument, therefore, by which Grosskurd justifies the rejection of the 
statement of Herodotus is not to be reconciled with the language of the 
historian: Herodotus certainly saw both the walls and the ditch. Ktésias 
saw them too, and his statement of the circuit, as three hundred and sixty 


300 HISTORY OF GREECE 


on the Euphrates iteelf. And the industry, agricultural as well 
as manufacturing, of the collective population, was not less per- 
severing than productive: their linen, cotton, and woollen fabrics, 
and their richly ornamented carpets, were celebrated throughout 
all the Eastern regions. ‘Their cotton was brought in part from 
islands in the Persian gulf, while the flocks of sheep tended by 
the Arabian nomads supplied them with wool finer even than that 
of Milétus or Tarentum. Besides the Chaldwan order of priests, 
there seem to have been among them certain other tribes with 
peculiar hereditary customs: thus there were three tribes, prob- 
ably near the mouth of the river, who restricted themselves to 
the eating of fish alone; but we have no evidences of a military 
caste (like that in Egypt) nor any other hereditary profession. 


stadia, stands opposed to that of four hundred and eighty stadia, which appears 


in Herodotus. But the authority of Herodotus is, in my judgment, so much 
superior to that of Ktésias, that I accept the larger figure as more worthy of 
credit than the smaller. Sixty English miles of circuit is, doubtless, a won 
der, but forty-five miles in cireuit is a wonder also: granting means and will 
to execute the lesser of these two, the Babylonian kings can hardly be 
supposed inadequate to the greater. 

To me the height of these artificial mountains, called walls, appears even 
more astonishing than their length or breadth. Yet it is curious that on this 
point the two eye-witnesses, Herodotus and Ktésias, both agree, with only the 
difference between royal cubits and common cubits. Herodotus states the 
height at two hundred royal cubits: Ktésias, at fifty fathoms, which are 
equal to two hundred common cubits (Diod. li, 7),— τὸ δὲ ὑψος, ὡς mer 


τ Ψ ine ¥ ~ 
᾿ ᾿ - at , oo 4 
ViOL Τῶν VEWTEPWY ἐγραψᾶν, TI Xw! 


Κτησιας φησι, TEVTIKOVTR Opyvlwy, ὡς UE EWTE 
πεντήκοντα. Olearius (ad Philostratum Vit. Apollon. Tyan. i, 25) shows 
plausible reason for believing that the more recent writers (νεώτεροι) cut 
down the dimensions stated by Ktésias simply because they thought such a 
vast height incredible. The difference between the royal cubit and the com- 
mon cubit, as Herodotus on this occasion informs us, was three digits in 
favor of the former; his two hundred royal cubits are thus equal to three 
hundred and thirty-seven feet eight inches: Ktésias has not attended to the 
difference between royal cubits and common cubits, and his estimate, there- 
fore. is lower than that of Herodotus by thirty-seven feet eight inches. 

On the whole. I cannot think that we are justified, either by the authority 
of such counter-testimony as can be produced, or by the intrinsic wonder οἱ 
the case, in rejecting the dimensions of the walls of Babylon as given hy 
Herodotus. 

Quintus Curtius states that a large proportion of the inclosed space was 
net occupied by dwellings, but sown and planted (v, 1, 26: compare Diodor 


ii, 9). 


BABYLON AS SEEN BY HERODOTUS 301 


In order to present any conception of what Assyna was, in the 
early days of Grecian hisiory, and during the two centuries pres 
ceding the conquest of Kabylon by Cyrus in 9036 B. C., we un- 
fortunately have no witness earlier than Herodotus, who did not 
see Babylon until near a century after that event, — about 
seventy years after its still more disastrous revolt and second 
subjugation by Darius, Babylonia had become one of the twenty 
satrapies of the Persian empire, and besides paying a larger reg- 
ular tribute than any of the other nineteen, supplied from its ex- 
uberant soil provision for the Great King and his countless host 
of attendants during one-third part of the year.! Yet it was 
then in astate of comparative degradation, having had its im- 
mense walls breached by Darius, and having afterwards under- 
gone the ill usage of Xerxés, who, since he stripped its temples, 
and especially the venerated temple of Bélus, of some of their 
richest ornaments, would probably be still more reckless in his 
mode of dealing with the civil editices.* If in spite of such in- 
fictions, and in spite of that manifest evidence of poverty and 
suffering in the people which Herodotus expressly notices, it con- 
tinned to be what he describes, still counted as almost the chief 
city of the Persian empire, both in the time of the younger Cy- 
rus and in that of Alexander,3— we may judge what it must 
once have been, without either foreign satrap or foreign tribute,! 
under its Assyrian kings and Chaldwan priests, during the last 
of the two centuries which intervened between the era of Nabon- 
assar and the capture of the city by Cyrus the Great. Though 
several of the kings, during the first of these two centuries, had 
contributed much to the great works of Babylon, yet it was during 
the second century of the two, after the capture of Nineveh by 
the Medes, and under Nebuchadnezzar and Nitodkris, that the 
kings attained the maximum of their power, and the city its 
greatest enlargement. It was Nebuchadnezzar who constructed 


' Herodot. i, 196. 

* Arrian, Exp. Al. iii, 16, 6; vii, 17,3; Quint. Curtius, tii, 3, 16. 

3 Xenoph. Anab. i, 4, 11; Arrian, Exp. Al. iii, 16,3. καὶ Gua τοῦ πολέμου 
τὸ ἄϑλον ἡ Βαϑυλὼν καὶ τὰ Σοῦσα ἐφαίνετο. 

4 See the statement of the large receipts of the satrap Tritantachines 
and his immense establishment of horses and Indian dogs (Ilerodot. i 
192). 


202 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the seaport Terédon, at the mouth of the Euphrates, and who 
probably excavated the long ship canal of near four hundred 
miles, which joined it, — which was perhaps formed partly ὕω a 
natural western branch of the Euphrates.! The brother of the poet 
Alkzeus, — Antimenidas, who served in the Babylonian nite 
and distinguished himself by his personal valor (6 10-580 B. aX 
— would have seen it in its full glory 2 he is the earliest Giresk 
of whom we hear individually in connection with the μιρδυ]ο. 
nians. It marks® strikingly the contrast between the a 


rai 9 


kings and the Babylonian kings, on whose ruin they rose, that 
while the latter incurred immense expense to facilitate the pli 
munication between Babylon and the sea, the former artificially 
impeded the lower course of the Tigris, in order that their zis 
dence at Susa might be out of the reach of assailants. 

That which strikes us most, and which must have struck the 
first Grecian visitors much more, both in Assyria and Egypt ig 
the unbounded command of naked human strength nousowed ie 
these early kings, and the effect of mere mass and indefatigable 
perseverance, unaided either by theory or by artifice, in the ac- 


I τ » » ic ¢ γέ 4 » awe Ϊ Ἢ 
| There is a valuable examination of the lower course of the Euphrates 
rier . J ‘ γῷ Υ͂ μ ν ἡ ; } i 
with the changes which 1 has undergone, in Ritter, West-Asien, b. iii. Ab 
a wal til ra Μ Ὶ . ν ‘ = . ite ᾿ ; | ‘ 
theil. ili, Abschnitt i, secv. 29, pp. 45-49, and the passage from Abydenus in 
the latter page. | Ι 
For the distance between Terédon or Diridétis, at the mouth of the Eu- 
phrates (which remained separate from that of the Tigris until the first 
century of the Christian e aby } , ἢ : 
sa Ἵ the Christian era), to Babylon, see Strabo, ii, p. 80; xvi, p. 
ve * , 
It is important to keep i 
‘ ep in mind the warning given by Ritte at none ¢ 
the maps of the course of tne river E ah ᾿ἀνυυωδδρολυρω νοὶ 
+. , course of tne river Euphrates, prepared previously to the 
publication of Colonel Chesney’s expedition in 1836, are to be trusted. That 
expedi. on gave the first complete and accurate survey of the course of the 
"παρῇ and ba to the detection of many mistakes previously committed by 
annert, Reichard, : ar able geographers ' 
κὰν — urd, md other able geographers and chartographers. To 
Ὁ immense mass of information contained in Ritter’s comprehensive and 
laborious work, is to be added the farther merit, that he is always careful in 
pointing out where the geographical data are insufficient and fall short of 
apts r vs] Tent.Acie Th ot 11} ᾿ 
certainty. See West-Asien, B. πὶ, Abtheilung iii, Abschnitt i, sect. 41, p 
959. 
Q ses νὴ . . 
ane xiii, p. 617, with the mutilated fragment of Alkwus, which Ὁ 
ii " , - . i , 
: er has so ingeniously corrected (Rhenisch. Museum, i, 4, p. 287). 
Strabo, xvi, p. 740. 


POWER OF BABYLONIAN KINGS 303 


eumplishment of gigantic results.| In Assyria, the results were 
in great part exaggerations of enterprises in themselves useful to 
the people for irrigation and defence: religious worship was min- 
sstered to in the like manner, as well as the personal fancies and 
ir kings: while in Egypt the latter class predomi- 


pomp of the 
We scarcely trace in either of them 


nates more over the former. 
the higher sentiment of art, which owes its first marked develop- 
ment to Grecian susceptibility and genius. But the human mind 
is in every stage of its progress, and most of all in its rude and 


unreflecting period, strongly impressed by visible and tangible 
magnitude, and awe-struck by the evidences of great power. To 
this feeling, for what exceeded the demands of practical conve- 
nienee and security, the wonders both in Egypt and Assyria 
chiefly appealed; while the execution of such colossal works de- 
monstrates habits of regular industry, a concentrated population 
under one government, and above all, an implicit submission to 
ontrasting forcibly with the small 


the regal and priestly sway, — ( 
and western Europe, where- 


autonomous communities of Greece 
in the will of the individual ertizen was so much more energetic 
and uncontrolled. The acquisition of habits of regular industry, 
ign to the natural temper of man, was brought about m 
ἢ China and Hindostan, before it had ac- 
in Europe ; but it was purchased either by 
to a despotic rule, or by imprisonment within 
Even during the 


so fore 
Egypt and Assyria, 
quired any footing 

prostrate obedience 

the chain of a consecrated institution of caste. 
Homeric period of Greece, these countries had attained a certain 
civilization in mass, without the acquisition of any high mental 
or the development of any individual genius: the reli- 
il sanction, sometimes combined and sometimes 
one his mode of life, his creed, his 
duties, and his place in society, without leaving any scope for the 
will or reason of the agent himself. Now the Phenicians and 
of individual impulse and energy 
this type of civilization, though 
they are still Asiatic. 


jualities 
gious and politic: 
separate, determined for every 


Carthaginians manifest a degree 
which puts them greatly above 
in their tastes, social feelings, and religion, 


ith regard to the ancient kings 


| Diodor. (i, 31) states this point justly w 
rac πολυχειρίας Kataokewm 


of Egypt — ἔργα μέγαλα καὶ ϑαυμαστὰ διὰ 
σαντας, ἀϑάνατα τῆς ἑαυτῶν 66’ ος καταλιπεῖν ὑπομνήματα. 


- ELE αὶ me 


ii 


304 HISTORY OF GREECE 


And ever. the Babylonian community, though their Chaldwan 
priests are the parallel of the Egyptian priests, with a less meas- 
are of ascendency, combine with their industrial aptitude and 
constancy of purpose something of that strenuous ferocity of 
character which marks so many people of the Semitic race, — 
Jews, Phenicians, and Carthaginians. These Semitic people 
stand distinguished as well from the Egyptian life, — enslaved by 
childish caprices and antipathies, and by endless frivolities of 
ceremonial detail, —as from the flexible, many-sided, and self- 
organizing Greek ; not only capable of opening both for himself 
and for the human race the highest walks of intellect, and the 
full creative agency of art, but also gentler by far in his private 
sympathies and dealings than his contemporaries on the Euphra- 
tes, the Jordan, or the Nile, —for we are not of course to com- 
pare him with the exigencies of western Europe in the eighteenth 
and nineteenth centuries. 

Both in Babylonia and in Egypt, the vast monuments, em- 
bankments, and canals, executed by collective industry, appeared 
the more remarkable to an ancient traveller by contrast with the 
desert regions and predatory tribes immediately surrounding 
them. West of the Euphrates, the sands of Arabia extended 
northward, with little interruption, to the latitude of the gulf of 
Issus; they even covered the greater part of Mesopotamia,! or 
the country between the Euphrates and the Tigris, beginning a 
few days’ journey northward of the wall called the wall of 
Media above mentioned, which — extending westward from the 
Tigris to one of the canals joining the Euphrates — had been 
erected to protect Babylon, against the incursion of the Medes. 


' See the description of this desert in Xenoph. Anab. i, 5, 1-8. 

> The Ten Thousand Greeks passed from the outside to the inside of the 
wall of Media: it was one hundred feet high, twenty feet wide, and was r?- 
ported to them as extending twenty parasangs or six hundred stadia (= sev- 
enty miles) in length (Xenoph. Anab. i‘, 4,12). Eratosthenés called it 
τὸ Σεμιράμ δος διατείχισμα (Strabo, ii, p. 80): it was seemingly about twen 
ty-five miles north of Bagdad. 

There is some confusion about the wall of Media: Mannert (Geogr. der 
G. und R. v, 2, p. 280) and Forbiger also (Alte Georg. sect. 97, p. 616, note 
94) appear to have confounded the ditch dug by special order of Artaxerxés 
40 oppose the march of the younger Cyrus, with the Nahar-Malcha or Bey 


NINEVEH AND ITS REMAINS. 305 


Eastward of the Tigris again, along the range of Mount Zagros, 
but at no great distance from the river, were found the Elymeai, 
Kossei, Uxii, Paretakéni, ete.,— tribes which, to use the ex 
pression of Strabo,! “as inhabiting a poor country, were under 
the necessity of living by the plunder of their neighbors.” Such 
rude bands of depredators on the one side, and such wide tracts 
of sand on the two others, without vegetation or water, contrast- 
ed powerfully with the industry and productiveness of Babylonia. 
Babylon itself is to be considered, not as one continuous city, but 
as a city together with its surrounding district inclosed within 
immense walls, the height and thickness of which were in them- 
selves a sufficient defence, so that the place was assailable only 
at its gates. In case of need, it would serve as shelter for the 
persons and property of the village inhabitants in Babylonia; 
and we shall see hereafter how useful under trying circumstances 
such a resource was, when we come to review the invasions of 
Attica by the Peloponnesians, and the mischiefs occasioned by a 
temporary crowd pouring in from the country, so as to overcharge 
the intra-mural accommodations of Athens. Spacious as Baby- 
ion was, however, it is affirmed by Strabo that Ninus or Nineveh 
was considerably larger. 


APPENDIX. 


Since the first edition of these volumes, the interesting work of Mr. Lay- 
ard, —‘“ Nineveh and its Remains,” together with his illustrative Drawings, 
-- The Monuments of Nineveh,’—have been published. And through his 
unremitting valuable exertions in surmounting all the difficulties connected 
with excavations on the spot, the British Museum has been enriched with a 
valuable collection of real Assyrian sculptures and other monuments. A 


canal between the Tigris and the Euphrates: see Xenoph. Anab. i, 7, 
15. 

It is singnlar that Herodotus makes no mention of the wall of Media, 
though his subject (i, 185) naturally conducts him to it: he seems to have 
sailed down the Euphrates to Babylon, and must, therefore, have seen it, if 
it had really extended to the Euphrates, as some authors have imagined 
Probably, however, it was not kept up with any care, even in his time, seeing 
that its original usefulness was at an end, after the whole of Asia, from ths 
Euxine to the Persian gulf, became subject to the Persians 

’ Strabo, xvi, p. 744. 

VOL. Ill. 2000 


LE ». “ὄ.... 


i 


806 HISTOKY OF GREECE 


namber of similar rel cs of Assyrian antiquity, obtained by M. Botta and 
others, have also been deposited in the museum of the Louvre at Paris. 

In respect to Assyrian 1rt, indeed to the history of art in general, a new 
world has thus been opened, which promises to be fruitful of instruction 
especially when we consider that the ground out of which the recent δοιαὶ 
sitions have been obtained, has been yet most imperfectly examined, and 
may be expected to yield a much ampler harvest hereafter, assuming cir 
cumstances tolerably favorable to investigation. ‘The sculptures to which 
we are now introduced, with all their remarkable peculiarities of style ana 
idca, must undoubtedly date from the eighth or seventh century B. C., ἃ! 
the latest, — and may be much earlier. ‘The style which they display 
forms a parallel and subject of comparison, though in many points ex- 
tremely different, to that of early Egypt,— at a time when the ideal com 
binations of the Greeks were, as far as we know, embodied only in epic and 
lyric poetry. 

Sut in respect to early Assyrian history, we have yet to find out whether 
much new information can be safely deduced from these interesting monu 
ments. ‘The cuneiform inscriptions now brought to light are indeed very 
numerous: and if they can be deciphered, on rational and trustworthy 
principles, we can hardly fail to acquire more or less of positive knowledge 
respecting a period now plunged in total darkness. But from the mono 
nients of art alone, it would be unsafe to draw historical inferences. For 
example, when we find sculptures representing a king taking a city by as 
sant, or receiving captives brought to him, etc., we are not to conclude that 
this commemorates any real and positive conquest recently made by the As. 
svriins. Our knowledge of the subjects of Greek sculpture on temples is 
quite sufficient to make us disallow any such inference, unless there be some 
corroborative proof Some means mast first be discovered, of discriminat 
ing historical from mythical subjects: a distinction which I here notice, the 
raiher, because Mr. Layard shows occasional tendency to overlook it in hi 
interesting remarks and explanations: see, especially, vol. ii, ch. vi, p. 409. 

From the rich and abundant discoveries made at Nimroud, combined with 
those at Kouyunjik and Khorsabad, Mr. Layard is inclined to comprehend 
all these three within the circnit of ancient Nineveh; admitting for that cir 
cuit the prodigious space alleged by Diodorus out of Ktésias, four hundred 
and eighty stadia or near sixty English miles. (See Nineveh and its Re- 
mains, vol. ti, ch. ii, pp. 242-253.) Mr. Layard considers that the northwest 
portion of Nimroud exhibits monuments more ancient, and at the same time 
better in style and execution, than the south-west portion, — or than Kouy- 
πη} κ and Khorsabad (vol. ii, ch. i, p. 204; ch. iii, p. 305). If this hypothe- 
sis, as to the ground covered by Nineveh, be correct, probably future exca- 
vations will confirm it —or, if incorrect, refute it. But I do not at all reject 
the supposition on the simple ground of excessive magnitude: on the con- 
trary, I should at once believe the statement, if it were reported by Herodo- 
tus after a visit to the spot, like the magnitude of Babylon. The testimony of 
Ktésiis is, indeed, very inferior in value to that of Herodotus: yet it ought 


NINEVEH AND ITS REMAINS. 867 


nardly to be cutweighed by the supposed improbability of so great a walled 
space, when we consider how little we know where to set bounds to the pow- 
er of the Assyrian kings in respect to command of human labor for any 
process merely simple and toilsome, with materials both near and inexhaust- 
ible. Not to mention the great wall of China, we have only to look at the 
Picts Wall, and other walls built by the Romans in Britain, to satisfy our 
selves that a great length of fortification, under circumstances much less fa 
vorable than the position of the ancient Assyrian kings, is noway incredible 
in itself. Though the walls of Nineveh and Babylon were much larger than 
those of Paris as it now stands, yet when we compare the two ποῖ merely in 
size, but in respect of costliness, elaboration, and contrivance, the latter will 
be found to represent an infinitely greater amount of work. 

Larissa and Mespila, those deserted towns and walls which Xenophon sav 
in the retreat of the Ten Thousand ( Anabas. iii. 4, 6-10). coincide in point 
of distance and situation with Nimroud and Kouyunjik, according to Mr. 
Layard’s remark. Nor is his supposition improbable, that both of them were 
formed by the Medes out of the ruins of the conquered city of Nineveh, 
Neither of them singly seems at all adequate to the reputation of that an- 
rient city, or rather walled circuit. According to the account of Herodotus 
Phraortes the second Median king had attacked Nineveh, but had been him 
self slain in the attempt, and lost nearly all his army. It was partly to re 
venge this disgrace that Kyaxares, son of Phraortes assailed Nineveh (He- 
rod. i, 102-103) : we may thus see a special reason, in addition to his owa 
violence of temper (i, 73), why he destroyed the city after having taken it 
\Nevov ἀναστάτου γενομένης, i, 178). It is easy to conceive that this vast 
walled space may have been broken up and converted into two Median 
towns, both on the Tigris. In the subsequent change from Median to Per 
sian dominion, these towns also became depopulated, as far as the strange 
tales which Xenophon heard in his retreat can be trusted. The interposition 
of these two Median towns doubtless contributed, for the time, to put out of 
sight the traditions respecting the old Ninus which had before stood upon 
their site. But these traditions were never extinct, and a new town hearing 
the eld name of Ninus must have subsequently arisen on the spot. Thie 
second Ninus is recognized by Tacitus, Ptolemy, and Ammianus, not only 
43 existing, but as pretending to uninterrupted continuity of succession from 
the ancient “caput Assyrix.” 

Mr. Layard remarks on the facility with which edifices, such as those iz 
Assyria, built of s inburnt bricks, perish when neglected, and crumble away 
into earth, leaving little or no trace. 


ΕΣ 


-““πἶρ 
= ee ~~ eo . 


HISTORY OF GREECF. 


CHAPTER XX 
EGYPTIANS. 


Ir, on one side, the Phenicians were separated from the produe 
tive Babylonia by the Arabian desert; on the other side, the 
western portion of the same desert divided them from the no less 
productive valley of the Nile. In those early times which pre- 
eeded the rise of Greek civilization, their land trade embraced 
both regions, and they served as the sole agents of international 
traffic between the two. Conveniently as their towns were 
situated for maritime commerce with the Nile, Egyptian jealousy 
had excluded Phenician vessels not less than those of the Greeks 
from the mouths of that river, until the reign ot Psammetichus 
(672-618 B. C.); and thus even the merchants ot Tyre could 
then reach Memphis only by means of caravans, employing as 
their instruments, as I have already observed, the Arabian tribes,! 
alternately plunderers and carriers. Respecting Egypt, as respect- 
ing Assyria, since the works of Hekatzeus are unfortunately lost, 
our earliest information is derived from Herodotus, who visited 
Egypt about two centuries after the reign of Psammetichus, 
when it formed part of one of the twenty Persian satrapies. The 
Egyptian marvels and peculiarities which he recounts, are more 
numerous, as well as more diversified, than the Assyrian, and 
had the vestiges been effaced as completely in the former as 
in the latter, his narrative would probably have met with an 
equal degree of suspicion. But the hard stone, combined with 


the dry climate of Upper Egypt (where a shower of rain counted 


----.-.........  ΟΦΟῬἜ-ἀἧΞς-ος-ς-ς-. m " uf 


᾿ Strabo, xvi, pp. 766, 776,778: Pliny, H. N. vi, 32. “Arabes, mirum dictu, 
ex innumeris populis pars «qua in commerciis aut latrociniis degunt: in 
universum gentes ditissima, ut apud quas maximx cpes Romanorum 
Parthorumque subsistant, — vendentibus que a mari aut sylvis cay iunt, nihil 
invicem redimentibus.” ) 

The latter part of this passage of Pliny presents an enunciation sufficiently 
distinct, though by implication only, of what has been called the meroaneia 
theory in political economy. 


10 Vol. fy 


RIVER NILE AND CANALS. 3909 


as a prodigy), have given such permanence to the monuments in 
the valley of the Nile, that enough has 1emained to bear out the 
father of Grecian history, and to show that, in describing what 
he professes to have seen, he is a guide perfectly trustworthy. 
For that which he heard, he appears only in the character of a 
reporter, and often an incredulous reporter ; but though this dis- 
tinction between his hearsay and his ocular evidence is not only 
obvious, but of the most capital moment,’ — it has been too often 
neglected by those who depreciate him as a witness. 

The mysterious river Nile, a god? in the eyes of ancient 
Egyptians, and still preserving both its volume and its useful- 
ness undiminished amidst the general degradation of the country, 
reached the sea in the time of Herodotus by five natural mouths, 
besides two others artificially dug ; — the Pelusiae branch formed 
the eastern boundary of Egypt, the Kandépie branch — one hun- 
dred and seventy miles distant — the western ; while the Seben- 
nytic branch was a continuation of the straight line of the upper 
river: from this latter branched off the Saitie and the Mendesian 
arms.2 Its overflowings are far more fertilizing than those of 


1 ΤῸ give ov. example : Herodotus mentions an opinion given to him by 
the γραμματιστὴῆς (comptroller) of the property of Athéné at Sais, to the 
effect that the sources of the Nile were at an immeasurable Gepth in the 
interior of the earth, between Syéné and Elephantiné, and that Psammeti- 
chus had vainly tried to sound them with a rope many thousand fathoms in 
length (ii, 28). In mentioning this tale (perfectly deserving of being recounted 
at least, because it came from a person of considerable station in the coun- 
try), Herodotus expressly says: “ This comptroller seemed to me to be only 
bantering, though he professed to know accurately,” — οὗτος δὲ ἐμοίγε παίζειν 
ἐδόκεε, φάμενος εἰδέναι ἀτρεκέως. Now Strabo (xvii, p. 819), in alluding to 
this story, introduces it just as if Herodotus had told it for a fact, — Πολλὰ 
0’ Ηρόδοτός TE KML ἄλλοι φλυαροῦσιν, οἷον, etc. 

Many other instances might be cited, both from ancient and modern writers, 
of similar carelessness or injustice towards this admirable author. 

2 Οἱ ἱρέες τοῦ Νείλου, Herod. ii, 90. 

3'The seven mouths of the Nile, so notorious in antiquity, are not 008- 
formable to the modern geography of the country: see Mannert, Geogr. der 
Gr. und Rém. x, 1, p. 539. 

The breadth of the base of the Delta, between Pelusium and Kandpus, is 
overstated by Herodotus (ii, 6-9) at three thousand six hundred stadia ; 
Diodorus (i, 34) and Strabo, at thirteen hundred stadia, which is near the 
truth, though the text of Strabo in various passages is not uniform on this 


310 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the Euphrates in Assyria, — partly from their more uniform recur. 
rence both in time and quantity, partly from the rich silt which it 
brings down and deposits, whereas the Euphrates served only as 
a moisture. The patience of the Egyptians had excavated, in 
middle Egypt, the vast reservoir — partly, it seems, natural and 
preexisting — called the lake of Morris: and in the Delta, a 
network of numerous canals; yet on the whole the hand of man 
had been less tasked than in Babylonia; whilst the soil annually 
enriched, yielded its abundant produce without either plough or 
spade to assist the seed cast in by the husbandman.! That under 
niatter, and requires correction. See Grosskurd’s note on Strabo, ii, p. 64 
(note 3, p. 101), and xvii, p. 186 (note 9, p. 332). Pliny gives the distance 
at one hundred and seventy miles (H. N. vy, 9). 

* Fierod. 1 195. Ilapay vertat ὁ σῖτος (i Babylonia) ov, κατάπερ ἐν 
Αἰγύπτῳ, αὐτοῦ τοῦ ποτάμου» ἀναβαίνοντος ἐς τὰς ἀρούρας, ἀλλὰ χερσί τε Kal 
κηλωνηΐοισι ἀρδόμενος " ἡ γὰρ Βαβυλωνίη γώρη πᾶσα, κατάπερ ἡ Αἰγυπτίη, 
κατατέτμηται ἐς διωρύχας, ete. 

Herodotus was informed that the canals in Egypt had been dug by the 
labor of that host of prisoners whom the victorious Sesostris brought home 
from his conquests (ii, 108). The canals in Egypt served the purpose partly 
of communication between the different cities, partly of a constant supply 
of water to those towns which were not immediately on the Nile: “that 
vast river, so constantly at work,” (to use the language of Herodotus — ὑπὸ 
τοσοῦτον Te ποτώμου καὶ οὕτως ἐργατικυῦ, li, 11), spared the Egyptians all 
the toil of irrigation which the Assyrian cultivator underwent (ii, 14). 

Lower Egypt, as Herodotus saw it, though a continued flat, was unfit 
either for horse or car, from the number of intersecting canals, — ¢vimmog¢ 
καὶ ἀναμάξεντος (ii, 108). But lower Egypt. as Volney saw it, was among 
the countries in the world best suited to the action of cavalry, so that he pro- 
nonnces the native population of the country to have no chance of contend. 
ing against the Mamelukes ( Volney, Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol. i, ch. 
12, sect. 2, p. 199). The country has reverted to the state in which it was 
{ἱππασίμη καὶ ἁμαξευομένη raca) before the canals were made.— one of the 
many striking illustrations of the difference between the Egypt which a 
modern traveller visits, and that which Herodotus and even Strabo saw, — 
ὅλην πλωτὴν διωρύγων ἐπὶ διώρυξι τμηϑεισῶν (Strabo, xvii, p. 788). 

Considering the early age of Herodotus, his remarks on the geological 
character of Egypt as a deposit of the accumulated mud by the Nile, appear 
to me most remarkable (ii, 8--14). Having no fixed number of years included 

in his religious belief as measuring the past existence of the earth, he car- 
ries his mind back without difficulty to what may have been effected by this 
river in ten or twenty thousand years, or “in the whole space of time elapsed 
before I was born,” (ii, 11.) 

About the lake of Morris. see a note a little farther cn. 


FIRST OPENING OF EGYPT TO THE GREEKS. 811 


these circumstances a dense and regularly organized population 
should have been concentrated in fixed abodes along the valley 


occupied by this remarkable river, is no matter of wonder; the 
marked peculiarities of the locality seem to have brought about 
such a result, in the earliest periods to which human society can 
be traced. Along the five hundred and fifty miles of its undivided 
course from Syéné to Memphis, where for the most part the moun 

tains leave only a comparatively narrow strip on each bank, as 
well as in the broad expanse between Memphis and the Mediter 

ranean, there prevailed a peculiar form of theocratic civilization, 
from a date which even in the time of Herodotus was immemo 

rially ancient. But when we seek for some measure of this 
antiquity (earlier than the time when Greeks were first admitted 
sito Egypt in the reign of Psammetichus), we find only the com- 
putations of the priests, reaching back for many thousand years, 
first, of government by immediate and present gods, next, of 

human kings. Such computations have been transmitted to ῥῃ 
by Herodotus, Manetho, and Diodorus,' _ agreeing in sid 
onception of the fore-time, with gods in the first part ο 

the series, and men in the second, but differing materially in 
events, names, and epochs: probably, if we possessed lists from 
other Egyptian temples, besides those which Manetho drew up 
at Heliopolis, or which Herodotus learned at Memphis, we or 
find discrepancies from both these two. To compare these lists, 
and to reconcile them as far as they admit of being reconciled, is 
as enabling us to understand the Egyptian mind, 
trustworthy chronological results, and forms 


essential ὁ 


interesting, 
but conducts to no 
no part of the task of an historian of Greece. a 

To the Greeks, Egypt was a closed world before the reign of 
Psammetichus, though after that time it gradually became an 
important part of their field both of observation and wre 
The astonishment which the country created in the mind of t e 
earliest Grecian visitors may be learned even from the narrative 
of Herodotus, who doubtless knew it by report long before he 
went there. Both the physical and moral features of Egypt 
stood in strong contrast with Grecian experience: “ not only 
(says Herodotus) does the climate differ from all other nimi 


1 See note in Appendix to this chanter. 


312 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


and the river from all other rivers, but Egyptian laws and cu» 
> 
I 


toms are opposed on almost all points to those of other men.’ 
4 


The delta was at that time full of large and populous cities, 
built on artificial elevations of ground, and seemingly not much 
inferior to Memphis itself, which was situated on the left bank of 
the Nile (opposite to the site of the modern Cairo), a little 


higher up than the spot where the delta begins. From the time 


when the Greeks first became cognizant of [gypt, to the build. 
ing of Alexandria and the reign of the Ptolemies, Memphis was 
the first city in Egypt, but it seems not to have been always so, — 
there had been an earlier period when Thebes was the seat of 
Egyptian power, and upper Egypt of far more consequence than 
middle Egypt. Vicinity to the delta, which must always have 
contained the largest number of cities and the widest surface of 
productive territory, probably enabled Memphis to usurp this 
honor from Thebes, and the predominance of lower Egypt was 
still farther confirmed when Psammetichus introduced Ionian and 
Karian troops as his auxiliaries in the government of the country. 
But the stupendous magnitude of the temples and palaces, the 
profusion of ornamental sculpture and painting, the immeasurable 
range of sculptures hewn in the rocks still remaining as attesta- 
tions of the grandeur of Thebes, — not to mention Ombi, Edfu, 
and Elephantiné, —: show that upper Egypt was once the place to 
which the land-tax from the productive delta was paid, and where 
the kings and priests who employed it resided. It has been even 
contended that Thebes itself was originally settled by emigrants 
from still higher regions of the river, and the remains yet 


! Herodot. ii, 35. Αἰγύπτιοι aqua τῷ οὐρανῷ τῷ κατά σφέας ἐόντι ἑτεροίῳ, 


καὶ τῷ ποτάμῳ φύσιν ἀλλοίην παρεχομένῳ ἣ οἱ ἄλλοι πόταμοι, τὰ πολλὰ πάντα 
ἔμπαλιν τοῖσι ἄλλοισι ἀνθρώποισι ἐστήσαντο Wea καὶ νόμους. 

3 Theokritus (Idyll. xvii, 83) celebrates Ptolemy Philadelphus king of 
Egypt as ruling over thirty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-three 
eities : the manner in which he strings these figures into three hexameter 
verses is somewhat ingenious. ‘The priests, in describing to Herodotus the 
unrivalled prosperity which they affirmed Egypt to have enjoyed under 
Amasis, the last king before the Persian conquest, said that there were then 
twenty thousand cities in the country (ii, 177). Diodorus tells us that 
eighteen thousand different cities and considerable villages were registered 
in the Egyptian dvaypagai (i, 31) for the ancient times, but that thirty 
thousand were numbered under the Ptolemies. 


UPPER AND LOWER EGYPT. 818 


found along the Nile in Nubia are analogous, both in style and 
in grandeur, to those in Thebais.! What is remarkable is, that 
both the one and the other are strikingly distinguished from tle 
Pyramids, which alone remain to illustrate the site of the an- 
cient Memphis. There are no pyramids either in upper Egypt 
or in Nubia; but on the Nile, above Nubia, near the Ethiopian 
Meroé, pyramids in great number, though of inferior dimensions, 
are again found. Trom whence, or in what manner, Egyptian 
took their rise, we have no means of determin- 
2 


institutions first 


‘ng: but there seems little to bear out the supposition of Heeren, 


. 


ι Respecting the monuments of ancient Egyptian art, see the summary of 
Q. Maller, Archiologie der Kunst, sects. 215-233, and a still better account 
and appreciation of them in Carl Schnaase, Geschichte der Bildenden Ktinste 
bey den Alten, Diisseldorf. 1843, vol. i, book ii, chs. 1 and 2. 

In regard to the credibility and value of Egyptian history anterior to 
Psammetichus, there are many excellent remarks by Mr. Kenrick, in the 
preface to his work, “ The Egypt of Herodotus,” (the second book of He 
rodotus. with notes.) About the recent discoveries derived from the hiero 
glyphics, he says: “ We know that it was the custom of the Egyptian kings 
to inscribe the temples and obelisks which they raised with their own names 
or with distinguishing hieroglyphics ; but in no one instance do these names, 
as read by the modern decipherers of hieroglyphics on monuments said to 
have been raised by kings before Psammetichus, correspond with the names 
given by Herodotus.” (Preface, p. xliv.) He farther adds in a note, “A 
name which has been read phonetically Mena, has been found at Thebes, and 
Mr. Wilkinson supposes it to be Menes. It is remarkable, however, that the 
names which follow are not phonetically written, so that it is probable that 
this is not to be read Mena. Besides, the cartouche, which immediately 
follows. is that of a king of the eighteenth dynasty; so that, at all events, 
it cannot have been engraved till many centuries after the supposed age of 
Menes: and the occurrence of the name no more decides the question of 
historical existence than that of Cecrops in the Parian Chronicle.” 

? Heeren, Ideen ἄρον den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part ii, 1, p. 403. The 
opinion given by Parthey, however (De Philis Insulé, p. 100, Berlin, 1830), 
may perhaps be just: “ Antiquissima state eundem populam, dicamus 
gyptiacum, ΝῊ ripas inde a Meroé insula usque ad AXgyptum inferiorem 
occupasse, e monumentorum congruentia apparet: posteriore tempore, tab- 
ulis et annalibus nostris longe superiore, alia stirps A.thiopica interiora terre 
usque ad cataractam Syenensem obtinuit. Ex qua state certa rerum notitia 

id nos pervenit, Agyptiorum et thiopum seyregatio jam facta est. Hero- 
dotus -sterique scriptores Greeci populos acute discernunt.” 

At th's moment, Syéné and its cataract mark the boundary of two people 


VOL Il. 14 


314 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


and other eminent authors, that they were transmitted dow1 the 
Nile by Ethiopian colonists from Meroé. Herodotus certainly 
conceived Egyptians and Ethiopians (who in his time jointly 
occupied the border island of Elephantiné, which he had himself 
visited) as completely distinct from each other, in race and 
customs not less than in language, —the latter being generally 
of the rudest habits, of great stature, and still greater physical 
strength, — the chief’ part of them subsisting on meat and milk, 
and blest with unusual longevity. He knew of Meroé, as the 
Ethiopian metropolis and a considerable city, fifty-two days’ 
journey higher up the river than Elephantiné, but his informants 
had given him no idea of analogy between its institutions and 
those of Egypt;! it was the migration of a large number of 
the Egyptian military caste, during the reign of Psammetichus, 
into Ethiopia, which first communieated civilized customs, in his 
judgment, to these southern barbarians. If there be really any 
sonnection between the social phenomena of Egypt and those of 
Meroé, it seems more reasonable to treat the latter as derivative 
from the former.? 

The population of Egypt was classified into certain castes or 
hereditary professions, of which the number was not exactly de- 
fined, and is represented differently by different authors. The 
priests stand clearly marked out, as the order richest, most pow- 


and two languages, — Egyptians and Arabic language to the north, Nubians 
and Berber language to the south. (Parthey, did.) 

' Compare Herodot. ii, 30-32 ; iii, 19-25; Strabo, xvi, p. 818. Herodotus 
gives the description of their armor and appearance as part of the army of 
Xerxés (vii, 69); they painted their bodies: compare Plin. H. N. xxxiii, 36. 
How little Ethiopia was visited in his time, may be gathered from the tenor 
of his statements: according to Diodorus (i, 37), no Greeks visited it earlier 
than the expedition of Ptolemy Philadelphas, ---- οὕτως ἄξενα hy τὰ περὶ τοὺς 
τόπους τούτους, καὶ παντελῶς ἐπικίνδυνα. Diodorus, however, is incorrect 
in saying that no Greek had ever gone as far southward as the frontier 
of Egypt: Herodotus certainly visited Elephantiné, probably other Greeks 
also. 

The statements respecting the theocratical state of Meroé and its superior 
civilization come from Diodorus (iii, 2, 5, 7), Strabo (xvii, p. 822), and Pliny 
fH. N. vi, 29-33), much later than Herodotus. Divdorus seems to have had 
no older informants before him, about Ethiopia, than Agatharchidés and 
Artemidérus, both in the second century B. c. (Diod. iii, 10.) 

3 Wesscling ad Diodor. iii, 3. 


CASTES IN EGYPT. 315 


erful, and most venvrated, — distributed all over the country, and 
possessing exclusively the means of reading and writing,! besides 
a vast amount of narrative matter treasured up in the memory, 
the whole stock of medical and physical knowledge then attaina- 
ble, and those rudiments of geometry, or rather land-measuring, 
which were so often called into use in a country annually inun- 
dated. To each god, and to each temple, throughout Egypt, 
lands and other properties belonged, whereby the numerous band 
of priests attached to him were maintained : it seems, too, that a 
farther portion of the lands of the kingdom was set apart for them 
in individual property, though on this point no certainty is attain- 
able. Their ascendency, both direct and indirect, over the minds 
of the people, was immense ; they prescribed that minute ritual 
under which the life of every Egyptian, not excepting the king 
himself,2 was passed, and which was for themselves more full of 
harassing particularities than for any one else. Every day in 
the year belonged to some particular god, and the priests alone 
knew to which. There were different gods in every nome, 
though Isis and Osiris were common to all, —and the priests of 
each god constituted a society apart, more or less important, ac- 
cording to the comparative celebrity of the temple: the high 


i Herodot, ii, 37. Θεοσέβεες δὲ περισσῶς ἐόντες μάλιστα πάντων ἀνϑρώπων, 
ete. He is astonished at the retentiveness of their memory; some of them 
bad more stories to tell than any one whom he had ever seen (ii, 77-109; 
Diodor. i, 73). 

The word priest conveys to a modern reader an idea very different from 
that of the Egyptian /epeic, who were not a profession, but an order com- 
prising many occupations and professions, — Josephus the Jew was in like 
manner an ἱερεὺς κατὰ γένος (cont. Apion. c. 3). 

2 Diodorus (i, 70-73) gives an elaborate description of the monastic strict- 
ness with which the daily duties of the Egyptian king were measured out by 
the priests: compare Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. p. 353, who refers to 
Hekatzeus (probably Hekateus of Abdéra) and Eudoxus. The priests 
represented that Psammetichus was the first Egyptian king who broke 
through the priestly canon limiting the royal allowance of wine: compare 
Strabo, xvii, p, 790. 

The Ethiopian kings at Meroé are said to have been kept in the like pupil- 
lage by the priestly order, until a king named Ergamenés, during the reign 
of Ptolemy Philadelphus in Egypt, emancipated himself and put the chief 
priests to death (Diodor. iii, 6). 

3 Herodot. ii. 82-83. 


316 HisTORY OF GREECE. 


priests of Hephzstos, whose dignity was said to have been trans 
mitted from father to son through a series of three hundred and 
forty-one generations! (commemorated by the like number of 
colossal statues, which Herodotus himself saw), were second in 
importance only to the king. The property of each temple in- 
cluded troops of dependents and slaves, who were stamped with 
“holy marks,”* and who must have been numerous in order to 
suffice for the large buildings and their constant visitors. 

Next in importance to the sacerdotal caste were the military 
caste or order, whose native name* indicated that they stood on 
the left hand of the king, while the priests occupied the right. They 
were classified into Kalasiries and Hermotybii, who occupied 


lands in eighteen particular nomes or provinces, principally in 


lower Egypt. The kalasiries had once amounted to one hundred 
and sixty thousand men, the hermotybii to two hundred and fifty 
thousand, when at the maximum of their population; but the 
highest point had long been past in the time of Herodotus. To 
each man of this soldier caste was assigned a portion of land 
equal to about six and a half English acres, free from any tax ; 
what measures were taken to keep the lots of land in suitable 
harmony with a fluctuating number of holders, we know not. 
The statement of Herodotus relates to a time long past and gone, 
and describes what was believed, by the priests with whom he 
talked, to have been the primitive constitution of their country 
anterior to the Persian conquest: the like is still more true re- 
specting the statement of Diodorus.4 The latter says that the 
territory of Egypt was divided into three parts,— one part 
belonging to the king, another to the priests, and the remainder to 
the soldiers ;> his language seems to intimate that every nome 
was so divided, and even that the three portions were equal, though 
he does not expressly say so. ‘The result of these statements, 
combined with the history of Joseph in the book of (Fenesis, seems 
to be, that the lands of the priests and the soldiers were regarded 
as privileged property and exempt from all burdens, while the 
remaining soil was considered as the property of the kin 


g, who, 


1 Herodot. i, 143 ® Herodot. ii, 113; στίγματα ἱρά. 
3 Herodot. ii, 30. + Herodot. i, 165-166: Diodor. i, 78. 
5 Diodor. i, 73 


MISCELLANEOUS CASTES IN EGYPT. 317 


however, received from it a fixed proportion, one-fifth of the 
total produce, leaving the rest in the hands of the cultivators.! 
We are told that Sethos, priest of the god Phtha (~~ Hephzstos) 
at Memphis, and afterwards named king, oppressed the military 
caste and deprived them of their lands, in revenge for which they 
withheld from him their aid when Egypt was invaded by Senna 
cherib, —and also that, in the reign of Psammetichus, a large 
number (two hundred and forty thousand) of these soldiers mi 
grated into Ethiopia from a feeling of discontent, leaving their 
wives and children behind them.2 It was Psammetichus who 
first introduced Ionian and Karian mercenaries into the country, 
and began innovations on the ancient Egyptian constitution ; 80 
that the disaffection towards him, on the part of the native soldiers, 
no longer permitted to serve as exclusive guards to the king, is 
not difficult to explain. The kalasiries and hermotybii were 
interdicted from every description of art or trade. There can be 
tittle doubt that under the Persians their lands were made sub- 
ject to the tribute, and this may partly explain the frequent 
revolts which they maintained, with very considerable bravery, 
against the Persian kings. 

Herodotus enumerates five other races (so he calls them), or 
castes, besides priests and soldiers,3 — herdsmen, swineherds, 
tradesmen, interpreters, and pilots; an enumeration which per- 
plexes us, inasmuch as it takes no account of the husbandmen, 
who must always have constituted the majority of the population. 
It is, perhaps, for this very reason that they are not comprised in 
the list,—not standing out specially marked or congregated 
together, like the five above named, and therefore not seeming to 
constitute a race apart. The distribution of Diodorus, who spec- 
ifies (over and above priests and soldiers) husbandmen, herdsmen, 
and artificers, embraces much more completely the whole popula- 


3esides this general rent or land-tax received by the Egyptian kings 
there seem, also, to have been special crown-lands. Strabo mentions 88 
island in the Nile (in the Thebaid) celebrated for the extraordinary excellence 
of its date-palms; the whole of this island belonged to the kings, without 
any other proprietor: it yielded a large revenue, and passed into the hands 
of the Roman government in Strabo’s time (xvii, p. 818). 
9 Herodot. ii, 30-141. 3 Herodot. ii, 164 


813 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ν᾿ ] - 
tion.' It seems more the statement of a refle 
out the principle of hereditary occup 
and t 5 whic 5 histori 
( εν so comments which the historian so abundantly interwea\ eg 
Wi ive 8 a ihe 
us narrative show that such was the character οὐ the 
authorities which he followed) ; — while the list given by H 
otus comprises that which struck his ol εἰς i I ie ea 
! stru 5. observation. It seems th; 
es th ) a " © ns [ lal a 
— proportion of the soil of the delta consisted of marsh land, 
ny ‘ai tees SAS le als alt 
a ing pieces of habitable ground, but impenetrable to an i 
vading enemv. and favar: ; gine 
sang enemy, and favorable only to the growth of 
other aquatic plants: oth ἃ “ΠΥ 
“ plants: other portions of the delta, as well as {I 
upper valley, in parts where it widened | ee 
wet for the culture of σταίη, thouch I 
. oo ἡ 
age, and eminently suitable to the 1 


cling man, pushing 
ations to its consequences; 


to the eastward, were too 
roducing the richest herb- 
‘ace of Egyptian herds 
γε τ ἀγετωρον ἄγον ἶ 5 Pui 1ierdsmen 
rm divided the soil with the husbandmen.2 pS 
ene , ᾿ Ὃ siti 
g rally were held reputable, but the race of swineherds w 
« Ὕ ᾿ . _ > Ἂν» ; a oa 
iated and despised, from the extreme antipathy of al] ᾿ 
tians to the νὸν. ὧδ 3 “ anipatiy of all other Egyp- 
3 > ΡΙΒ, -- which animal yet could not be al Ν 


wal together pr 
scribed, because there were ce gether pro- 


rtain peculiar occasions 

: cullar occasions on which 

sone ; ΜΝ οἱ lic 

" was imperative to offer him in sacrifice to Seléné or Dior 
Jionysus, 


Herodotus acquaints 
odotus acquaints us that the swineherds were interdicted 
i : wv) i w -raicte 


from ; om” "! 

all the temples, and that they always intermarried 

themselves, other Egyptians disdaining | a oe 
: » 0 “gypuans disdaining such an alliance,—a 

statement which indirectly intimates that there ss 


tg ( was no standing 
objection against intermarriace of the h 


remainino castes νὴ ith 
Ψ (Ὁ > 


were ’ Greeks, the histori 
half Greeks, the historian does not note them as of inferior 


acco cc “a , 
ἮΝ except as compared with the two ascendant ¢ ist f 
> page . « , Cc , 7 S λῷ ᾿ 

soldiers and priests ; moreover stes 0 


the creation of : 
" Cres a ΠΟΥ͂ caste s 
that there was no consecr pigs 


ated or unchangeable total number 

Idiodor. i, 74 : 3 

-1, 74. About the Eevpti: 
= W “fyptian castes generally, see Heere 

~~" “s erkehr der Alten Welt. part ii, 2 pp. 572 595 Amani 

ὡ" i : é ᾿ to at o 4 Ὡυσυ. 
ὦ e Gtation from Maillet's Travels in Egypt, in Heeren, Idee 

j also Volney’s Travels, vol. i, ch. 6 p. 77 ce 
on expression of Herodotus —oi περὶ 
‘ ἔουσι — indicates thai; the portion of the 
meconsilerable. 


The inhabitants of the marsh land we 
population (Thucyd. i, 110). 


τὴν σπειρομένην Αἴγυπτον 
soil used as pasture was not 


re the mos‘ warlike part of the 


TRADESMEN — ARTISANS. — EMBALMING. $19 


Those whom Herodotus denominates tradesmen (xaz#Aot) are 
doubtless identical with the artisans (τεχνῖται) specified by Diod- 


orus, — the town population generally as distinguished from that 


of the country. During the three months of the year when 


Egypt was covered with water, festival days were numerous, — 
the people thronging by hundreds of thousands, in vast barges, to 
one or other of the many holy places, combining worship and 
nt.! In Egypt, weaving was a trade, whereas in Greece 


enjoyme 
was the domestic occupation of females; and Herodotus treats 


as one of those reversals of the order of nature which were seen 
in Egypt,? that the weaver stayed at home plying his web 
The process of embalming 


it 
it 
only 
while his wife went to market. 
bodies was elaborate and universal, giving employment to a large 
special elass of men: the profusion of edifices, obelisks, sculpture 
and painting, all executed by native workmen, required a large 
body of trained sculptors,’ who in the mechanical branch of their 
business attained a high excellence. Most of the animals in 
Egypt were objects of religious reverence, and many of them 
were identified in the closest manner with particular gods. ‘The 
order of priests included a large number of hereditary feeders 


' Jlerodot. ii, 59-60. 

2 Herodot. ii, 35; Sophokl. Gdip. Colon. 332: where the passage cited by 
the Scholiast out of Nymphodorus is a remarkable example of the habit of 
ingenious Greeks to represent all customs which they thought worthy of 
notice, as having emanated from the design of some great sovereign: here 
Nymphodérus introduces Sesostris as the author of the custom in question, 
in order that the Egyptians might be rendered effeminate. 

3 The process of embalming is minutely described (Herod. ii, 85-90) ; the 
word which he uses for it is the same as that for salting meat and fish, — 


ταρίχευσις : compare Strabo, xvi, p. 764. 
Perfect exactness of execution, mastery of the hardest stone, and undevi- 


ating obedience to certain rules of proportion, are general characteristics of 
Egyptian sculpture. There are yet seen in their quarries obelisks not severed 
from the rock, but having three of their sides already adorned with hiero- 
glyphics ; so certain were they of cutting off the fourth side with precision 
(Schnaase, Gesch. der Bild. Kiinste, i, p. 428). 

All the nomes of Egypt, however, were not harmonious in their feelings 
respecting animals: particular animals were worshipped in some nomes 
which in other nomes were objects even of antipathy, especially the crocodile 
(Herod. ii, 69; Strabo, xvii, p. 817: see particularly the fifteenth Satire of 


dJavenal) 


820 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


and tenders of these sacred animals.! Among the sacerdotal 
order were also found the computers of genealogies, the infinitely 
subdivided practitioners in the art of healing, ete.,2 who enjoyed 
good reputation, and were sent for as surgeons to Cyrus and 
Darius. The Egyptian city population was thus exceedingly 
numerous, so that king Sethon, when called upon to resist an 
invasion without the aid of the military caste, might well be sup- 
posed to have formed an army out of “the tradesmen, the 
artisans, and the market-people :”3 and Alexandria, at the com- 
mencement of the dynasty of the Ptolemies, acquired its numer- 
ous and active inhabitants at the expense of Memphis and the 
ancient tewns of lower Egypt. 

The mechanical obedience and fixed habits of the mass of the 
Egyptian population (not priests or soldiers) was a point which 
made much impression upon Grecian observers ; so that Solon is 
said to have introduced at Athens a custom prevalent in Egypt, 
whereby the nomarch or chief of each nome was required to in- 
vestigate every man’s means of living, and to punish with death 
those who did not furnish evidence of some recognized occupation.4 
It does not seem that the institution of caste in Egypt, though 
insuring unapproachable ascendency to the priests and much con- 
sideration to the soldiers, was attended with any such profound 
debasement to the rest as that which falls upon the lowest caste 
or sudras in India, —no such gulf between them as that between 
the twice-born and the once-born in the religion of Brahma. Yet 
those stupendous works, which form the permanent memorials of 
the country, remain at the same time as proofs of the oppressive 
exactions of the kings, and of the reckless caprice with which 
the lives as well as the contributions of the people were lavished. 
One hundred and twenty thousand Egyptians were said to have 
perished in the digging of the canal, which king Nekés began but 


' Herodot. ii, 65-72 ; Diodor. i, 83-90; Plutarc’,, Isid. et Osir. p. 380. 

Hasselquist identified all thc birds carved on the obelisk near Matarea 
(Heliopolis), (Travels in Egypt, p. 99.) 

* HMerodot. ii, 82-83; iii, 1, 129. It is one of the points of distinction 
between Egyptians and Babylonians, that the latter had no surgeons of 
larpoi: they brought ont the sick into the market-place, to preéit by the 
sympathy and advice of the passers-by (Herodot. i, 197). 

2 Herodot. ii, 141. * Herodot. iii, 177. 


GREAT MONUMENTS IN EGYPT. 39) 


did not finish, between the Pelusian arm of the Nile and neve 
sea ;! while the construction of the two great pyramids, ae ἔρθη 

to the kings Cheops and Chephrén, was described bik wae rt 
by the priests as a period of exhausting labor and eae sa 
ing to the whole Egyptian people, — and yet the great : a ᾿ 
said to have been built by the dodekarchs, appeared to τ & 
more stupendous work than the Pyramids, 80 i τς ὃ 
ployed upon it cannot have been less destructive. 16 mov γα. , 

such vast masses of stone as were seen τι the cummin : set 
both of upper and lower Egypt, with the imperfect mec steer 
resources then existing, must have tasked the efforts of the peor 
yet more severely than the excavation of the half Anisns? can 

Indeed, the associations with which the Pyramids 
were connected, in the minds of those with whom Hiesenotes = 
d, were of the most odious character. Such vast works, 
Aristotle observes, are suitable to princes who raga ge 
the strength and break the spirit of their people. . 1 Gree 

an intention may have been sometimes 
but the Egyptian kings may be presumed 
of pomp, — sometimes 


of Nekdés. 
verse 
despots, perhaps, such 


deliberately conceived ; 
to have followed chiefly caprice, or love 


ad the account of the foundation of Petersburg by 
et petites, qui faisaient 


τον he Ἦν 

1 Herodot. ii, 158. Re τ 16 

reat: “ ilien de ces réformes, grandes 

Peter the Great: “Au mi asd ros ; 

les amusemens du czar, et de la guerre terrible qui loccupoit a onl nat 
CS ¢ > Lt © & nie 

XII, il jeta les fondemens de Yimportante ville et du port de reat 

ae an ὰ il π᾿ i cabane. Pierre travailla de 

714, dans ais y’y avait pas une cabane. 
ans un marais ou il ΠῚ — 
oh, rien ne le rebuta: des ouvriers furent forcés 


ins z »miere maison: 
-o3 mains a la premiere mals aim ΤῊ 
pape aig Baltique, des frontieres d’Astrachan, des 


ir sur ce > la mer 
de venir sur ce bord de ἰξ : ss | - 
bords de la Mer Noire et de la Mer Caspienne. II perit plus de cent m 
aa faire, et dans les fatigues et la disette 


.5 dans les travaux qu'il fallut 

ommes dans les travau it fa 

: mais enfin la ville existe.” ( Voltaire, Anecdotes sur Pierre le 
ed. Paris, 1825, tom. xxxi, p. 491.) 

’ —" ? : = : in I 

λέων τετρυμένον ἐς TO ἔσχατον κακοῦ. (Diodor 
ν 4, ͵ ͵ / > 


qu’on essuya: 
Grand, en CEuvres Completes 
2 Herodot. ii, 124-129. Tov 
i, 63-64.) | 
Περὶ τῶν Πυραμίδων ο 
ΐ ὑδὲ 7 i ryypadevoly, συμφωνεῖ, αἱ. 
ρίοις, οὐδὲ παρὰ τοῖς συγγραᾶς } a 
of the discrepant stories about the date of the whee and rapes 
i This fession, of the complete want 0 
their constructors. This con . 
information respecting the most remarkable edifices of lower Poy ne ; 
, i S i c. 44), tha 
iki st wi tatement which Diodorus had given 
striking contrast with the s 
the priests possessed records, “ continually handed comm from reign to reign 
respecting four hundred and seventy Egyptian kings. 


VOL. III. 14* 8108, 


(Diodorus observes ) οὐδὲν ὅλως οὐδὲ παρὰ τοῖς EYXO- 
He then alludes to some 
e names of 


322 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


views of a permanent benefit to be achieved, — as in the canal 
of Nekos and the vast reservoir of Meeris,' with its channel join- 
ing the river, — when they thus expended the physical strength 
and even the lives of their subjects. 

Sanctity of animal life generally, veneration for particular ani- 
mals in particular nomes, and abstinence on religious grounds 
from certain vegetables, were among the marked features of 
Egyptian life, and served preéminently to impress upon the 
country that air of singularity which foreigners like Herodotus 
remarked in it. ‘The two specially marked bulls, called apis at 
Memphis, and mnevis at Heliopolis, seem to have enjoyed a sort 
of national worship 9 the ibis, the cat, and the dog were through- 
out most of the nomes venerated during life, embalmed like men 
after death, and if killed, avenged by the severest punishment of 
the offending party: but tke veneration of the crocodile was 
confined to the neighborhood of Thebes and the lake of Meeris. 
Such veins of religious sertiment, which distinguished Egypt 
from Phenicia and Assyria, not less than from Greece, were ex- 
plained by the native priests after their manner to Herodotus, 
though he declines from pious scruples to communicate what was 
told to him. They seem remnants continued from a very early 


‘It appears that the lake of Morris is, at least in great part, a natural 
reservoir, though improved by art for the purposes wanted, and connected 
with the river by an artificial canal, sluices, etc. (Kenrick ad Herodot. 
ii, 149.) 

“The lake still exists, of diminished magnitude, being about sixty miles 
in circumference, but the communication with the Nile has ceased.” Herodo- 
tus gives the circumference as three thousand six hundred stadia,=between 
four hundred and four hundred and fifty miles. 

I incline to believe that there was more of the hand of man in it than Mr. 
Kenrick supposes, though doubtless the receptacle was natural. 

3 Herodot. ii, 38-46, 65--72; iii, 27-80: Diodor. i, 83-90. 

It is surprising to find Pindar introducing into one of his odes a plain 
mention of the monstrous circumstances connected with the worship of the 
goat in the Mendesian nome (Pindar, Fragm. Inc. 179, ed. Bergk). Pindar 
had also dwelt, in one of his Prosodia, upon the mythe of the gods having 
disguised themselves as animals, when seeking to escape Typhon; which was 
one of the tales told as an explanation of the consecration of animals in 
Egypt: see Pindar, Fragm. Inc. p. 61, ed. Bergk; Porphyr. de Abstinent 


iii, p. 251, ed. Rhoer. 
3 Herodot. ii, 65. Diodorns does not fee) the same reluctance to mentior 


these ἀπόῤῥητα (i, 86). 


NUMEROUS DYNASTIES OF KINGS. 323 


stage of Fetichism,—and the attempts of different persons, 
noticed in Diodorus and Plutarch, to account for their origin, 
partly by legends, partly by theory, will give little satisfaction tc 
any one.! 

Though Thebes first, and Memphis afterwards, were undoubt- 
edly the principal cities of Egypt, yet if the dynasties of Mane- 
tho are at all trustworthy, even in their general outline, the 
Egyptian kings were not taken uniformly either from one or the 
other. Manetho enumerates on the whole twenty-six different 
dynasties or families of kings, anterior to the conquest of the 
country by Kambysés,—the Persian kings between Kambysés 
and the revolt of the Egyptian Amyrtazus, in 405 B. Ο. constitut- 
ing his twenty-seventh dynasty. Of these twenty-six dynas- 
ties, beginning with the year 5702 B. c., the first two are Thin- 
ites, —the third and fourth, Memphites,—the fifth, from the 
island of Elephantiné,—the sixth, seventh, and eighth, again 
Memphites, — the ninth and tenth, Herakleopolites, — the elev- 
enth, twelfth, and thirteenth, Diospolites or Thebans, — the four- 
teenth, Choites, — the fifteenth and sixteenth, Hyksos, or shep- 
herd kings, — the seventeenth, shepherd kings, overthrown and 
succeeded by Diospolites, —the eighteenth (B. Cc. 1655-1327, in 
which is included Rameses, the great Egyptian conqueror, identi- 
fied by many authors with Sesostris, 1411 B. 0.), nineteenth, and 
twentieth, Diospolites, — the twenty-first, Tanites, — the twenty- 
second, Bubastites,—the twenty-third, again Tanites, — the 
twenty-fourth, Saites, — the twenty-fifth, Ethiopians, beginning 
with Sabakon, whom Herodotus also mentions,—the twenty- 
sixth, Saites, including Psammetichus, Nekés, Apries or Uaphris, 
and Amasis or Amosis. We see by these lists, that, according to 
the manner in which Manetho construed the antiquities of his 
country, several other cities of Egypt, besides Thebes and Mem- 
phis, furnished kings to the whole territory ; but we cannot trace 
any correspondence between the nomes which furnished kings, 
and those which Herodotus mentions to have been exclusively 
occupied by the military caste. Many of the separate nomes 
were of considerable substantive importance, and had a marked 
local character each to itself, religious as well as political; though 


' Diodor. i, 86-87 ; Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. p. 377, seq. 


824 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the whole of Eyypt, from Elephantiné to Pelusium and Kan6pus, 
is said to have always constituted one kingdom, from the earliest 
times which the native priests could conceive. 

We are to consider this kingdom as engaged, long before the 
time when Greeks were admitted into it,! in a standing caravan- 
commerce with Phenicia, Palestine, Arabia, and Assyria. An- 
cient Egypt having neither vines nor olives, imported both wine 
and oil,2 while it also needed especially the frankincense and 
arcmatic products peculiar to Arabia, for its elaborate religious 
ceremonies. ‘Towards the last quarter of the eighth century b. C. 
(a little before the time when the dynasty of the Mermnadez 
in Lydia was commencing in the person of Gygés), we trace 
events tending to alter the relation which previously subsisted 
between these countries, by continued aggressions on the part 
of the Assyrian monarchs of Nineveh, — Salmaneser and Sen- 
nacherib. The former having conquered and led into captivity 
the ten tribes of Israel, also attacked the Phenician towns on the 
adjoining coast; Sidon, Palew-Tyrus, and Aké yielded to him, but 
Tyre itself resisted, and having endured for five years the hard- 
ships of a blockade with partial obstruction of its continental aque- 
ducts, was enabled by means of its insular position to maintain 
independence. It was just at this period that the Grecian estab- 
lishments in Sicily were forming, and I have already remarked 
that the pressure of the Assyrians upon Phenicia, probably had 
some effect in determining that contraction of the Phenician oc- 
cupations in Sicily, which really took place (B. ο. 730-720). 
Respecting Sennacherib, we are informed by the Old Testament, 
that he invaded Judwa, and by Herodotus (who calls him king 
of the Assyrians and Arabians), that he assailed the pious king 
Sethos in Egypt: in both cases his army experienced a miracu- 
lous repulse and destruction. After this, the Assyrians of Nine- 


! On this early trade between Egypt, Phenicia, and Palestine, anterior to 
any acquaintance with the Greeks, see Josephus cont. Apion. i, 12. 

3 Herodotus notices the large importation of wine into Egypt in his day, 
from all Greece as well as from Phenicia as well as the employment -:f the 
earthen vessels in which it was brought for the transport of water, in the 
journeys across the desert (iii, 6). 

In later times, Alexandria was supplied with wine chiefly from Laodikeig, 
in Syria, near the month of the Orortes (Strabo, xvi, p. 751). 


THE WOODEN HORSE OF 


Greece, vol. three. 


PSAMMETICHUS ADMITS GREEKS INTO EGYPT 325 


veh, either torn by intestine dissension, or shaken by the attacks 
of the Medes, appear no longer active; but about the year 630 
B. C., the Assyrians or Chaldeans of Babylon manifest a formida- 
ble and increasing power. It is, moreover, during this century 
that the old routine of the Egyptian kings was broken through, 
and a new policy displayed towards foreigners by Psammetichus, 
— which, while it rendered Egypt more formidable to Judwza and 
Phenicia, opened to Grecian ships and settlers the hitherto inac- 
cissible Nile. 

Herodotus draws a marked distinction between the history of 
Egypt before Psammetichus and the following period: the former 
he gives as the narration of the priests, without professing to 
guarantee it, — the latter he evidently believes to be well ascer- 
tained.! And we find that, from Psammetichus downward, Hero- 
dotus and Manetho are in tolerable harmony, whereas even for 
the sovereigns occupying the last fifty years before Psammeti- 
chus, there are many and irreconcilable discrepancies between 
them ;* but they both agree in stating that Psammetichus reigned 
fifty-four years. So important an event as the first admission of 
the Greeks into Egypt, was made, by the informants of Herodo- 
tus, to turn upon two prophecies. After the death of Sethos, 
king and priest of Hephzstos, who left no son, Egypt became 
divided among twelve kings, of whom Psammetichus was one: 
it was under this dodekarchy, according to Herodotus, that the 
marvellous labyrinth near the lake of Meeris was constructed. 
The twelve lived and reigned for some time in perfect harmony, 
but a prophecy had been made known to them, that the one who 
should make libations in the temple of Hephzstos out of a brazen 
goblet would reign over all Egypt. Now it happened that one 
day, when they all appeared armed in that temple to offer sucri- 
fice, the high priest brought out by mistake only eleven golden 
goblets instead of twelve, and Psammetichus, left without a goblet, 
made use of his brass helmet as a substitute. Being thus con- 


, 


' Herodot. ii, 147-154. ἀπὸ Ψαμμητίχου, ---- πάντα καὶ τὰ ὕστερον ἐπιστάω 
weva ἀτρεκέως. 

* See these differences stated and considered in Boeckh, Manetho und die 
Hundstern Periode, pp. 326-336, of which some account is given ip the 
Appendix to this chapter. 


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390 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


sidered, though unintentionally, to have fulfilled the condition of 
the prophecy, by making libations in a brazen goblet, he became 
an object of terror to his eleven colleagues, who united to de- 
spoil him of his dignity, and drove him into the inaccessible 
marshes. In this extremity, he sent to seek counsel from the 
oracle of Lété at Buté, and received for answer an assurance, 
that “vengeance would come to him by the hands of brazen men 
showing themselves from the seaward.” His faith was for the 
moment shaken by so startling a conception as that of brazen 
men for his allies: but the prophetic veracity of the priest at 
Buto was speedily shown, when an astonished attendant came to 
acquaint him, in his lurking-place, that brazen men were ravaging 
the sea-coast of the delta. It was a body of Ionian and Karian 
soldiers, who had landed for pillage, and the messenger who came 
to inform Psammetichus had never before seen men in an entire 
suit of brazen armor. That prince, satisfied that these were the 
allies whom the oracle had marked out for him, immediately 
entered into negotiation with the Ionians and Karians, enlisted 
them in his service, and by their aid in conjunction with his other 
parfisans overpowered the other eleven kings, — thus making 
himself the one ruler of Egypt.! 

Such was the tale by which the original alliance of an Egyp- 
tian king with Grecian mercenaries, and the first introduction of 
Greeks into Egypt, was accounted for and dignified. What fol- 
lowed is more authentic and more important. Psammetichus 
provided a settlement and lands for his new allies, on the Pelu- 
siac or eastern branch of the Nile, a little below Bubastis. The 
[onians were planted on one side of the river, the Karians on 


' Herodot. ii, 149-152. This narrative of Herodotus, however little satis- 
factory in an historical point of view, bears evident marks of being the 
genuine tale which he heard from the priests of Hephastos. Diodorus gives 
an account more historically plausible, but he could not well have had any 
positive authorities for that period, and he gives us seemingly the ideas of 
Greek authors of the days of the Ptolemies. Psammetichus (he tells us), ag 
one of the twelve kings, ruled at Sais and in the neighboring part of the 
iclta: he opened a trade, previously unknown in Egypt, with Greeks and 
henicians, so profitable that his eleven colleagues became jealous of his 
riches and combined to attack him. He raised an army of foreign merce- 
naries and defeated them (Diodor. i, 66-67). Polysnus gives a different 
story about Psammetichus and the Karian mercenaries (vii 3). 


OPENING OF THE NILE.—NAUKRATIS $97 


the other ; and the place was made to serve asa military position, 
not only for the defence of the eastern border, but also for the 
support of the king himself against malcontents at home: it was 
called the Stratopéda, or the Camps.! He took pains, moreover, to 
facilitate the intercourse between them and the neighboring in- 
habitants, by causing a number of Egyptian children to be domi- 
ciled with them, in order to learn the Greek language; and hence 
sprung the interpreters ; who, in the time of Herodotus, consti- 
tuted a permanent hereditary caste or breed. | 
Though the chief purpose of this first foreign settlement in 
Egypt, between Pelusium and Bubastis, was to er sate an inde- 
pendent military force, and with it a fleet for the king, yet it was 
of course an opening both for communication and traffic to all 
Greeks and to all Phenicians, such as had never before been 
available. And it was speedily followed by the throwing open of 
the Kan6épic or westernmost branch of the river for the purposes 
of trade specially. According to a statement of Strabo, it was in 
the reign of Psammetichus that the Milesians with a fleet of 
thirty ships made a descent on that part of the coast, first built 
a fort in the immediate neighborhood, and then presently founded 
the town of Naukratis, on the right bank of the Kandpic Nile. 
There is much that is perplexing in this affirmation of Strabo ; 
but on the whole I am inclined to think that the establishment of 
the Greek factories and merchants at Naukratis may be consid- 
ered as dating in the reign of Psammetichus,? — Naukratis being 


' Herodot. ii, 154. πο, 

2 Strabo, xvii, p. 801. καὶ τὸ Μιλησίων τεῖχος" πλεύσαντες γὰρ ἐπὶ Fap- 
κμητίχου τριάκοντα ναυσὶν Μιλήσιοι κατὰ Κυαξάρη «Φϑ Ὅς δὲ τῶν 
Μήδω ν)ὴ κάτεσχον εἰς τὸ στόμα τὸ Βολβίτινον - εἶτ᾽ ἐκβάννες ἐτείχισαν τὸ 
λεχϑὲν κτίσμα" χρόνῳ δ' ἀναπλεύσαντες εἰς τὸν Σαϊτικὸν νομὸν, κατα- 
ναυμαχήσαντες “Ivapov, πόλιν ἔκτισαν Ναύκρατιν ob πολὺ τῆς Σχεδίαι 
ὕπερϑεν. 

What is meant by the allusion to Kyaxarés, or to Inarus, in this passage, 
Ido not understand. We know nothing of any relations either between 
Kyaxarés and Psammetichus, or between Kyaxarés and the Milesians. 
moreover, if by κατὰ Κυαξάρη be meant in the time of Kyaxarés, as the 5680. 
lators render it, we have in immediate succession ἐπὶ δαμμητίχου, ---κατὰ 
Κυαξάρη, with the same meaning, which is, to say the leas: of it. ἃ very 
awkward sentence. The words οὗτος δὲ τῶν Μήδων loc« not unlike a 
eomment added hy some early reader of Strabo, who could not understand 


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$28 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


a city of Egyptian origin, in which these foreigners were per 
mitted to take up their abode, — not a Greek colony, as Strabo 
would have us believe. The language of Herodotus seems rather 


to imply that it was king Amasis — between whom and the death 


of Psammetichus there intervened nearly half a century — who 
first allowed Greeks to settle at Naukratis; but on comparing 
what the historian tells us respecting the courtezan Rhoddépis 
anu the brother of Sappho the Poetess, it is evident that there 
must have been both Greek trade and Greek establishments in 
that town long before Amasis came to the throne. We may con- 
sider, then, that both the eastern and western mouths of the Nile 
became open to the Greeks in the days of Psammetichus; the 
former as leading to the head-quarters of the mercenary Greek 
troops in Egyptian pay, — the latter for purposes of trade. 
While this event afforded to the Greeks a valuable enlarge- 
ment both of their traffic and of their field of observation, it 
seems to have occasioned an internal revolution in Egypt. The 
nome of Bubastis, in which the new military settlement of for- 
eigners was planted, is numbered among those occupied by the 
Egyptian military caste :! whether their lands were in part taken 
away from them, we do not know; but the mere introduction of 
such foreigners must have appeared an abomination, to the strong 
conservative feeling of ancient Egypt. And Psammetichus 


why Kyaxarés should be here mentioned, and who noted his difficulty in 
words which have subsequently found their way into the text. Then again, 
Inarus belongs to the period between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars ; 
at least we know no other person of that name than the chief of the Egyp- 
tian revolt against Persia (Thucyd. i, 114) who is spoken of as a “ Libyan, 
the son of Psammetichus.” The mention of Kyaxarés, therefore, here 
appears unmeaning, while that of Inarus is an anachronism: possibly, the 
story that the Milesians founded Naukratis “ after having worsted Inarus in 
a sea-fight,” may have grown out of the etymology of the name Naukratis, 
tn the mind of one who found Inarus the son of Psammetichus mentioned 
two centuries afterwards, and identified the two Psammetichuses with each 
other. 

The statement of Strabo has been copied by Steph. Byz. v, Ναύκρατις 
Eusebius also announces (Chron. i, p. 168) the Milesians as the founders of 
Naukratis, but puts the event at 753 B. c., during what he calls the Milesian 
thalassokraty: see Mr. Fynes Clinton ad ann. 732 5. oc. in the Fasti 
Hellenici. ' Herod-t. ii, 166 


NEKOS. 329 


treated the native soldiers in a manner which showed of how 
much less account they had become since the “ brazen helmets” 
had got footing in the land. It had hitherto been the practice to 
distribute such portions of the military as were on actual service 
in three different posts: at Daphné, near Pelusium, on the north- 
eastern frontier, — at Marea, on the north-western frontier, near 
the spot where Alexandria was afterwards built,—and at Ele- 
phantiné, on the southern or Ethiopian boundary. Psammeti- 
chus, having no longer occasion for their services on the eastern 
frontier, since the formation of the mercenary camp, accumulated 
them in greater number and detained them for an unusual time 
at the two other stations, especially at Elephantiné. Here, as 
Herodotus tells us, they remained for three years unrelieved, and 
Diodorus adds that Psammetichus assigned to those native troops 
who fought conjointly with the mercenaries, the least honorable 
post in the line; until at length discontent impelled them to emi- 
grate in a body of two hundred and forty thousand men into 
Ethiopia, leaving their wives and children behind in Egypt, — 
nor could they be induced by any instances on, the part of Psam- 
metichus to return. This memorable incident,! which is said to 
have given rise to a settlement in the southernmost regions of 
Ethiopia, called by the Greeks the Automoli (though the emigrant 
soldiers still called themselves by their old Egyptian name), at- 
ests the effect produced by the introduction of the foreign mer- 
cenaries in lowering the position of the native military. The 
number of the emigrants, however, is a point noway to be relied 
upon: we shall presently see that there were enough of them left 
behind to renew effectively the struggle for their lost dignity. 

It was probably with his Ionian and Karian troops that Psam- 
metichus carried on those warlike operations in Syria which 
filled so large a proportion of his long and prosperous reign of 
fifty-four years.2. He besieged the city of Azétus in Syria for 
twenty-nine years, until he took it, — the longest blockade which 
the historian had ever heard of: moreover, he was in that coun- 
try when the destroying Scythian nomads, who had defeated the 


Herodo . ii, 30: Diodor. i, 67. 
2 "Anping -- ὃς μετὰ Ψαμμήτιχον τὸν ἑωῦτοῦ προπάτορα ἐγένετ. ὑδαιμονέσ 
rareg τῶν πρότερον βασιλέων (Herodot. ii, 161). 


— 
ΝΙΝ 


-. ..» 


SSS ee ees eee σης - 


830 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Median king Kyaxarés and possessed themselves of Upper Asia, 
advanced to invade Egypt, — an undertaking which Psammeti- 
chus, by large presents, induced them to abandon.! 

There were, however, more powerful enemies than the Scyth- 
ians, against whom he and his son Nekés — who succeeded him, 
seemingly about 604 B. c.2—had to contend in Syria and the 


lands adjoining. It is just at this period, during the reigns of 


' Herodot. i, 105: ii, 157. 

* The chronology of the Egyptian kings from Psammetichus to Amasis ia 
yiven in some points differently by Herodotus and by Manetho: — 
2 "τὸ δ 


According to Herodotus, According to Manetho ap. African. 


Psammetichus reigned 54 years. | Psammetichus reigned 54 years. 
roe . 16 Nechao II.... 
Psammis ... " ; * | Psammathis. . 
Apriés 2 a Uaphris ..... 
μ. .Ὅἥ..... “ νυ ...., 


Diodorus gives 22 years for Apriés and 55 years for Amasis (i, 68). 

Now the end of the reign of Amasis stands fixed for 526 B. c., and, there- 
fore, the beginning of his reign (according to both Herodotus and Manetho) 
to 570 B. Ο. or 569 B. c. According to the chronology of the Old Testa- 
ment, the battles of Megiddo and Carchemisch, fought by Nekés, fall from 
609-605 B. c., and this coincides with the reign of Nekés as dated by 
Herodotus, but not as dated by Manetho. On the other hand, it appears 
from the evidence of certain Egyptian inscriptions recently discovered, that 
the real interval from the beginning of Nechao to the end of Uaphris is only 
forty years, and not forty-seven years, as the dates of Herodotus would make 
it (Boeckh, Manetho und die Hundstern-Periode, pp. 341-348), which would 
place the accession of Nekés in 610 or 609 8 c. Boeckh discusses at some 
length this discrepancy of dates, and inclines to the supposition that Nekés 
reigned nine or ten years jointly with his father, and that Herodotus haa 
counted these nine or ten years twice, once in the reign of Psammetichus, 
once in that of Nekés. Certainly, Psammetichus can hardly have been very 
young when his reign began, and if he reigned fifty-four years, he must have 
reached an extreme old age, and may have been prominently aided by his 
son. Adopting the suppositions, therefore, that the last ten years of the 
reign of Psammetichus may be reckoned both for him and for Nekés, — that 
for Nek6s separately only six years are to be reckoned, — and that the num- 
ber of years from the beginning of Nekés’s separate reign to the end of 
Uaphris is forty, —Boeckh places the beginning of Psammetichus in 654 
B. C., and not in 670 B. Ο., as the data of Herodotus would make it (¢. pp 

Mr. Clinton, Fast. Hellen. Β. c. 616, follows Herodotus. 


NEKOS.- HIS CANAL.— iS NAVY. 231 


Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar (Β. c. 625-561) that 
the Chaldzans or Assyrians of Babylon appear at the maximum 
of their power and aggressive disposition, while the Assyrians of 
Ninus or Nineveh lose their substantive position through the 
taking of that town by Kyaxarés (about B. c. 600), — the great- 
est height which the Median power ever reached. Between the 
Egyptian Nekés and his grandson Apriés — Pharaoh Necho and 
Pharaoh Hophra of the Old Testament —on the one side, and 
the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar on the other, Judea and Phe- 
nicia form the intermediate subject of quarrel: and the political 
independence of the Phenician towns is extinguished never 
again to be recovered. At the commencement of his reign, it 
appears, Nekés was chiefly anxious to extend the Egyptian com- 
merce, for which purpose he undertook two measures, both of 
astonishing boldness for that age,—a canal between the lower 
part of the eastern or Pelusiac Nile, and the inmost corner of 
the Red sea, — and the circumnavigation of Africa; his great ob- 
ject being to procure a water-communication between the Medi- 
terranean and the Red sea. He began the canal— much about 
the same time as Nebuchadnezzar executed his canal from Bab- 
ylon to Terédon — with such reckless determination, that one 
hundred and twenty thousand Egyptians are said to have perished 
in the work ; but either from this disastrous proof of the difficul- 
ty, or, as Herodotus represents, from the terrors of a menacing 
prophecy which reached him, he was compelled to desist. Next, 
he accomplished the cireumnavigation of Africa, already above 
alluded to; but in this way too he found it impracticable to pro- 
cure any available communication such as he wished.!' It is plain 
that in both these enterprises he was acting under Phenician and 
Greek instigation; and we may remark that the point of the 
Nile from whence the canal took its departure, was close upon 
the mercenary camps or stratopeda. Being unable to connect 
the two seas together, he built and equipped an armed naval 
force both upon the one and the other, and entered upon aggres- 
sive enterprises, naval as well as military. His army, on march- 


' Herodot. ii, 158. Respecting the canal of Nekés, see the explanation of 
Mr. Kenrick on this chapter of Herodotus. From Bubastis to Suez the 
length would be about ninety miles. 


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$32 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ing into Syria, was met at Megiddo — Herodotus says Magdolum 
— by Josiah king of Judah, who was himself slain and so com- 
pletely worsted, that Jerusalem fell into the power of the con- 
queror, and became tributary to Egypt. It deserves to be 
noted that Nekés sent the raiment which he had worn on the day 
of his victory, as an offering te the holy temple of Apollo at 
Branchide near Milétus,! — the first recorded instance of a do- 
nation from an Egyptian king to a Grecian temple, and a proof 
that Hellenic affinities were beginning to take effect upon him: 
probably we may conclude that a large proportion of his troops 
were Milesians. 

But the victorious career of Nekés was completely checked by 
the defeat which he experienced at Carchemisch, or Circesium, 
on the Euphrates, from Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, 
who not only drove him out of Judea and Syria, but also took 
Jerusalem, and carried away the king and the principal Jews 
into captivity.2, Nebuchadnezzar farther attacked the Phenician 
cities, and the siege of ‘Tyre alone cost him severe toil for thirteen 
years. After this long and gallant resistance, the Tyrians were 
forced to submit, and underwent the same fate as the Jews: their 
princes and chiefs were dragged captive into the Babylonian ter- 
ritory, and the Phenician cities became numbered among the 
tributaries of Nebuchadnezzar. So they seemed to have remain- 
ed, until the overthrow of Babylon by Cyrus: for we find among 
those extracts, unhappily, very brief, which Josephus has pre- 


' Herodot. ii, 159. Diodorus makes no mention of Nekdés. 

The account of Herodotus coincides in the main with the history of the 
Old Testament about Pharaoh Necho and Josiah. The great city of Syria 
which he calls Καδυτις seems to be Jerusalem, though Wesseling (ad 
Herodot. iii, 5) and other able critics dispute the identity. See Volney, 
Recherches sur l’Hist. Anc. vol. ii, ch. 13, p. 239: “ Les Arabes ort conservé 
Vhabitude d’appeler Jerusulem la Sainte par excellence, εἰ Qods. Sans 
doute les Chaldéens et les Syriens lui donnérent le méme nom, qui dans leur 
dialecte est Qadouta, dont Hérodote rend bien Porthographie quand il écrit 
K advric.” 

* Jeremiah, xlvi, 2; 2i book of Kings, xxiii and xxiv; Josephus, Ant 
* «5,1; x, 6 3. 

About Nebuchadnezzar, see the Fragment of Berosus ap. Joseph. cont 
Apion. i, 19-20, and Antiqg. εἰ. x, 11, 1, and Berosi Fragment. ed. Ritcher 


pp. 65-67 


NEBUCHADNEZZAR. — PSAMMIS. 388 


served out of the Tyrian annals, that during this interval there were 
disputes and irregularities in the government of Tyre,! — judges 
being for a time substituted in the place of kings; while Merbal 
and Hirom, two princes of the regal Tyrian line, detained captive 
in Babylonia, were successively sent down on the special petition 
of the Tyrians, and reigned at Tyre; the former four years, the 
latter twenty years, until the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus. 
The Egyptian king Apriés, indeed, the son of Psammis, and 
grandson of Nekos, attacked Sidon and Tyre both by land and 
sea, but seemingly without any result.2. To the Persian empire, 
as soon as’Cyrus had conquered Babylon, they cheerfully and 
spontaneously submitted,? whereby the restoration of the captive 
Tyrians to their home was probably conceded to them, like that 
of the captive Jews. 

Nekos in Egypt was succeeded by his son Psammis, and he 
again, after a reign of six years, by his son Apriés; of whose 
power and prosperity Herodotus speaks in very high genera! 


! Menander ap. Joseph. Antiq. J. ix, 14,2. Ἐπὶ Εἰϑωβάλου τοῦ βασιλέως 
ἐπολιόρκησε Ναβουχοδονόσορος τὴν Τύρον ἐπ᾽ ἔτη dexatpia. That this siege 
of thixteen years ended in the storming, capitulation, or submission (we 
know not which, and Vulney goes beyond the evidence when he says, “ Les 
Tyriens furent emportés d'assaut par le roi de Babylone,” Recherches sur 
Histoire Ancienne, vol. ii, ch. 14, p. 250) of Tyre to the Chaldzan king, is 
quite certain from the mention which afterwards follows of the Tyrian princes 
being detained captive in Babylonia. Hengstenberg (De Rebus Tyrio- 
rum, pp. 34-77) heaps up a mass of arguments, most of them very incon- 
clusive, to prove this point, about which the passage cited by Josephus from 
Menanéer leaves no doubt. What is not true, is, that Tyre was destroyed 
alu laid desolate by Nebuchadnezzar: still less can it be believed that that 
king conquered Egypt and Libya, as Megasthenes, and even Berosus, so far 
as Egypt is concerned, would have us believe,— the argument of Larcher ad 
Herodot. ii, 168, is anything but satisfactory. The defeat of the Egyptian 
king at Carchemisch, and the stripping him of his foreign possessions in Ju- 
dwa and Syria, have been exaggerated into a conquest of Egypt itself. 

* Herodot. ii, 161. He simply mentions what I have stated in the text; 
while Diodorus tells us (i, 68) that the Egyptian king took Sidon by as- 
tault, terrified the other Phenician towns into submission, and defeated 
the Phenicians and Cyprians in a great naval battle, acquiring a vast 
spoil. 

What authority Diodorus here followed, I do not know; but the measnred 
statement of Herodotus is far the most worth of credit. 

3 Herodot. iii, 19. 


384 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


terms, though the few particulars which he recounts are of a con- 
trary tenor. It was not till after a reign of twenty-five years, 
that Apriés undertook that expedition against the Greek colonies 
in Libya, — Kyréné and Barca, — which proved his ruin. The 
native Libyan tribes near those cities, having sent to surrender 
themselves to him, and entreat his aid against the Greek settlers, 
Apriés despatched to them a large force composed of native 
Egyptians; who, as has been before mentioned, were stationed on 
the north-western frontier of Egypt, and were, therefcre, most 
available for the march against Kyréné. The Kyrenean citizens 
advanced to oppose them, and a battle ensued in which the Egyp- 
tians were completely routed with severe loss. It is affirmed 
that they were thrown into disorder from want of practical knowl- 
edge of Grecian warfare,! — a remarkable proof of the entire iso- 
lation of the Grecian mercenaries (who had now been long in the 
service of Psammetichus and his successors) from the native 
Egyptians. 

This disastrous reverse provoked a mutiny in Egypt against 
Apriés, the soldiers contending that he had despatched them on 
the enterprise with a deliberate view to their destruction, in order 
to assure his rule over the remaining Egyptians. The malcon- 
tents found so much sympathy among the general population, that 
Amasis, a Saitic Egyptian of low birth, but of considerable ine 
telligenve, whom Apriés had sent to conciliate them, was either 
persuaded or constrained to become their leader, and prepared to 
march immediately against the king at Sais. Unbounded and 
reverential submission to the royal authority was a habit so deeply 
rooted in the Egyptian mind, that Apriés could not believe the re 
sistance to be serious. He sent an officer of consideration named 
Patarbémis to bring Amasis before him, and when the former re- 
turned, bringing back from the rebel nothing better than a con- 
temptuous refusal to appear except at the head of an army, the 
exasperated king ordered his nose and ears to be cut off. This 
act of atrocity caused such indignation among the Egyptians 
round him, that most of them deserted and Joined the revolters, 
who thus became irresistibly formidable in point of numbers. 
There yet remained to Apriés the foreign mercenaries, — thirty 


' Herodot. ii, 161: iv. 159 


AMASIS. 335 


thousand Ionians and Karians, — whom he summoned from their 
stratopeda on the Pelusiae Nile to his residence at Sais; and 
this force, the creation of his ancestor Psammetichus, and the 
main reliance of his family, still inspired him with such unabated 
confidence, that he marched to attack the far superior numbers 
under Amasis at Momemphis. Though his troops behaved with 
"ravery, the disparity of numbers, combined with the excited 
feeling of the insurgents, overpowered him: he was defeated and 
‘arried prisoner to Sais, where at first Amasis not only spared 
his life, but treated him with generosity.! Such, however, was 
the antipathy of the Egyptians, that they forced Amasis to sur- 
render his prisoner into their hands, and immediately strangled 
him. 

It is not difficult to trace in these proceedings the outbreak of 
a long-suppressed hatred on the part of the Egyptian soldier- 
caste towards the dynasty of Psammetichus, to whom they owed 
their comparative degradation, and by whom that stream of Hel. 
lenism had been let in upon Egypt, which doubtless was not wit- 
nessed without great repugnance. It might seem, also, that this 
dynasty had too little of pure Egyptianism in them to find favor 
with the priests. At least Herodotu does not mention any reli- 
cious edifices erected either by Nekés or Psammis or Apriés, though 
he describes much of such outlay on the part of Psammetichus, 
—who built magnificent propylea to the temple of Hephestos at 
Memphis,? and a splendid new chamber or stable for the sacred 
bull Apis, —and more still on the part of Amasis. 

Nevertheless, Amasis, though he had acquired the crown by 
this explosion of native antipathy, found the foreign adjuncts 
both already existing and eminently advantageous. He not only 
countenanced, but extended them; and Egypt enjoyed under him 
a degree of power and consideration such as it neither before pos- 
sessed, nor afterwards retained, — for his long reign of forty-four 
years (570-526 Β. c.) closed just six months before the Persian 
conquest of the country. He was eminently phil-Hellenic, and 
the Greek merchants at Naukratis, —the permanent settlers, as 
well as the occasional visitors, — obtained from him valuable en 


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336 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


largement of their privileges. Besides granting permissien to 
various Grecian towns, to erect religious establishments for such 
of their citizens as visited the place, he also sanctioned tle ccn-. 
stitution of a formal and organized emporium or factory, invest- 
ed with commercial privileges, and armed with authority exer- 
cised by presiding officers regularly chosen. This factory was 
connected with, and probably grew out of, a large religious edi- 
fice and precinct, built at the joint cost of nine Grecian cities: 
four of them Ionie,— Chios, Teds, Phokawa, and Klazomenz ; 
four Doric, — Rhodes, Knidus, Halikarnassus, and Phasélis; and 
one Zolic,— Mityléné. By these nine cities the joint temple 
and factory was kept up and its presiding magistrates chosen ; 
but its destination, for the convenience of Grecian commerce gen- 
erally, seems revealed by the imposing title of Zhe Hellénion. 
Samos, Milétus, and “gina had each founded a separate temple 
at Naukratis, for the worship of such of their citizens as went 
there ; probably connected—as the Hellénion was—with protection 
and facilities for commercial purposes. But though these three 
powerful cities had thus constituted each a factory for itself, as 
guarantee to the merchandise, and as responsible for the conduct, 
of its own citizens separately, — the corporation of the Helléni- 
on served both as protection and control to all other Greek mer- 
chants. And such was the usefulness, the celebrity, and proba- 
bly the pecuniary profit, of the corporation, that other Grecian 
cities set up claims to a share in it, and falsely pretended to have 
contributed to the original foundation.! 

Naukratis was for a long time the privileged port for Grecian 
commerce with Egypt. No Greek merchant was permitted to 
deliver goods in any other part, or to enter any other of the 


' Herodot. ii, 178. The few words of the historian about these Greek es- 
tablishments at Naukratis are highly valuable, and we can only wish that he 
had told us more: he speaks of them in the present tense, from personal 
knowledge — τὸ μὲν viv péysorov αὐτέων τέμενος καὶ οὐνομαστότατον ἐὸν 
καὶ χρησιμώτατον, καλεύμενον δὲ ‘EAAnviov, aide πόλις εἰσὶν αἱ παρέχουσαι 
.-- Τουτέων μὲν ἐστι τοῦτο τὸ τέμενος, καὶ προστάτας τοῦ ἐμπορίου αὐταὶ αἱ 
τόλις εἰσὶν αἱ παρέχουσαι. Ὅσαι δὲ ἄλλαι πόλις μεταποιεῦνται, οὐδὲν 
σφι μετεὸν μεταποιεῦνται 

We are here let into a vein of commercial jealousy between the Greek 
cities about which we should have been glad to be farther informed. 


COMMERCE AND FACTORInS AT NAUKRATIS. 337 


mouths of the Nile except the Kanépic. If forced into any of 
them by stress of weather, he was compelled to make oath that 
his arrival was a matter of necessity, and to convey his goods 
round by sea into the Kanépic branch to Naukratis ; and if the 
weather still forbade such a proceeding, the merchandise was put 
into barges and conveyed round to Naukratis by the internal ca- 
nals of the delta. Such a monopoly, which made Naukratis in 
Egypt, something like Canton in China, or Nangasaki in Japan, 
no longer subsisted in the time of Herodotus.! But the factory 
of the Hellénion was in full operation and dignity, and very 
probably he himself, as a native of one of the contributing cities, 
Halikarnassus, may have profited by its advantages. At what 
crecise time Naukratis first became licensed for Grecian trade, 
we cannot directly make out; but there seems reason to believe 
that it was the port to which the Greek merchants first went, so 
svon as the general liberty of trading with the country was con- 
ceded to them; and this would put it at least as far back as the 
foundation of Kyréné, and the voyage of the fortunate Kolzeus, 
who was on his way with a cargo to Egypt, when the storms 
overtook him, — about 630 Β. c., during the reign of Psammeti- 
chus. And in the time of the poetess Sapphd, and her brother 
Charaxus, it seems evident that Greeks had been some time es- 
tablished at Naukratis.2 But Amasis, though his predecessors 


ι Herodot. ii, 179. "Hv δὲ τοπαλαιὸν μούνη ἡ Ναύκρατις ἐμπόριον, καὶ 
ἀλλο οὐδὲν Αἰγύπτου... Οὕτω δὴ Ναύκρατις ἐτετιμῆτο. 
2 The beautiful Thracian courtezan, Rhoddpis, was purchased by a Samian 


merchant named Xanthés, and conveyed to Naukratis, in order that he might 
make money by her (κατ᾽ ἐργασίην). The speculation proved a successful 
one, for Charaxus, brother of Sappho, going to Naukratis with a cargo of 
wine, became so captivated with Rhodépis, that he purchased her for a very 
large sum of money, and gave her her freedom. She then carried on her profes- 
sion at Naukratis on her own account, realized a handsome fortune, the tithe 
of which she employed in a votive offering at Delphi, and acquired so much 
renown, that the Egyptian Greeks ascribed to her the building of one of the 
pyramids, —a supposition, on the absurdity of which Herodotus makes 
proper comments, but which proves the great celebrity of the name of Rho- 
dépis (Herodot. ii, 134). Athenzus calls her Doriché, and distinguishes her 
from Rhodépis (xiii, p. 596, compare Suidas, v, '‘Podwridoc ἀνάϑημα). When 
Charaxus returned to Mityléné, his sister Sappho composed a song, in which 


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238 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


had permitted such establishment, may doubtless be regarded as 
having given organization to the factories, and as having placed 
the Greeks on a more comfortable footing of security than they 
had ever enjoyed before. 

This Egyptian king manifested several other evidences of his 
phil-Hellenic disposition, by donations to Delphi and other Gre- 
cian temples, and he even married a Grecian wife from the city 
of Kyréné.! Moreover, he was in intimate alliance and relations 
of hospitality both with Polykrates despot of Samos, and with 
Creesus king of Lydia.2 He conquered the island of Cyprus, 
and rendered it tributary to the Egyptian throne: his fleet and 
army were maintained in good condition, and the foreign merce- 
naries, the great strength of the dynasty which he had supplant- 
ed, were not only preserved, but even removed from their camp 
near Pelusium to the chief town Memphis, where they served as 
the special guards of Amasis. Egypt enjoyed under him a de- 
gree of power abroad, and prosperity at home — the river having, 
been abundant in its overflowing — which was the more tena 
ciously remembered on account of the period of disaster and sub- 
jugation immediately following his death. And his contributions 
in architecture and sculpture, to the temples of Sais4 and Mem. 
phis, were on a scale of vastness surpassing everything before 


known in lower Egypt. 


she greatly derided him for this proceeding, — a song which doubtless He- 
rodotus knew, and which gives to the whole anecdote a complete authen- 
ticity. 

Now we can hardly put the age of Sappho lower than 600-580 Β. c. (see 
Mr. Clinton, Fasti Hellen ad ann. 595 Β. c., and Ulrici, Geschichte der 
Griech. Lyrik, ch. xxiii, p. 360): Alkeeus, too, her contemporary, had him- 
self visited Egypt (Alcei Fragm. 103, ed. Bergk; Strabo, i, p. 63). The 
Greek settlement at Naukratis, therefore, must be decidedly older than Ama- 
sis, who began to reign in 570 B. c., and the residence of Rhodépis in that 
town must have begun earlier than Amasis. though Herodotus calls her κατ' 
μασιν ἀκμάζουσα (ii, 134). Nor can we construe the language of Herodo 
tus strictly, when he says that it was Amasis who permitted the residence of 
Greeks at Naukratis (ii, 178). 

' Herodot. ii, 181. 3 Herodot i, 77; iii, 39. 

8 Herodot. ii, 182, 154. κατοίκισε ἐς Μέμφιν, φυλακὴν ἰωῦτοι τοιεύμενθ 
ποὸς Αἰγυπτίων. 

4 Herodot. ii, 175-117. 


MANETHO AND THE SOTHIAC PERIOD. 


APPENDIX. 


Tue archeology of Egypt, as given in the first book of Diodorus, is so 
much blended with Grecian mythes, and so much colored over with Grecian 
motive, philosophy, and sentiment, as to serve little purpose in illustrating the 
native Egyptian turn of thought. Even in Herodotus, though his stories are in 
the main genuine Egyptian, we find a certain infusion of Hellenism which the 
priests themselves had in his day acquired, and which probably would not 
have been found in their communications with Solon, or with the poet Al- 
kwus, a century and a half earlier. Still, his stories (for the tenor of which 
Diodorus unduly censures him, i, 69) are really illustrative of the national 
mind ; but the narratives coined by Grecian fancy out of Egyptian materials, 
and idealizing Egyptian kings and priests so as to form a pleasing picture 
for the Grecian reader, are mere romance, which has rarely even the merit 
of amusing. Most of the intellectual Greeks had some tendency thus to 
dress up Egyptian history, and Plato manifests it considerably ; but the 
Greeks who crowded into Egypt under the Ptolemies carried it still further. 
Hekateus of Abdéra, from whom Diodorus greatly copied (i, 46), is to be 
numbered among them, and from him, perhaps, come the eponymous kings 
figyptus (i,51) and Neileus (i, 63), the latter of whom was said to have 
viven to the river its name of Nile, whereas it had before been called ALqyp- 
tus (this to save the credit of Homer, who calls it Αἴγυπτος ποταμὸς, Odyss., 
xiv, 258): also Macedon, Prometheus, Triptolemus, etc., largely blended with 
Egyptian antiquities, in Diodorus, (i, 18, 19, ete.) It appears that the name 
of king Neilos occurred in the list of Egyptian kings in Diksarchus (ap 
Svhol. Apoll. Rhod. iv, 272; Dikwarch. Fragment. p. 100, ed. Fuhr). 

That the avaypagai in the temples of Egypt reached to a vast antiquity 
and contained a list of names, human, semi-divine, and divine, very long 
indeed, — there is no reason to doubt. Herodotus, in giving the number of 
years between Dionysus and Amasis as 1500, expressly says that “the priests 
told him they knew this accurately, since they always kept an account, and 
always wrote down the number of years,” —xal ταῦτα Αἰγύπτιοι ἀτρεκέως 
φασὶν ἐπίστασϑαι αἰεΐ τε λογιζόμενοι καὶ αἰεὶ ἀπογραφόμενοι τὰ ἔτεα (ii. 145): 
compare Diodor. i, 44. He tells us that the priests read to him out of a 
manuscript of papyrus (ἐκ βύβλου, ii, 100) the names of the 330 successive 
kings from father to son, between Mén or Menés and Meeris ; and the 341 
colossal statues of chief priests, each succeeding his father, down to Sethos 
priest of Hephestos and king (ii, 142), which were shown to him in the tem- 
ple of Hephxstos at Memphis, afford a sort of monumental evidence anal- 
ogous in its nature to a written list. So also the long period of 23,000 years 
given by Diodorus, from the rule of Hélios down to the expedition of Alex. 
ander against Asia, 18,000 of which were occupied by the government of 
gods and demigods (i, 26, 94. ¢ i,—his numbers do not all agree with one 
another), may probably be drawn from an ἀναγραφῆ. Many temples in 


$40 HISTORY or GREECE. 


Egypt probably had such tablets or inscriptions, some differing from others 
But this only shows us that such ἀναγραφαὶ or other temple monuments do 
not of themselves carry any authority, unless in cases where there is fair 
reason to presume them nearly contemporary with the facts or persons which 
they are produced to avouch, It is plain that the temple inscriptions repre- 
sent the ideas of Egyptian priests (of some unknown date anterior to Herod- 
οἱ 15) respecting the entire range of Egyptian past history and chronology. 

What the proportion of historical items may be, included in this aggre- 
gate, we have no means of testing, nor are the monuments in Egyptian tem 
- ‘es in themselves a proof of the reality of the persons or events which they 
are placed to commemorate, any more than the Centauromachia or Amazon- 
omachia on the frieze of a Grecian temple proves that there really existed 
Centaurs or Amazons. But it is interesting to penetrate, so far as we are 
enabled, into the scheme upon which the Egyptians themselves conceived 
and constructed their own past history, of which the gods form quite as es- 
sential an element as the human kings; for we depart from the Egyptian 
soint of view when we treat the gods as belonging to Egyptian religion 
and the human kings to Egyptian history, — both are parts of the same 
series. 

It is difficult to trace the information which Herodotus received from the 
Egyptian priests to any intelligible scheme of chronology ; but this may be 
done in regard*to Manetho with much plausibility, as the recent valuable and 
elaborate analysis of Boeckh (Manetho und die Hundsternperiode, Berlin, 
1845) has shown. He gives good reason for believing that the dynasties of 
Manetho have been so arranged as to fill up an exact number of Sothiac cy- 
cles (or periods of the star Sirius, each comprehending 1460 Julian years = 
1461 Egyptian years). The Egyptian calender recognized a year of 365 
days exactly, taking no note of the six hours additional which go to make 
up the solar year: they had twelve months of thirty days, with five epago- 
mens or additional days, and their year always began with the first of the 
month Thoth (Soth, Sothis). Their year being thus six hours shorter (or 
one day for every four years) than the Julian year with its recurrent leap 
year, the first of the Egyptian month Thoth fell back every four years ony 
day in the Julian calender, and in the course of 1460 years it fell suecessive- 
ly on every day of the Julian year, coming back again to the same day from 
which it had started. This period of 1460 years was called a Sothiac period, 
and was reckoned from the year in which the first of the Egyptian month 
Thoth coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius in Egypt; that is, (for an 
interval from 2700 8. c. down to the Christian era) on the 20th July of 
the Julian year. We know from Censorinus that the particular revolu- 
tion of the Sothiac period, in which both Herodotus and Manetho were in- 
cluded, ended in the year 139 after the Christian era, in which year the first 
of the Egyptian month Thoth fell on the 20th July, or coincided with the 
heliacal rising of Sirius in Egypt: knowing in what year this period ended, 
we also know that it must have begun in 1322 Β. c., and that the period im- 
mediately preceding it must have begun in 2782 B. c. (Censorinus, De Die 


11 Vol 3 


MANETHO AND THE SOTHIAC PERIOD 8-11 


Watali, c. 21; Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i, Abschn. 1, pp. 125- 
138.) The name Sothis, or Thoth, was the Egyptian name for Sirius or the 
Dog-star, the heliacal rising of which was an important phenomenon in that 
country, as coinciding nearly with the commencement of the overflowing of 


the Nile. 

Boeckh has analyzed, with great care and ability, the fragmentary, par 
tial, and in many particulars conflicting, versions of the dynasties of Manetho 
which have come down to us: after all, we know them very imperfectly, 
and it is clear that they have been much falsificd and interpolated. He pre- 
fers, for the most part, the version reported as that of Africanus. The 
number of years included in the Egyptian chronology has been always a 
difficulty with critics, some of whom have eluded it by the supposition that 
the dynasties mentioned as successive were really simultaneous, — while 
others have supposed that the years enumerated were not full years, but 
years of one month or three months; nor have there been wanting other 
efforts of ingenuity to reconcile Manetho with the biblical chronology. 

Manetho constructs his history of the past upon views purely Egyptian, 
applying to past time the measure of the Sothiac period or 1460 Julian years 
(= 1461 Egyptian years), and beginning both the divine history of Egypt, 
and the human history which succeeds it, each at the beginning of one of 
these Sothiac periods. Knowing as we do from Censorinus that a Sothiac 
period ended in 139 A. D., and, of course, began in 1322 B. c. — we also 
know that the third preceding Sothiac period must have begun in 5702 3. c. 
(1322 + 1460 + 1460 + 1460 = 5702). Now the year 5702 B. C. coincides 
with that in which Manetho places Menés, the first human king of Egypt; 
‘or his thirty-one dynasties end with the first year of Alexander the Great, 
332 5. c.. and include 5366 years in the aggregate, giving for the beginning 
of the series of dynasties, or accession of Menés, the date 5702 B. c. Prior 
to Menés he gives a long series of years as the time of the government of 
gods and demigods; this long time comprehends 24,837 years, or seventeen 
Sothiac periods of 1461 Egyptian years each. We see, therefore, that Man- 
etho (or perhaps the sacerdotal ἀναγραφαὶ which he followed) constructed a 
system of Egyptian history and chronology out of twenty full Sothiac pe- 
riods. in addition to that fraction of the twenty-first which had elapsed down 
to the time of Alexander, — about three-quarters of a century anterior to 
Manetho himself, if we suppose him to have lived during the time of Ptole- 
my Philadelphus, which, though not certain, is yet probable (Boeckh, p. 11). 
These results have not been brought out without some corrections of Mane- 
tho’s figures, — corrections which are, for the most part, justified on reasona- 
ble grounds, and, where not so justified, are unimportant in amount ; so that 
the approximation is quite sufficient to give a high degree of plausibility toe 
Boeckh’s hypothesis : see pp. 142-145. 

Though there is no doubt that in the time of Manetho the Sothiac period 
was familiar to the Egyptian priests, yet as to the time at which it first be- 
came known we have no certain information: we do not know the time at 
which they first began to take notice of the fact that their year of 365 days 


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842 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


was six hours too short According to the statement of Herodotus (ii, 4), 
the priests of Heliopolis represented the year of 365 days (which they said 
that the Egyptians had first discovered) as if it were an exact recurrence of 
the seasons, without any reference to the remaining six hours. This passage 
of Herodotus, our oldest informant, is perplexing. Geminus (Isagogé in 
Arati Phenomena, c. 6) says that the Egyptians intentionally refrained from 
putting in the six hours by any intercalation, because they preferred that 
their months, and the religious ceremonies connected with them, should from 
time to time come round at different seasons,— which has much more the 
air of an ingenious after-thought, than of a determining reason. 

Respecting the principle on which the Egyptian chronology of Herodotus 
is put together, see the remarks of M. Bunsen, A‘gyptens Stellang in der 
Welt-geschichte, vol. i, p. 145. 


CRAPTTER AA. 


DECLINE OF THE PHENICIANS.— GROWTH OF CARTHAGE. 


THe preceding sketch of that important system of foreign 
nations, — Phenicians, Assyrians, and Egyptians, — who occu- 
pied the south-eastern portion of the (οἰκουμένη) inhabited world 
of an early Greek, brings them down nearly to the time at 
which they were all absorbed into the mighty Persian empire. 
In tracing the series of events which intervened between 700 
B. C., and 530 B. C., we observe a material increase of power both 
in the Chaldeans and Egyptians, and an immense extension of 
Grecian maritime activity and commerce,— but we at the same 
time notice the decline of Tyre and Sidon, both in power and 
traffic. The arms of Nebuchadnezzar reduced the Phenician 
cities to the same state of dependence as that which the Ionian 
cities underwent half a century later from Croesus and Cyrus, 
while the ships of Milétus, Phékza, and Samos gradually spread 
over all those waters of the Levant which had once been exclu- 
sively Phenician. In the year 704 Β. c., the Samians did not yet 
p@\sess a single trireme,! down to the year 630 B. Cc. not a single 


) Thucyd. i, 13. 


ALPHABET. — SCALE OF WEIGHT. 845 


Greek vessel had yet visited Libya; but when we reach 550 3. c, 
we find the fonic ships predominant in the AXgean, and those 
af Corinth end Korkyra in force to the west of Peloponnesus, 
—we see the flourishing cities of Kyréné and Barka already 
rooted in Libya, and the port of Naukratis a busy emporium of 
Grecian commerce with Egypt. The trade by land, which is all 
that Egypt aad enjoyed prior to Psammetichus, and which was 
exclusively conducted by Phenicians, is exchanged for a trade by 
sea, of whic. the Phenicians have only a share, and seemingly a 
smaller share than the Greeks; and the conquest by Amasis of 
the island uf Cyprus, half-filled with Phenician settlements and 
onze the tributary dependence of Tyre, affords one mark of the 
comparative decline of that great city. In her commerce with 
the Red sea and the Persian gulf she still remained without a com- 
petitor, the schemes of the Egyptian king Nekos having proved 
abortive; sid even in the time of Herodotus, the spices and 
frankincense of Arabia were still brought and distributed only 
by the Pheuician merchant.!| But on the whole, both her polit- 
ical and industrial development are now cramped by impedi- 
ments, and kept down by rivals, not before in operation ; and the 
part which she will be found to play in the Mediterranean, through- 
out the whoie course of this history, is one subordinate and of 
reduced importance. 

The course of Grecian history is not directly affected by these 
countries, γι their effect upon the Greek mind was very consid- 
erable, and the opening of the Nile by Psammetichus constitutes 
an epoch 1a Hellenic thought. It supplied their observation 
with a large and diversified field of present reality, while it was 
at the same iime one great source of those mysticizing tendencies 
which corrupted so many of their speculative minds. But te 
Phenicia and Assyria, the Greeks owe two acquisitions well 
deserving special mention, — the alphabet, and the first standard 
and scale οἵ weight, as well as coined money. Of neither of 
these acquisitions can we trace the precise date. That the Greek 
alphabet is derived from the Phenician, the analogy of the two 
proves beyond dispute, though we know not how or where the ine+ 
timable present was handed over, of which no traces are to be found 


1 Herodot. iii, 107. 


544 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


in the Homeric poems.! The Latin alphabet, which is nearly 


identical with the most ancient Doric variety of the Greek, was - 


derived from the same source,— also the Etruscan alphabet, 
though —if O. Muller is correct in his conjecture — only at 
second-hand, through the intervention of the Greek.2 If we can- 
not make out at what time the Phenicians made this valuable 
communication to the Greeks, much less can we determine when 


ΟἹ how they acquired it themselves, — whether it be of Semitic 


invention, or derived from improvement upon the phonetic hiero- 
glyphics of the Egyptians. 

Besides the letters of the alphabet, the scale of weight and 
that of coined money passed from Phenicia and Assyria into 
Greece. It has been shown by Boeckh, in his “ Metrologie,” that 


' The various statements or conjectures to be found in Greek authors (all 
comparatively recent) respecting the origin of the Greek alphabet, are 
collected by Franz, Epigraphicé Greea, 5. iii, pp. 12-20: “Omnino Greeci 
alphabeti ut certa primordia sunt in origine Phoenicia, ita cereus terminus in 
litteraturd Ionica seu Simonidea. Que inter utrumguwe ἃ veteribus ponuntur, 
incerta omnia et fabulosa.......... Non comm ramur in 115 que de littera- 
rum origine et propagatione ex fabulosa Pe.asgorum historid (cf. Knight, 
pp. 119-123; Raoul Rochette, pp. 67-87) neque in iis que de Cadmo nar- 
rantur quem unquam fuisse hodie jam nemo crediderit Al phabeti 
Phienicii omnes 22 literas cum antiquis Greecis congruere, hodie nemo 
est qui ignoret.” (pp. 14-15.) Franz gives valuable information respecting 
the changes gradually introduced into the Greek alphabet, and the erroneous 
statements of the Grammatici as to what letters were original, and what 
were subsequently added. 

Kruse also, in his “ Hellas,” (vol. i, p. 13, and in the first Beylage, annexed 
to that volume,) presents an instructive comparison of the Greek, Latin, and 
Phenician alphabets. 

The Greek authors, as might be expected, were generally much more fond 
of referring the origin of letters to native heroes or gods. such as Palamédés, 
Prométheus, Musseus, Orpheus, Linus, etc., than to the Phenicians. The 
oldest known statement (that of Stésichorus, Schol. ap. Bekker. Anecdot. ii, 
p 786) ascribes them to Palamédeés. 

Both Franz and Kruse contend strenuously for the existence and habit 
of writing among the Greeks in times long anterior to Homer: in which I 
dissent from them. 

3 See O. Miiller, Die Etrusker (iv, 6), where there is much instruction on 
the Tuscan alphabet. 

3 This question is raised and discussed by Justus Olshausen, Ueber den Urs 
prung jes Alphabetes (pp. 1-10), in the Kieler Philologische Studien, 1841. 


THE GNOMON. 345 


she AXginzan scale,! — with its divisions, talent, mna, and obolus, 
— is identical with the Babylonian and Phenician: and that the 
word mna, which forms the central point of the scale, is of Chal- 
diean origin. On this 1 have already touched in a former chap- 
ter, while relating the history of Pheidén of Argos, by whom 
what is called the A’ginzan scale was first promulgated. 

In tracing, therefore, the effect upon the Greek mind of early 
intercourse with the various Asiatic nations, we find that, as the 
Greeks made up their musical scale, so important an element of 
their early mental culture,in part by borrowing from Lydians 
and Phrygians,—so also their monetary and statical system, 
their alphabetical writing, and their duodecimal division of the 
day, measured by the gnomon and the shadow, were all derived 
from Assyrians and Phenicians. The early industry and com- 
merce of these countries was thus in many ways available to 
Grecian advance, and would probably have become more so, if 
the great and rapid rise of the more barbarous Persians had not 
reduced them all to servitude. The Phenicians, though unkind 
rivals, were at the same time examples and stimulants to Greek 
maritime aspiration ; and the Phenician worship of that goddess 
whom the Greeks knew under the name of Aphrodité, became 
communicated to the latter in Cyprus, in Kythéra, in Sicily, — 
perhaps also in Corinth. 

The sixth century B. c., though a period of decline for Tyre 
and Sidon, was a period of growth for their African colony 
Carthage, which appears during this century in considerable 
traffic with the Tyrrhenian towns on the southern coast of Italy, 
and as thrusting out the Phékzan settlers from Alalia in Corsica. 
The wars of the Carthaginians with the Grecian colonies in Sicily, 
so far as they are known to us, commence shortly after 500 B. o., 
and continue at intervals, with fluctuating success, for two cen- 
turies and a half. 

The foundation of Carthage by the Tyrians is placed at differ- 
ent dates, the lowest of which, however, is 819 B. c.: other 
authorities place it in 878 B. c., and we have no means of decid- 
ing between them. I have already remarked that it is by no 


‘ See Boeckh, Metrologie, chs. iy, v, vi; also the preceding volume of θεν 
History 


15* 


B46 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


means the oldest of the Tyrian colonies; but though Utica and 
Gadés may have been more ancient than Carthage,' the latter 
greatly outstripped them in wealth and power, and acquired a 
sort of federal preérainence over all the Phenician colonies on the 
eoast of Africa. In those later times when the dominion of the 
Carthaginians had reached its maximum, it comprised the towns 
of Utica, Hippo, Adrumétum, and Leptis, — all original Phenician 
foundations, and enjoying probably, even as dependents of Car- 
thage, a certain qualified autonomy, — besides a great number of 
smaller towns planted by themselves, and inhabited by a mixed 
population called Liby-Phenicians. Three hundred such towns, 
—a dependent territory covering half the space between the 
lesser and the greater Syrtis, and in many parts remarkably fer- 
tile, — a city said to contain seven hundred thousand inhabitants, 
active, wealthy, and seemingly homogeneous, — and foreign de- 
pendencies in Sicily, Sardinia, the Balearic isles, and Spain, — 
all this aggregate of power, under one political management, was 
sufficient to render the contest of Carthage even with Rome for 
some time doubtful. 

But by what steps the Carthaginians raised themselves to 
such a pitch of greatness we have no information, and we are 
even left to guess how much of it had already been acquired in 
the sixth century B. c. As in the case of so many other cities, 


' Utica is said to have been founded 287 years earlier than Carthage; the 
author who states this, professing to draw his information from Phenician 
histories (Aristot. Mirab. Auscult. c. 134). Velleius Paterculus states Gadés 
to be older than Utica, and places the foundation of Carthage B. ¢. 815 
(i, 2,6). He seems to follow in the main the same authority as the com- 
poser of the Aristotelic compilation above cited. Other statements place 
the foundation of Carthage in 878 B. c. (Heeren, Ideen iiber den Verkehr, 
etc., part ii, b. i, p. 29). Appian states the date of the foundation as fifty 


years before the Trojan war (De Reb. Punic. c. 1); Philistus, as twenty-one, 


vears before the same event (Philist. Fragm. 50, ed. (δ ον); Timeeus, as 
thirty-eight years earlier than the Ist Olympiad (Timai Fragm. 21, ed. 
Didot); Justin, seventy-two years earlier than the foundation of Rome 
fxvill, 6). 

The citation which Josephus gives from Menander’s work, extracted from 
Tvrian ἀταγραφαὶ, placed the foundation of Carthage 143 years after the 
building of the temple of Jerusalem (Joseph. cont. Apion. i, c. 17-18} 
Apion said that Carthage was founded in the first year of Olympiad 7 (Β. 4 
48), (Joseph. c. Apion. ii, 2.) 


GROWTH OF CARTHAGE. 341 


we have a foundation-legend, decorating the moment of birth, and 
then nothing farther. The Tyrian princess Dido or Elisa, daugh- 
ter of Belus, sister of Pygmalion king of Tyre, and wife of the 
wealthy Sichzus priest of Héraklés in that city, — is said to have 
been left a widow in consequence of the murder of Sicheus by 
Pygmalion, who seized the treasures belonging to his victim. 
But Dido found means to disappoint him of his booty, possessed 
herself of the gold which had tempted Pygmalion, and secretly 
emigrated, carrying with her the sacred insignia of Héraklés: a 
considerable body of Tyrians followed her. She settled at Car- 
thage on a small hilly peninsula joined by a narrow tongue of 
land to the continent, purchasing from the natives as much land 
as could be surrounded by an ox’s hide, which she caused to be 
cut into the thinnest strip, and thus made it sufficient for the site 
of her first citadel, Byrsa, which afterwards grew up into the 
great city of Carthage. As soon as her new settlement had ac- 
quired footing, she was solicited in marriage by several princes of 
the native tribes, especially by the Getulian Jarbas, who threat- 
ened war if he were refused. Thus pressed by the clamors of 
her own people, who desired to come into alliance with the natives, 
yet irrevocably determined to maintain exclusive fidelity to her 
first husband, she escaped the conflict by putting an end to her 
life. She pretended to acquiesce in the proposition of a second 
marriage, requiring only delay sufficient to offer an expiatory 
sacrifice to the manes of Sichzus: a vast funeral pile was erected, 
and many victims slain upon it, in the midst of which Dido 
pierced her own bosom with a sword, and perished in the flames. 
Such is the legend to which Virgil has given a new color by inter- 
weaving the adventures of A neas, and thus connecting the foun- 
dation legends of Carthage and Rome, careless of his deviation 
from the received mythical chronology. Dido was worshipped 
as a goddess at Carthage until the destruction of the city:! and it 


'“Quamdiu Carthago invicta fuit, pro Ded culta est.” (Justin. xviii, 6; 
Virgil, Aneid, i, 340-370.) We trace this legend about Dido up to Timaus 
(Timei Frag. 28, ed. Didot): Philistus seems to have followed a different 
story;—he said that Carthage had been founded by Azor and Karchéd6n 
(Philist. Fr. 50). Appian notices both stories (De Reb. Pun. 1): that of 
Dido was current both among the Romans and Carthaginians: of Zérus 
(or Ezérus) and Karchédén, the second is evidently of Greek coinage, the 
first seems genuine Phenician: see Josephus cont. Apion. i, c. 18-21 


“348 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


has been imagined with some probability that she is identical 
with Astarté, the divine patroness under whose auspices the 
colony was originally established, as Gadés and Tarsus were 
founded under those of Héraklés,— the tale of the funeral pile 
= self-burning appearing in the religious ceremonies of other 
Cilician and Syrian towns.! Phenician religion and worship was 
diffused along with the Phenician colonies throughout the larger 
portion of the Mediterranean. i ἢ 
The Phékzans of Ionia, who amidst their adventurous voyages 
westward established the colony of Massalia, (as early as 600 B. c.) 
were only enabled to accomplish this by a naval victory over the 
Carthaginians,— the earliest example of Greek and Carthaginian 
collision which has been preserved to us. The Carthaginians 
were jealous of commercial rivalry, and their traflic with the Tus- 
cans and Latins in Italy, as well as their lucrative mine-working 
in Spain, dates from a period when Greek commerce in hone 
regions was hardly known. In Greek authors, the denomination 
Phenicians is often used to designate the Carthaginians, ar well 
as the inhabitants of ‘Tyre and Sidon, so that we cannot ahnacrs 
distinguish which of the two is meant; but it is remarkable that 
the distant establishment of Gadés, and the numerous settlements 
planted for commercial purposes along the western coast of Africa 
and witheut the strait of Gibraltar, are expressly ascribed to the 
Tyrians.2 Many of the other Phenician establishments on the 
southern coast of Spain seemed to have owed their origin to Car- 
thage rather than to Tyre. But the relations between the two 
so far as we know them, were constantly amicable, and Carthiaie, 
even at the period of her highest glory, sent Theori with a pte 
ute of religious recognition to the Tyrian Héraklés: the visit of 
these envoys coincided with the siege of the town by Alexander 
the Great. On that critical occasion, the wives and children of 
the I'yrians were sent to find shelter at Carthage: two centuries 
before, when the Persian empire was in its age of growth and 
expansion, the Tyrians had refused to aid Kambysés with their 
fleet in his plans for conquering Carthage, and thus probably pre 
served their colony from subjugation. 


1 See Movers, Die Phonizier, pp. 609-616. 
® Strabo, xvii, p. 826. 3 Herodot. iii, 19. 


WESTERN COLONIES OF GREECE. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


WESTERN COLONIES OF GREECE—IN EPIRUS, ITALY, SICILY, 
AND GAUL. 


THE stream of Grecian colonization to the westward, as far as 
we can be said to know it authentically, with names and dates, be- 
gins from the 11th Olympiad. But it is reasonable to believe 
that there were other attempts earlier than this, though we must 
content ourselves with recognizing them as generally probable. 
There were doubtless detached bands of volunteer emigrants οἱ 
marauders, who, fixing themselves in some situation favorable to 
ecommerce or piracy, either became mingled with the native tribes, 
or grew up by successive reinforcements into an acknowledged 
Not being able to boast of any filiation from the prytan- 


town. 
a known Grecian city, these adventurers were often dis- 


eium of 
posed to faster 
and ascribe their 


1 upon the inexhaustible legend of the Trojan wat, 
origin to one of the victorious heroes in the 


host of Agamemnon, alike distinguished for their valor and for 
Of such alleged 


settlements by fugitive Grecian or Trojan heroes, there were 
points throughout the shores of the 


Mediterranean ; and the same honorable origin was claimed even 


their ubiquitous dispersion after the siege. 
a great number, on various 


by many non-Hellenic towns. 

In the eighth century B. C., when this westerly stream of Gre- 
cian colonization begins to assume an authentic shape (735 B. Cs), 
the population of Sicily — as far as our scanty information per- 
mits us to determine it — consisted of two races completely dis- 
tinct from each other — Sikels and Sikans — besides the Elymi, 
a mixed race apparently distinct from both, and occupying Eryx 
and Egesta, near the westernmost corner of the island, — and the 
Phenician colonies and coast establishments formed for purposes 
of trade. According to the belief both of Thucydidés and Phi- 


listus, these Sikans, though they gav themselves out as indigen 


B50 HISTOKY OF GREECE 


ous, were yet of Iberian origin! and emigrants of earlier date 
than the Sikels,— by whom they had been invaded and ventiieted 
to the smaller western half of the island, and who were said te 
have crossed over originally from the south-western corner of the 
Calabrian peninsula, where a portion of the nation still dwelt in 
the time of Thucydidés. The territory known to Greek wikia 
of the fifth century B. C. by the names of (Enotria on the CC i 
of the Mediterranean, and Italia on that of the gulfs of sa 
tum and Squillace, included all that lies south of a line δωνι 
across the breadth of the country, from the gulf of Poseidénia 
(Peestum) and the river Silarus on the Mediterranean sen to 
ni north-west corner of the gulf of Tarentum: it was in 
bounded northwards by the Iapygians and Messapians, who oe- 
cupied the Salentine peninsula, and the country immediately ad. 
joining to Tarentum, and by the Peuketians on the lonic εἰν 
According to the logographers Pherekydés and Hellantkes.9 
(Enotrus and Peuketius were sons of Lykadn, grandsons of Po. 
lasgus, and emigrants in very early times from Arcadia to this 
territory. An important statement in Stephanus Byzantinus3 ac 

quaints us that the serf-population, whom the great Hellenic citi ; 
in this portion of Italy employed in the cultivation of their μ᾿, 
were called Pelasgi, seemingly even in the historical times : it is 
upon this name, probably, that the mythical genealogy of φίωωυ. 
kydés is constructed. This Q®notrian or Pelasgian race were 

the population whom the Greek colonists found there on thelie ων 
rival. They were known apparently under otner names eat 
the Sikels, — mentioned even in the Odyssey, though their emit 
locality in that poem cannot be ascertained — the endian, de 
Itali, properly so called, — the Morgétes, — and the Chav ni -- 


1? “ω ὦ. = ἊΣ 
Thucyd. vi, 25 Philistus, Fragm. 3, ed. Géller, ap. Diodor. v, 6. Timsus 
et the opposite opinion (Diodor. /. ¢.), also Ephorus, if we may judge 
y an indistinct passage of Strabo) vi, p. 27 ius aliens 
j σ Ss , p. 270). Dionysius of Halikar 
follows Thucydidés (A. R. i, 22). : ne 
νὰ opinion of Philistus is of much value on this point, since he was, or 
might have been, personally cognizant of Iberi ies i 
an, ᾿ an mercenaries in i 
of the elder Dionysius. Tee 
ΑΙ : ‘ 
Pherekyd. Fragm. 85, ed. Didot; Hellanik. Fr. 53, ed. Didot : Dionya 
Malik. A. R. i, 11, 13, 22; Skymnus Chins, v, 362; Pausan. viii, 3, 5. 
* Stephan Byz. v, Xix. εἦν 


(ENOTRIANS. 351 


all of them names of tribes either cognate or subdivisional.! 
The Chaones or Chaonians are also found, not only in Italy, but 
in Epirus, as one of the most considerable of the Epirotic tribes, 
— while Pandosia, the ancient residence of the C&notrian kings in 
the southern corner of Italy,2 was also the name of a township 
or locality in Epirus, with a neighboring river Acheron in both: 
from hence, and from some other similarities of name, it has 
been imagined that Epirots, Cinotrians, Sikels, etc., were all 
names of cognate people, and all entitled to be comprehended 
under the generic appellation of Pelasgi. That they belonged to 
the same ethnical kindred, there seems fair reason to presume, 
and also that in point of language, manners, and character, they 
were not very widely separated from the ruder branches of the 


Hellenic race. | 
It would appear too, as far as any judgment can be formed on a 


point essentially obscure, that the C&notrians were ethnically 
akin to the primitive population of Rome and Latium on one 
side,3as they were to the Epirots on the other; and that tribes 


’ Aristot. Polit. vii, 9,3. "Ὥκουν δὲ τὸ πρὸς τὴν ᾿Ιαπυγίαν καὶ τὸν Ἰόνιον 
Χῶνες (or Χάονες) τὴν καλουμένην Σίριν" ἧσαν δὲ καὶ οἱ Χῶνες Οἰνωτροὶ τὸ 
γένος. 

Antiochus Fr. 3, 4, 6, 7, ed. Didot; Strabo, vi, p. 254; Hesych. ν, Χώνην͵ 
Dionys. Hal. A. R. i, 12. 

? Livy, viii, 24. 

3 For the early habitation of Sikels or Siculi in Latium and Campania, 
see Dionys. Hal. A. R. i, 1-21: it is curious that Siculi and Sicani, whether 
the same or different, the primitive ante-Hellenic population of Sicily, an 
also numbered as the ante-Roman population of Rome: see Virgil, Aneid, 
viii, 328, and Servius ad neid. xi, 317. 

The alleged ancient emigration of Evander from Arcadia to Latium forms 
a parallel to the emigration of (£notrus from Arcadia to southern Italy as 
recounted by Pherekydés: it seems to have been mentioned even as early as 
in one of the Hesiodic poems (Servius ad Virg. Ain. viii, 138): compare 
Steph. Byz. v, Παλλάντιον. The earliest Latin authors appear all to have 
recognized Evander and his Arcadian emigrants: see Dionys. Hal. i, 31-32, 
ii, 9, and his references to Fabius Pictor and Aélius Tubero, i, 79-80; also 
Cato ap. Solinum, c. 2. If the old reading ᾿Αρκάδων, in Thucyd. vi, 2 
(which Bekker has now altered into Σεκελῶν), be retained, Thucydidés would 
also stand as witness for a migration from Arcadia into Italy. A third 
emigration of Pelasgi, from Peloponnesus to the river Sarnus m southern 
Italy (near Pompeii), was mentioned by Conon (ap. Servium ay Virg. Ain 


vii, 730). 


B52 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


of this race, comprising Sikels, and Itali properly so called, as 
sections, had at one time occupied most of the territory from the 
left bank of the river Tiber southward between the Apennines 
and the Mediterannean. Both Herodotus and his junior com 
temporary, the Syracusan Antiochus, extend (CEnotria as far 
northward as the river Silarus,! and Sophoklés includes the 
whole coast of the Mediterranean, from the strait of Messina to 
the gulf of Genoa, under the three successive names of (πο- 
tria, the Tyrrhenian gulf, and Liguria. Before or during the 
fifth century B. c., however, a differ νηὶ population, called Opi- 
cians, Oscans, or Ausonians, had descended from their original 
seats on or north of the Apennines, and had conquered the ter- 


' Herodotus (i, 24-167) includes Elea (or Velia) in Q®notria, — and 
Tarertum in Italia; while Antiochus considers Tarentum as in lapygia, 
and the southern boundary of the Tarentine territory as the northern 
boundary of Italia: Dionysius of Halikarnassus (A. R. ii, 1) seems to copy 
from Antivchus when he extends the (Enotrians along the whole south- 
western corner of Italy, within the line drawn from Tarentum to Poseidonia, 
or Pestum. Hence the appellation Oivwrpidec νῆσοι to the two islands 
opposite Elea (Strabo, vi, p. 253). Skymnus Chius (vy. 247) recognizes the 
same boundaries. 

Twelve (Enotrian cities are cited by name (in Stephanus Byzantinus\ 
from the Εὐρώπη of Hekateeus (Frag. 30-39, ed. Didot) : Skylax in his 
Periplus does not name CE£notrians; he enumerates Campanians, Samnites, 
and Lucanians (cap. 9-13). The intimate connection between Milétus and 
Sybaris would enable Hekatsus to inform himself about the interior 
(Enotrian country. 

(Enotria and Italia together, as conceived by Antiochus and Herodotus, 
comprised what was known a century afterwards as Lucania and Bruttium: 
see Mannert, Geographie der Griech. und Rémer. part ix, b. 9, ch. i, p. 86. 
Livy, speaking with reference to 317 kz. c.. when the Lucanian nation as well 
as the Bruttians were in full vigor, describes only the sea-coast of the lower 
sea as Grecian, — “cum omni ord Grecorum inferi maris a Thuriis Neapolim 
et Cumas,” (ix, 19.) Verrius Flaccus considered the Sikels as Greci (Festus, 
v, Major Grecia, with Miiller’s note). 

ἢ Sophoklés, Triptolem. Fr. 527, ed. Dindorf. He places the lake Avernus, 
which was close to the Campanian Cums, in Tyrrhenia: see Lexicon 
Sophocleum, ad calc. ed. Brunck, νυ. "Aopvoc. Euripidés (Medea, 1310- 
1326) seems to extend Tyrrhenia to the strait of Messina. 

* Aristot. Polit. vii, 9, 3. Gxovv δὲ τὸ μὲν πρὸς τὴν Τυῤῥηνίαν ᾿Οπικοὶ. καὶ 
πρότερον καὶ νῦν καλούμιεννοι τὴν ἐπίκλησιν Αὔσονες. Festus: “ Ausoniam 
appellavit Auson, Ulyssis et Calypsds filius, eam primam partem Italie in 
qaa sunt urbes Beneventum et Cales: deinde paulatim tota quoque Italia 


(ENOTRIANS. — OSCANS. 853 


ritory between Latium and the Silarus, expelling or subjugating 
the (Enotrian inhabitants, and planting outlying settlements even 
down to the strait of Messina and the Liparzan isles. Hence the 
more precise Thucydidés designates the Campanian territory, in 
which Cumz stood, as the country of the Opici; a denomination 
which Aristotle extends to the river Tiber, so as to comprehend 
within it Rome and Latium.! Not merely Campania, but in earlier 
times even Latium, originally occupied by a Sikel or CEnotrian 
population, appears to have been partially overrun and subdued 
by fiercer tribes from the Apennines, and had thus received 
a certain intermixture of Oscan race. But in the regions south 
of Latium. these Oscan conquests were still more overwhelming ; 
and to this cause (in the belief of inquiring Greeks of the fifth 
century B. C.)? were owing the first migrations of the C&notrian 


qua Apennino finitur, dicta est Ausonia,” ete. The original Ausonia would 
thus coincide nearly with the territory called Samnium, after the Sabine 
emigrants had conquered it: see Livy, viii, 16; Strabo, v, p. 250; Virg. 7En. 
vii, 727, with Servius. Skymnus Chius (v, 227) has copied from the same 
source as Festus. For the extension of Ausonians along various parts of 
the more southern coast of Italy, even to Rhegium, as well as to the Lipa- 
rean isles, see Diodor. v, 7-8; Cato, Origg. Fr. lib. iii, ap. Probum ad Virg. 
Bucol. v, 2. The Pythian priestess, in directing the Chalkidic emigrants to 
Rhegium, says to them,—"Evda πόλιν oixile, διδοῖ δέ σοι Αὔσονα χώραν 
(Diodor. Fragm. xiii, p. 11, ap Scriptt. Vatic. ed. Maii). Temesa is Auso- 
nian in Strabo, vi, p. 255. 

' Thucyd. vi, 3; Aristot. ap. Dionys. Hal. A. R.i, 72. ᾿Αχαιῶν τινας τῶν 
ἀπὸ Τροίης ἀνακομιζομένων, --- ἐλϑεῖν εἰς τὸν τόπον τοῦτον τῆς ᾿Οπικῆς͵ ὃς 
καλεῖται Λάτιον. 

Even in the time of Cato the elder, the Greeks comprehended the Romans 
under the general, and with them contemptuous, designation of Opici (Cato 
ap. Plin. H. N. xxii, 1: see Antiochus ap. Strab. v, p. 242), 

> Thucyd. vi, 2. Σικελοὶ dé ἐξ ᾿Ιταλίας φεύγοντες ᾿Οπικοὺς διέβησαν ἐς 
Σικελίαν (see a Fragment of the geographer Menippus of Pergamus, in 
Hudson’s Geogr. Minor. i, p. 76). Antiochus stated that the Sikels were 
driven out of Italy into Sicily by the Opicians and CEnotrians; but the 
Sikels themselves, according to him, were also C®notrians (Dionys. H. i, 
12-22). It is remarkable that Antiochus (who wrote at a time when the 
nume of Rome had not begun to exercise that fascination over men’s minds 
which the Roman power afterwards occasioned), in setting forth the mythical 
antiquity of the Sikels and CEnotrians, represents the eponymous Sikelus as 
an exile from Rome, who came into the s¢uth of Italy to the king Morgés, 
successor of Italus, —’Eme? δὲ Ἴταλος κατεγήρα, Mooyne ἐβασίλευσεν. "Ἐπὶ 


VOL. IL 230c. 


ως --- Ξτ εὺ LEAS, LL ee 


304 HISTORY OF GREECE 


race out of southern Italy, which wrested the larger portion of 
Sicily from the preéxisting Sikanians. 

This imperfect account, representing the ideas of Greeks of 
the fifth century B. Ὁ. as to the early population of southern 
Italy, is borne out by the fullest comparison which can be made 
between the Greek, Latin, and Oscan language, —the first two 
certainly, and the third probably, sisters of the same Indo-Euro- 
pean family of languages. While the analogy, structural and 
radical, between Greek and Latin, establishes completely such 
community of family — and while comparative philology proves 
that on many points the Latin departs less from the supposed 
common type and mother-language than the Greek — there ex- 
ists also in the former a non-Grecian element, and non-Grecian 
classes of words, which appear to imply a confluence of two 
or more different people with distinct tongues; and the same 
non-Grecian element, thus traceable in the Latin, seems to pre- 
sent itself still more largely developed in the scanty remains of 
the Oscan.'! Moreover, the Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily 


τούτου δὲ ἀνὴρ ἀφίκετο ἐκ Ρώμης φυγὰς, Σικελὸς ὄνομα αὐτῷ (Antiochus ap. 
Dionys. H. i, 73: compare c. 12). 

Philistus considered Sikelus to be a son of Italus: both he and Hellanikus 
believed in early migrations from Italy into Sicily, but described the em# 
grants differently (Philistus, Frag 2, ed. Didot). 

‘See the learned observations upon the early languages of Italy and 
Sicily, which Maller has prefixed to his work on the Etruscans (Einleitung, 
i, 12). I transcribe the following summary of his views respecting the early 
Italian dialects and races: “The notions which we thus obtain respecting 
the early languages of Italy are as follows: the Sikel, a sister language, nearly 
allied to the Greek or Pelasgic; the Latin, compounded from the Sikel and 
from the rougher dialect of the men called Aborigines ; the Osean, akin to the 
Latin in both its two elements; the language spoken by the Sabine emigrants 
in their various conquered territories, Oscan ; the Sabine proper, a distinct 
and peculiar language, yet nearly connected with the non-Grecian element 
in Latin and Oscan, as well as with the language of the oldest Ausonians 
and Aborigines.” 

[x.B. This last statement, respecting the original Sabine language, is 
very imperfectly made out: it seems equally probable that the Sabellians 
may have differed from the Oscans no more than the Dorians from the 
fonians: see Niebuhr, Rim. Gesch. tom. i, p. 69.| 

“Such a comparison of languages presents to us a certain view, which I 
shall here briefly unfold, of the earliest history of the Italian races. At a 
period anterior to all records, a single people, akin to the Greeks, dwelling 


OSCANS. — SIKELS. 356 


caught several peculiar words from their association with the Si- 
kels, which words approach in most cases very nearly to the 
Latin, — so that a resemblance thus appears between the language 
of Latium on the one side, and that of C&notrians and Sikels (in 
southern Italy and Sicily) on the other, prior to the establish- 
ments of the Greeks. ‘These are the two extremities of the 
Sikel population; between them appear, in the intermediate 
country, the Oscan or Ausonian tribes and language; and these 
latter seem to have been in a great measure conquerors and in- 
truders from the central mountains. Such analogies of language 
countenance the supposition of Thucydidés and Antiochus, that 
these Sikels had once been spread over a still larger portion of 
southern Italy, and had migrated from thence into Sicily in conse- 
quence of Oscan invasions. The element of affinity existing be- 
tween Latins, GEnotrians, and Sikels — to a certain degree also 
between all of them together and the Greeks, but not extending 


extended from the south of Tuscany down to the straits of Messina, occu- 
pies in the upper part of its territory only the valley of the Tiber, — lower 
down, occupies the mountainous districts also, and in the south, stretches 
across from sea to sea,—called Sikels, GEnotrians, or Peucetians. Other 
mountain tribes, powerful, though not widely extended, live in the northern 
Abruzzo and its neighborhood: in the east, the Sabines, southward from 
them the cognate Marsi, more to the west the Aborigines, and among them 
probably the old Ausonians or Oscans. About 1000 years prior to the 
Christian era, there arises among these tribes—from whom almost all 
the popular migrations in ancient Italy have proceeded —a movement 
whereby the Aborigines more northward, the Sikels more southward, are 
precipitated upon the Sikels of the plains beneath. Many thousands of the 
great Sikel nation withdraw to their brethren the CEnotrians, and by degrees 
still farther across the strait to the island of Sicily. Others of them remain 
stationary in their residences, and form, in conjunction with the Aborigines, 
the Latin nation,—in conjunction with the Ausonians, the Oscen nation: 
the latter extends itself over what was afterwards called Samnium and 
Campania. Still, the population and power of these mountain tribes, 
especially that of the Sabines, goes on perpetually on the increase: as they 
pressed onward towards the Tiber, at the period when Rome was only 8 
single town, so they also advanced southwards, and conquered, — first, the 
mountainous Opica; next, some centuries later, the Opician plain, Cam- 
pania; lastly, the ancient country of the CEnotrians, afterwards denominated 
Lucania.” 

Compare Niebuhr, Rémisch. Geschicht. vol. i, p. 80, 2d edit., and the first 
ehapter of Mr. Donaldson’s Varronianus. 


et Oe Le re 


So Pl. 


856 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


to the Opicians or Oscans, or to the Iapygians — may be calied 
Pelasgic, for want of a better name ; but, by whatever name it be 
called, the recognition of its existence connects and explains 
many isolated circumstances in the early history of Rome as well 
as in that of the Italian and Sicilian Greeks. 

The earliest Grecian colony in Italy or Sicily, of which we 
know the precise date, i: placed about 750 B. c., eighteen years 
subsequent to the Varronian era of Rome; so that the causes, 
tending to subject and Hellenize the Sikel population in the south- 
ern region, begin their operation nearly at the same time as 
those which tended gradually to exalt and aggrandize the modi- 
fied variety of it which existed in Latium. At that time, ac- 
cording to the information given to Thucydidés, the Sikels had 
been established for three centuries in Sicily: Hellanikus and 
Philistus — who δοῦν recognized a similar migration into that 
island out of Italy, though they give different names, both to the 
emigrants and to those who expelled them — assign to the mi- 
gration a date three generations before the Trojan war.'! Earlier 
than 735 B. c., however, though we do not know the precise era 
of its commencement, there existed one solitary Grecian estab- 
lishment in the Tyrrhenian sea, —the Campanian Cumz, near 
cape Misenum ; which the more common opinion of chronologists 
supposed to have been founded in 1090 B. c., and which has even 
been carried back by some authors to 1139 B. c.2. Without re- 
posing any faith in this early chronology, we may at least fee. 
certain that it is the most ancient Grecian establishment in any 
part of Italy, and that a considerable time elapsed before any 
other Greek colonists were bold enough to cut themselves off 
from the Hellenic world by occupying seats on the other side of 


' Thucyd. vi, 2; Philistus, Frag. 2, ed. Didot. 

2 Strabo, v, p. 243; Velleius Patercul. i, 5; Eusebius, p 121. M. Raoul 
Rochette, assuming a different computation of the date of the Trojan war, 
pushes the date of Cumue still farther back to 1139 B. c. (Histoire des 
Colonies Grecques, book iv, c. 12, p. 100.) 

The mythes of Cumz extended to a period preceding the Chalkidic 
settlement. See the stories of Aristeus and Dedalus ap. Sallust. Fragment 
Incert. p. 204, ed. Delphin.; and Servius ad Virgil. Aineid. vi, 17. The 
fabulous Thespiadz, or primitive Greek settlers in Sardinia, were suppose 
in early ages to have left that island and retired to (ume (Diodor. v, 15). 


CUM IN ITALY. 357 


the strait of Messina,! with all the hazards of Tyrrhenian piracy 
as well as of Scylla and Charybdis. The Campanian Cuma — 
known alsxost entirely by this its Latin designation — received its 
name and a portion of its inhabitants from the AZolic Kymé in 
Asia Minor. A joint band of settlers, partly from this latter 
town, partly from Chalkis in Eubcea,— the former under the 
Kymwan Hippoklés, the latter under the Chalkidian Megasthe- 
nés, — having combined to form the new town, it was settled by 
agreement that Kymé should bestow the name, and that Chalkis 
should enjoy the title and honors of the mother-city.? 

Cum, situated on the neck of the peninsula which terminates 
in cape Misenum, occupied a lofty and rocky hill overhanging the 
sea,3 and difficult of access on the land side. The unexampled 
fertility of the Phlegrean plains in the immediate vicinity of the 
city, the copious supply of fish in the Lucrine lake,‘ and the gold 
mines in the neighboring island of Pithekuse,— both subsisted 
and enriched the colonists. They were joined by fresh settlers 
from Chalkis, from Eretria, and even from Samos ; and became 
numerous enough to form distinct towns at Dikwarchia and Nea 
polis, thus spreading over a large portion of the bay of Naples. 
In the hollow rock under the very walls of the town was situated 
the cavern of the prophetic Sibyl, — a parallel and reproduction 
of the Gergithian Sibyl, near Kymé in /Eolis: in the immediate 
neighborhood, too, stood the wild woods and dark lake of Aver- 
nus, consecrated to the subterranean gods, and offering an estab- 
lishment of priests, with ceremonies evoking the dead, for pur- 


poses of prophecy or for solving doubts and mysteries. It was 
here that Grecian imagination localized the Cimmerians and the 
fable of Odysseus; and the Cumeans derived gains .rom the nu- 


| Ephorus, Frag. 52, ed. Didot. 

? Strabo, v, p. 243; Velleius Patere. i, 5. 

3 See the site of Cums as described by Agathias (on occasion of the siege 
of the place by Narses, in 552 A. D.), Histor. i, 8-10; also by Strabo, v, p. 
244 

‘ Diodor. iv, 21, v, 71; Polyb. iii, 91; Pliny, H. N. iii, 5; Livy, viii, 22. 
“In Baiano sinu Campanis contra Puteolanam civitatem lacus sunt duo, 
Avernus et Lucrinus: qui olim propter piscium copiam vectigalia magna 
{restabant,” (Servius ad Virg. Georgie. ii, 161.) 


858 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


merous visitors to this holy spot,! perhaps hardly less than these 
of the inhabitants of Krissa from the Vicinity of Delphi. Of the 
relations of these Cumzans with the Hellenic world generally, we 
unfortunately know nothing ; but they seem to have been in inti- 
mate connection with Rome during the time of the kings, and 
especially during that of the last king Tarquin,? — forming the 
intermediate link between the Greek and Latin world, whereby 
the feelings of the Teukrians and Gergithians near the olic 
Kymé, and the legendary stories of Trojan as well as Grecian 
heroes — Aineas and Odysseus — passed into the antiquarian im- 
agination of Rome and Latium. The writers of the Augustan 
age knew Cume only in its decline, and wondered at the vast ex- 
tent of its ancient walls, yet remaining in their time. But during 
the two centuries prior to 500 B. 6., these walls inclosed a full 
and thriving population, in the plenitude of prosperity, — with a 
surrounding territory extensive as well as fertile,‘ resorted to by 
purchasers of corn from Rome in years of scareity, and unassail- 
ed as yet by formidable neighbors, — and with a coast and harbors 
well suited to maritime commerce. At that period, the town of 
Capua, if indeed it existed at all, was of very inferior impor- 
tance, and the chief part of the rich plain around it was in- 


ἡ haw, , ae “ων a ἢ , “" , 

Strabo, v, p. 243. Καὶ εἰσέπλεόν ye of προϑυσόμενοι καὶ ἱλασόμενοι τοῦ 

καταχϑονίους δαίμονας, ὄντων τῶν ὑφηγουμένων τὰ Toiade ἱερέων, ἠργολαβη 
κότων τὸν τόπον. 

" Dionys. H. iv, 61-62, vi, 21; Livy, ii, 34. 

* See, respecting the transmission of ideas and fables from the olic 
Kymé to Cuma in Campania, the first volume of this History, chap. xv, 
p. 457. 

The father of Hesiod was a native of the olic Kymé: we find in the 
Hesiodic Theogony (ad jin.) mention of Latinus as the son of Odysseus and 
Circé: Servius cites the same from the ᾿Ασπιδοποιία of Hesiod (Servius ad 
Virg. En. xii, 162; compare Cato, Fragment. p. 33, ed. Lion). The great 
family of the Mamilii at Tusculum, also derived their origin from Odysseus 
and Circé (Livy, i, 49). 

The tomb of Elpénér, the lost companion of Cidysseus, was shown 
at Circeii in the days of Theophrastus (Hist. Plant v, 8,3) and Skylax 
(ε. 10). 

Hesiod notices the promontory of Pelérus, the strait of Messina, and the 
islet of Ortygia near Syracuse (Diodor. iv, 85; Strabo, i, Ρ. 23) 

* Livy, ii, 9. 


ARISTODEMUS OF CUME. 350 


cluded in the possessions of Cumz! — not unworthy probably, in 
the sixth century B. C., to be numbered with Sybaris and Krotén. 

The decline of Cumz begins in the first half of the fifth cen- 
tury B. c. (500-450 B. 0.), first, from the growth of hostile 
powers in the interior,—the Tuscans and Samnites, — next, 
from violent intestine dissensions and a destructive despotism. 
The town was assailed by a formidable host of invaders from thc 
interior, ‘Tuseans reinforced by Umbrian and Daunian allies ; 
which Dionysius refers to the 64th Olympiad (524-520 8. c.), 
though upon what chronological authority we do not know, and 
though this same time is marked by Eusebius as the date of the 
foundation of Dikzarchia from Cumz. The invaders, in spite 
of great disparity of number, were bravely repelled by the Cu- 
mans, chiefly through the heroic example of a citizen then first 
known and distinguished, — Aristodémus Malakus. The govern- 
ment of the city was oligarchical, and the oligarchy from that day 
became jealous of Aristodémus; who, on his part, acquired ex- 
traordinary popularity and influence among the people. Twenty 
years afterwards, the Latin city of Aricia, an ancient ally of 
Cumez was attacked by a Tuscan host, and intreated succor from 
the Cumzans. The oligarchy of the latter thought this a good 
opportunity to rid themselves of Aristodémus, whom they de 
spatched by sea to Aricia, with rotten vessels and an insufficiem 
body of troops. But their stratagem failed and proved then 
ruin; for the skill and intrepidity of Aristodémus sufficed for the 
rescue of Aricia, and he brought back his troops victorious and 
devoted to himself personally. Partly by force, partly by 
stratagem, he subverted the oligarchy, put to death the principal 
rulers, and constituted himself despot: by a jealous energy, by 
disarming the people, and by a body of mercenaries, he main- 
vained himself in this authority for twenty years, runnipg his 
career of lust and iniquity until old age. At length a conspiracy 
of the oppressed population proved successful against him; ke 
was slain, with all his family and many of his chief partisans, anc 
the former government was restored.? 


! Niebuhr, Romisch. Geschicht. vol. i, p. 76, 2d edit. 
5 The history of Aristodémus Malakus is given at some length by Pe 
nysius of Halikarnassus (viii, 3-10). 


860 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The despotism of Aristodémus falls during the exile of the 
expelled Tarquin! (to whom he gave shelter) from Rome, and 
during the government of Gelon at Syracuse; and this calamit- 
ous period of dissension and misrule was one of the great causes 
of the decline of Cumz. Nearly at the same time, the Tuscan 
power, both by land and sea, appears at its maximum, and the 
Puscan establishment at Capua begins, if we adopt the era of 
the town as given by Cato.2 There was thus created at the ex- 
pense of Cumz a powerful city, which was still farther aggran- 
dized afterwards when conquered and occupied by the Samnites ; 
whose invading tribes, under their own name or that of Lucani- 
ans, extended themselves during the fifth and fourth centuries 
B. C., even to the shores of the gulf of Tarentum.2 Cume was 
also exposed to formidable dangers from the sea-side: a fleet, 
either of Tuscans alone, or of Tuscans and Carthaginians united, 
assailed it in 474 B. ©., and it was only rescued by the active in- 
terposition of Hiero, despot of Syracuse ; by whose naval force 
the invaders were repelled with slaughter.4 These incidents go 
partly to indicate, partly to explain, the decline of the most an- 
cient Hellenic settlement in Italy,— a decline from which it never 
recovered. 

After briefly sketching the history of Cum, we pass naturally 
to that series of powerful colonies which were established in 
Sicily and Italy, beginning with 735 Β. c. — enterprises in which 
Chalkis, Corinth, Megara, Sparta, the Achzans in Peloponnesus, 
and the Lokrians out of Peloponnesus, were all concerned. 
Chalkis, the metropolis of Cumz, became also the metropolis of 
Naxos, the most ancient Grecian colony in Sicily, on the eastern 
coast of the island, between the strait of Messina and Mount 
Etna. 

The great number of Grecian settlements, from different colo- 
nizing towns, which appear to have taken effect within a few 
years upon the eastern coast of Italy and Sicily — from the lIapy- 
gian cape to cape Pachynus — leads us to suppose that the ex- 


' Livy, ii, 21. * Velleius Patercul. i, 5. 
* Compare Strabo, v, p. 250; vi, p. 264. ‘ Cumanos Osca mutavit vicinia," 
Pays Velleius, ὦ. 6. 


* Diodor. xi, 51; Pindar, Pyth. i, 71. 


COLONIES IN SICILY.—NAXOS, 361 


traordinary capacities of the country for receiving new settlers 
had become known only suddenly. The colonies follow so close 
upon each other, that the example of the first cannot have been 
the single determining motive to those which followed. 1 
shall have occasion to point out, even a century later (on the 
occasion of the settlement of Kyréné), the narrow range of Gre- 
cian navigation ; so that the previous supposed ignorance would 
not be at all incredible, were it not for the fact of the preéxisting 
colony of Cumz. According to the practice universal with Gre- 
cian ships — which rarely permitted themselves to lose sight of 
the coast except in cases of absolute necessity — every man, who 
navigated from Greece to Italy or Sicily, first coasted along the 
shores of Akarnania and Epirus until he reached the latitude of 
Korkyra; he then struck across first to that island, next to the 
Japygian promontory, from whence he proceeded along the east- 
ern coast of Italy (the gulfs of Tarentum and Squillace) to the 
southern promontory of Calabria and the Sicilian strait; he 
would then sail, still coastwise, either to Syracuse or to Cuma, 
according to his destination. So different are nautical habits now, 
that this fact requires special notice ; we must recollect, moreover, 
that in 735 B. c., there were yet no Grecian settlements either in 
Epirus or in Korkyra: outside of the gulf of Corinth, the world 
was non-Hellenic, with the single exception of the remote Cume. 
A l'ttle before the last-mentioned period, Theoklés (an Athenian 
or a Chalkidian — probably the latter) was cast by storms on the 
coast of Sicily, and became acquainted with the tempting char- 
acter of the soil, as well as the dispersed and half-organized con- 
dition of the petty Sikel communities who occupied it.! The 
oligarchy of Chalkis, acting upon the information which he 
brought back, sent out under his guidance settlers. Chalkidian 
and Naxian, who founded the Sicilian Naxos. Theoklés and his 
companions on landing first occupied the eminence of Taurus, im- 


' Thucyd. vi, 3; Strabo, vi, p. 267. 

* The admixture of Naxian colonists may be admitted, as well upon the 
presumption arising from the name, as from the statement of Hellanikus, ap. 
Stephan. Byz. v, XaAxic. 

Ephorus put together into one the Chalkidian and the Megarian migra- 
tions. which Thucydidés represents as distinct (Ephorus ap. Strabo, vi, p 
267). 

VOL. III. 16 


362 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


mediately overhanging the sea (whereon was establihed four 
centuries afterwards the town of Tauromenium, after Naxos had 
been destroyed by the Syracusan despot Dionysius) ; for they had 
to make good their position against the Sikels, who were in occu- 
pation of the neighborhood, and whom it was requisite either to 
dispossess or to subjugate. After they had acquired secure pos- 
session of the territory, the site of the city was transferred to a 
convenient spot adjoining ; but the hill first occupied remained 
ever memorable, both to Greeks and to Sikels. On it was erect- 
ed the altar of Apollo Archégetés, the divine patron who (through 
his oracle at Delphi) had sanctioned and determined Hellenic 
cvlonization in the island. The altar remained permanently as a 
sanctuary common to all the Sicilian Greeks, and the ‘Theérs or sa- 
ered envoys from their various cities, when they visited the Olympic 
and other festivals of Greece, were always in the habit of offer- 
ing sacrifice upon it immediately before their departure. To the 
autonomous Sikels, on the other hand, the hill was an object of 
durable but odious recollection, as the spot in which Grecian con 
quest and intrusion had first begun; and at the distance of three 
centuries and a halt from the event, we find them still animated 
by this sentiment in obstructing the foundation of Tauromenium.! 
At the time when Theoklés landed, the Sikels were in pos- 
session of the larger half of the island, lying chiefly to the east 
of the Herzan mountains,2—a chain of hills stretching in 9 
southerly direction from that principal chain, called the Neurode 
or Nebrode mountains, which runs from east to west for the most 
part parallel with the northern shore. West of the Herwan hills 
were situated the Sikans; and west of these latter, Eryx and 
Kgesta, the possessions of the Elymi: along the western portion 
of the northern coast, also, were placed Motyé, Soloéis, and Pan- 
ormus (now Palermo), the Phenician or Carthaginian seaports. 
The formation, or at least the extension, of these three last- 
mentioned ports, however, was a consequence of the multiplied 


' Thucyd. vi, 3; Diodor. xiv, 59-88. 

2 Mannert places the boundary of Sikels and Sikans at these mountains 
Otto Siefert (Akragas und sein Gebiet, Hamburg, 1845, p. 53) places it ai 
the Gemelli Colles, rather more to the westward,-—thus contracting the 
domain of the Sikans . compare Diodor. iv, 82-83. 


FOUNDATION OF SYRACUSE. 863 


Grecian colonies ; for the Phenicians down to this time had not 
founded any territorial or permanent establishments, but had con- 
tented themselves with occupying in a temporary way various 
capes or circumjacent islets, for the purpose of trade with the in- 
terior. The arrival of formidable Greek settlers, maritime like 
themselves, induced them to abandon these outlying factories, 
and to concentrate their strength in the three considerable towns 
above named, all near to that corner of the island which ap- 
proached most closely to Carthage. ‘The east side of Sicily, and 
most part of the south, were left open to the Greeks, with no 
other opposition than that of the indigenous Sikels and Sikans, 
who were gradually expelled from all contact with the sea-shore, 
except on part of the north side of the island,—and who were 
indeed, so unpractised at sea as well as destitute of shipping, 
that in the tale of their old migration out of Italy into Sicily, the 
Sikels were affirmed to have crossed the narrow strait upon rafts 
at a moment of favorable wind.! 

In the very next year? to the foundation of Naxos, Corinth 
began her part in the colonization of the island.. A body of set- 
tlers, under the cekist Archias, landed in the islet Ortygia, farther 
southward on the eastern coast, expelled the Sikel occupants, and 
laid the first stone of the mighty Syracuse. Ortygia, two Eng- 
lish miles in circumference, was separated from the main island 
only by a narrow channel, which was bridged over when the city 
was occupied and enlarged by Gelon in the 72d Olympiad, if 
not earlier. It formed only a small part, though the most 
secure and best-fortified part, of the vast space which the city 
afterwards occupied; but it sufficed alone for the inhabitants 
during a considerable time, and the present city in its modern 
decline has again reverted to the same modest limits. Moreover, 
Ortygia offered another advantage of not less value; it lay acrosa 
the entrance of a spacious harbor, approached by a narrow 
mouth, and its fountain of Arethusa was memorable in antiquity 
both for the abundance and goodness of its water. We should 
have been glad to learn something respecting the numbers, char- 


' Thucyd. vi, 2. 
? Mr. Fynes Clinton discusses the era of Syracuse, Fasti Hellenici, ad 
B. c. 734, and the same work, vol. ii, Appendix xi, p. 264. 


$64 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


acter, porition, natizity, etc. of these primitive emigrants, the 
founders of a city shich we shall hereafter find comprising a 
vast walled circuit, which Strabo reckons at one hundred and 
eighty stadia, but which the modern observations of Colonel 
Leake announce as fourteen English miles,! or about one hundred 
and twenty-two stadia. We are told only that many of them 
came from the Corinthian village of Tenea, and that one of them 
sold to a comrade on the voyage his lot of land in prospective, 
for the price of a honey-cake : the little which we hear about the 
determining motives? of the colony refers to the personal charac- 
terof the cekist. Archias son of Euagétus, one of the governing 
gens of the Bacchiade at Corinth, in the violent prosecution οἵ 
unbridled lust, had caused, though unintentionally, the death of a 
free youth named Aktzon, whose father Melissus, after having 
vainly endeavored to procure redress, slew himself at the Isth- 
Mian games, invoking the vengeance of Poseidon against the 
aggressor.’ Such were the destructive effects of this paternal 
curse, that Archias was compelled to expatriate, and the Bacchi- 
κἀξ placed him at the head of the emigrants to Ortygia, in 734 
B. c.: at that time, probably, this was a sentence of banishment 
to which no man of commanding station would submit except 
under the pressure of necessity. 

There yet remained room for new settlements between Naxos 
and Syracuse: and Theoklés, the cekist of Naxos, found himselt 
in a situation to occupy part of this space only five years after 
the foundation of Syracuse: perhaps he may have been joined 
by fresh settlers. He attacked and expelled the Sikels* from 
the fertile spot called Leontini, seemingly about half-way down 
on the eastern coast between Mount A‘tna and Syracuse; and 
also from Katana, immediately adjoining to Mount Attna, which 
still retains both its name and its importance. Two new Chalki- 
dic colonies were thus founded,— Theoklés himself becoming 
ekist of Leontini, and Euarchus chosen by the Katanzan settlers 
themselves, of Katana. 


! See Colonel Leake, notes on the Topography of Syracuse, p. 41. 
3. Athene. iv, 167; Strabo, ix, p. 380. 
8 Diodor. Frag. Lit. viii, p. 24; Plutarch, Narrat. Amator. p. 772; Schol 


Apollon. Rhod. iv, 1212. . 
4 Polysenus (v, 5, 1) describes the stratagem of Theoklés on this occasion 


GELA. — ZANKLE. 368 


The city of Megara was not behind Corinth and Chalkis in 
furhishing emigrants to Sicily. Lamis the Megarian, having 
now arrived with a body of colonists, took possession first of a 
new spot called Trotilus, but afterwards joined the recent Chal- 
kidian settlement at Leontini. The two bodies of settlers, how- 
ever, could not live in harmony, and Lamis, with his companions, 
was soon expelled; he then occupied Thapsus,! at a little dis- 
tance to the northward of Ortygia or Syracuse, and shortly after- 
wards died. His followers made an alliance with Hyblon, king 
of a neighboring tribe of Sikels, who invited them to settle ip 
his territory; they accepted the proposition, relinquished Thap 
sus, and founded, in conjunction with Hyblon, the city called the 
Hyblean Megara, between Leontini and Syracuse. This inci- 
dent is the more worthy of notice, because it is one of the 
instances which we find of a Grecian colony beginning by 
amicable fusion with the preéxisting residents: Thucydidés 
seems to conceive the prince Hyblén as betraying his people 
against their wishes to the Greeks.2 

It was thus that, during the space of five years, several distinct 
bodies of Greek emigrants had rapidly succeeded each other in 
Sicily: for the next forty years, we do not hear of any fresh ar- 
rivals, which is the more easy to understand as there were during 
that interval several considerable foundations on the coast of Italy, 
which probably took off the disposable Greek settlers. At length, 
forty-five years after the foundation of Syracuse, a fresh body of 
settlers arrived, partly from Rhodes under Antiphémus, partly 
from Kréte under Entimus, and founded the city of Gela on the 
south-western front of the island, between cape Pachynus and 
Lilybeum (B. c. 690) — still on the territory of the Sikels, 
though extending ultimately to a portion of that of the Sikans.3 
The name of the city was given from that of the neighboring 
river Gerla. 

One other fresh migration from Greece to Sicily remains te 


' Polyenus details a treacherous stratagem whereby this expulsion is said 
to have been accomplished (v, 5, 2). 

* Thucydid. vi,3. Ὕβλωνος rot Βασιλέως προδόντος τὴν χώραν καὶ Kady 
γησαμένου. 

* Thucydid. vi, 4; Diodor. Excerpt. Vatican. ed. Maii, Fragm. xiii, p. 13 
Pansanias, viii, 46, 2 


να... αὐ 


— 
.--. ... e- _ 


866 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


be mentioned, though we cannot assign the exact date of it. The 
town of Zanklé (now Messina), on the strait between Italy and 
Sicily, was at first occupied by certain privateers or pirates from 
Cumz, — the situation being eminently convenient for their ope- 
rations. But the success of the other Chalkidic settlements im- 
parted to this nest of pirates a more enlarged and honorable 
character: a body of new settlers joined them from Chalkis and 
other towns of Kuboea, the land was regularly divided, «nd two 
joint cekists were provided to qualify the town as a member of 
the Hellenic communion — Periérés from Chalkis, and Krate- 
menés from Cumz. The name Zanklé had been given by the prim- 
itive Sikel occupants of the place, meaning in their language a 
sickle; but it was afterwards changed to Messéné by Anaxilas, 
despot of Rhegium, who, when he conquered the town, intro- 
duced new inhabitants, in a manner hereafter to be noticed.! 

Besides these emigrations direct from Greece, the Hellenic 
colonies in Sicily became themselves the founders of sub-colo- 
nies. ‘Thus the Syracusans, seventy years after their own settle- 
ment (B. C. 664), founded Akrz — Kasmenz, twenty years after- 
wards (B. c. 644), and Kamarina forty-five years after Kasmenz 
(Β. c. 599): Daskén and Menekdlus were the cekists of the lat- 
ter, which became in process of time an independent and consid- 
erable town, while Akrew and Kasmenz seem to have remained 
subject to Syracuse. Kamarina was on the south-western side 
of the island, forming the boundary of the Syracusan territory 
towards Gela. Kallipolis was established from Naxos, and Eu- 
beea (a town so called) from Leontini.? 

Hitherto, the Greeks had colonized altogether on the territory 
of the Sikels; the three towns which remain to be mentioned 
were all founded in that of the Sikans,3— Agrigentum or Akra- 
gas, Selinis,and Hlimera. The two tormer were both on the 
south-western coast, — Agrigentum bordering upon Gela on the 
one side, and upon Selinus on the other. Himera was situated 


' Thucydid. vi, 4. 2 Strabo, vi, p. 272. 

* Stephanus Byz. Σικανία, 7 περίχωρος ᾿Ακραγαντινῶν. Herodot. vii, 170; 
Diodor. iv, 78. 

Vessa, the most considerable among the Sikanian townships or villages, 
with its prince Teutus, is said to have been conquered by Phalaris despot of 
Agrigentuin, through a mixture of craft and force (Polyzen. 9, 1, 4). 


AGRIGENTUM. — SELINUS. — HIMERA. 367 


vn the westerly portion of the northern coast, — the single 
Hellenic establishment in the time of Thucydidés which that long 
line of coast presented. The inhabitants of the Hyblean Me- 
gara were founders of Selinus, about 630 B. c., a century after 
their own establishment: the ekist Pamillus, according to the 
usual Hellenic practice, was invited from their metropolis Me- 
gara in Greece proper, but we are not told how many fresh set 
‘lers came with him: the language of Thucydidés leads us to 
suppose that the new town was peopled chiefly from the Hyblean 
Megarians themselves. The town of Akragas, or Agrigentum, 
called after the neighboring river of the former name, was found- 
ed from Gela in B. c. 582. Its wekists were Aristonous and Pys- 
tilus, and it received the statutes and religious characteristics of 
Gela. Himera, on the other hand, was founded from Zanklé, 
under three cekists, Eukleidés, Simus, and Sakén. The chief 
part of its inhabitants were of Chalkidic race, and its legal and 
religious characteristics were Chalkidic; but a portion of the 
settlers were Syracusan exiles, called Mylétide, who had been 
expelled from home by a sedition, so that the Himerean dialect 
was a mixture of Doric and Chalkidic. Himera was situated 
not far from the towns of the Elymi, — Eyrx and Egesta. 
Such were the chief establishments founded by the Greeks in 
Sicily during the two centuries after their first settlement in 
735 Β. 6. The few particulars just stated respecting them are 
worthy of all confidence,— for they come to us from Thucydides, 
- but they are unfortunately too few to afford the least satisfac 
tion to our curiosity. It cannot be doubted that these first two 
centuries were periods of steady increase and prosperity among 
the Sicilian Greeks, undisturbed by those distractions and calam- 
ities which supervened afterwards,.and which led indeed to the 
extraordinary aggrandizement of some of their communities, but 
also to the ruin of several others: moreover, it seems that the 
Carthaginians in Sicily gave them no trouble until the time of 
Gel6n. Their position will indeed seem singularly advantageous, 
if we consider the extraordinary fertility of the soil in this fine 
island, especially near the sea, — its capacity for corn, wine, and 
oil, the species of cultivation to which the Greek husbandman 
had been accustomed under less favorable circumstances, — its 
abundant fisheries on the coast, so important in Grecian diet, ard 


868 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


continuing undiminished even at the present day, together with 
sheep, cattle, hides, wool, and timber from the native population 
in the interior. These natives seem to have been of rude pastoral 
habits, dispersed either among petty hill-villages, or in caverns 
hewn out of the rock, like the primitive inhabitants of the Ba- 
learie islands and Sardinia; so that Sicily, like New Zealand in 
our century, was now for the first time approached by organized 
industry and tillage! Their progress, though very great, during 
this most prosperous interval (between the foundation of Naxos, 
in 735 B. c. to the reign of Gelon at Syracuse in 485 B. C.), is not to 
be compared to that of the English colonies in America; but it 
was nevertheless very great, and appears greater from being con- 
eentrated as it was in and around a few cities. Individual spread- 
ing and separation of residence were rare, nor did they consist 
either with the security or the social feelings of a Grecian colon- 
ist. ‘The city to which he belonged was the central point of his 
existence, where the produce which he raised was brought home 
to be stored or sold, and where alone his active life, political, do- 
mestic, religious, recreative, ete., was carried on. There were 


dispersed throughout the territory of the city small fortified places 
and garrisons,? serving as temporary protection to the cultivators 
in case of sudden inroad; but there was no permanent resi- 
dence for the free citizen except the town itself. This was, per 


haps, even more the case in a colonial settlement, where every- 
thing began and spread from one central point, than in Attica, 
where the separate villages had once nourished a population 


1 Of these Sikel or Sikan caverns many traces yet remain: see Otto 
icfert, Akragas und sein Gebiet, pp. 39, 45, 49, 55, and the work of Captain 
W. H. Smyth, — Sicily and its Islands, London, 1824, p. 190. 

“'These crypts (observes the latter) appear to have been the earliest effort 
of a primitive and pastoral people towards a town, and are generally with- 
out regularity as to shape and magnitude: in after-ages they perhaps served 
as a retreat in time of danger, and as a place of security in case of extraor- 
dinary alarm, for women, children, and valuables. In this light, I was 
particularly struck with the resemblance these rude habitations bore to ths 
caves I had seen in Owhyhee, for similar uses. The Troglodyte villages o. 
Northern Africa, of which I saw several, are also precisely the same ” 

About the early cave-residences in Sardinia and the Balearic islands, com 
snit Diodor. v, 15-17. 

3 Thucydid. vi, 45. τὰ περιπόλια τὰ ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ (of Syracuse). 


MIXED RACES OF INHABITANTS. 369 


politically independent. It was in the town, therefore, that the 
aggregate increase of the colony palpably concentrated itself, — 
property as well as population,— private comfort and luxury not 
less than public force and grandeur. Such growth and improve- 
ment was of course sustained by the cultivation of the territory, 
but the eviCences of it were manifested in the town; and the 
large population which we shall have occasion to notice as be- 
longing to Agrigentum, Sybaris, and other cities, will illustrate 
this position. 

There is another point of some importance to mention in re- 
gard to the Sicilian and Italian cities” The population of the 
town itself may have been principally, though not wholly, Greek ; 
but the population of the territory belonging to the town, or of 
the dependent villages which covered it, must have been ina 
great measure Sikelor Sikan. The proof of this is found in a cir- 
cumstance common to all the Sicilian and Italian Greeks, — the 
peculiarity of their weights, measures, monetary system, and 
language. ‘The pound and ounce are divisions and denominations 
belonging altogether to Italy and Sicily, and unknown originally 
to the Greeks, whose scale consisted of the obolus, the drachma, 
the mina, and the talent: among the Greeks, too, the metal first and 
most commonly employed for money was silver, while in Italy and 
Sicily copper was the primitive metal made use of. Now among 
all the Italian and Sicilian Greeks, a scale of weight and money 
arose quite different from that of the Greeks at home, and form- 
vd by a combination and adjustment of the one of these systems 
to the other; it is in many points complex and difficult to under- 
stand, but in the final result the native system seems to be pre- 
dominant, and the Grecian system subordinate.! Such a conse- 


᾿ Respecting the statical and monetary system, prevalent among the Italian 
an Sicilian Greeks, see Aristot. Fragment. περὶ Πολιτειῶν, ed. Neumann, Ρ. 
102; Pollux, iv, 174, ix, 80-87; and above all, Boeckh, Metrologie, ch. xviii, 
p. 292, and the abstract and review of that work in the Classical Museum, 
No. 1; also, O. Miiller, Die Etrusker, vol. i, Ρ. 309. 
The Sicilian Greeks reckoned by talents, each consisting of 120 litre or 
libree: the Aiginszean obolus was the equivalent of the litra, having been the 
value in silver of a pound-weight of copper, at the time when the valuation 
was taken. 

The common denominations of money and weight — with the exception 


VQL. Ill. 1G* 24on. 


270 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


quence as this could not have ensued, if the Greek settlers in 
Italy and Sicily had kept themselves apart as communities, and 
had merely carried on commerce and barter with communities of 
Sikels: it implies a fusion of the two races in the same commu 
nity, though doubtless in the relation of superior and subject, and 
not in that of equals. The Greeks on arriving in the country 
expelled the natives from the town, perhaps also from the lands 
immediately round the town ; but when they gradually extended 
their territory, this was probably accomplished, not by the expul- 
sion, but by the subjugation of those Sikel tribes and villages, 
much subdivided and each individually petty, whom their aggres- 
sions successively touched. 

At the time when Theoklés landed on the hill near Naxos, 
and Archias in the islet of Ortygia, and when each of them ex- 
pelled the Sikels from that particular spot, there were Sikel vil- 
lages or little communities spread through all the neighboring 
country. By the gradual encroachments of the colony, some of 
these might be dispossessed and driven out of the plains near the 
coast into the more mountainous regions of the interior, but many 
of them doubtless found it convenient to submit, to surrender a 
portion of their lands, and to hold the rest as subordinate villagers 
of an Hellenic city-community :! and we find even at the time of 
the Athenian invasion (414 B. c.) villages existing in distinct 
identity as Sikels, yet subject and tributary to Syracuse. More- 
over, the influence which the Greeks exercised, though in the 
first instance essentially compulsory, became also in part self- 
operating, — the ascendency of a higher over a lower civilization. 
It was the working of concentrated townsmen, safe among one 
another by their walls and by mutual confidence, and surrounded 
by more or less of ornament, public as well as private, — upon 
dispersed, unprotected, artless villagers, who could not be insen- 
sible to the charm of that superior intellect, imagination, and or- 


of the talent, the meaning of which was altered while the word was retained 
— seem to have been all berrowed by the Italian and Sicilian Greeks from 
the Sikel or Italic scale, not from the Grecian, — νούμμος, Aitpa, δεκάλιτρον, 
πεντηκοντάλιτρον, πεντούγκιον, ἑξᾶς, τετρᾶς, τριᾶς, ἥμινα, ἡμιλίτριον (seq 
Fragments of Epicharmas and Sophron, ap. Ahrens de Dialecto Doric, 
Appendix, pp. 435, 471, 472, and Athen. xi, p. 479). 

'Thucyd vi, 88. 


THE SIKELS ARE GRADUALLY HELLENIZED. 871 


ew 


ganization, which wrought so powerfully upon the whole contem- 
poraneous world. ΤῸ understand the action of these superior 
emigrants upon the native but inferior Sikels, during those three 
earliest centuries (730—430 B. c.) which followed the arrival of 
Archias and Theoklés, we have only to study the continuance of 
the same action during the three succeeding centuries which pre- 
ceded the age of Cicero. At the period when Athens undertook 
the siege of Syracuse (B. c. 415), the interior of the island was 
occupied by Sikel and Sikan communities, autonomous, and re- 
taining their native customs and language ;' but in the time of 
Verres and Cicero (three centuries and a half afterwards) the 
interior of the island, as well as the maritime regions had become 
Hellenized : the towns in the interior were then hardly less Greek 
‘han those on the coast. Cicero contrasts favorably the character 
of the Sicilians with that of the Greeks generally (t. ὁ. the 
Greeks out of Sicily), but he nowhere distinguishes Greeks in 
Sicily from native Sikels ;2 nor Enna and Centuripi from Katana 
and Agrigentum. The little Sikel villages became gradually 

semi-Hellenized and merged into subjects of a Grecian town 

during the first three centuries, this change took place in the re- 
gions of the coast,— during the following three centuries, in the 
regions of the interior; and probably with greater rapidity and 
eflect in the earlier period, not only because the action of the 
Grecian communities was then closer, more concentrated, and 


' Thucyd. vi, 62-87; vii, 13. 

? Cicero in Verrem, Act ii, lib. iv, c. 26-51; Diodor. v, 6. 

Contrast the manner in which Cicero speaks of Agyrium, Centuripi, ani 
inna, with the description of these places as inhabited by autonomous 
Sikels, B. c. 396, in the wars of the elder Dionysius (Diodor. xiv, 55, 58, 78). 
Both Sikans and Sikels were at that time completely distinguished from the 
Greeks, in the centre of the island. 

O. Miller states that “Syracuse, seventy years after its foundation, colonized 
Akrz, also Enna, situated in the centre of the island,” (Hist. of Dorians, i 
6,7). Enna is mentioned by Stephanus Byz. as a Syracusan foundation, 
hut without notice of the date of its foundation, which must have been much 
‘ater than Miiller here affirms. Serra di Falco (Antichita di Sicilia, Introd. 
t. , p. 9) gives Enna as having been founded later than Akre, but earlict 
than Kasmene; for which date I find no authority. Talaria (see Steph 
Byz. ud voc.) is also mentioned as another Syracusan city, of which we dc 
not know either the date or the particulars of foundation. 


a = 


= pire Se 


= 


372 HISTORY OF GREECE 


more compulsory, but because also the obstinate tribes cuuld thea 
retire into the interior. | 

The Greeks in Sicily are thus not to be considered as purely 
Greeks, but as modified by a mixture of Sikel and Sikan lan- 
guage, customs, and character. Each town included in its non- 
privileged population a number of semi-Hellenized Sikels (or Si- 


kans, as the case might be), who, though in a state of dependence, 
contributed to mix the breed and influence the entire mass. We 
have no reason to suppose that the Sikel or G&notrian language 
ever became written, like Latin, Oscan, or Umbrian :' the in- 
scriptions of Segesta and Halesus are all in Dorie Greek, which 
supplanted the native tongue for public purposes as a separate 
language, but not without becoming itself modified in the con- 
fluence. In following the ever-renewed succession of violent 
political changes, the inferior capacity of regulated and pacific 
popular government, and the more unrestrained and voluptuous 
license, which the Sicilian and Italian Greeks? exhibit as compared 
with Athens and the cities of Greece proper, — we must ‘all to 
mind that we are not dealing with pure Hellenism; and that the 
native element, though not unfavorable to activity or increase of 
wealth, prevented the Grecian colonist from partaking fully in 
that improved organization which we so distinctly trace in Athens 
from Solon downwards. How much the taste, habits, ideas, reli- 
gion, and local mythes, of the native Sikels passed into the minds 
of the Sikeliots or Sicilian Greeks, is shown by the character of 
their literature and poetry. Sicily was the native country of that 
rustic mirth and village buffoonery which gave birth to the prim- 
itive comedy, —- politicized and altered at Athens so as to suit men 
of the market-place, the ekklesia, and the dikastery, — blending, 
in the comedies of the Syracusan Epicharmus, copious details 
about the indulgences of the table (for which the ancient Sicilians 
were renowned) with Pythagorean philosophy and moral maxims, 
— but given with all the naked simplicity of common life, in a 
sort of rhythmical prose, without even the restraint of a fixed 
meire, by the Syracusan Sophron in his lost Mimes, and after- 


> 


Ahrens, De Dialecto Dorica, sect. 1, p. Ὁ. 
5 Plato, Epistol. vii, p. 326; Plautus, Rudens, Act i, Se. 1, 56; Act ii, Se 
6. 58 


12 Vol, 3 


SICILIAN COMEDY. 373 


wards polished as well as idealized in the Bucolic poetry of The 
okritus.!. That which is commonly termed the Doric comedy was 
in great part at least, the Sikel comedy taken up by Dorian com- 
posers, — the Doric race and dialect being decidedly predominant 
in Sicily: the manners thus dramatized belonged to that coarser 
vein of humor which the Doric Greeks of the town had in com- 
mon with the semi-Hellenized Sikels of the circumjacent villages. 
Moreover, it seems probable that this rustic population enabled 
the despots of the Greco-Sicilian towns to form easily and cheap- 
ly those bodies of mercenary troops, by whom their power was 
sustained,? and whose presence rendered the continuance of pop- 
ular government, even supposing it begun, all but impossible. 

It was the destiny of most of the Grecian colonial establish 
ments to perish by the growth and aggression of those inland 
powers upon whose coast they were planted, — powers which 
gradually acquired, from the vicinity of the Greeks, a military and 
political organization, and a power of concentrated action, such 
as they had not originally possessed. But in Sicily, the Sikels 
were not numerous enough even to maintain permanently their 
own nationality, and were ultimately penetrated on all sides by 
Hellenic ascendency and manners. We shall, nevertheless, come 


1 Timokreon, Fragment. 5 ap. Ahrens, De Dialecto Dorica, p. 478,— 
Σικελὸς κομψὸς ἀνὴρ Iori τὰν ματέρ᾽ ἔφα. 

Bernhardy, Grundriss der Geschichte der Griech. Litteratur, vol. ii, ch. 
120, sects. 2-5; Grysar, De Doriensium Comeedia, Cologne, 1828, ch. i, pp. 
41, 55, 57, 210; Boeckh, De Grace Trageed. Princip. p. 52; Aristot. ap. 
Athens. xi, 505. The κότταβος seems to have been a native Sikel fashion, 
borrowed by the Greeks (Athenzus, xv, pp. 666-668). 

The Sicilian βουκολιασμὸς was a fashion among the Sicilian herdsmen 
earlier than Epicharmus, who noticed the alleged inventor of it, Diomus, 
the βούκολος Σικελιώτης (Athenwx. xiv, p. 619). The rustic manners and 


. speech represented in the Sicilian comedy are contrasted with the town 


manners and speech of the Attic comedy, by Plautus, Perse, Act iii 
Se. 1, v, 31: — 
“Librorum eccillum habeo plenum soracum. 
Dabuntur dotis tibi inde sexcenti logi, 


Atque Attici omnes, nullum Siculum acceperis.” 
Uompare the beginning of the prologue to the Menzchmi of Plautus. 
The comic μῦϑος began at Syracuse with Epicharmus and Phormu 


\Aristot. Poet. v 5). 
® Zenobius. Proverb. v, 84,— Σικελὸς στρατιώτης. 
᾽ ρ NS 


374 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


to one remarkable attempt, made by a native Sikel prince in the 
82d Olympiad (455 B. c.), — the enterprising Duketius, — to group 
many petty Sikel villages into one considerable town, and thus τὰ: 
raise his countrymen into the Grecian stage of polity and orga, 
ization. Had there been any Sikel prince endowed with these 
superior ideas at the time when the Greeks first settled in Sicily, 
the subsequent history of the island would probably have been 
very different ; but Duketius had derived his projects from the 
spectacle of the Grecian towns around him, and these latter had 
acquired much too great power to permit him to succeed. The 
description of his abortive attempt, however, which we find in 
Diodorus,! meagre as it is, forms an interesting point in the 
history of the island. 

Grecian colonization in Italy began nearly at the same time as 
in Sicily, and was marked by the same general circumstances. 
Placing ourselves at Rhegium (now Reggio) on the Sicilian 
strait, we trace Greek cities gradually planted on various points of 
the coast as far as Cumz on the one sea, and Tarentum (Taranto) 
on the other. Between the two seas runs the lofty chain of the 
Apennines, calcareous in the upper part of its course, through- 
out middle Italy,— granitic and schistose in the lower part, 
where it traverses the territories now called the hither and the 
farther Calabria. The plains and valleys on each side of the Cal- 
abrian Apennines exhibit a luxuriance of vegetation extolled by 
all observers, and surpassing even that of Sicily ;2 and great as 


ὁ Diodor. xi, 90-91; xii, 9. 

* See Dolomieu, Dissertation on the Earthquakes of Calabria Ultra, in 
17®8, in Pinkerton, Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. v, p. 280. 

“It is impossible (he observes) to form an adequate idea of the fertility 
of “alabria Ultra, particularly of that part called the Plain (south-west of 
the Apennines, below the gulf of St Eufemia). The fields, productive of 
olive-trees of larger growth than any seen elsewhere, are yet productive of 
griin. Vines load with their branches the trees on which they grow, yet 
leazen not their crops. All things grow there, and nature seems to anticipate 
the wishes of the husbandman. There is never a sufficiency of hands to 
gather the whole of the olives, which finally fall and rot at the bottom of the 
trees that bore ther, in the months of February and March. Crowds of 
foreigners, principal)y Sicilians, come there to help to gather them, and share 
the produce with the grower. Oil is their chief article of exportation: in 
@very quarter their wines are good and precious.” Compare pp 278-282. 


PRODUCTIVE TERRITORY OF CNOTRIA. 375 


the productive powers of this territory are now, there is full 
reason for believing that they must have been far greater in 
ancient times. For it has been visited by repeated earthquakes, 
each of which has left calamitous marks of devastation : those 
of 1638 and 1783 —especially the latter, whose destructive 
effects were on a terrific scale, both as to life and property! — 
are of a date sufficiently recent to admit of recording and 
measuring the damage done by each; and that damage, in many 
parts of the south-western coast, was great and irreparable. An- 
imated as the epithets are, therefore, with which the modern 
traveller paints the present fertility of Calabria, we are war- 
ranted in enlarging their meaning when we conceive the country 
as it stood between 720-320 B. c., the period of Grecian occupa- 
tion and independence; while the unhealthy air, which now 
desolates the plains generally, seems then to have been felt 
only to a limited extent, and over particular localities. The 
founders of Tarentum, Sybaris, Krotén, Lokri, and Rhegium, 
planted themselves in situations of unexampled promise to the 
‘ndustrious cultivator, which the previous inhabitants had turned 
to little account: since the subjugation of the Grecian cities, these 
once rich possessions have sunk into poverty and depopulation, 
especially during the last three centuries, from insalubrity, indo- 
lence, bad administration, and fear of the Barbary corsairs. 

The CEnotrians, Sikels, or Italians, who were in possession of 
these territories in 720 B. C., seem to have been rude petty com- 
munities, — procuring for themselves safety by residence on lofty 
eminences, — more pastoral than agricultural, and some of them 
consuming the produce of their fields in common mess, on 8 prine 
ciple analogous to the syssitia of Sparta or Kréte. King Ita- 
lus was said to have introduced this peculiarity? among the 
southernmost portion of the C&notrian population, and at the 
same time to have bestowed upon them the name of Italians, 


though they were also known by the name of Sikels. Through- 


‘Mr Keppel Craven observes (Tour through the Southern Provinces of 
Naples, ch xiii, p. 254), “ The earthquake of 1783 may be said to have 
altered the face of tne whole of Calabria Ultra, and extended its ravages as 
far northward as Cosenza.” 

® Aristot. Polit vii, 9, 3. 


ee a OO ee Le ee ee. ees -- π.Ἕ- 
ΡΟΝ == a = 2 > - ᾿ πεν ͵ 


376 HISTORY OF GREECE 


out the centre of Calabria between sea and sea, the high chain ut 
the Apennines afforded protection to a certain extent both to their 
independence and to their pastoral habits. But these heights are 
made to be enjoyed in conjunction with the plains beneath, so as to 
alternate winter and summer pasture for the cattle: it is in this 
manner that the richness of the country is rendered available, 
since a large portion of the mountain range is buried in snow 
during the winter months. Such remarkable diversity of soil 
and climate rendered Calabria a land of promise for Grecian set- 
tlement: the plains and lower eminences being as productive of 
corn, wine, oil, and flax, as the mountains in summer-pasture and 
timber, — and abundance of rain falling upon the higher ground, 
which requires only industry and care to be made to impart the 
maximum of fertility to the lower: moreover, a long line of sea- 
coast, — though not well furnished with harbors, — and an abun- 
dant supply of fish, came in aid of the advantages of the soil. 
While the poorer freemen of the Grecian cities were enabled to 
obtain small lots of fertile land in the neighborhood, to be culti- 
vated by their own hands, and to provide for the most part their 
own food and clothing, the richer proprietors made profitable use 
of the more distant portions of the territory by means of their 
cattle, sheep, and slaves. 

Of the Grecian towns on this favored coast, the earliest as 
well as the most prosperous were Sybaris and Krotén: both in 
the gulf of Tarentum,—both of Achwan origin, and conter- 
minous with each other in respect of territory. Krotén was 
placed not far to the west of the south-eastern extremity of the 
gulf, called in ancient times the Lakinian cape, and ennobled by 
the temple of the Lakinian Héré, which became alike venerated 
and adorned by the Greek resident as well as by the passing 
navigator: one solitary column of the temple, the humble rem- 
nart of its past magnificence, yet marks the extremity of this once 
celebrated promontory. Sybaris seems to have been planted in 
the year 720 8. c., Kroton in 710 B. c.: Iselikeus was cekist of 
the former,! Myskellus of the latter. This large Achwan emi- 


* Strabo, vi, p 263. Kramer, in his new edition of Strabo follows Koray 
in suspecting the correctness of the name ‘Ise λεκεὺς, which certainly departa 
from the usual analogy of Grecian names. Assuming it to be incorrect 


SYBARIS AND KROTON. 377 


gration seems to have been connected with the previous expulsion 
of the Achzan population from the more southerly region of 
Peloponnesus by the Dorians, though in what precise manner we 
are not enabled to see: the Achzan towns in Peloponnesus ap- 
pear in later times too inconsiderable to furnish emigrants, but 
probably in the eighth century Β. c. their population may have 
been larger. The town of Sybaris was planted between two 
rivers, the Sybaris and the Krathis,! the name οὐ the latter bor- 
rowed from a river of Achaia, —the town of Krotén about twenty- 
five miles distant, on the river A°sarus. The primitive settlers 
of Sybaris consisted in part of Troezenians, who were, however, 
subsequently expelled by the more numerous Achwans,—a deed 
of violence which was construed by the religious sentiment of 
Antiochus and some other Grecian historians, as having drawn 
down upon them the anger of the gods in the ultimste de 
struction of the city by the Krotoniates.2 

The fatal contest between these two cities, which ended in the 
ruin of Sybaris, took place in 510 B. c., after the latter had sub- 
sisted in her prosperity for two hundred and ten years. And the 
astonishing prosperity to which both of them attained is a sufficient 
proof that during the most of this period they had remained in 
peace at least, if not in alliance and common Achzan brotherhood. 
Unfortunately, the general fact of their great size, wealth, and 
power, is all that we are permitted to know. The walls of Syb- 
aris embraced a circuit of fifty stadia, or more than six miles, 
while those of Krotén were even larger, and comprised not less 
than twelve miles a large walled circuit was advantageous for 
sheltering the movable property in the territory around, which 
was carried in on the arrival of an invading enemy. Both cities 


however, there are no means of rectifying it: Kramer prints, — οἰκιστὴς δὲ 
αὐτῆς ὁ Ἶσ.... Ἑλικεὺς : thus making ‘EAcxede the ethnicon of the Achgan 
town Heliké. 

There were also legends which connected the foundation of Kroton with 
Wéraklés, who was affirmed to have been hospitably sheltered by the 
eporymous hero Krotén. Héraklés was οἰκεῖος at Krotén: see Ovid. 
Metaniorph. xv, 1-60; Jamblichus, Vit. Pythagor. c. 8, p. 30, c. 9, p. 37, ed 
Kuster. 

' Herodot. i, 145. ’ Aristot. Polit. v, 2, 10 

3 Stegho, vi, p. 262; Livy, xxiv, 3 


378 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


possessed an extensive dominion across the Calabrian peninsula 
from sea to sea; but the territorial range of Sybaris seems to 
have been greater and her colonies wider and more distant, — 
a fact which may, perhaps, explain the smaller circuit of the 
sity. 

The Sybarites were founders of Laus and Skidrus, on the 
Mediterranean sea in the gulf of Policastro, and even of the 
more distant Poseidonia, — now known by its Latin name of Pes- 
tum, as well as by the temples which still remain to decorate its 
deserted site. They possessed twenty-five dependent towns, and 
ruled over four distinct native tribes or nations. What these 


nations were we are not told,! but they were probably differ- 
ent sections of the Qnotrian name. The Krotoniates also 
reached across to the Mediterranean sea, and founded (upon the 
gulf now called St. Euphemia) the town of Terina, and seemingly 
also that of Lametini.2 The inhabitants of the Epizephyrian 


Lokri, which was situated in a more southern part of Calabria 
Ultra, near the moderna town of Gerace, extended themselves 
in like manner across the peninsula, and founded upon the Medi- 
terranean coast the towns of Hippénium, Medma, and Mataurum,3 
as well as Mel and Itoneia, in localities not now exactly ascer- 
tained. 

Myskellus of Rhypes in Achaia, the founder of Krotén under 
the express indication of the Delphian oracle, is said to have 
thought the site of Sybaris preferable, and to have solicited per- 
mission from the oracle to plant his colony there, but he was ad- 
monished to obey strictly the directions first given.4 It is farther 


’ Strabo, vi, p. 263, v, p. 251; Skymn. Chi. v, 244; Herodot. vi, 21. 

* Stephan. Byz. v, Tépiva — Aapnrivot; Skymn. Chi. 305. 

3 Thucydid. v, 5; Strabo, vi, Ρ. 256; Skymn. Chi. 307. Steph. Byz. calls 
Mataurum πόλις Σικελίας. 

4 Herodot. viii, 47. Κροτωνιῆται, γένος εἰσὶν ᾿Αχαιοί: the date of the 
foundation is given by Dionysius of Halikarnassus (A. R. ii, 59). 

The oracular commands delivered to Myskellus are found at length in the 
Fragments of Diodorus, published by Maii (Scriptt. Vet. Fragm. x, p. 8): 
tompare Zenob. Proverb. Centur. iii, 42. 

Though Myskellus is thus given as the cekist of Krotén, yet we find s 
Krotoniatic coin with the inscription Ἡρακλῆς Οἰκίστας (Eckhel, Doctrin. 
Nomm. Vet. vol. i, p. 172): the worship of Héraklés at Kroton under this 


PRIMITIVE COLONISTS OF LOKRL 879 


affirmed that the foundation of Krotén was aided by Archias, then 
passing along the coast with his settlers for Syracuse, who is alse 
brought into conjunction in a similar manner with the foundation 
of Lokri: but neither of these statements appears chronologically 
admissible. The Italian Lokri (called Epizephyrian, from the 
neighborhood of cape Zephyrium) was founded in the year 683 
B. C. by settlers from the Lokrians,— either the Ozolian Lokrians 
in the Krisswan gulf, or those of Opus on the Eubcean strait. 
This point was disputed even in antiquity, and perhaps both the 
one and the other may have contributed: Euanthus was the οἶς 
ist of the place.! The first years of the Kpizephyrian Lokri are 
said to have been years of sedition and discord. And the vile 
character which we hear ascribed to the primitive colonists, as 
well as their perfidious dealing with the natives, are the more to 
be noted, as the Lokrians, of the times both of Aristotle and of 
Polybius, fully believed these statements in regard to their own 
ancestors. 

The original emigrants to Lokri were, according to Aristotle, a 
body of runaway slaves, men-stealers, and adulterers, whose only 
legitimate connection with an honorable Hellenic root arose from 
a certain number of well-born Lokrian women who accompanied 
them. ‘These women belonged to those select families called the 
Hundred Houses, who constituted what may be called the no- 
bility of the Lokrians in Greece proper, and their descendants 
continued to enjoy a certain rank and preéminence in the colony, 
even in the time of Polybius. The emigration is said to have 
been occasioned by disorderly intercourse between these noble 
Lokrian women and their slaves, — perhaps by intermarriage 
with persons of inferior station, where there had existed no re- 


title is analogous to that of ᾿Απολλὼν Οἰκίστης καὶ Δωματίτης at /Egina 
(Pythenétus ap. Schol. Pindar. Nem. vy, 81). There were various legends 
respecting Héraklés, the Eponymus Kroton, and Lakinius. Herakleidés 
Ponticus, Fragm. 30, ed. Kéller; Diodor. iv, 24; Ovid, Metamorph. xv, 
1-53. 

' Strabo, vi, p. 259. Euantheia, Hyantheia, or Gantheia, was one of the 
towns of the Ozolian Lokrians on the north side of the Krissean gulf, from 
which, perhaps, the emigrants may have departed, carrying with them the 
name and patronage of its eponymous cekist (Plutarch, Quest. Gree.c. & 
Skylax, p. 14). 


880 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


cognized connudium ;' a fact referred, by the informants of Ans 
totle, to the long duration of the first Messenian war, -— the Lo- 
krian warriors having for the most part continued in the Messe- 
nian territory as auxiliaries of the Spartans during the twenty 
years of that war, permitting themselves only rare and short 
visits to their homes. ‘This is a story resembling that which we 
shall find in explanation of the colony of Tarentum. It comes 
to us too imperfectly to admit of criticism or verification ; but the 
unamiable character of the first emigrants is a statement deserv- 
ing credit, and very unlikely to have been invented. ‘Their first 
proceedings on settling in Italy display a perfidy in accordance 
with the character ascribed to them. They found the territory in 
this southern portion of the Calabrian peninsula possessed by 
native Sikels, who, alarmed at their force, and afraid to try the 
hazard of resistance, agreed to admit them to a participation and 
joint residence. The covenant was concluded and sworn to by 
both parties in the following terms: “There shall be friend. 
ship between us, and we will enjoy the land in common, so long 
as we stand upon this earth and have heads upon our shoulders.” 
At the time when the oath was taken, the Lokrians had put earth 
into their shoes and concealed heads of garlic upon their shoul- 
ders; so that, when they had divested themselves of these ap- 
pendages, the oath was considered as no longer binding. Avail- 
ing themselves of the first convenient opportunity, they attacked 
the Sikels by surprise and drove them out of the territory, of 
which they thus acquired the exclusive possession.3 Their first 
establishment was formed upon the headland itself, cape Zephy- 
rium (now Bruzzano); but after three or four years the site of 


the town was moved to an eminence in the neighboring plain, in 
a a, ee aie . rai . 
which the Syracusans are said to have aided them.4 


* Polyb. xii, 5, 8,9; Dionys. Perieget. v, 365. 

* This fact may connect the foundation of the colony of Lokri with 
Sparta; but the statement of Pausanias (iii, 3, 1), that the Spartans in the 
reign of king Polydcrus founded both Lokri and Kroton, seems to belong te 
a different historical conception. 

ὃ Polyb. xii, 5-12. 

* Strabo, vi, p. 259. We find that, in the accounts given of the foundation 
of Korkyra. Krot6n, and Lokri, reference is made to the Syracusan settlers 
vithcr as contemporary in the way of companionship, or as auxiliaries 


ZALEUKUS THE LOKRIAN. 381 


{n describing the Grecian settlers in Sicily, I have already 
stated that they are to be considered as Greeks with a consider- 
able infusion of blood, of habits, and of manners, from the native 
Sikels: the case is the same with the Italiots, or Italian Greeks, 
and in respect to these Epizephyrian Lokrians, especially, we find 
it expressly noticed by Polybius. Composed as their band was 
of ignoble and worthless men, not bound together by strong tribe- 
feelings or traditional customs, they were the more ready to 
adopt new practices, as well religious as civil,' from the Sikels. 
One in particular is noticed by the historian,— the religious dig- 
nity called the Phialéphorus, or censer-bearer, enjoyed among the 
native Sikels by a youth of noble birth, who performed the duties 
belonging to it in their sacrifices; but the Lokrians, while they 
identified themselves with the religious ceremony, and adopted 
both the name and the dignity, altered the sex, and conferred it 
upon one of those women of noble blood who constituted the or- 
nament of their settlement. Even down to the days of Poly- 
bius, some maiden descended from one of these select Hundred 
Houses, still continued to bear the title and to perform the cere- 
monial duties of Phialéphorus. We learn from these statements 
how large a portion of Sikels must have become incorporated as 
dependents in the colony of the Epizephyrian Lokri, and how 
strongly marked was the intermixture of their habits with those 
of the Greek settlers; while the tracing back among them of all 
eminence of descent to a few emigrant women of noble birth, is 
a peculiarity belonging exclusively to their city. 

That a body of colonists, formed of such unpromising materials, 
should have fallen into much lawlessness and disorder, is noway 
surprising; but these mischiefs appear to have become so utterly 
intolerable in the early years of the colony, as to force upon 
every one the necessity of some remedy. Hence arose a plie- 
nomenon new in the march of Grecian society, — the first pro- 


perhaps the accounts all come from the Syracusan historian Antiochus, who 
exaggerated the intervention of his own ancestors. 

1 “Nil patrium, nisi nomen, habet Romanus alumnus,” observes Propertius 
(iv, 37) respecting the Romans: repeated with still greater bitterness in the 
epistle in Sallust from Mithridatés to Arsacés, (p. 191, Delph. ed.) The 
remark is well-applicable to Lokri. 


3382 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


mulgation of written laws. The Epizephyrian Lokrian:., having 
applied to the Delphian oracle for some healing suggesticn under 
their distress, were directed to make laws for themselves ;! and 
received the ordinances of a shepherd named Zaleukus, which he 
professed to have learned from the goddess Athéné in a dream. 
His laws are said to have been put in writing and promulgated 
in 664 B. C., forty years earlier than those of Drako at Athens. 
That these first of all Grecian written laws were few and sim- 
ple, we may be sufficiently assured. The only fact certain re- 
specting them is their extraordinary rigor 2 they seem to have 
enjoined the application of the ἰδ: talionis as a punishment for 
personal injuries. In this general character of his laws. Zaleukus 


al existence, — 
against the authority not only of Ephorus, but also of Aristotle 
and ‘Theophrastus. The laws must have remained, however, 
for a long time, formally unchanged ; for so great was the aver: 
sion of the Lokrians, we are told, to any new law, that the man 
who ventured to propose one appeared in public with a rope 
round his neck, which was at once tightened if he failed to con- 
vince the assembly of the necessity of his proposition.4 Of the 
government of the Epizephyrian Lokri we know only. that in 


' Aristot. ap. Schol. Pindar. Olymp. x, 17. 
. Proverb. Zenob. Centur. iv, 20. Ζαλεύκου νόμος, ἐπὶ τῶν ἀποτόμων 

* Strabo, vi, p. 259; Skymnus Chius, y, 313; Cicero de Legg. ii 6, and 
Epist. ad Atticum, vi, 1. ΠΥ 

_ Heyne, Opuscula, vol. ii, Epimetrum ii, pp- 60-68; Godller ad Timai 

Fragment. pp. 220-259. Bentley (on the Epistles of Phalaris. ch. xii p 
274) seems to countenance, without adequate reason, the doubt of eas 
about the existence of Zaleukus. But the statement of Ephorus, that 
Zaleukus had collected his ordinances from the Kretan. Liconian: wad 
Areiopagitic customs, when contrasted with the simple and far more credible 
statement above cited from Aristotle, shows how loose were the aflirmations 
respecting the Lokrian laweiver (ap. Strabo, vi, p. 260). Other statements 
also, concerning him, alluded to by Aristotle (Politic. ii, 9, 3), were thetic 
at variance with chronology i 

Charondas, the lawgiver of the Chalkidie towns in Italy and Sicily, as far 
as we can judge amidst much confusion of testimony. seems to belong to al 
age much later than Zaleukus: I shall speak of him hereafter. ὴ 

* Démosthen. cont. Timokrat. p. 744 ; Polyb xii, 10, 


RHEGIUM. 388 


later times it included a great council of one thousand members, 
and a chief executive magistrate called Kosmopolis: it is spoken 
of also as strictly and carefully administered. 

The date of Rhegium (Reggio), separated from the territory 
of the Epizephyrian Lokri by the river Halex, must have been 
not only earlier than Lokri, but even earlier than Sybaris, — if 
the statement of Antiochus be correct, that the colonists were 
joined by those Messenians, who, prior to the first Messenian 
war, were anxious to make reparation to the Spartans for the 
outrage offered to the Spartan maidens at the temple of Artemis 
Limnatis, but were overborne by their countrymen and forced 
into exile. A different version, however, is given by Pausanias 
of this migration of Messenians to Rhegium, yet still admitting 
the fact of such migration at the close of the first Messenian 
war, which would place the foundation of the city earlier than 
720 8. c. Though Rhegium was a Chalkidic colony, yet a portion 
of its inhabitants seem to have been undoubtedly of Messenian 
origin, and amongst them Anaxilas, despot of the town between 
500-470 B. c., who traced his descent through two centuries to a 
Messenian emigrant named Alkidamidas.! The celebrity and 
power of Anaxilas, just at the time when the ancient history of 
the Greek towns was beginning to be set forth in prose, and witk 
come degree of system, caused the Messenian element in the 
population of Rhegium to be noticed prominently ; but the town 
was essentially Chalkidic, connected by colonial sisterhood with 
the Chalkidic settlements in Sicily — Zanklé, Naxos, Katana, and 
Leontini. The original emigrants departed from Chalkis, as a 
tenth of the citizens consecrated by vow to Apollo in consequence 
of famine; and the directions of the god, as well as the invita 
tion of the Zankleans, guided their course to Rhegium. The 
‘own was flourishing, and acquired a considerable number of 
dependent villages around,? inhabited doubtless by cultivators of 
the indigenous population. But it seems to have been often at 
variance with the conterminous Lokrians, and received one severe 
defeat, in conjunction with the Tarentines, which will be here- 


after recounted. 


A — 


~ 
‘ 


Pansan. iv, 23, 2. 


* Strabo, vi, p. 25 
? Strabo, vi, p. 258. ἔσχυσε dé μάλιστα ἡ τῶν Ῥηγινών πόλις, καὶ περιοικΐ 


δας ἔσχε συχνὰς, ete. 


3 
. 


384 HISTORY OF GREECE 


Between Lokri and the Lakinian cape were situated the Acha« 
an colony of Kaulénia, and Skyllétium; the latter seemingly in- 
eluded in the domain of Kroton, though pretending to have been 
originally founded by Menestheus, the leader of the Athenians at 
the siege of Troy: Petilia, also, a hill-fortress north-west of the 
Lakinian cape, as well as Makalla, both comprised in the territory 
of Krotén, were affirmed to have been founded by Philoktétés, 
Along all this coast of the gulf of Tarentum, there were various 
establishments ascribed to the heroes of the Trojan war, --- 
Epeius, Philoktétés, Nestor, — or to their returning troops. Of 
these establishments, probably the occupants had been small. 
miscellaneous, unacknowledged bands of Grecian adventurers,2 
who assumed to themselves the most honorable origin which they 
could imagine, and who became afterwards absorbed into the 
larger colonial establishments which followed; the latter adopt- 
ing and taking upon themselves the heroic worship of Philok- 
tétés or other warriors from Troy, which the prior emigrants had 
begun. 

During the flourishing times of Sybaris and Krotén, it seems 
that these two great cities divided the whole length of the coast 
of the Tarentine gulf, from the spot now called Rocca Imperiale 
down to the south of the Lakinian cape. Between the point 
where the dominion of Sybaris terminated on the Tarentine side, 
and Tarentum itself, there were two considerable Grecian settle- 
ments, — Siris, afterwards called Herakleia, and Metapontium. 
The fertility and attraction of the territory of Siris, with its two 
rivers, Akiris and Siris, were well known even to the poet Ar- 
chilochus? (660 B. c.), but we do not know the date at which it 
passed from the indigenous Chdénians or Chaonians into the 
hands of Greek settlers A citizen of Siris is mentioned amone 
the suitors for the daughter of the Sikyonian Kleisthenés, (580- 
560 B. 9.) Weare told that some Kolophonian fugitives, emi- 
grating to escape the dominion of the Lydian kings, attacked 


' Strabo, vi. p. 263; Aristot. Mirab. Ause. c. 106; Athena. xii, p. 523. It 
is to these reputed Rhodian companions of Tlépolemus before Troy, that 
the allusion in Strabo refers, to Rhodian occupants near Sybaris (xiv, Ρ 
655). ; 

* See Mannert, Geographie, part ix, b. 9, ch. 11, p. 234. 

* Archiloch. Fragm. 17, ed. Schneidewin. 


MET APONTIUM. $85 


and possessed themselves of the spot, giving to it the name Po- 
lieion. The Chonians of Siris ascribed to themselves a Trojan 
origin, exhibiting a wooden image of the Ilian Athéné, which 
they affirmed to have been brought away by their fugitive an- 
cestors after the capture of Troy. When the town was stormed 
by the Ionians, many of the inhabitants clung to this relic for 
protection, but were dragged away and slain by the victors,! 
whose sacrilege was supposed to have been the cause that their 
settlement was not durable. At the time of the invasion of 
Greece by Xerxés, the fertile territory of Siritis was considered 
as still open to be colonized ; for the Athenians when their affairs 
appeared desperate, had this scheme of emigration in reserve as 
a possible resource ;? and there were inspired declarations from 
some of the contemporary prophets, which encouraged them to 
undertake it. At length, after the town of Thurii had been 
founded by Athens, in the vicinity of the dismantled Sybaris, the 
Thurians tried to possess themselves of the Siritid territory, but 
were opposed by the Tarentines.3 According to the compromise 
concluded between them, Tarentum was recognized as the me- 
tropolis of the colony, but joint possession was allowed both to 
Tarentines and Thurians. The former transferred the site of 
the city, under the new name Herakleia, to a spot three miles 
from the sea, leaving Siris as the place of maritime access to it.4 

About twenty-five miles eastward of Siris, on the coast of the 
Tarentine gulf, was situated Metapontium, a Greek town which 
was affirmed by some to draw its origin from the Pylian compan- 
ions of Nestor, —by others, from the Phocian warriors of Epe- 


1 Herodot. vi, 127; Strabo, vi, p. 263. The name Polieion seems to be 
read Πλεῖον in Aristot. Mirab. Auscult. 106. 

Niebuhr assigns this Kolophonian settlement of Siris to the reign of Gygés 
in Lydia; for which I know no other evidence except the statement that 
Gygés took τῶν Κολοφωνίων τὸ ἄστυ (Herodot. i, 14); but this is no proof 
that the inhabitants then emigrated ; for Kolophon was a very flourishing and 
prosperous city afterwards. 

Justin (xx, 2) gives a case of sacrilegious massacre committed near the 
statue of Athéné at Siris, which appears to be totally different from the tale 
respecting the Kolophonians. 

5 Herodot. viii, 62. 3 Strabo, vi, p. 264. 

4 Strabo, vi, p. 264. 

VOL. It. 250c. 


B86 LISTORY OF GREECE. 


ius, on their return from Troy. The proofs of the former were 
exhibited in the worship of the Neleid heroes, — the proofs of 
the latter in the preservation of the reputed identical tools with 
which Epeius had constructed the Trojan horse.! Metapontium 
was planted on the territory of the Chénians or (CE notrians, 
but the first colony is said to have been destroyed by an 
attack of the Samnites,? at what period we do not know. It had 
been founded by some Achzan settlers, — under the direction of 
the cekist Daulius, despot of the Phocian Krissa, and invited by 
the inhabitants of Sybaris, who feared that the place might be 
appropriated by the neighboring Tarentines, colonists from Sparta 
and hereditary enemies in Peloponnesus of the Achzan race. 
efore the new settlers arrived, however, the place seems to have 
been already appropriated by the Tarentines; for the Achzan 
Leukippus only obtained their permission to land by a fraudulent 
promise, and, after all, had to sustain a forcible struggle both with 
them and with the neighboring Cénotrians, which was compro- 
mised by a division of territory. ‘The fertility of the Meta- 
pontine territory was hardly less celebrated than that of the 
Siritid.s 
Farther eastward of Metapontium, again at the distance of 
about twenty-five miles, was situated the great city of Taras, or 


' Strabo, ὁ αι; Justin, xx, 2; Velleius Paterc. i, 1; Aristot. Mirab. Aus- 
cult. c. 108. This story respecting the presence and implements of Epeius 
may have arisen through the Phocian settlers from Krissa. 

The words of Strabo —7¢aviodn δ᾽ ὑπὸ Σαυνιτῶν (vi, p. 264) can hardly 
be connected with the immediately following narrative, which he gives out 
of Antiochus, respecting the revival of the place by new Achzan settlers, 
invited by the Achzans of Sybaris. For the latter place was reduced to 
impotence in 510 B. c.: invitations by the Achwans of Sybaris must, there- 
fore, be anterior to that date. If Daulius despot of Krissa is to be admitted 
as the ekist of Metapontinm, the plantation of it must be placed early in 
the first half of the sixth century B. c.; but there is great difficulty in 
admitting the extension of Samnite conquests to the gulf of Tarentum at so 
early a period as this. I therefore construe the words of Antiochus as 
referring to the original settlement of Metapontium by the Greeks, not to 
the revival of the town after its destruction by the Samnites. 

? Strabo, /. c.; Stephanus Byz. (v, Μεταπόντιον) identifies Metapontium 
and Siris in a perplexing manner. 

Livy (xxv, 15) recognizes Metapcntium as Achean: compare Heyne 
O>ascula, vol. ii, Prolus. xii, p. 207. 


TARENTUM. 387 


Tarentum, a colony from Sparta founded after the first Messe- 
nian war, seemingly about 707 Bs. c. The ckist Phalanthus, 
said to have been an Herakleid, was placed at the head of a body 
of Spartan emigrants, — consisting principally of some citizens 
called Epeunaktz, and of the youth called Parthenix, who had 
been disgraced by their countrymen on account of their origin, 
and were on the point of breaking out into rebellion. It was 
out of the Messenian war that this emigration is stated to have 
arisen, in ἃ manner analogous to that which has been stated 
respecting the Epizephyrian Lokrians. The Lacedemonians, 
before entering Messenia to carry on the war, had made a vow 
not to return until they should have completed the conquest; a 
vow in which it appears that some of them declined to take part, 
standing altogether aloof from the expedition. When the absent 
soldiers returned after many years of absence consumed in the 
war, they found a numerous progeny which had been born to 
their wives and daughters during the interval, from intercourse 
with those (Epeunaktz) who had stayed at home. The Epeu- 
naktz were punished by being degraded to the rank and servi- 
tude of Helots; the children thus born, called Partheniz,' were 
also cut off from all the rights of citizenship, and held in dis- 
honor. But the parties punished were numerous enough to make 
themselves formidable, and a conspiracy was planned among 
them, intended to break out at the great religious festival of the 
Hyacinthia, in the temple of the Amyklwan Apollo. Palanthus 
was the secret chief of the conspirators, who agreed to com- 
mence their attack upon the authorities at the moment when he 
should put on his helmet. The leader, however, never intending 
that the scheme should be executed, betrayed it beforehand, stip- 
ulating for the safety of all those implicated in it. At the com- 
mencement of the festival, when the multitude were already 
assembled, a herald was directed to proclaim aloud, that Phalan- 
thus would not on that cay put on his helmet, — a proclamation 


' Parthenie, i. e. children of virgins: the description given by Varro of 
the Illyrian virgines illustrates this phrase: “ Quas virgines ibi appellant, non- 
nunquam annorum xx, quibus mos eorum non denegavit, ante nuptias uf 
auccumberent quibus vellent, et incomitatis ut vagari liceret, et liberos habere* 
(Varro, De Re Rusticé, ii, 10, 9.) 


888 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


which at once revenled to the conspirators that they were be- 
trayed. Some of them sought safety in flight, others assumed 
the posture of suppliants ; but they were merely detained in con- 
finemeni, with assurance of safety, while Phalanthus was sent te 
the Delphian oracle to ask advice respecting emigration. He is 
said to have inquired whether he might be permitted to appropri- 
ate the fertile plain of Sikyon, but the Pythian priestess emphat- 
ically dissuaded him, and enjoined him to conduct his emigrants 
to Satyrium and Tarentum, where he would be “a mischief to 
the Iapygians.” Phalanthus obeyed, and conducted the detected 
censpirators as emigrants to the Tarentine gulf,! which he reached 
afew years after the foundation of Sybaris and Kroton by the 
Achzxans. According to Ephorus, he found these prior emigrants 
at war with the natives, aided them in the contest, and received 
in return their aid to accomplish his own settlement. But this can 
hardly have consisted with the narrative of Antiochus, who re- 
presented the Achwans of Sybaris as retaining, even in their 
colonies, the hatred againat the Dorian name which they had con 
tracted in Peloponnesus.2 Antiochus stated that Phalanthus 
and his colonists were received in a friendly manner by the indi- 
genous inhabitants, and allowed to establish their new town in 
tranquillity. 

If such was really the fact, it proves that the native inhabitants 
of the soil must have been of purely inland habits, making no 
use of the sea either for commerce or for fishery, otherwise they 


' For this story respecting the foundation of Tarentum, see Strabo, vi, pp 
278-280 (who gives the versions both of Antiochus and Ephorus); Justin 
lii, 4; Diodorus, xv, 66; Excerpta Vatican. lib. vii-x, ed. Maii Fr 12 
Servius ad Virgil. Aineid. iii, 551. τ 

There are several points of difference between Antiochus, Ephorus, and 
Servius ; the story given in the text follows the former. 

The statement of Hesychius (v, Παρϑενεῖαι) seems on the whole some 
what more intelligible than that given by Strabo, — Οἱ κατὰ τὸν Μεσσγνιακὸν 
πόλεμον αὐτοῖς γενόμενοι ἐκ τῶν ϑεραπαίνων" καὶ οἱ ἐξ ἀνεκδότου λάϑρα 
γεννώμενοι παῖδες. Justin translates Parthenia, Spuni. 

The local eponymous heroes Taras and Satyrus (from Satyrium) were 
celebrated and worshipped among the Tarentines See Cicero, Verr. iv, 60, 
18; Servius ad Virg. Georg. ii, 197; Zumpt. ap Orelli, Onomasticon 
Tullian. ii, p. 570. 

* Compare Strabo, vi, p. 264 and p. 280. 


“σι ποσὰ τι - -- --- 


HARBOR AND FISHERY OF TARENTUM. $29 


would hardly have relinquished such a site as that of Tarentum, 
— which, while favorable and productive, even in regard to the 
adjoining land, was with respect to sea-advantages without a par- 
allel in Grecian Italy.1 It was the only spot in the gulf which 
possessed a perfectly safe and convenient harbor, — a spacious 
‘niet of the sea is there formed, sheltered by an isthmus and 
an outlying peninsula, so as to leave only a narrow entrance. 
This inlet, still known as the Mare Piccolo, though its shores 
and the adjoining tongue of land appear to have undergone much 
change, affords at the present day a constant, inexhaustible, and 
varied supply of fish, especially of shell-fish ; which furnish both 
nourishment and employment to a large proportion among the 
inhabitants of the contracted modern Taranto, just as they once 
served the same purpose to the numerous, lively, and jovial pop- 
ulation of the mighty Tarentum. The concentrated population 
of fishermen formed a predominant element in the character of 


the Tarentine democracy.2. Tarentum was just on the bord»rs 


! Strabo, vi, p. 278; Polyb. x, 1. 
Sat. vi, 297. “Atque coronatum et petulans madidumque 
compare Plato, Legg. 1, p- 637; and Horat. Satir. ii, 4, 34. 


2 Juvenal, 
Tarentum:” 


Aristot. Polit. iv, 4, 1. of ἁλιεῖς ἐν Τάραντι καὶ Βυζαντίῳ. “ Tarentina ostrea,” 


Varro, Fragm. p. 301, ed. Bipont. 

To illustrate this remark of Aristotle on the fishermen of Tarentum, as 
the predominant class in the democracy, I transcribe a passage from Mr. 
Keppel Craven’s Tour in the Southern Provinces of Naples, ch. x, p. 182. 
“ Swinburne gives a list of ninety-three different sorts of shell-fish which are 
found in the gulf of Taranto; but more especially in the Mare Piccolo. 
Among these, in ancient times, the murex and purpura ranked foremost in 
value; in our degenerate days, the mussel and oyster seem to have usurped 
ce as acknowledged but less dignified ; but there are numerous 


a preéminen 
other tribes held in proportionate estimation for their exquisite flavor, and as 


greedily sought for during their respective seasons. The appetite for shell- 
fish of all sorts, which seems peculiar to the natives of these regions, is such 
as to appear exaggerated to a foreigner, accustomed to consider only a few 
of them as eatable. This taste exists at Taranto, if possible, in a stronger 
decree than in ary other part of the kingdom, and accounts for the com- 
paratively large revenue which government draws from this particular 
branch of commerce. The Mare Piccolo is divided into several portions, 
which are let to different societies, who thereby become the only privileged 
fishermen ; the lower classes are almost all employed by these corporations, 
as every revolving season of the year affords occupation for them, so that 
Nature herself seems to have afforded the exclusive trade most suited to the 


— aan 


a 


890 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


of the country originally known as Italy, within which Herodotua 
includes it, while Antiochus considers it in Iapygia, and reevard 
Metar ᾿ υ ‘ rio * A faray 
etapontium as the last Greek town in Italy. 
Its il ) i e re . " Mel " “ὦ ae . . 
in mediate neighbors were the Iapygians, who, under vari- 
ous subdivisions of name and dialect, seem to have occupied the 
greater part of south-eastern Italy, including the peninsula de- 
nominate ter the time Tet κ5 i : . aa 
ninated after them,— yet sometimes also called the Salentine, 
— between the Adriatic and the Tarentine gulf,—and who are 


even stated at one fime to have occupied some territory on the 


south east of that gulf, near the site of Krotén. The Iapygian 
A ai 


name appears to have comprehended Messapians, Salentines, and 
Kalabrians ; according to s . dean Blonkait ἡ} ὑμὴν 

i ; according to some, even Peuketians and Daunians 
as far along the Adriatic as Mount Garganus, or Drion; Sk “ie 
notices in his time (about 360 Β. c.) five different toncues jn ὍΝ 
country which he calls Ϊαρυσία. The Messapians and Salen- 


inhabitants of Taranto soth seas abound with varieties of testacea, but 
the inner gulf (the Mare Piccolo) is esteemed most favorable to their senna 
and flavor; the sandy bed is literally blackened by the mussels sik chee 
it; the boats that glide over its surface are laden with them ; they πων 
the rocks that border the strand, and appear equally abundant on the shore 
piled up in heaps.” Mr. Craven goes on to illustrate still farther the 
wonderful abundance of this fishery; but that which has been waa id 
transcribed, while it illustrates the above-noticed remark of Aristotle will 4 
the same time help to explain the prosperity and physical abandance of the 
ancient Tarentum. hihi ai 
For an elaborate account of the state of cultivation, especially of the 
olive, near the degenerate modern Taranto, see the Travels of M. De Salis 
Marschlins in the Kingdom of Naples (translated by Aufrere Lamiion +798). 
sect. 5, pp. 82-107, 163-178. lami sit i 
' Skylax does not mention at all the name of Italy; he gives to the whole 
coast, from Rhegium to Poseidonia on the Mediterranean, and from a 
same point to the limit between Thurii and Herakleia on the σα] of Ta ren- 
tum, the name of Lucania (c. 12-13). From this point he extends βουνὰ 
to the Mount Drion, or Garganus, so that he includes not only Meta ‘a ae 
bat also Herakleia in Iapygia. en ne 
Antiochus draws the line between Italy and Iapygia at the extremity of 
the Metapontine territory; comprehending Metapontium tn Italy “ell 
Tarentum in Iapygia /Antiochus, Frag. 6, ed. Didot; ap Strabo, δ" 
254). Gibbard 
Herodotus, however, speaks not only of Metaponti 
. ΡΝ Ayo νη ΨΥ ἰῇ tapontium, but also of Taren 
I notice this discrepancy of geographical speech, between the two con 


IAPYGIANS AND TARENTINS. 891 


tines are spoken of as emigrants from Kréte, akin to the Minoian 
or primitive Kretans; and we find a national genealogy which 
recognizes Iapyx son of Dedaius, an emigrant from Sicily. But 
the story told to Herodotus was, that the Kretan soldiers who 
had accompanied Minos in his expedition to recover Daedalus 
from Kamikus in Sicily, were on their return home cast away on 
the shores of Iapygia, and became the founders of Hyria and other 
Messapian towns in the interior of the country.) Brundusium 
also, or Brentesion, as the Greeks called it,2 inconsiderable in the 
days of Herodotus, but famous in the Roman times afterwards, 
as the most frequented seaport for voyaging to Epirus, was a 
Alessapian town. The native language spoken by the lapygian 
Messapians was a variety of the Oscan: the Latin poet Ennius, 
a native of Rudix in the Iapygian peninsula, spoke Greek, Latin, 
and Oscan, and even deduced his pedigree from the ancient 
national prince or hero Messapus.* 

We are told that during the lifetime of Phalanthus, the Taren- 
tine settlers gained victories over the Messapians and Peuketians, 
which they commemorated afterwards by votive offerings at Del- 
phi,—and that they even made acquisitions at the expense of 
the inhabitants of Brundusium,! —a statement difficult to believe, 
:f we look to the distance of the latter place, and to the circum- 
stance that Herodotus, even in his time, names it only as a harbor. 
Phalanthus too, driven into exile, is said to have found a hospit- 
able reception at Brundusium, and to have died there. Of the 
history of Tarentum, however, during the first two hundred and 


temporaries Herodotus and Antiochus, the more especially, because Niebuhr 
has fallen into a mistake by exclusively following Antiochus, and by saying 
n of the days of Plato, would have spoken of Tarentum as 
This is perfectly true 


that no writer, eve 
being in Italy, or of the Tarentines as Italiots. 
respecting Antiochus, but is certainly not true with respect to Herodotus ; 
nor can it be shown to be true with respect to Thucydidés, — for the passage 
of the latter, which Niebuhr produces, does not sustain his inference. 
‘Nieouhr, Rémische Geschichte, vol. i, pp. 16-18, 2d edit.) 

1} Herodot. vii, 170; Pliny, H.N. iii, 16; Athene. xii, p. 523; Services ad 
Virgil. Aneid. viii, 9. 

* Herodot. iv, 99. 

® Servius ad Virgil. Aeneid. vii, 691. Polybius distinguishes Iapymans 
from Messapians (ii, 24). 

4 Pausanias. x, 10,3; x, 13,5; Strabo, vi, p 282; Justin, iii, 4. 


392 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


thirty years of its existence, we possess no detail: ; we have 
reason to believe that it partook in the general prosperity cf the 
Italian Greeks during those two centuries, though it remained in- 
ferior both to Sybaris and to Krotén. About the year 510 B. 6. 
these two latter republics went to war, and Sybaris was nearly 
destroyed ; while in the subsequent half-century, the Krotoniates 
suffered the terrible defeat of Sagra from the Lokrians, and the 
T'arentines experienced an equally ruinous defeat from the Iapy- 
gian Messapians. From these reverses, however, the Tarentines 
appear to have recovered more completely than the Krotoniates ; 
for the former stand first among the Italiots, or Italian Greeks, 
from the year 400 Β. c. down to the supremacy of the Romans, 
and made better head against the growth of the Lucanians and 
Bruttians of the interior. 

Such were the chief cities of the Italian Greeks from Taren- 
tum on the upper sea to Poseidonia on the lower; und if we take 
them during the period preceding the ruin of Sybaris (in 010 
B. C.), they will appear to have enjoyed a degree of prosperity 
even surpassing that of the Sicilian Greeks. The dominion of 
Sybaris, Kroton, and Lokri extended across the peninsula from 
sea to sea, and the mountainous regions of the interior of Cala- 
bria were held in amicable connection with the cities and cultiva- 
tors in the plain and valley near the sea, — to the reciprocal ad- 
vantage of both. ‘The petty native tribes of QC£notrians, Sikels, 
or Italians, properly so called, were partially Hellenized, and 
brought into the condition of village cultivators and shepherds, 
dependent upon Sybaris and its fellow cities ; a portion uf them 
dwelling its the town, probably, as domestic slaves of the rich 
men, but most of them remaining in the country as serfs, penes- 
te, or coloni, intermingled with Greek setilers, and paying over 
parts of their produce to Greek proprietors. 

But this dependence, though accomplished in the first instance 
by force, was yet not upheld exclusively by force, — it was to a 


great degree the result of an organized march of life, and of more 


productive cultivation brought within their reach,— of new wants, 
both created and supplied, — of temples, festivals, ships, walls, 
chariots, etc., which imposed upon the imagination of the rude 
landsraan and shepherd. Against mere force the natives could 


ASCENDENCY OF ITALIAN GREEKS. $93 


have found shelter in the unconquerable forests and ravines of 
the Calabrian Apennines, and in that vast mountain region of the 
Sila, lying immediately behind the plains of Sybaris, where even 
the French army, with its excellent organization, in 1807, found 
so much difficulty in reaching the bandit villagers.! It was not by 
arms alone, but by arms and arts combined,—a mingled influ. 
ence, such as enabled imperial Rome to subdue the fierceness of 
the rude Germans and Britons, — that the Sybarites and Kroton. 
iates ac yuired and maintained their ascendency over the natives 
of the interior. ‘The shepherd of the banks of the river Sybaris 
or Krathis not only found a new exchangeable value for his cattle 
and other produce, becoming familiar with better diet and cloth- 
ing, and improved cultivation of the olive and the vine, — but he 
vas also enabled to display his prowess, if strong and brave, in 
the public games at the festival of the Lakinian Héré, or even at 
the Olympic games in Peloponnesus.? It is thus that we have to 
explain the extensive dominion, the great population and the 
wealth and luxury of the Sybarites and Krotoniates,— a popu- 
lation of which the incidental reports as given in figures are not 
trustworthy, but which we may well believe to have been very 
numerous. The native Cénotrians, while unable to combine in 
resisting Greek force, were at the same time less widely distin- 
cnuished from the Greeks, in race and language, than the Oscans 
of middle Italy, and therefore more accessible to Greek pacific 
influences; while the Osean race seem to have been both fiercer 
in repelling the assaults of the Greeks, and more intractable as 
to their seductions. Nor were the Iapygians modified by the 
neighborhood of Tarentum, in the same degree as the tribes ad- 
joining to Sybaris and Krot6én were by their contact with those 
cities. The dialect of Tarentum,? as well as of Herakleia, 


' See a description of the French military operations in these almost inac- 
cessible regions, contained in a valuable publication by a French general 
officer, on service in that country for three years, “ Calabria during a Military 
Residence of three years,” London, 1832, Letter xx, p. 201. 

The whole picture of Calabria contained in this volume is both interesting 
and instructive: military operations had never before been carried on, proba- 
bly, in the mountains of the Sila. 

? See Theokritus, Idyll. iv, 6-35, which illustrates the point here stated. 

3 Suidas, v, Ῥίνϑων; Stephan. Byz. ν, Τάρας : compare Bernhardy, Grun 

17* 


894 HISTORY OF GREECE 


though a marked Doric, admitted many local pecaliarities, and 
the farces of the Tarentine poet Rhinthon, like the Syracusan 
Sophron, seem to have blended the Hellenic with the Italie in 
language as well as in character. 

About the year 560 B. c., the time of the accession of Peisis. 
tratus at Athens, the close of what may properly be called the 
first period of Grecian history, Sybaris and Kroton were at the 
maximum of their power, which each maintained for half a century 
afterwards, until the fatal dissension between them. We are 
told that the Sybarites, in that final contest, marched against Kro- 
ton with an army of three hundred thousand men: fabulous as 
this number doubtless is, we cannot doubt that, for an irruption 
of this kind into an adjoining territory, their large body of semi- 
Hellenized native subjects might be mustered in prodigious force. 
The few statements which have reached us respecting them 
touch, unfortunately, upon little more than their luxury, fantastic 
self-indulgence, and extravagant indolence, for which qualities 
they have become proverbial in modern times as well as in an- 
cient. Anecdotes illustrating these qualities were current, and 
served more than one purpose, in antiquity. The philosopher 
recounted them, in order to discredit and denounce the character 
which they exemplified, — while among gay companies, “ Syb- 
aritic tales,” or tales respecting sayings and doing of ancient Syb- 
arites, formed a separate and special class of excellent stories, to be 
pid simply for amusement,! — with which view witty romancers 


dviss der Roémischen Litteratur, Abschnitt ii, pt. 2, pp. 185-186, about the 
analogy of these φλύακες of Rhinthon with the native Italic Mimes. 

The dialect of the other cities of Italic Greece is very little known: the 
ancient Inser:ption of Petilia is Doric: see Ahrens, De Dialecto Doric, 
sect. 49, p. 418. 

' Aristophan. Vesp. 1260. Αἰσωπικὸν γελοῖον, ἢ Συβαριτικόν. What is 
meant by Συβαριτικὸν γελοῖον is badly explained by the Scholiast, but is 
perfectly well illustrated by Aristophanés himself, in subsequent verses of the 
same play (1427--1436). where Philokleon tells two good stories respecting 
“a Sybaritan man,” and a “woman in Sybaris:” ’Avjp Συβαρίτης ἐξέπεσει 
ἐξ ἅρματος, etc. -- ἐν Συβάρει γυνῆ wore Κατέαξ᾽ ἐχῖνον, etc. 

These Συβάρεᾳ ἐπιφϑέγματα are as old as Epicharmus, whose mind was 
much imbued with the Pythagorean philosophy. See Etymolog. Magn. 
Lvtapisecv. lian amused himself also with the ἱστόριαι Συβαριτικαί 
(V. H. xiv, 20): compare Hesychius, Συβαριτικοὶ λόγοι, and Suidas, Συβα 
διτι κῶς. 


CHARACTER OF THE SYBARITES. 395 


multiplied them indefinitely. It is probable that the Pythagorean 
philosophers (who belonged originally to Krotén, but maintained 
themselves permanently as a philosophical sect in Italy and Si- 
cily, with a strong tinge of ostentatious asceticism and mysticism), 
in their exhortations to temperance and in their denunciations of 
luxurious habits, might select by preference examples from Syb- 
aris, the ancient enemy of the Krotonians, to point their moral, — 
and that the exaggerated reputation of the city thus first became 
the subject of common talk throughout the Grecian world; for 
little could be actually known of Sybaris in detail, since its hu 
miliation dates from the first commencement of Grecian conteme 
poraneous history. Hekatzeus of Milétus may perhaps have 
visited it in its full splendor, but even Herodotus knew it only 
by past report, and the principal anecdotes respecting it are cited 
trom authors considerably later than him, who follow the tone 
f thought so common in antiquity, in ascribing the ruin of the 


μ᾽ 
Sybarites to their overweening corruption and luxury.! 

Making allowance, however, for exaggeration on all these ac- 
counts, there can be no reason to doubt that Sybaris, in 560 B. c., 
was one of the most wealthy, populous, and powerful cities of the 
Hellenic name; and that it also presented both comfortable 
abundance among the mass of the citizens, arising from the easy 


1 Thus Herodotus (vi, 127) informs us that, at the time when Kleisthenés 
of Sikyon invited from all Greece suitors of proper dignity for the hand of 
his daughter, Smindyridés of Sybaris came among the number, “the most 
delicate and luxurious man ever known,” (ἐπὶ πλεῖστον δὴ χλιδῆς εἰς ἀνὴρ 

xeTo — Herodot. vi, 127), and Sybaris was at that time (B. c. 580-560) in 
its greatest prosperity. In Chameleon, Timeeus, and other writers subse- 
quent to Aristotle, greater details were given. Smindyridés was said to have 
taken with him to the marriage one thousand domestic servants, fishermen, 
hird-catchers, and cooks (Athenee. vi, 271; xii, 541). The details of Syb- 
aritic luxury, given in Athenzus, are chiefly borrowed from writers of this 
post-Aristotelian age,— Herakleidés of Pontus, Phylarchus, Klearchus, 
Timzeus (Athen. xii, 519-522). The best-authenticated of all the exam- 
ples of Sybaritic wealth, is the splendid figured garment, fifteen cubits in 
length, which Alkimenés the Sybarite dedicated as a votive offering in the 
temple of the Lakinian Héré. Dionysius of Syracuse plundered that tem 
ple, got possession of the garment, and is said to have sold it to the Cartha- 
ginians for the price of one hundred and twenty talents: Polemon, the 


Periegetes al | 
Athen. xii, 541). Whether the price be correctly stated, we are not ina 
ritnatinn ta determine 


898 HISTORY OF GREECE 


lots of fertile land, and excessive indulgences 
marked contrast with 


attainment of fresh 
1ong the rich,—to a degree forming 
: of which Herodotus characterized poverty as the 
The extraordinary productiveness of the neighbor- 
—allegzed by Varro, in his time, when the culture 


an 
Hellas proper, 
foster-sister.! 
ing territory, 
must have been much worse than it had been under the old Syb- 
dinary crop of a hundred-fold,2 and extolled 
even in its present yet more neglected cul- 
The river Krathis, — 


aris, to yield an or 
by modern travellers, 
ture, — has been already touched upon. 
able river of that region, — at a time when 


still the most consider 
-course in 


there was an industrious population to keep its water 
order, would enable the extensive fields of Sybaris to supply 
nourishment for a population larger perhaps than any 


abundant 
But though nature was thus 


other Grecian city could parallel. 


bountiful, industry, good management, and well-ordered govern- 


ment were required to turn her bounty to account: where these 


are wanting, later experience of the same territory shows that its 


1 Herodot. vii, 102. τῇ Ἑλλάδι wevin μὲν αἰεί κοτε συντροφὸς ἐστι. 

: Varro. De Re Rustica, i, 44. “In Sybaritano dicunt etiam cum cente- 
simo redire solitum.” The land of the Italian Greeks stands first for wheaten 
bread and beef; that of Syracuse for pork and cheese (Hermippus ap. 
Athene. i, p. 27): about the excellent wheat of Italy, compare Sophokles, 


Triptolem. Fragm. 529, ed. Dindorf. 

Theophrastus dwells upon the excellence of the 
Sicilian Messéné, which produced, according to him, thirty- 
This affords some measure 


land near Myle, in the 


territory of the 
fold. (Hist. Plant. ix, 2, 8, p. 299, ed. Schneid.) 
both for the real excellence of the ancient Sybaritan territory, 


of comparison, 
its estimated produce being 


and for the estimation in which it was held ; 
more than three times that of Mylex. 

See in Mr. Keppel Craven’s Tour in the Southern Provinces of Naples 
(chapters xi, xii, pp. 212-218), the description of the rich and productive 
plain of the Krathis (in the midst of which stood the ancient Sybaris), 
extending about sixteen miles from Cassano to Corigliano, and about twelve 
miles from the former town to the sea. Compare, also, the picture of the 
same country, in the work by a French officer, referred to in a previous note, 
“ Calabria during a Military Residence of three years,” London, 1832, Letter 
¥xXii, pp. 219-226. 

Hekatzus (c. 39, ed. Klausen) calls Cosa, — Κύσσα, πόλις Οἰνωτρῶν ἐν 
μεσογαίᾳ. Cosa is considered to be identical, seemingly on good grounds, 
with the modern Cassano (Cesar, Bell. Civ. iii, 22): assuming this to be 
eorrect, there must have been an (Enotrian dependent town within eight 
miles of the ancient city of Sybaris. 


re en 


FERTILE LANDS OF SYBARIS. 397 


inexhaustible capacities may exist in vain. That luxury, which 
Grecian moralists denounced in the leading Sybarites, between 
960 and 510 B. c., was the result of acquisitions vigorously and 
industriously pushed, and kept together by an orderly central 
force, duriig a century and a half that the colony had existed. 
Though the Troezenian settlers who formed a portion of the orig- 
inal emigrants had been expelled when the Achzans became 
more numerous, yet we are told that, on the whole, Sybaris was 
liberal in the reception of new emigrants to the citizenship,! and 
that this was one of the causes of its remarkable advance. Of 
these additional comers, we may presume that many went to form 
its colonies on the Mediterranean sea, and some to settle both 
among its four dependent inland nations, and its twenty-five sub- 
ject towns. Five thousand horsemen, we are told, clothed in 
showy attire, formed the processional march in certain Sybaritic 
festivals, —a number which is best appreciated by comparison 
with the fact, that the knights or horsemen of Athens, in her best 
days, did not exceed twelve hundred. The Sybaritic horses, if 
we are to believe a story purporting to come from Aristotle, 
were taught to move at the sound of the flute; and the garments 
of these wealthy citizens were composed of the finest wool from 
Milétus in Ionia,2 — the Tarentine wool not having then acquired 
the distinguished renown which it possessed five centuries after- 
wards towards the close of the Roman republic. Next to the 
great abundance of home produce, — corn, wine, oil, flax, cattle, 
fish, timber, etc., — the fact next in importance which we hear 
respecting Sybaris is, the great traffic carried on with Milétus: 
these two cities were more intimately and affectionately connect- 
ed together than any two Hellenic cities within the knowledge of 
Herodotus.3 The tie between Tarentum and Knidus wae oboe 
of a very intimate character,‘ so that the great intercourse, per- 
sonal as well as commercial, between the Asiatic and the L[:alie 


: Diodor xii, 9, ? Athenseus, xii, p. 519. 
Herodot. vi, 21. Respecting tae great abundance of ship-timber in the 
territory of the Italicts (Italian Greeks), see Thucyd. vi, 90; vii, 25. 
The pitch from the pine forests in the Sila was also abundant and cele 
brated (Strabo, vi, p. 261). 
4 Herodot. iii, 138. 


4908 ΗΙΒΤΟΕΥ͂ OF GREECE. 


Greeks, appears as a marked fact in the history of the sixth 
century before the Christian era. 

In this respect, as well as in several others, the Hellenic world 
wears a very different aspect in 560 B. c. from that which it as- 
sumed a century afterwards, and in which it is best known to 
modern readers. At the former period, the Ionic and Italiz 
Greeks are the great ornaments of the Hellenic name, and car- 
ried on a more lucrative trade with each other, than either of 
them maintained with Greece proper; which both of them re 
eoznized as their mother-country, though without admitting any- 
thing in the nature of established headship. The military power 
of Sparta is indeed at this time great and preponderant in Pelo- 
ponnesus, but she has no navy, and she is only just essaying 
her strength, not without reluctance, in ultramarine interference. 
After the lapse of a century, these circumstances change ma- 
terially. ‘The independence of the Asiatic Greeks is destroyed, 
and the power of the Italic Greeks is greatly broken; while 
Sparta and Athens not only become the prominent and leading 
Hellenic states, but constitute themselves centres of action for the 
lesser cities, to a degree previously unknown. 

It was during the height of their prosperity, seemingly, in the 
sixth century B. C., that the Italian Greeks either acquired for, or 
bestowed upon, their territory the appellation of Magna Grecia, 
which at that time it well deserved ; for not only were Sybaris 
and Krotén then the greatest Grecian cities situated near togeth- 
er, but the whole peninsula of Calabria may be considered as at- 
tached to the Grecian cities on the coast. The native C£notrians 
and Sikels occupying the interior had become Hellenized, or 
semi-Hellenized, with a mixture of Greeks among them, — com- 
mon subjects of these great cities; so that the whole extent of 
the Calabrian peninsula, within the line which joins Sybaris with 
Poseidonia, might then be fairly considered as Hellenic territory. 
Sybaris maintained much traffic with the Tuscan towns in the 
Mediterranean, and the communication between Greece and 
Rome, across the Calabrian isthmus,! may perhaps have been 
easier during the time of the Roman kings — whose expulsion 
was nearly contemporaneous with the ruin of Sybaris— than it 


—_—_—— 


= ce, “-..........-............ὄ . dco 


δ Athenzeus, xii, p. 519. 


KROTON. 399 


became during the first two centuries of the Roman republic, 
But all these relations underwent a complete change after the 
breaking up of the power of Sybaris in 510 Β. c., and the 
gradual march of the Oscan population from middle Italy towards 
the south. Cum was overwhelmed by the Samnites, Poseido- 
nia by the Lucanians; who became possessed not only of these 
maritime cities, but also of the whole inland territory — now 
called the Basilicata, with part of the hither Calabria — across 
from Poseidonia to the neighborhood of the gulf of Tarentum: 
while the Bruttians, —a mixture of outlying Lucanians with the 
Greco-CEnotrian population once subject to Sybaris, speaking 
both Greek and Osean,'! — became masters of the inland moun- 
tains in the farther Calabria, from Consentia nearly to the Sici- 
lian strait. It was thus that the ruin of Sybaris, combined with 
the spread of the Lucanians and Bruttians, deprived the Italian 
Greeks of that inland territory which they had enjoyed in the 
sixth century B. C., and restricted them to the neighborhood of 
the coast. ‘To understand the extraordinary power and prosper- 
ity of Sybaris and Krotén, in the sixth century B. C., when the 
whole of this inland territory was subject to them, and before the 
rise of the Lucanians, and Bruttians, and when the name Mag- 
na Grecia was first given, it is necessary to glance by contrast at 
these latter periods ; more especially since the name still contin- 
aed to be applied by the Romans to Italian Greece after the 
contraction of territory had rendered it less appropriate. 

Of Krotén at this early period of its power and prosperity we 
know even less than of Sybaris. It stood distinguished both for 
the number of its citizens who received prizes at the Olympic 
games, and for the excellence of its surgeons or physicians. And 
what may seem more surprising, if we consider the extreme 
present insalubrity of the site upon which it stocd, it was in an- 
cient times proverbially healthy,2 which was not so much the case 
with the more fertile Sybaris. Respecting all these cities of 
Italian Greeks, the same remark is applicable as was before made 
in reference to the Sicilian Greeks,—that the intermixture of 
the native population sensibly affected both their character and 
habits. We have no information respecting their government 


' Festus, v, bilingues Brutates. 3 Strabc, vi, p. 262. 


400 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


during this early period of prosperity, except that we find men. 
tion at Krotén, as at the Epizephyrian Lokri, of a senate of one 
thousand members, yet not excluding occasionally the ekklesia, or 
general assembly.!_ Probably, the steady increase of their domin- 
ion in the interior, and the facility of providing maintenance for 
new population, tended much to make their political systems, 
whatever they may have been, work in a satisfactory manner. 
‘(he attempt of Pythagoras and his followers to constitute them- 
selves a ruling faction as well as a philosophical sect, will be re- 
counted in a subsequent chapter. The proceedings connected 
with that attempt will show that there was considerable analogy 
and sympathy between the various cities of Italian Greece, so as 
to render them liable to be acted on by the same causes. But 
though the festivals of the Lakinian Héré, administered by the 
Krotoniates, formed from early times a common point of religious 
assemblage to all,? — yet the attempts to institute periodical meet- 
ings of deputies, for the express purpose of maintaining political 
harmony, did not begin until after the destruction of Sybaris, nor 
were they ever more than partially successful. 

One other city, the most distant colony founded by Greeks in 
the western regions, yet remains to be mentioned ; and we can do 
no more than mention it, since we have no facts to make up its 
history. Massalia, the modern Marseilles, was founded by the 
Jonic Phokzans in the 45th Olympiad, about 597 B. c.,3 at the 
time when Sybaris and Krotén were near the maximum of their 
power, — when the peninsula of Calabria was all Hellenic, and 
when Cume also had not yet been visited by those calamities 
which brought about its decline. So much Hellenism in the 
eouth of Italy doubtless facilitated the western progress of the 


' Jamblichus, Vit. Pythagor. c. 9, p. 33; c. 35, p. 210. 

? Athenzeus, xii, 541. 

3 This date depends upon Timzus (as quoted by Skymnus Chius, 210) 
and Solinus ; there seems no reason for distrusting it, though Thucydidés 
(i, 13) and Isokratés (Archidamus, p.316) seem to conceive Massalia 84 
founded by the Phokzans about 60 years later, when Ionia was cenquered hy 
Harpagus (see Bruckner, Historia Reip. Massiliensium, sect. 2, p. 9, Raoul 
Rochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecques, vol. iii, pp. 405-413, who, how: 
ever, puts the arrival of the Phok#ans, in these regions and at Tartéssus 


much too carly). 


POLITICAL CHARACTER OF THE MASSALIOTsS. 40} 


adventurous Phokwan mariner. It would appear that Massalia 
was founded by amicable fusion of Phokzan colonists with the 
indigenous Gauls, if we may judge by the romantic legend of the 
Protiade, a Massaliotic family or gens existing in the time of 
Aristotle. Euxenus, a Phokwan merchant, had contracted 
friendly relations with Nanus, a native chief in the south of 
(;aul, and was invited to the festival in which the latter was about 
to celebrate the marriage of his daughter Petta. According to 
the custom of the country, the maiden was to choose for herself 
a husband among the guests, by presenting him with a cup: 
through accident, or by preference, Petta presented it to Euxe- 
nus, and became his wife. Proétis of Massalia, the offspring of 
this marriage, was the primitive ancestor and eponym of the 
Protiade. According to another story respecting the origin of 
the same gens, Protis was himself the Phokzean leader who mar 
ried Gyptis, daughter of Nannus king of the Segobrigian Gauls. 

Of the history of Massalia we know nothing, nor does it ap- 
pear to have been connected with the general movement of the 
Grecian world. We learn generally that the Massaliots admin- 
istered their affairs with discretion as well as with unanimity, and 
exhibited in their private habits an exemplary modesty, — that 
although preserving alliance with the people of the interior, they 
were scrupulously vigilant in guarding their city against surprise, 
permitting no armed strangers to enter, —that they introduced 
the culture of vines and olives, and gradually extended the Greek 
alphabet, language, and civilization among the neighboring 
Gauls, — that they possessed and fortified many positions along 
the coast of the gulf of Lyons, and founded five colonies along 
the eastern coast of Spain, — that their government was oligar- 
chical, consisting of a perpetual senate of six hundred pers. ns, 
yet admitting occasionally new members from without, and a 
small council of fifteen members, — that the Delphinian Apollo 
and the Ephesian Artemis were their chief deities, planted as 
guardians of their outlying posts, and transmitted to their colo- 


5 


nies.? Although it is common to represent a deliberate march 


’ Aristotle, Μασσαλιώτων πολιτεῖα, ap. Atheneum, xiii, p. 576; Justin, 

xii, 3. Plutarch (Solon, c. 2) seems to follow the same sto~y as Justin. . 
* Strabo, iv, pp. 179-182: Justin, xliii, 4-5; Cicerv, Pro Flacco. 26. Ia 
VOL. Ill. Zinn. 


402 HISTORY Of GREECE. 


and steady suprematy of the governing few, with contented 
obedience on the part of the many, as the characteristic of Dorian 
states, and mutability not less than disturbance as the pees 
tendency in Ionia, — yet there is no Grecian community to whom 
the former attributes are more pointedly ascribed than the Ionic 
Messalia. The commerce of the Massaliots appears to have 
been extensive, and their armed maritime force sufficiently pows 
erful to defend it against the aggressions of Carthage, — their 
principal enemy in the western Mediterranean. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 
GRECIAN COLONIES IN AND NEAR EPIRUS. 


On the eastern side of the Ionian sea were situated the Gre 
eian colonies of Korkyra, Leukas, Anaktorium, Ambrakia, Apol 

i idamnus. 
er el by far the most distinguished, for situation, κῃ 
wealth, and for power, was Korkyra, — now known as Corfu, the 
same name belonging, as in antiquity, both to the town and the 
island, which is separated from the coast of Epirus by . sii 
varying from two to seven miles in breadth. Lago ee — 
ed by the Corinthians, at the same time, we are told, nah yee -_ 
Chersikratés, a Bacchiad, is said to have accompanied See ee 
his voyage from Corinth to Syracuse, and to have been ae " " 
a company of emigrants on the island of Korkyra, W ne 
founded a settlement.! What inhabitants he found there, or how 


' : > +e Po 
rather appears from Aristotle ( ae - 
originally a body completely close, which gave rise to discontent on τὰν ἐν" 
οἵ wealthy men not included in it: a mitigation took place by admitting 
i casi +, men selected from the latter. 
into it, occasionally, men selected from 
Some authors seem to have accused the Massaliots of luxurious and 


effeminate habits (see Athenzeus, xii, p. 523). 
1 Strabo, vi, p. 269: compare Timeeus, Fragm. 49, 
Didot. 


lit. v, 5, 2; vi. 4-5) that the senate was 


ed. Goller; Fr. 53, od 


KORKYRA. 408 


they were dealt with, we cannot cl sarly make out. The islard 
was generally conceived in antiquity as the residence of the Ho- 
meric Phwakians, and it is to this fact that Thucydidés ascribes 
in part the eminence of the Korkyrean marine.! According to 
another story, some Eretrians from Eubcea had settled there, and 
were compelled to retire. A third statement represents the Li- 
burnians? as the prior inhabitants,— and _ this perhaps is the 
most probable, since the Liburnians were an enterprising, mari- 
lime, piratical race, who long continued to occupy the more north- 
erly islands in the Adriatic along the Illyrian and Dalmatian 
coast. That maritime activity, and number of ships, both war- 
like and commercial, which we find at an early date among the 
Korkyrwans, and in which they stand distinguished from the 
Italian and Sicilian Greeks, may be plausibly attributed to their 
partial fusion with preéxisting Liburnians ; for the ante-Helleniec 
natives of Magna Grecia and Sicily, as has been already no- 
ticed, were as unpractised at sea as the Liburnians were 
expert. 

At the time when the Corinthians were about to colonize Sic- 
ily, it was natural that they should also wish to plant a settlement 
at Korkyra, which was a post of great importance for facilitating 
the voyage from Peloponnesus to Italy, and was farther conveni- 
ent for traffic with Epirus, at that period altogether non-Hellenic. 
Their choice of a site was fully justified by the prosperity and 
power of the colony, which, however, though sometimes in com- 
bination with the mother-city, was more frequently alienated from 
her and hostile, and continued so from an early period throughout 
most part of the three centuries from 700-400 3. c.3 Perhaps 
also Molykreia and Chalkis, on the south-western coast of ZEto- 
lia, not far from the mouth of the Corinthian gulf, may have 
been founded by Corinth at a date hardly less early than Kor- 
kyra. 

It was at Corinth that the earliest improvements in Greek 
ship-building, and the first construction of the trireme or war- 


' Thucyd. i, 25. 

? Strabo, ἰ. c.; Plutarch, Quest. Greec. c. 11 ; a different fable in Conon 
Narrat. 3, ap. Photiur. Cod. 86. 

8 Herodot. iii, 49. 4 Thucyd. i, 108; iii, 102. 


404 HISTORY OF GREECE 


ship with a triple bank of oars, was introduced, and it was b- 
ably from Corinth that this ‘mprovement passed to Kork big 
it did to Samos. In early times, the Korkyrzan navy tie in ; 
condition to cope with the Corinthian, and the most ancient naval 
battle known to Thucydidés! was one between these two poset 
in 664 B. C. As far as we can make out, it aupesne that ὡ. 
ra maintained her independence, not only during the governm 
of the Bacchiads at Corinth, but also ἀνε the long ae 
of the despot Kypselus, and a part of the reign of his son Peri 
ander. But towards the close of this latter reign, we find K 
kyra subject to Corinth; and the barbarous i safiboted 
by Periander, in revenge for the death of his son, upon thr ᾿ 
hundred Korkyrean youths, has already been senounted i. 
former chapter. After the death of Periander, the island ht 
to have regained its independence, but we are left without ni 
particulars respecting it, from about 585 B. c. down to the 3 4 
shortly preceding the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, — eae 
century. At this later epech the Korkyrzans neon ei 
force hardly inferior to any state in Greece. The éxnaieion τ 
Kypselids from Corinth, and the reéstablishment of he revs : : 
oligarchy, or something like it, does not seem to have eh it ‘led 
the Korkyrzans to their mother-city ; for it was immediatel fe 
vious to the Peloponnesian war that the Corinthians oe a 
the bitterest complaints against them,? of setting at nowsiet vee 
obligations which a colony was generally understood to i oblig 
ed to render. No place of honor was reserved at the δῆς 
festivals of Korkyra for Corinthian visitors, nor was it he ri : 
tice to offer to the latter the first taste of the victims hoe οὐρὴ 
observances which were doubtless respectfully fulfilled at Leaks 
kia and Leukas. Nevertheless, the Korkyrxans had siden δι} 
conjointly with the Corinthians in favor of Syracuse, when ἴω 
= Atay RR doy nee yeopongg and enslaved by 
; | a (about 492 B. c.),— an incident 
- which shows that they were not destitute of generous sympath 
with sister states, and leads us to imagine that their aie 


1 Thucyd. i, 13. 

4 " “"» » 

: a iti, 49-51: see above, chap. ix, p. 42 of this volume 
vucyd. i, 25-37. 4 Herorct. vii. 155 


13 Vol. 3 


AMBRAKIA, LEUKAS, ANAKTORIUM. 405 


from Corinth was as much the fault of the mother-city as their 
own. 
The grounds of the quarrel were, probably, jealousies of 
‘rade, — especially trade with the Epirotic and Illyrian tribes, 
«herein both were to a great degree rivals. Safe at home, and 
industrious in the culture of their fertile island, the Korkyrzans 
were able to furnish wine and oil to the Epirots on the main-land 
in exchange for the cattle, sheep, hides, and wool of the latter, — 
asily and cheaply than the Corinthian merchant. And for 
of this trade, they had possessed themselves of a 
ip of the main-land immediately on the other side 


it, where they fortified various posts for 


more e 
the purposes 
pera or str 


of the intervening stral 
the protection of their property.' The Corinthians were person- 


ally more popular among the Epirots than the Korkyraans ;2 but 
τε was not until long after the foundation of Korkyra that they 
established their first settlement on the main-land, — Ambrakia, 
on the north side of the Ambrakiotic gulf, and near the mouth of 
the river Arachthus. It was during the reign of Kypselus, and 
under the guidance of his son Gorgus, that this settlement was 
planted, which afterwards became populous and considerable. 
We know nothing respecting its growth, and we hear only of a 
despot named Periander as ruling in it, probably related to the 
despot of the same name it Corinth. Periander of Ambrakia 
was overthrown by a private conspiracy, provoked by his own 
brutality, and warmly seconded by the citizens, who lived con- 
etantly afterwards under a popular government.4 
Notwithstanding the long-continued dissensions between Kor- 
ky'ra and Corinth, it appears that four considerable settlements 
on this same line of coast were formed by the joint enterprise of 
both, — Leukas and Anaktorium, to the south of the mouth of 
the Ambrakiotic gulf, — and Apollonia and Epidamnus, botli in 
the territory of the Illyrians, at some distance to the north of the 
Akrokeraunian promontory. In the settlement of the two latter. 


' Thucyd. iii, 85. These fortifications are probably alluded to also i, 
45-54. ἢ ἐς τῶν ἐκείνων τι χωρίων. 

3 Thucyd. i, 47 

3 Strabo, vii, p. 325, x, p- 452; Skymn. Chi. 455, Raoul Rochette. Hist 
es Colon. Grecq. vol. iii p. 294. 

4 Aristot. Polit. v, 3,5, v, 8, 9. 


406 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the Korkyrzans seem to have been the principals, —in that ot 
the two former, they were only auxiliaries; and it probably did 
not suit their policy to favor the establishment of any new 
colony on the intermediate coast opposite to their own island. be- 
tween the promontory and the gulf above mentioned, Leukas, 
Anaktorium, and Ambrakia are all referred to the ageney of 
Kypselus the Corinthian, and the tranquillity which Aristotle 
ascribes to his reign may be in part ascribed to the new homes 
thus provided for poor or discontented Corinthian citizens, 
Leukas was situated near the modern Santa Maura: the present 
island was originally a peninsula, and continued to be so until 
the time of Thucydidés ; but in the succeeding half-century, the 
Leukadians cut through the isthmus, and erected a bridge across 
the narrow strait connecting them with the main-land. It had 
been once an Akarnanian settlement, named Kpileukadii, the in- 
habitants of which falling into civil dissension, invited one thousand 
Corinthian settlers to join them. The new-comers choosing their 
opportunity for attack, slew or expelled those who had invited 
them, made themselves masters of the place with its lands, and 
converted it from an Akarnanian village into a Grecian town,! 
Anaktorium was situated a short distance within the mouth of 
the Ambrakian gulf, — founded, like Leukas, upon Akarnanian 
soil, and with a mixture of Akarnanian inhabitants, by colonists 


* About Leukas, see Strabo, x, p. 452; Skylax, p. 34; Steph. Byz. νυ» 
Ἐπιλευκάδιοι. 

Strabo seems to ascribe the cutting through of the isthmus to the original 
colonists. But Thucydidés speaks of this isthmus in the plainest manner 
(iii, 81), and of the Corinthian ships of war as being transported across it. 
The Dioryktos, or intervening factitious canal, was always shallow, only 
deep enough for boats, se that ships of war had still to be carried across by 
hand or machinery (Polyb. v, 5): both Plutarch (De βοτὰ Num. Vind. p. 
552) and Pliny treat Leukadia as having again become a peninsula, from the 
accumulation of sand (H. N. iv, 1): compare Livy, xxxiii, 17. : 

Mannert (Geograph. der Gr. und Rom. part viii, b. 1, p. 72) accepts the 
statement of Strabo, and thinks that the Dioryktos had already been dug 
before the time of Thucydilés. But it seems more reasonable to suppose 
that Strabo was misinformed as to the date, and that the cut took place at 
some time between the age of Thucydidés and that of Skylax. 

Boeckh (ad Corp. Inscriptt. Gr. t. i, p. 58) and W. C. Miiller (De Corry 
‘wor. Republica, Gétting 1835, p. 18) agree “ith Mannert. 


APOLLONIA AND EPIDAMUS. 407 


under the auspices of Kypselus or Periander. In both these 
establishments Korkyrzan settlers participated ;! in both, also, 
the usual religious feelings connected with Grecian emigration were 
displayed by the neighborhood of a venerated temple of Apollo 
overlooking the sea,— Apollo Aktius near Anaktorium, and 
Apollo Leukatas near Leukas.® 

Between these three settlements, — Ambrakia, Anaktorium, and 
Leukas, — and the Akarnanian population of the interior, there 
were standing feelings of hostility; perhaps arising out of the 
violence which had marked the first foundation of Leukas. 
The Corinthians, though popular with the Epirots, had been in- 
different or unsuccessful in conciliating the Akarnanians. It 
rather seems, indeed, that the Akarnanians were averse to the 
presence or neighborhood of any powerful seaport; for in spite 
of their hatred towards the Ambrakiots, they were more appre- 
hensive of seeing Ambrakia in the hands of the Athenians than 
in that of its own native citizens.3 

The two colonies, north of the Akrokeraunian promontory, and 
on the coast-land of the Illyrian tribes,— Apollonia and Epi- 
damnus,— were formed chiefly by the Korkyrzans, yet with 
some aid and a portion of the settlers from Corinth, as well as 
from other Doric towns. Especially it is to be noticed, that 
the cekist was a Corinthian and a Herakleid, Phalius the son of 
Eratokleidés, — for, according to the usual practice of Greece, 
whenever a city, itself a colony, founded a sub-colony, the cekist 
of the latter was borrowed from the mother-city of the former.‘ 
Hence the Corinthians acquired a partial right of control and in- 
terference in the affairs of Epidamnus, which we shall find here- 
after leading to important practical consequences. Epidamnus, 
— better known under its subsequent name Dyrrhachium, — was 
situated on an isthmus on or near the territory of the Illyrian 
tribe called Taulantii, and is said to have been settled about 627 


' Skymn. Chius, 458; Thucyd. i, 55; Plutarch, Themistoklés, c. 24. 

3 Thucyd. i, 46; Strabo, x, p. 452. Before 220 B. c., the temple of Apolls 
Aktius, which in the time of Thueydidés belonged to Anaktorinm, had come 
to belong to the Akarnanians; it seems, also, that the town itself had been 
merged in the Akarnanian league, for Polybius docs not mention it separatels 


(Polyb. iv, 63). 
* Thucyd. iii 94 95, 115. 4 Thucyd. i, 24-26. 


408 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


8. Cc. Apollonia, οἵ which the god Apollo himself seems to have 
been recognized as eekist,! was founded under similar ciicum- 
stances, during the reign of Periander of Corinth, on a maritime 
plain both extensive and fertile, near the river Adéus, two days’ 
journey south of Epidamnus. 

Both the one and the other of these two cities seem to have 
flourished, and to have received accession of inhabitants from 
Triphylia in Peloponnesus, when that country was subdued by 
the Eleians. Respecting Epidamnus, especially, we are told that 
it acquired great wealth and population during the century pre- 
ceding the Peloponnesian ‘war.2 <A few allusions which we find 
in Aristotle, too brief to afford much instruction, lead us to sup- 
pose that the governments of both began by being close oligar- 
chies, under the management of the primitive leaders of the 
colony, — that in Kipidamnus, the artisans and tradesmen in the 
town were considered in the light of slaves belonging to the 
public, — but that in process of time, seemingly somewhat be- 
fore the Peloponnesian war, intestine dissensions broke up this 
oligarchy,? substituted a periodical senate, with occasional public 


‘The rhetor Aristeidés pays a similar compliment to Kyzikus, in his 
Paxegyrical Address at that city,— the god Apollo had founded it person 
ally and directly himself, not through any human eekist, as was the case witb 
other colonies (Aristeidés, Adyo¢ περὶ Κυζίκου, Or. xvi, p. 414; vol. i, p, 384, 
Dindorf ). 

* Thucyd. i, 24. ἐγένετο μεγάλη καὶ πολυάνϑρωπος. Strabo, vii, Ρ. 316, 
viii, p. 357; Steph. Byz. v, ’AwoAAwvia; Plutarch, De Serd Numin. Vind. 


Respecting the plain near the site of the ancient Apollonia, Colonel Leake 
observes: “ The cultivation of this noble plain, capable of supplying grain 
to all Illyria and Epirus, with an abundance of other productions, is con- 
fined to a few patches of maize near the villages,” (Travels in Northern 
Greece, vol. i, ch. vii, p. 367.) Compare e. ii, p. 70. 

The country surrounding Durazzo (the ancient Epidamnus) is described 
by another excellent observer as highly attractive, though now unhealthy. 
See the valuable topographical work, “Albanien, Rumelien, und die 
Oesterreichisch-montenegrinische Grinze,” von Dr. Joseph Maller (Prag. 
1844), p. 62. 

8 Thucyd. {, 25; Aristot. Polit. Bm 1320, 1}. 1: 3 Bs ν 1. 8; 
1, 3, 4 

The allusions of the philosopher are so brief, as to convey little or ne 
knowledge: see O. Miiller, Dorians, Ὁ. iii, 9,6; Tittmann, Griech. Staats. 
verfass. p. 491. 


APOLLONIA AND EPIDAMNUS. 409 


wsemblies, in place of the permanent phylarchs, a chiefs of 
tribes, and thus introduced a form more or less democratical, yet 
still retaining the original single-headed archon. The Epidam- 
nian government was liberal in the admission of metics, or resi- 
dent aliens, —a fact which renders it probable that the alleged 
public slavery of artisans in that town was a statis carrying 
with it none of the hardships of actual slavery. . It was through 
an authorized selling agent, or polétés, that all traffic between 
{pidamnus and the neighboring Illyrians was carried on, — indi- 
vidual dealing with them being interdicted.! Apollonia was 10 
gne respect pointedly distinguished from Epidamnus, since she 
excluded metics, or resident strangers, with a degree of rigor 
hardly inferior to Sparta. These few facts are all that we are 
permitted to hear respecting colonies both important in them- 
selves and interesting as they brought the Greeks into connection 
with distant people and regions. 

The six colonies just named, — Korkyra, Ambrakia, Anakto- 
rium, Leukas, Apollonia, and Epidamnus,— form an aggregate 
lying apart from the rest of the Hellenic name, and connected 
with each other, though not always maintained in harmony, by 
analogy of race and position, as well as by their common origi- 
nal from Corinth. That the commerce which the Corinthian 
merchants carried on with them, and through them with the 
tribes in the interior, was lucrative, we can have no doubt ; and 
Leukas and Ambrakia continued for a long time to be not merely 
faithful allies, but servile imitators, of their mother-city. The 
commerce of Korkyra is also represented as very extensive, and 
carried even to the northern extremity of the Ionic gulf. It 
would seem that they were the first Greeks to open a trade and 
to establish various settlements on the Illyrian and Dalmatian 
coasts, as the Phokzans were the first to carry their traffic along 
the Adriatic coast of Italy: the jars and pottery of Korkyra en- 
joyed great reputation throughout all parts of the gulf.2 The 


! Plutarch, Quest. Gree. p. 297, c. 29: Elian, V. H. xiii, 16. . 

2 W. C. Miiller, De Corcyrxor. Repub. ch. 3, pp. 60-63; Aristot. Mirab 
Ausc. c. 104, Hesychius, v, Κερκυραῖοι ἀμφορεῖς ; Herodot. i, 145. 

The story given in the abuve passage of the P-eudo-Aristotle is to be 
taken in connectw.a with the succecding chapter of the same work (105), 
wherein the statement, largely credited in antiquity, is given. that the river 


VOL. Ill. 18 


410 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


general trade of the island, and the encouragement for its ship 
ping, must probably have been greater during the sixth century 
8. C., while the cities of Magna Grecia were at the maximum 
of their prosperity, than in the ensuing century, when they had 
comparatively declined. Nor can we doubt that the visitors and 
presents to the oracle of Dodona in Epirus, which was distant 
two days’ journey on landing from Korkyra, and the importance 
of which was most sensible during the earlier periods of Grecian 
history, contributed to swell the traffic of the Korkyrzans. 

It is worthy of notice that the monetary system established at 
Korkyra was thoroughly Grecian and Corinthian, graduated on 
the usual scale of obols, drachms, minze, and talents, without in- 
eluding any of those native Italian or Sicilian elements which 
were adopted by the cities in Magna Grecia and Sicily. The 
type of the Corinthian coins seems also to have passed to those 
of Leukas and Ambrakia.' 

Of the islands of Zakynthus and Kephallenia, Zante and 
Cephalonia, we hear very little: of Ithaka, so interesting from 
the story of the Ody ssey, we have have no historical information 
at all. The inhabitants of Zakynthus were Achzans from 
Peloponnesus: Kephallenia was distributed among four separate 
city governmerts.2 Neither of these islands play any part in 
Grecian history until the time of the maritime empire of Athens, 
after the Persian war. 


Danube forked at a certain point of its course into two streams, one flowing 
into the Adriatic, the other into the Euxine. 

See the Inscriptions No. 1838 and No. 1845, in the collection of Boeckh 
and Boeckh’s Metrologic, vii, 8, p. 97. Respecting the Corinthian coinage 
our information is confused and imperfect. 


* Thucyd. ii, 30-66. 


AKARNANIANS. — EPIROTS. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 
AKARNANIANS. — EPIROTS. 


Some notice must be taken of those barbarous or uon-Hel 
lenic nations who formed the immediate neighbors of Hellas, west 
of the range of Pindus, and north of that range which connects 
Pindus with Olympus,— as well as of those other tribes, who, 
though lying more remote from Hellas proper, were yet brought 
into relations of traffic or hostility with the Hellenic colonies. 

Between the Greeks and these foreign neighbors, the Akarna- 
nians, of whom I have already spoken briefly in my preceding 
volume, form the proper link of transition. ‘They occupied the 
territory between the river Acheléus, the Ionian sea, and the Am- 
brakian gulf: they were Greeks, and admitted as such to contend 
at the Pan-Hellenic games,! yet they were also closely connected 
with the Amphilochi and Agri, who were not Greeks. In man- 
ners, sentiments, and intelligence, they were half-Hellenic and 
half-Epirotic, — like the /®tolians and the Ozolian Lokrians. 
Even down to the time of Thucydidés, these nations were subdi- 
vided into numerous petty communities, lived in unfortified vil- 
lages, were frequently in the habit of plundering each other, and 
never permitted themselves to be unarmed: in case of attack, 
they withdrew their families and their scanty stock, chiefly cattle, 
to the shelter of difficult mountains or marshes. They were for 
the most part light-armed, few among them being trained to the 
panoply of the Grecian hoplite; but they were both brave and 
skilful in their own mode of warfare, and the sling, in the hands 
of the Akarnanian, was a weapon of formidable efficiency.? 

Notwithstanding this state of disunion and insecurity, however, 
the Akarnanians maintained a loose political league among theme 


~- yoann = 


' See Aristot. Fragm. wep? Πολιτειῶν, ed. Neumann: Fragm. 2, 'Ακαρνα 
ἐὼν πολιτεῖα. 
? Pollux, i, 150; Thucyd. ii, 81 


412 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


selves, and a hill near the Amphilochian Argos, on the shores of 
the Ambrakian gulf, had been fortified to serve as a judgment 
seat, or place of meeting, for the settlement of disputes. And -- 
seems that Stratus and Ciniade had both become fortifiea ἢ 
some measure towards the commencement of the Peloponnesian 
war. The former, the most considerable township in Akarnania, 
was situated on the Acheléus, rather high up its course, — the 
latter was at the mouth of the river, and was rendered difficult 
of approach by its inundations.! Astakus, Solium, Palzrus, and 
Alyzia, lay on or near the coast of the Ionian sea, between 
(Eniade and Leukas: Phytia, Koronta, Medeén, Limnza, and 
Thyrium, were between the southern shore of the Ambrakian 
gulf and the river Achelous. 

The Akarnanians appear to have produced many prophets. 
They traced up their mythical ancestry, as well as that of their 
neighbors the Amphilochians, to the most renowned prophetic 
family among the Grecian heroes, — Amphiaraus, with his sons 
Alkmxén and Amphilochus: Akarnan, the eponymous hero of 
the nation, and other eponymous heroes of the separate towns, 
were supposed to be the sons of Alkmx6n.2 They are spoken 
of, together with the A&tolians, as mere rude shepherds, by the 
lyric poet Alkman, and so they seem to have continued with little 
alteration until the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, when 
we hear of them, for the first time, as allies of Athens and as 
bitter enemies of the Corinthian colonies on their coast. The 
contact of those colonies, however, and the large spread of Akar- 
nanian accessible coast, could not fail to produce some effect in 
socializing and improving the people. And it is probable that 
this effect would have been more sensibly felt, had not the Akar- 
nanians been kept back by the fatal neighborhood of the A®tolians, 
with whom they were in perpetual feud,—a people the most 
unprincipled and unimprovable of all who bore the Hellenic 


' Thucyd. ii, 102; iii, 105 

3 Thucyd. ii, 68-102; Stephan. Byz. v, Porras. See the discussion in 
Strabo (x, p. 462), whether the Akarnanians did, or did not, take part in the 
»xpedition against Troy; Epherus maintaining the negative, and stringing 
together a plausible narrative to explain why they did not. The time came 
ehen the Akarnanians gained credit with Rome for this supposed absence of 
ἡ} 


oom Ge relene * 
et ators 


EPIROTS. 413 


nam.e, and whose habitual faithlessness stood in marked contras\ 
with the rectitude and steadfastness of the Akarnanian character.' 
It was in order to strengthen the Akarnanians against these ra- 
pacious neighbors, that the Macedonian Kassander urged them 
to consolidate their numerous small townships into a few con- 
siderable cities. Partially, at least, the recommendation was 
earried into effect, so.as to aggrandize Stratus and one or two 
ether towns; but in the succeeding century, the town of Leukas 
seems to lose its original position as a separate Corinthian colo- 
ny, and to pass into that of chief city of Akarnania,? which is 
lost only by the sentence of the Roman conquerors. 

Passing over the borders of Akarnania, we find small nations 
or tribes not considered as Greeks, but known, from the fourth 
century B. Cc. downwards, under the common name of Epirots. 
This word signifies properly, inhabitants of a continent, as op- 
nosed to those of an island or a peninsula, and came only gradually 
to be applied by the Greeks as their comprehensive denomination 
to designate all those diverse tribes, between the Ambrakian 
culf on the south and west, Pindus on the east, and the Illyrians 
and Macedonians to the north and north-east. Of these Epirots, 
the principal were, — the Chaonians, Thesprotians, Kassopians, 
and Molossians,? who occupied the country inland as well as 
maritime along the Ionian sea, from the Akrokeraunian moun- 
tains to the borders of Ambrakia in the interior of the Ambra- 
kian gulf. The Agrans and Amphilochians dwelt eastward of 
the last-mentioned gulf, bordering upon Akarnania: the Atha- 
manes, the Tymphans, and the Talares, lived along the western 
skirts and high range of Pindus. Among these various tribes it 
‘3 difficult to discriminate the semi-Hellenic from the non-Hellen- 
ic; for Herodotus considers both Molossians and Thesprotians as 
Hellenic, — and the oracle of Ddédéna, as well as the Nekyoman- 
teion, or holy cavern for evoking the dead, of Acheron, were 
both in the territory of the Thesprotians, and both, in the time 
of the historian, Hellenic. Thucydidés, on the other hand, treats 
both Molossians and Thesprotians as barbaric, and Strabo says 


Φ----ο---“--- - ------ - ---ον. ἡ 


1 Polyb. iv, 30: compare also ix, 40. 
? Diodor. xix, 67; Livy, xxxiii, 16-17; xlv, 3}. 
* Skylax, c. 28-32. 


414 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the same respecting the Athamanes, whom Plato numbers as 
Hellenic.! As the Epirots were confounded with the Hellenic 
communities towards the south, so they become blended with the 
Macedonian and Illyrian tribes towards the north. The Macedo- 
nian Orestz, north of the Cambunian mountains and east of Pin- 
dus, are called by Hekatzus a Molossian tribe; and Strabo evew 
extends the designation Epirots to the Illyrian Parorwia and 
Atintanes, west of Pindus, nearly on the same parallel of lati- 
tude with the Orestz.2 It must be remembered, as observed 
above, that while the designations Illyrians and Macedonians are 
properly ethnical, given to denote analogies of language, habits, 
feeling, and supposed origin, and probably acknowledged by the 
people themselves,— the name Epirots belongs to the Greek 
language, is given by Greeks alone, and marks nothing except 
residence on a particular portion of the continent. ‘Theopompus 
(about 340 Β. 0.) reckoned fourteen distinct Epirotic nations, 
among whom the Molossians and Chaonians were the principal. 
It is possible that some of these may have been semi-Illyrian, 
others semi-Macedonian, though all were comprised by him 
under the common name Epirots.* 

Of these various tribes, who dwelt between the Akrokerau 


nian promontory and the Ambrakian gulf, some, at least, appear 
to have been of ethnical kindred with portions of the inhabitants 
of southern Italy. There were Chaonians on the gulf of ‘Taren- 
tum, before the arrival of the Greek settlers, as well as in Epirus; 
we do not find the name Thesprotians in Italy, but we find there 
δ, town named Pandosia, and a river named Acheron, the same as 


! Herodot. ii, 56, v, 92, vi, 127; Thucyd. ii, 80; Plato, Minos, p. 315. 
The Chaonians and Thesprotians were separated by the river Thyamis 
(now Kalamas),— Thucyd. i, 46; Stephanus Byz. v, Τροία. 

3 Hekatzeus, Fr. 77, ed. Klausen; Strabo, vii, p. 326; Appian, IIlyric. c. 7. 
In the time of Thucydidés, the Molossi and the Atintines were under the 
same king (ii, 80). The name ‘Hrecpora:, with Thucydidés, means only 
inhabitants of «a continent,—o/ ταύτῃ ἠπειρῶται (i, 47; ii, 80) includes 
#tolians and Akarnanians (iii, 94-95), and is applied to inhabitants of 
Thrace (iv, 105). 

Epirus is used in its special sense toalesignate the territory west of Pindus 
by Xenophon, Hellen. vi, 1, 7. 

Compare Mannert, Geographie der Griech. und Romer, part vii, bock 2 
p. 283. 3 Strabo, vil, p. 324.. 


EPIROTS. —MACEDONIANS. 415 


among the Epirotic Thesprotians: the ubiquitous name Pelasgian 
is connected both with one and with the other. This ethnical 
affinity, remote or near, between Cinotrians and Epirots, which 
we must accept as a fact without being able to follow it into 
ictail, consists at the same time with the circumstance, — that 
both seem to have been susceptible of Hellenic influences to an 
unusual degree, and to have been moulded, with comparatively 
little difficulty, into an imperfect Hellenism, like that of the 
fEtolians and Akarnanians. The Thesprotian conquerors of 
Thessaly passed in this manner into Thessalian Greeks, and the 
Amphilochians who inhabited Argos on the Ambrakian gulf, 
were Hellenized by the reception of Greeks from Ambrakia, 
though the Amphilochians situated without the city, still re- 
mained barbarous in the time of Thucydides :! a century after- 
wards, probably, they would be Hellenized, like the rest, by a 
longer continuance of the same influences, — as happened with 
the Sikels in Sicily. 

To assign the names and exact boundaries of the different 
tribes inhabiting Epirus, as they stood in the seventh and sixth 
centuries B. C., at the time when the western stream of Grecian 
colonization was zoing on, and when the newly established Am- 
brakiots must have been engaged in subjugating or expelling the 
prior occupants of their valuable site, — is out of our power. 
We have no inf*rmation prior to Herodotus and Thucydidés, 
and that which tkey tell us cannot be safely applied to a time 
either much earlicr or much later than their own. That there 
was great analogy between the inland Macedonians and the Epi 
rots, from Mount Bermius across the continent to the coast oppo- 
site Korkyra, in military equipment, in the fashion of cutting the 
hair, and in speech, we are apprized by a valuable passage of 
Strabo ; who farther tells us, that many of the tribes spoke two 
different languages,2— a fact which at least, proves very close 


1 Thucyd. ii, 68. 

3 Strabo, vii, p. 324. In these same regions, under the Turkish govern 
ment of the present day, such is the mixture and intercourse of Greeks, 
Albanians, Bulgaric Sclavonians, Wallachians, and Turks, that most of the 
natives find themselves under the necessity of acquiring two, sometimes 
three, languages: see Dr. Grisebach, Reise durch Rumelien und nach Bruseg, 


ch. xii, vol. ii, p. 68. 


416 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


‘ntercommunion, if not a double origin and incorporation. Wars, 
or voluntary secessions and new alliances, would alter the bon 
daries and relative situation of the various tribes. And this 
would be the more easily effected, as all Epirus, even in the fourth 
century B. C., WAS parcelled out among an aggregate of viii 
without any great central cities ; 80 that the severance * a - 
lage from the Molossian union, and its junction with the ~— 
tian (abstracting from the feelings with which it might » 
connected), would make little practi val difference in its conditior 
or proceedings. The gradual increase of Hellenic upoense 
tended partially to centralize this political dispersion, enlarging 
some of the villages into small towns by the incorporation ol 
some of their neighbors ; and in this way, probably, were formed 
the seventy Epirotic cities which were destroyed and apres ap to 
plunder on the same day, by Paulus Emilius and the Roman 
senate. The Thesprotian Ephyré is called a city, even by Thu- 
evdidés.! Nevertheless, the situation was unfavorable to the 
formation of considerable cities, either on the coast or in the 
interior, since the physical character of the territory is an exag- 


geration of that of Greece, — almost throughout, wild, rugged, and 


mountainous. ‘The valleys and low grounds, though frequent, are 
never extensive, — while the soil is rarely suited, in any contin- 
uous spaces, for the cultivation of corn: insomuch that the flour 
for the consumption of Janina, at the present day, is transported 
from Thessaly over the lofty ridge of Pindus, by means of asses 
and mules :2 while the fruits and vegetables are brought from 
Arta, the territory of Ambrakia. Epirus is essentially a pastors: 
country: its cattle as well as its shepherds and shepherd's dogs 
were celebrated throughout all antiquity ; and its population then, 
us now, found divided village residence the most suitable to their 
means and occupations. In spite of this natural tendency, how- 
ever, Hellenic influences were to a certain extent efficacious, and 


1 Livy, xlv, 34; Thueyd. i, 47. Phanoté, in the more northerly part of 
ἢ Τ , ͵ ᾿ i . ΄ «yf 
Epirus, is called only a castellum, though it was an important military post 
(Livy, xliii, 21). 

2 Leake’s Travels in Northern Greece, ch. xxxvill, vol. iv, pp. 207, 216, 
233: ch. ix, vol. i, p. 411; Cyprien Robert, Les Slaves de Turquie, book iv, 


eh. 2. . ὦ 
Βουβόται πρῶνες ἐξόχοι --- Pindar, Nem. iv, 81; Cesar, Bell. Civil. iu, 


TERRITORY OF EPIRUS. 417 


it is to them that we are to ascribe the formation of towns like 
Phoeniké, — an in‘and city a few miles removed from the sea, in 
a latitude somewhat north of the northernmost point of Korkyra, 
which Polybius notices as the most flourishing! of the Epirotic 
cities at the time when it was plundered by the [llyrians in 280 
B. 6. Passarén, the ancient spot where the Molossian kings were 
accustomed on their accession to take their coronation-oath, had 
grown into a considerable town, in this last century before the 
Roman conquest; while Tekmén, Phylaké, and Horreum also 
became known to us at the same period.2 But the most impor- 
tant step which those kings made towards aggrandizement, was 
the acquisition of the Greek city of Ambrakia, which became the 
vapital of the kingdom of Pyrrhus, and thus gave to him the 
only site suitable for a concentrated population which. the 
country afforded. 

If we follow the coast of Epirus from the entrance of the Am- 
brakian gulf northward to the Akrokeraunian promontory, we 
shall find it discouraging to Grecian colonization. ‘There are 
none of those extensive maritime plains which the gulf of Taren- 
tum exhibits on its coast, and which sustained the grandeur of 
Sybaris and Kréton. Throughout the whole extent, the moun- 
tain-region, abrupt and affording little cultivable soil, approaches 
near to the 568,3 and the level ground, wherever it exists, must be 
‘ommanded and possessed, as it is now, by villagers on hill-sites, 
always difficult of attack and often inexpugnable. From hence, 
and from the neighborhood of Korkyra, — herself well situated 
for traffic with Epirus, and jealous of neighboring rivals, — we 
may understand why the Grecian emigrants omitted this unprofit- 
able tract, and passed on either northward to the maritime plains 
of Illyria, or westward to Italy. In the time of Herodotus and 
Thucydidés, there seems to have been no Hellenic settlement 
between Ambrakia and Apollonia. The harbor called Glykys 
Limén, and the neighboring valley and plain, the most consider- 
able in Epirus, next to that of Ambrakia, near the junction of 


? Polybius, ii, 5, 8. 

3 Plutarch, Pyrrh. c. i; Livy, xlv, 26. 

2 See the description of the geographical festures of Epiras in Boué, Ls 
Turquie en Europe, Géographie Générale, vol. 1, p. 57. 

VOL. III. 18* 2700. 


418 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the lake and river of Acheron with the sea, were possessed by 
the Thesprotian tewn of Ephyré, situated on a neighboring emi- 
nence; perhaps also, in part, by the ancient Thesprotian town of 
Pandosia, so pointedly connected, both in Italy and Epirus, with 
the river Acheron.! Amidst the almost inexpugnable mountains 
and gorges which mark the course of that Thesprotian river, was 
situated the memorable recent community of Suli, » -«vh held in 
dependence many surrounding villages in the lower grounds and 
in the plain, —the counterpart of primitive Epirotic rulers in 
situation, in fierceness, and in indolence, but far superior to them 
in energetic bravery and endurance. It appears that after the 
time of Thucydidés, certain Greek settlers must have found ad- 
mission into the Epirotic towns in this region. For Demosthenes? 
mentions Pandosia, Buchetia, and Elza, as settlements from Elis, 
which Philip of Macedon conquered and handed over to his 
brother-in-law the king of the Molossian Epirots ; and Strabo tells 
us that the name of Ephyré had been changed to Kichyrus, which 
appears to imply an accession of new inhabitants. 

Both the Chaonians and Thesprotians appear, in the time of 
Thucydidés, as having no kings: there was a privileged kingly 
race, but the presiding chief was changed from year to year. 
The Molossians, however, had a line of kings, succeeding from 
father to son, which professed to trace its descent through aiveen 
generations downward, from Achilles and Neoptolemus to Tha- 
rypas about the year 400 B. C.; they were thus ὁ scion οἱ the 
great AZakid race. Admeétus, the Molossian king to whom The- 
mistoklés presented himself as a suppliant, appears to have lived 
in the simplicity of an inland village chief. But Arrybas, his 


1 See the account of this territory in Colonel Leake’s Travels in Northera 
Greece, vol. i. ch. v; his journey from Janina, through the district of Sali 
and the course of the Acheron, to the plain of Glyky and the Acherusian 
lake and marshes near the sea. Compare, also, vol. iv, ch. xxxv, p. 73. 

“To the ancient sites (observes Colonel Leake) which are so numerous im 
the great valleys watered by the lower Acheron, the lower Thyamis, and 
their tributaries, it is a mortifying disappointment to the geographer not to 
be able to apply a single name with absolute certainty.” 

The number of these sites affords one among many presumptions that 
each mast have been individually inconsiderable. 

4 Demosthenés, De Haloneso, ch. 7, p. 84 R; Strabo, vii, p. 324. 


CHAONIANS, THESPROTIANS, MOLOSSIANS. 419 


son or grandson, is said to have been educated at Athens, and te 
have introduced improved social regularity into his native coun- 
try: while the subsequent kings both imitated the ambition and 
received the aid of Philip of Macedon, extending their dominion! 
over a large portion of the other Epirots: even in the time of 
Skylax, they covered a large inland territory, though their por- 
tion of sea-coast was confined. From the narrative of Thucydi- 
dés, we gather that all the Epirots, though held together by no 
political union, were yet willing enough to combine for purposes 
of aggression and plunder. The Chaonians enjoyed a higher 
military reputation than the rest,— but the account which Thu- 
cydidés gives of their expedition against Akarnania exhibits a 
blind, reckless, boastful impetuosity, which contrasts strikingly 
with the methodical and orderly march of their Greek allies and 
companions.2. We may here notice, that the Kassopzans, whom 
Skylax places in the south-western portion of Epirus between the 
Acheron and the Ambrakian gulf, are not noticed either by He- 
rodotus or Thucydidés: the former, indeed, conceives the river 
Acheron and the Thesprotians as conterminous with the Ambra- 
kiotie territory. 

To collect the few particulars known respecting these ruder com- 
munities adjacent to Greece, is a task indispensable for the just 
comprehension of the Grecian world, and for the appreciation of 
the Greeks themselves, by comparison or contrast with their con- 
temporaries. Indispensable as it is, however, it can hardly be 
rendered in itself interesting to the reader, whose patience I have 
to bespeak by assuring him that the facts hereafter to be recounted 
of Grecian history would be only, -half understaed. without this 
preliminary survey of the lands avoun4. ΚΦ Δ ΔΑ Ρ br ee 


. oa” . 


' Skylax, c. 32; Pausanias, i, 11; Justin, xyii, 62°" το. wo. 2 °2' 4% 
That the Arrhybas of Justin is tile sani¢: es the Tiariypes εὖ" Pausanies, — 
perhaps, also, the same as 7’haryps in Thucydidés, who was ἃ minor at the 
beginning of the Peloponnesian war, — seems probable. 
5 Thucyd. ii, 81. ᾿ δὴν unt 


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CONTENTS. 
VOL. IV. 


PART IT. 


CONTINUATION OF HISTORICAL GRKEUCK. 


CHAPTER XXV. 


ROBERT δ. FREEDMAN BEQUEST ILLYRIANS, MACEDONIANS, PAONIANS. 


Dafferent tribes of Illyrians.— Conflicts and contrast of Illyrians with 
Greeks.— Epidamnus and Apollonia in relation to the Illyrians.— 
Early Macedonians. — Their original seats. — General view of the coun- 
try which they occupied — eastward of Pindus and Skardus. — Distri- 


bution and tribes of the Macedonians. ~ Macedonians round Edessa — 
the leading portion of the nation. — Pierians and Bottiwans — originally 
laced on the Thermaic gulf, between the Macedonians and the sea. — 
᾿υὐνόμενῆνο <~ Anolon Greeks who established the dvnasty of Edessa— 
Perdikkas. — Talents for command manifested by Greek chieftains over 
barbaric tribes. — Aggrandizement of the dynasty of Edessa — conquests 
as far as the Thermaic gulf, as well as over the interior Macedonians. -- 
Friendship between king Amyntas and the Peisistratids..... -pages 1-19 


CHAPTER XXVI. 
THRACIANS AND GREEK COLONIES IN THRACS. 


Thracians — their numbers and abode. —~ Many distinct tribes, yet little di- 
versity of character. — Their cruelty, rapacity, and military efficiency. — 
Thracian worship and character Asiatic. — Early date of the Chalkidic 
colonies in Thrace.— Methéné the earliest —about 720 B.c.— Several 
other small settlements on the Chalkidic peninsula and its three p 
ing headlands. — Chalkidic peninsula — Mount Athos.— Colonies in 
Palléné, or the westernmost of the three headlands. — In Sithonia, or 
the middle headland.— In the headland of Athos — Akanthus, Stageira, 
etc. — Greek settlements east of the Strymén in Thrace.—Island of 
Thasus.— Thracian Chersonesus.— Perinthus, Selymbria, and Byzan- 
tium. — Grecian settlements on the Euxine, south of the oe sg - 
πα OnE ΠΝ νου, κοελνυνυσιοονουσοοννον νυνούύ. co SOB 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER AZVil 


RYRENE.—- BARK A.-—— HESPER DES. 


First voyages of the Greeks to Libya. — Foundation of Kyréné, — F punded 
by Battus from the island of Théra.— Colony firs’ settled in the island 
of Platea— afterwards removed to Kyréné. — Situation of Kyréné. ~— 
Fertility, produce, and prosperity. — Libyan tribes near Kyréné. — Ex- 
tensive dominion of Kyréne and Barka over the Libyans. —~ Connection 
of the Greek colonies with the Nomads of Libya. — Manners of the Libyaa 
Nomads. — Mixture of Greeks and Libyan inhabitants at Kyréné. — Dyn- 
asty of Battus, Arkesilaus, Battus the Second, at Kyréné— fresh colonists 
from Greece. — Disputes with the native Libyans. — Arkesilaus the Sec- 
ond, prince of Kyréné — misfortunes of the city —foundation of Barka. 
— Battus the Third, a lame man — reform by Deménax, who takes away 
the supreme power from the Battiads. — New emigration — restoration 
of the Battiad Arkesilaus the Third. — Oracle limiting the duration of 
the Battiad dynasty — Violences at Kyréné under Arkesilaus the Third. 
— Arkesilaus sends his submission to Kambysés, king of Persia. — Per 
sian expedition from Egypt against Barka—Pheretimé, mother of 
Arkesilaus.— Capture of Barka by perfidy —cruelty of Pheretimé.— 
Battus the Fourth and Arkesilaus the Fourth —final extinction of the 
dynasty about 460-450 B.c.— Constitution of Deménax not durable. 

Ccecesecesccccccccce 2949 


CRAPTER AAViti. 


A\N-HELLENIC FESTIVALS —- OLYMPIC, PYTHIAN, NEMEAN, AND ISTHMIAQ. 


\7ant of grouping and unity in the early period of Grecian history. — New 
causes, tending to favor union, begf after 560 B.c.—no general war 
between 776 and 560 B.c. known to Thucydidés. —Increasing disposition 
to religious, intellectual, and social union.— Reciprocal admission of 
cities to the religious festivals of each other. —LEarly splendor of the 
lonic festival at Delos — its decline. — Olympic games — their celebrity 
and long continuance.— Their gradual increase — new matches intro- 
duced. — Olympic festival — the first which passes from a local to a Pan- 
Hellenic character.— Pythian games, or festival.— Early state and site 
of Delphi.— Phocian town of Krissa.—Kirrha, the seaport of Krissa. 
— Growth of Delphi and Kirrha — decline of Krissa.— Insolence of the 
Kirrhzans punished by the Amphiktyons. — First Sacred War, in 595 
B.c. — Destruction of Kirrha.— Pythian games founded by the Am- 
phiktyons.—Nemean and Isthmian games. —Pan-Hellenic character 
acquired by all the four festivals— Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isth- 
mian.— Increased frequentation of the other festivals in most Greek 
¢ities.— All other Greek cities, except Sparta, encouraged such visits. — 
Mffect of these festivals upon the Greek mind. ...........0+..+..50-78 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


LYRIC POETRY.-— THE SEVEN WISE MEN, 


Age and dur.tion of the Greek lyric poetry.— Epical age preceding the 


yrical.— Wider range of subjects for poetry——new metres — enlarged 
musical scale. —Improvement of the harp by Terpander — of the flute 
by Olympus and others. — Archilochus, Kallinus, Tyrtzeus, and Alkman 
—670-600 B.c.— New metres superadded to the Hexameter— Elegiac, 
Iambic, Trochaic. ~ Archilochus.— Simonidés of Amorgos, Kallinus, 
Tyrtzeus. — Musical and poetical tendencies at Sparta. — Choric training 
— Alkman, Thalétas.— Doric dialect employed in the choric composi- 
tions. — Arion and Stésichorus—substitution of the professional in 
place of the popular chorus. — Distribution of the chorus by Stésichorus 
— Strophé — Antistrophé — Epédus.— Alkwus and Sappho.— Gnomic 
or moralizing poets.— Solon and Theognis. — Subordination of musical 
and orchestrical accompaniment to the words and meaning. — Seven 
Wise Men. — They were the first men who acquired an Hellenic reputa- 
tion, without political genius. — Early manifestation of philosophy —in 
the form of maxims.— Subsequent growth of dialectics and discussion. 
—Increase of the habit of writing — commencement of prose composi- 
tions. — First beginnings of Grecian art.— Restricted character of early 
art, from religious associations. — Monumental ornaments in the cities ~ 
begin in the sixth century B.c.— Importance of Grecian art as a means 
Of Hellenic anion. ..csccccccscccscccncescsnscccecccesereccedamlur 


CHAPTER XXX. 


GRECIAN AFFAIRS DURING THE GOVERNMENT OF PEISISTRATUS AND 


HIS SONS AT ATHENS, 


Peisistratus and his sons at Athens —B.c. 560-510 — uncertain chronology 


as to Peisistratus. — State of feeling in Attica at the accession of Peisis- 
tratus. — Retirement of Peisistratus, and stratagem whereby he is rein- 
stated.— Quarrel of Peisistratus with the Alkmexénids — his second retire- 
ment. — His second and final restoration. — His strong government ~ 
mercenaries — purification of Delos. — Mild despotism of Peisistratus. — 
His sons Hippias and Hipparchus. — Harmodius and Aristogeitén. — 
They conspire and kill Hipparchus, B.c. 514.— Strong and lasting senti- 
ment, coupled with great historical mistake, in the Athenian public. — 
Hippias despot alone — 514-510 B.c.—his cruelty and conscious inse- 
curity. — Connection of Athens with the Thracian Chersonesus and the 
Asiatic coast of the Hellespont. — First Miltiadés —cekist of the Cherso- 
nese.— Second Miltiadés — sent out thither by the Peisistratids. — Pro- 
ceedings of the exiled Alkmzdénids against Hippias.— Conflagration and 
rebuilding of the Delphian temple.— The Alkmeénids rebuild the tem- 
ple with magnificence. — Gratitude of the Delphians towards them — they 

rocure from the oracle directions to Sparta, enjoining the expulsion of 

ippias.— Spartan expeditions into Attica.— Expulsion of Hippias, 
GOR πόο GF TAs 666k. ὧδ ἐξιος δ νυνινν coeeseus 102—] 20 


a* 


CONTENTS. 


CRAPrTESR AZZ. 


GRECIAN AFFAIRS AFTER TIIE EXPULSION OF THE PEISISTRATIDS. = 


REVOLUTION OF KLEISTHENES AND ESTABLISHMENT OF DEMOCRACY 
AT ATIIENS. 


State of Athens after the expulsion of Hippias.— Opposing party-leaders 
— Kleisthenés — Isagoras.-— Democratica! revc lution headed by Kleis- 
thenés.— Rearrangement and extension of tlie political franchise. τα 
Suppression of the four old tribes, and formation of ten new tribes, in- 
cluding an increased number of the population. — Imperfect description 
of this event in Herodotus -— its real bearing. — Grounds of opposition to 
it in ancient Athenian feeling. — Names of the new tribes — their rela- 
tion to the demes. —- Demes belonging to each tribe usually not adjacent 
to each other.— Arrangements and functions of the deme. —Solonian 
constitution preserved, with modifications. — Change of military arrange- 
ment in the state. — The ten stratégi, or generals. — The judicial assem- 
bly of citizens, or Helixa, subsequently divided into fractions, each judg- 
ing separately. — The political assembly, or ekklesia.— Financial ar. 
rangements.— Senate of Five Hundred. —ekklesiae, or political assem- 
bly. — Kleisthenés the real author of the Athenian democracy. — Judicial 
attributes of the people—their gradual enlargement. —~ Three points in 
Athenian constitutional law, hanging together: — Universal admissibility 
of citizens to magistracy-—choice by lot ~— reduced functions of the 
magistrates chosen by lot.-— Universal admissibility of citizens to the 
archonship — not introduced until after the battle of Platw. — Constitu- 
tion of Kleisthenés retained the Solonian law of exclusion as to individ- 
ual office. — Difference between that constitution and the political state 
of Athens after Periklés.~-Senate of Areopagus.— The ostracism. — 
Weakness of the public force in the Grecian governments. — Past vio- 
lences of the Athenian nobles. — Necessity of creating a constitutional 
morality. — Purpose and working of the ostracism. — Securities against 
its abuse. — Ostracism necessary as ἃ protection to the early democracy 
— afterwards dispensed with. ~ Ostracism analogous to the exclusion of a 
known pretender to the throne in a monarchy. — Effect of the long as- 
cendency of Periklés, in strengthening constitutional morality. — Ostra 
cism in other Grecian cities. — Striking effect of the revolution of Kleis- 
thenés on the minds of the citizens. — Isagoras calls in Kleomenés and 
the Lacedemonians against it.— Kleomenés and Isagoras are expelled 
from Athens. — Recall of Kleisthenés — Athens solicits the alliance of 
the Persians. — First connection between Athens and Platwza.— Disputes 
between Plata and Thebes —decision of Corinth as arbitrator. — Sec- 
ond march of Kleomenés against Athens — desertion of his allies. — 
First appearance of Sparta as acting head of Peloponnesian allies. — 
Signal successes of Athens against Boeotians and Chalkidians. — Plan 
tation of Athenian settlers, or kléruchs, in the territory of Chalkis. ~ 
Distress of the Thebans~-they ask assistance from Mgina.— The 
#iginetans make war on Athens.— Preparations at Sparta to attack 
Athens anew — the Spartan allies are summoned, together with Hippias. 
— First formal convocation at Sparza—advance of Greece towards a 
litical system. — Proceedings of the convocation — animated protest of 
rinth against any interference in ἕξ vor of Hippias — the Spartan allies 
refuse to interfere. — Aversion to sit zle-headed rule — now predominant 


SONTENTS. vil 


in Greece. — Striking development of Atheaian energy after the revolu- 
tion of Kleisthenés —language of Herodo:us.— Effect of the idea or 
theory of democracy in exciting Athenian sentiment. — Patriotism of ag 
Athenian between 500-400 5.0. --α combined with an eager spirit of per. 
sonal military exertion and sacrifice.— Diminution of this active senti- 
ment in the restored democracy after the Thirty Tyrants... ....126-181 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


RISE OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE.-—~CYRUS. 


Btate of Asia before the rise of the Persian monarchy. — Great power and 


alliances of Croesus. — Rise of Cyrus — uncertainty of his early history. 
— Story of Astyagés. — Herodotus and Ktésias.— Condition of the native 
Persians at the first rise of Cyrus. — Territory of Iran — between Tigris 
and Indus. — War between Cyrus and Croesus. — Croesus tests the oracles 
— triumphant reply from Delphi — munificence of Croesus to the oracle. 
— Advice given to him by the oracle.— He solicits the alliance of Spar- 
ta. — He crosses the Halys and attacks the Persians. — Rapid march of 
Cyrus to Sardis. — Siege and capture of Sardis.— Croesus becomes 
prisoner of Cyrus — how treated. — Remonstrance addressed by Croesus 
to the Delphian god.— Successful justification of the oracle. — Fate of 
Croesus impressive to the Greek mind. — The Moers, or Fates. — State 
of the Asiatic Greeks after the conquest of Lydia by Cyrus.— They ap- 
ply in vain to Sparta for aid. — Cyrus quits Sardis —revolt of the Lydi- 
ans suppressed. — The Persian general Mazarés attacks Ionia — the 
Lydian Paktyas. — Harpagus succeeds Mazarés —conquest of Ionia by 
the Persians. — Fate of Phékxa.— Emigration of the Phokaans 
vowed by all, executed only by one half.— Phék#an colony first at 
Alalia, then at Elea.— Proposition of Bias for a Pan-Ionic .emigration 
not adopted. — Entire conquest of Asia Minor by the Persians. 182-208 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 


GROWTH OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. 


Conquests of Cyrus in Asia. — His attack of Babylon. — Difficult approach 


to Babylon— no resistance made to the invaders. — Cyrus distributes 
the river Gyndés into many channels. — He takes Babylon, by drawing 
off for a time the waters of the Euphratés.— Babylon left in undimin- 
ished strength and population. — Cyrus attacks the Massagete — is de- 
feated and slain.— Extraordinary stimulus to the Persians, from the 
conquests of Cyrus. — Character of the Persians.— Thirst  r foreign 
conquest among the Persians, for three reigns after Cyrus. — Kambysés 
succeeds his father Cyrus —his invasion of Egypt. — Death of Amasis, 
king of Egypt, at the time when the Persian expedition was preparing — 
his son Psammenitus succeeds.— Conquest of Egypt by Kambysés. ~ 
Submission of Kyréné and Barka to Kambysés — his projects for con- 
quering Libya and Ethiopia disappointed. — Insults of Kambysés to the 


will CONTENTS. 


Egyptian religion.—- Madness of Kambysés—he puts to death his 
younger brother, Smerdis. — Conspiracy of the Magian Patizeithés who 
sets up his brother as king under the name of Smerdis. — Death of Kar 

bysés. — Reign of the false Smerdis — conspiracy of the seven Persian 
noblemen against him —he is slain-— Darius succeeds to the throne. — 
Political bearing of this conspiracy —Smerdis represents Median pres 
ponderance, which is again put down by Darius. — Revolt of the Medes 
— suppressed. — Discontents of the satraps. — Revolt of Babylon. — Re- 
conquered and dismantled by Darius. — Organization of the Persian em- 
pire by Darius. — Twenty satrapies with a fixed tribute apportioned to 
each. —Imposts upon the different satrapies. — Organizing tendency of 
Darius —first imperial coinage — imperial roads and posts. — Island of 
Samos —its condition at the accession of Darius. — Polykratés. — Poly 

kratés breaks with Amasis, king of Egypt. and allies himself with Kam- 
bysés.— The Samian exiles, expelled by Polykratés, apply to Sparta for 
aid. — The Lacedmonians attack Samos, but are repulsed. — Attack on 
Siphnos by the Samian exiles. — Prosperity of Polykratés. — He is slain 
by the Persian satrap Orcetés. — Meandrius, lieutenant of Polykratés in 
Samos —he desires to establish a free government after the death of 
Polykratés — conduct of the Samians.— Mzandrius becomes despot.— 
Contrast between the Athenians and the Samians. — Sylosén, brother of 

Polykratés, lands with a Persian army in Samos — his history. — Mean- 
drius agrees to evacuate the island. — Many Persian officers slain — 
slaughter of the Samians.— Sylosén despot at Samos. — Application of 

Meandrius to Sparta for aid — refused........... poeeecosesss 209-252 


CRArTER RARITY. 
DEMOKEDES. — DARIUS INVADES SCYTHIA. 


Conquering dispositions of Darius.—Influence of his wife, Atossa.— 
Démokédés, the Krotoniate surgeon — his adventures —he is carried as 
a slave to Susa.— He cures Darius, who rewards him munificently. — 
He procures permission by artifice, and through the influence of Atossa, 
to return to Greece. — Atossa suggests to Darius an expedition against 
Greece. — Démokédés, with some Persians, is sent to procure information 
for him. — Voyage of Démokédés along the coast of Greece — he stays 
at Kroton—fate of his Persian companions. — Consequences which 
might have been expected to happen if Darius had then undertaken his 
expedition against Greece.— Darius marches against Scythia.— His 
naval force formed of Asiatic and insular Greeks. — He directs the 
Greeks to throw a bridge over the Danube and crosses the river. - He 
marches into Scythia — narrative of his march impossible and unintelligi- 
ble, considered as history. — The description of his march is rather to be 
looked upon as a fancy-picture, illustrative of Scythian warfare. — Poeti- 
eal grouping of the Scvthians and their neighbors by Herodotus, — 
Strong impression produced upon the imagination of Herodotus by the 
Scythians.— Orders given by Darius to the Ionians at the bridge over 
the Danube. — The Ionians are left in guard of the bridge; their conduct 
when Darius’s return is delayed. — The Ionian despots preserve the 
bridge and enable Darius to recross the river, as a means of support te 
their own dominion at home. — Opportunity lost of emancipation from 


CONTENTS. iz 


the Persians — Conquest of Thrace by the Persians as far as the rivet 
Strymon — Myrkinus near that river given to Histiseus. — Macedonians 
and Pxonians are conquered by Megabazas. — Insolence of the Persian 
envoys in Macedonia —they are murdered. — Histizeus founds a prosper 
ous colony at Myrkinus— Darius sends for him into Asia. — Otanée 
Persian general on the Hellespont — he conquers the Pelasgian popula 
tion of Lemnos, Imbros, ete. — Lemnos and Imbros captured by the 
Athenians and Miltiadés..............seccecesseececcceses ἤν 


CHAPTER XAXYV. 


IONIC REVOLT. 


Danus carries Histiaus to Susa.— Application of the banished Hippias τὸ 


Artaphernés, satrap of Sardis. — State of the island of Naxos — Naxian 
exiles solicit aid from Aristagoras of Milétus.— Expedition against 
Naxos, undertaken by Aristagoras with the assistance of Artaphernés 
fhe satrap. —Its failure, through dispute between Aristagoras and the 
Persian general, Megabatés.— Alarm of Aristagoras —he determines 
to revolt against Persia —instigation to the same effect from His- 
tieus. — Revolt of Aristagoras and the Milesians — the despots 
in the various cities deposed and seized. — Extension of the revolt 
throughout Asiatic Greece — Aristagoras goes to solicit aid from 
Sparta. — Refusal of the Spartans to assist him. — Aristagoras appliet 
to Athens— obtains aid both from Athens and Eretria.— March of 
Aristagoras up to Sardis with the Athenian and Eretrian allies — 
burning of the town—retreat and defeat of these Greeks by the Per- 
sians. — The Athenians abandon the alliance. — Extension of the revolt 
to Cyprus and Byzantium. — Phenician fleet called forth by the Persians 
— Persian and Phenician armament sent against Cyprus — the lonians 
send aid thither —victory of the Persians — they reconquer the island. 
— Successes of the Persians against the revolted coast of Asia Minor. — 
Aristagoras loses courage and abandons the country.— Appearance of 
Histizeus, who had obtained leave of departure from Susa. — Histizus is 
suspected by Artaphernés — flees to Chios.— He attempts in vain to 
procure admission into Milétus — puts himself at the head of a small 
piratical squadron. — Large Persian force assembled, aided by the Pheni- 
cian fleet, for the siege of Milétus. — The allied Grecian fleet mustered 
at Ladé. — Attempts of the Persians to disunite the allies, by means of 
the exiled despots. — Want of command and discipline in the Grecian 
fleet. — Energy of the Phékzxan Dionysius —he is allowed to assume the 
command. — Discontent of the Grecian crews — they refuse to act under 
Dionysius. — Contrast of this incapacity of the Ionic crews with the sub- 
sequent severe discipline of the Athenian seamen. — Disorder and mis- 
trust grow up in the fleet— treachery of the Samian captains. — Com- 
plete victory of the Persian fleet at Ladé — ruin of the Ionic tleet — se 
vere loss of the Chians.— Voluntary exile and adventures of Dionysius. 
—- Siege, capture, and ruin of Milétus by the Persians. — The Phenician 
fleet reconquers all the coast-towns and islands. — Narrow escape of 
Miltiadés from their pursuit. — Cruelties of the Persians after the recon- 
quest. — Movements and death of Histimnus. — Sympathy and terror of 
the Athenians at the capture of Milétus—-the tragic writer Plirynichus 
is One... τ ννο φόνον jreeteebs) π᾿ ς΄. : 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 
FROM THE IONIC REVOLT TO THE BATTLE OF MARATHON. 


Proceedings of the satrap Artaphernés after the reconquest of Ionia --- 
Mardonius comes with an army into Ionia—he puts down the despots 
in the Greek cities. — He marches into Thrace and Macedonia — his fleet 
destroyed by a terrible storm near Mount Athos —bLe returns into Asia. 
— Island of Thasos — prepares to revolt from the Persians —forced to 
submit.— Preparations of Darius for invading Greece —he sends her- 
alds round the Grecian towns to demand earth and water —many of 
them submit. — Augina among those towns which submitted —state and 
relations of this island. — Heralds from Darius are put to death, both at 
Athens and Sparta. — Effects of this act in throwing Sparta into a state 
of hostility against Persia. — The Athenians appeal to Sparta, in conse- 
quence of the medism (or submission to the Persians) of AXgina. — Inter- 
ference of Sparta — her distinct acquisition and acceptance of the leader- 
ship of Greece. — One condition of recognized Spartan leadership was, 
the extreme weakness of Argos at this moment.— Victorious war of 
Sparta against Argos. — Destruction of the Argeians by Kleomenés, in 
the grove of the hero Argus. ~— Kleomenés returns without having at- 
tacked the city of Argos. -— He is tried —his peculiar mode of defence 
— acquitted. — Argos unable to interfere with Sparta in the affair of 
égina and in her presidential power.— Kleomenés goes to Aigina ἔς 
seize the medizing leaders-—resistance made to him, at the instigatior 
of his colleague Demaratus.— Demaratus is deposed, and Leotychidé: 
chosen king, by the intrigues of Kleomenés. — Demaratus leaves Sparta 
and goes to Darius.— Kleomenés and Leotychidés go to Mgina, seize 
ten hostages, and convey them as prisoners to Athens. — Important effect 
of this proceeding upon the result of the first Persian invasion of Greece. — 
Assemblage of the vast Persian armament under Datis at Samos. — He 
crosses the Aigean — carries the island of Naxos without resistance — 
respects Delos. — He reaches Eubexa—siege and capture of Eretria. — 
Datis lands at Marathon,— Existing condition and character of the 
Athenians. — Miltiadés —his adventures —chosen one of the ten gen- 
erals in the year in which the Persians landed at Marathon. — Themisto- 
klés and Aristeidés. — Miltiadés, Aristeidés, and perhaps Themistoklés, 
were now among the ten stratégi, or generals, in 490 B.c.— The Athe- 
nians ask aid from Sparta-—delay of the Spartans. — Difference of opin- 
ion among the ten Athenian generals — five of them recommend an im- 
mediate battle, the other five are adverse to it.— Urgent instances of 
Miltiadés in favor of an immediate battle — casting-vote of the polemarch 
determines it.— March of the Athenians to Marathon —the Platzans 
spontaneously join them there. — Numbers of the armies.— Locality of 
Marathon. — Battle of Marathon —rapid charge of Miltiadés — defeat 
of the Persians.— Loss on both sides. — Ulterior plans of the Persians 
against Athens — party in Attica favorable to them.— Rapid march of 
Miltiadés back to Athens on the day of the battle. — The Persians aban- 
fon the enterprise, and return home.—Athens rescued through the 
speedy battle brought on by Miltiadés.— Change of Grecian feeling as 
to the Persians — terror which the latter insp red at tke time of the battle 
of Marathon. — Immense effect of the Marathonian victory on the feel- 
ings of the Greeks -—- especially of the Athenians. — Who were the trai 


CONTENTS. si 


tors that invited the Persians to Athens after the battle — false imputation 
on the Alkmzdénids. — Supernatural belief connected with the battle — 
commemorations of it.— Return of Datis to Asia — fate of the Eretrian 
captives. — Glory of Miltiadés — his s*bsequent conduct — unsuccessful 
expedition against Paros — bad hurt οἱ Miltiadés. — Disgrace of Miltia- 
dés on his return. —He is fined —dies of his wound — the fine is paid 
by his son Kimon.— Reflections on the closing adventures of the life of 
Miltiadés. — Fickleness and ingratitude imputed to the Athenians — how 
far they deserve the charge. — Usual temper of the Athenian dikasts in 
eetimating previous services. — Tendency of eminent Greeks to be core 
rupted by success. — In what sense it is apparently true that fickleness 
was an attribute of the Athenian democracy..........++ «.+-.311-378 


CRAPTER AXRAV EI 


IONIC PHILOSOPHERS. - PYTHAGORAS.— KROTON AND SYBARIS 


Phalaris despot of Agrigentum. — Thalés.— Ionic philosophers — not « 


school or succession.— Step in philosopliy commenced by Thalés. ~ 
Vast problems with scanty means of solution. — One cause of the vem 
of skepticism which runs through Grecian philosophy. ~— Thalés — pri- 
meval element of water, or the fluid. — Anaximander. — Problem of the 
One and the Many —the Permanent and the Variable. — Xenophanés ~ 
his doctrine the opposite of that of Anaximander. — The Eleatic school. 
Parmenidés and Zeno, springing from Xenophanés — their dialectics — 
their great influence on Grecian speculation. — Pherekydés. — History 
of Pythagoras.— His character and doctrines. — Pythagoras more a 
missionary and schoolmaster than a politician — his political efficiency 
exaggerated by later witnesses. — His ethical training — probably not 
applied to all the members of his order. — Decline and subsequent reno- 
vation of the Pythagorean order.— Pythagoras not merely a borrower, 
but an original and ascendent mind. — He passes from Samos to Kroton. 
— State of Kroton —oligarchical government — excellent gymnastic 
training and medical skill.— Rapid and wonderful effects said to have 
been produced by the exhortations of Pythagoras. — He forms a power. 
ful club, or society, consisting of three hundred men taken from the 
wealthy classes at Kroton. — Political influence of Pythagoras — was an 
indirect result of the constitution of the order.— Causes which led to 
the subversion of the Pythagorean order. —Violences which accompanied 
its subversion. — The Pythagorean order is reduced to a religious and 
philosophical sect, in which character it continues. — War between Syb- 
aris and Kroton.— Defeat of the Sybarites, and destruction of their 
city, partly through the aid of the Spartan prince Dorieus. — Sensation 
excited in the Hellenic world by the destruction of Sybaris. — Gradual 
decline of the Greek power in Italy. — Contradictory statements and ar 
guments respecting the presence of Dorieus. — Herodotus does not men 
tion the Pythagoreans, when he alludes to the war between Sybaris and 
Kroton. — Charondas, lawgiver of Katana, Naxos, Zanklé Rhégium, ete. 

© seneenes ,e8 os ee coco, S4O—419 


HISTORY OF GREECK. 


PART IL. 


CONTINUATION OF HISTORICAL GREECE. 


fist OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


ΠΕΡ CHAPTER XXV. 
GREECE 
VOL. IV. [LLYRIANS, MACEDONIANS, PEONTANS. 


Frontispiece—Creesus on the Funeral Pyre . 
Death of Socrates . : . ° : . 
The Return οὗ the 10,000 under Xenophon 
Aristoteles and his Pupil, Alexander 


Nortuwarp of the tribes called Epirotic lay those more nu- 
merous and widely extended tribes who bore the general name 
of Illyrians; bounded on the west by the Adriatic, on the east by 
the mountain-range of Skardus, the northern continuation of Pin- 
dus,— and thus covering what is now called Middle and Upper ΑἹ- 
bania, together with the more northerly mountains of Montenegro, 
Herzegovina, and Bosnia. Their limits to the north and north-east 


eannot be assigned, but the Dardani and Autariate must have 
reached to the north-east of Skardus and even east of the Ser- 
vian plain of Kossovo; while along the Adriatic coast, Skylax 
extends the race so far northward as to include Dalmatia, treating 
the Liburnians and Istrians beyond them as not Illyrian: yet Ap- 
pian and others consider the Liburnians and Istrians as Illyrian, 
and Herodotus even includes under that name the Eneti, or Ven- 
eti, at the extremity of the Adriatic gulf.| The Bulini, accord- 


' Herodot. i, 196; Skylax, c. 19-27; Appian, Illyric. c. 2, 4, 8. 
The geography of the countries occupied in ancient times by the IIlyri- 
ans, Macedonians, Peonians, Thracians, etc., and now possessed by a great 
diversity of races, among whom the Turks and Albanians retain the prim 
VOL. lV. 1 loc. 


9 HISTORY OF CREECE. 


Skylax, were the northernmost Illyrian tribe: the Amantini, 


ing to x 


immediately northward of the Epirotic Chaonians, were the 


itive barbarism without mitigation, is still very imperfectly understood, 
though the researches of Colonel Leake, of Boué, of Grisebach, and others 
᾿ valuable travels of the latter), have of late thrown much 
Hlow much our knowledge is extended in this direction, may 
raphie, or to O. 


(especially the 
light upon it. ies 
be seen by comparing the map prefixed to Mannert’s Geog ne, © 
Miiller’s Dissertation on the Macedonians, with that in Boué’s l'ravels, 
deficiency of the maps, even as they now stand, is emphat- 
e his Critique des Cartes de la Turquie in 
— by Paul Joseph Schaffarik, the learned 


hut the extreme 
ically noticed by Boué himself (se 
the fourth volume of his Voyage), | 
historian of the Selavonic race, in the preface attached by him to Dr 
Joseph Miiller’s Topographical Account of Albania, — and by Grisebach, 
who in his surveys, taken from the summits of the mountains Peristert and 
Liubatrin, found the map differing at every step from the bearings which 
presented themselves to his eye. It is only since Boué and Grisebach that 
the idea has been completely dismissed, derived originally from Strabo, of ἃ 
straight line of mountains (εὐθεῖα γραμμὴ, Strabo, lib. vii, Fragm. 3) run- 
ning seross from the Adriatic to the Euxine, and sending forth other lateral 
chains in a direction nearly southerly. The mountains of Tarkey in 
Europe, when examined with the stock of geological science which M 
Viquesnel (the companion of Boué) and Dr. Grisebach bring to the task 
are found to belong to systems very different, and to present evidences of 
conditions of formation often quite independent of each other. 

The thirteenth chapter of Grisebach’s Travels presents the best account 
which has yet been given of the chain of Skardus and Pindus : he has been 
the first to prove clearly, that the Ljubatrin, which immediately overhangs 
the plain of Kossovo at the southern border of Servia and Bosnia, is the 
north-eastern extremity of a chain of mountains reaching southward to the 
frontiers of AStolia, in a direction not very wide of N-S.,— with the single 
interruption (first brought to view by Colonel Leake) of the Klissoura of 
Devol, —a complete gap, where the river Devol, rising on the eastern side, 
crosses the chain and joins the Apsus, or Beratino, on the western, — (it 18 
remarkable that both in the map of Boué and in that annexed to Dr. Joseph 
Miiller’s Topographical Description of Albania, the river Devol is made to 
‘oin the Genussus, or Skoumi, considerably north of the Apsus, though 
Colonel Leake’s map gives the correct course.) In Grisebach’s nomenclature 
Skardus is made to reach from the Ljubatrin as its north-eastern extremity, 
south-westward and southward as far as the Klissoura of Devol: south 
of that point Pindus commences, in a continuation, however, of the same 
axis. 

In reference to the seats of the ancient Ilyrians and Macedonians 
Grisebach has made another observation of great importance (vol. ii, p 
121). Between the north-eastern extremity, Mount Ljubatrin, and the 
Klissoura of Devol, there are in the mighty and continuous chain of Skas 


ILLYRIANS, MACEDONIANS, PEONIANS. 3 


southernmost. Among the southern Illyrian tribes are to be 
numbered the Taulantii, — originally the possessors, after wards 
the immediate neighbors, of the territory on which Epidamnus 
was founded. The ancient geographer Hekatzeus! (about 500 


dus (above seven thousand feet high) only two passes fit for an army to 
cross: one near the northern extremity of the chain, over which Grisebach 
himself crossed, from Kalkandele to Prisdren, a very high col, not less than 
five thousand feet above the level of the sea; the other, considerably to the 
southward, and lower as well as easier, nearly in the latitude of Lychnidus, 
or Ochrida. It was over this last pass that the Roman Via Egnatia 
travelled, and that the modern road from Scutari and Durazzo to Bitolia 
now travels. With the exception of these two partial depressions, the 
long mountain-ridge maintains itself undiminished in height, admitting, 
indeed, paths by which a small company either of travellers or of Alba- 
nian robbers from the Dibren, may cross (there is a path of this kind which 
connects Struga with Ueskioub, mentioned by Dr. Joseph Maller, p. 70, 
and some others by Boué, vol. iv, p. 546), but nowhere admitting the passage 
of an army. 

To attack the Macedonians, therefore, an Illyrian army would have to go 
through one or other of these passes, or else to go round the north-eastern 
pass of Katschanik, beyond the extremity of Ljubatrin. And we shall find 
that, in point of fact, the military operations recorded between the two 
nations carry us usually in one or other of these directions. ‘The military 
proceedings of Brasidas (‘Thucyd. iv. 124),—of Philip the son of Amyntas 
king of Macedon (Diodor. xvi, 8),—of Alexander the Great in the first year 
of his reign (Arrian, i, 5), all bring us to the pass near Lychnidus (com- 
pare Livy, xxxii, 9; Plutarch, Flaminin. c. 4); while the Illyrian Dardani 
and Autariatz border upon Pzonia, to the north of Pelagonia, and threaten 
Macedonia from the north-east of the mountain-chain of Skardus. The 
Autariatz are not far removed from the Pzonian Agrianes, who dwelt near 
the sources of the Strymon, and both Autariate and Dardani threatened 
the return march of Alexander from the Danube into Macedonia, after 
his successful campaign against the Getz, low down in the course of that 
great river (Arrian, i, 5). Without being able to determine the precise line 
of Alexander’s march on this occasion, we may see that these two Illyrian 
tribes must have come down to attack him from Upper Meesia, and on the 
eastern side of the Axius. This, and the fact that the Dardani were the 
immediate neighbors of the Psonians, shows us that their seats could not 
have been far removed from Upper Meesia (Livy, xlv, 29): the fauces 
Pelagoniz (Livy, xxxi, 34) are the pass by which they entered Macedonia 
from the north. Ptolemy even places the Dardani at Skopie (Ueskioub) 
‘ni, 9); his information about these countries seems better than that of 
Btrabo. 

' Hekatei Fragm. ed. Klausen, Fr. 66-70; Thucyd. 1, 26. 

Skylax places the Encheleis north of Epidamnus and of the Taulantii 


4 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


B.C.), 18 sufficiently well acquainted with them to specify their 
town Sesar¢thus: he also named the Chelidonii as their northern, 
the Encheleis as their southern neighbors; and the Abri also as 
a tribe nearly adjoining. We hear of the Illyrian Parthini, 
nearly in the same regions, — of the Dassaretii,' near Lake Lych- 
nidus, —of the Penestw, with a fortified town Uscana, north 
of the Dassaretii,—of the Ardizans, the Autariatz, and the 
Dardanians, throughout Upper Albania eastward as far as Upper 
Meesia, including the range of Skardus itself ; so that there were 
some Illyrian tribes conterminous on the east with Macedonians, 
and on the south with Macedonians as well as with Pzonians. 
Strabo even extends some of the Illyrian tribes much farther 
northward, nearly to the Julian Alps. 

With the exception of some portions of what is now called 
Middle Albania, the territory of these tribes consisted principally 
of mountain pastures with a certain proportion of fertile valley, 
but rarely expanding intoa plain. The Autariatz had the rep- 
utation of being unwarlike, but the Ilyrians generally were poor, 
rapacious, fierce, and formidable in battle. They shared with 
the remote Thracian tribes the custom of tattooing their bodies 
and of offering human sacrifices: moreover, they were always 
ready to sell their military service for hire, like the modern Al 


It may be remarked that Hekatawus seems to have communicated much 
information respecting the Adriatic: he noticed the city of Adria at the 
extremity of the Gulf, and the fertility and abundance of the territory 
around it (Fr. 58: compare Skymnus Chius, 384). 

' Livy, xliii, 9-18. Mannert (Geograph. der Griech. und Romer, part vis 
ch. 9, p. 386, seq.) collects the points and shows how little can be ascertained 
respecting the localities of these Ilyrian tribes. 

? Strabo, iv, p. 206. 

8 Strabo, vii, p. 315; Arrian, i, 5, 4-11. So impracticable is the territory, 
and so narrow the means of the inhabitants, in the region called Upper 
Albania, that most of its resident tribes even now are considered as free 
and pay no tribute to the Turkish government: the Pachas cannot extort 
ὁ without greater expense and difficulty than the sum gained would repay. 
Ihe same was the case in Epirus, or Lower Albania, previous to the time 
of Ali Pacha: in Middle Albania, the country does not present the like 
difficulties, and no such exemptions are allowed (Boué, Voyage en Turquie, 
vol. iii, p. 192). These free Albanian tribes are in the same condition with 
regard to the Sultan as the Mysians and Pisidians in Asia Minor with 
regard to the king of Persia in ancient times (Xenophon, Anab. iii, 2, 23). 


EX LENT AND CHARACTER OF THE ILLYRIANS. 5 


banian Schkipetars, in whom probably their blood yet flows, 
though with considerable admixture from subsequent emigrations. 
Of the Illyrian kingdom on the Adriatic coast, with Skodra (Scu- 
tari) for its capital city, which became formidable by its reckless 
piracies in the third century B.c., we hear nothing in the flourishing 
period of Grecian history. The description of Skylax notices in 
his day, all along the northern Adriatic, a considerable and 
standing traffic between the coast and the interior, carried on by 
Liburnians, Istrians, and the small Grecian insular settlements 
of Pharus and Issa. But he does not name Skodra, and prob- 
ably this strong post — together with the Greek town Lissus, 
founded by Dionysius of Syracuse — was occupied after his time 
by conquerors from the interior,' the predecessors of Agron and 
Gentius, — just as the eoast-land of the Thermaic gulf was con- 
quered by inland Macedonians. 

Once during the Peloponnesian war, a detachment of hired 
Illyrians, marching into Macedonia Lynkéstis (seemingly over 
the pass of Skardus a little east of Lychnidus, or Ochrida), tried 
the valor of the Spartan Brasidas ; and on that occasion — as in 
the expedition above alluded to of the Epirots against Akarnaria 
__we shall notice the marked superiority of the Grecian character, 
even in the case of an armament chiefly composed of helots 
newly enfranchised, over both Macedonians and Illyrians,— 
we shall see the contrast between brave men acting in concert 
and obedience to a common authority, and an assailing host of 
warriors, not less brave individually, but in which every man is 
his own master,? and fights as he pleases. The rapid and impet- 
uous rush of the Illyrians, if the first shock failed of its effect, 
was succeeded by an equally rapid retreat or flight. We hear 
nothing afterwards respecting these barbarians until the time of 
Philip of Macedon, whose vigor and military energy first repress- 
ed their incursions, and afterwards partially οἱ nquered them. It 


seems to have been about thie period (400-350 B.c.) that the 


1 Diodor. xv, 13; Polyb. ii, 4. 

2 See the description in Thucydidés (iv. 124-128) ; especially the exhor 
tation which he puts into the mouth of Brasidas,— αὐτοκράτωρ μάχᾳ 
contrasted with the orderly array of Greeks. 

« Tlyriorum velocitas ad excursiones et impetus subitos.” 
(Livy, xxxi, 35." 


6 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


great movement of the Gauls from west to east took place, which 
brought the Gallic Skordiski and other tribes into the revions be- 
tween the Danube and the Adriatic sea, and which probably dis- 
lodged some of the northern Illyrians so as to drive them upon 
new enterprises and fresh abodes. 

What is now called Middle Albania, the Illyrian territory imme- 
diately north of Epirus, is much superior to the latter in produe- 
tiveness.! ‘hough mountainous, it possesses more both of low hill 
and valluy, and ampler as well as more fertile cultivable spaces, 
Epidamnus and Apollonia formed the seaports of this territory 
and the commerce with the southern Illyrians, less barbarous shane 
the northern, was one of the sources? of their great prosperity 
during the first century of their existence,—a prosperity inter 
rupted in the case of the Epidamnians by internal dissensions, 
which impaired their ascendency over their Illyrian neighbors 
and ultimately placed them at variance with their miothioncivy 
Korkyra. The commerce between these Greek seaports and the 
interior tribes, when once the former became strong enouch to 
render violent attack from the latter hopeless, was reciprocally 
beneficial to both of them. Grecian oil and wine were introduced 
among these barbarians, whose chiefs at the same time learned 
to appreciate the woven fabrics,? the polished and carved me- 
tallic work, the tempered weapons, and the pottery, which issued 
from Grecian artisans. Moreover, the importation sometimes of 
salt-fish, and always that of salt itself, was of the greatest im por- 
tance to these inland residents, especially for such localities as 
possessed lakes abounding in fish, like that of Lychnidus. We 
hear of wars between the Autariate and the Ardizi, respecting 
salt-springs near their boundaries, and also of other tribes whon 
the privation of salt reduced to the necessity of submitting t. 


‘See Pouqueville, Voyage en Grace, vol. i, chs. 23 and 24; Grisebach 
Reise durch Rumelien und nach Brussa, vol. ii. pp. 138-139; Boué La 
Turquie en Europe, Géographie Générale, vol. i, pp. 60-65. hi 

5 Skymaus Chius, v, 418-425. 

* Thucydidés mentions the ὑφαντὰ καὶ λεῖα, καὶ ἡ ἄλλη κατασκευὴ, wlich 
the Greek settlements on the Thracian coast sent up to king Seuthés (i 98): 
similar to the ὑφάσμαϑ᾽ ἱερὰ, and to the χεριαρᾶν τρυγόνων δαίδαλα ‘oie 
as presents to the Delphian go’ ‘Eurip. Ion. 1141 ; Pindar, Pyth. δ 46) 


ARTICLES EXCHANGED 7 


the Romans.! On the other hand, these tribes possessed two articles 
of exchange so precious in the eyes of the Greeks, that Polybius 
reckons them as absolutely indispensable,? — cattle and slaves; 


! Strabo, vii, p. 317 ; Appian, Illyric. 17; Aristet. Mirab. Ausc. c. 138. For 
the extreme importance of the trade in salt, as a bond of connection, see 
the regulations of the Romans when they divided Macedonia into four 
provinces, with the distinct view of cutting off all connection between one 
and the other. All commercium and connubium were forbidden between 
them: the fourth region, whose capital was Pelagonia (and which included 
all the primitive or Upper Macedonia, east of the range of Pindus and 
Skardus), was altogether inland, and it was expressly forbidden to draw its 
salt from the third region, or the country between the Axius and the 
Peneius ; while on the other hand the Illyrian Dardani, situated northward 
of Upper Macedonia, received express permission to draw their salt from 
this third or maritime region of Macedonia: the salt was to be conveyed 
from the Thermaie gulf along the road of the Axius to Stobi in Pzonia, 
and was there to be sold at a fixed price. 

The inner or fourth region of Macedonia, which included the modern 
Bitoglia and Lake Castoria, could easily obtain its salt from the Adriatic, 
by the communication afterwards so well known as the Roman Egnatian 
way ; but the communication of the Dardani with the Adriatic led through 
a country of the greatest possible difficulty, and it was probably a great 
convenience to them to receive their supply from the gulf of Therma by 
the road along the Vardar (Axius) (Livy, xlv, 29). Compare the route of 
Grisebach from Salonichi to Scutari, in his Reise durch Rumelien, vol. ii. 

2 About the cattle in Illyria, Aristotle, De Mirab. Ausc. c. 128. There is 
a remarkable passage in Polybius, wherein he treats the importation of 
slaves as a matter of necessity to Greece (iv, 37). The purchasing of the 
Thracian slaves in exchange for salt is noticed by Menander, — θρᾶξ 
εὐγενὴς el, πρὸς ἅλας yopacpévog: see Proverb. Zenob. ii, 12, and Dioge- 


nian, i, 100. 
The same trade was carried on in antiquity with the nations on and near 


Caucasus, from the seaport of Dioskurias at the eastern extremity of the 
Euxine (Strabo, xi, p. 506). So little have those tribes changed, that the 
Circassians now carry on much the same trade. Dr. Clarke’s statement 
earries us back to the ancient world: “'The Circassians frequently sell their 
children to strangers, particularly to the Persians and Turks, and their 
princes supply the Turkish seraglios with the most beautiful of the prison- 
ers of both sexes whom they take in war. In their commerce with the 
Tchernomorski Cossacks (north of the river Kuban), the Circassians bring 
considerable quantities of wood, and the delicious honey of the mountains, 
sewed up in goats’ hides, with the hair on the outside. These articles they 
exchange for salt, a commodity found in the neighboring lakes, of a very 
excellent quality. Salt is more precious than any other kind of wealth te 


8 HIS’) JRY OF GREECE. 


which latter were doubtless procured from Illyria, often in ex 
change for salt, as they were from Thrace and from the Euxine 
and from Aquileia in the Adriatic, through the internal wars of 
one tribe with another. Silver-mines were worked at Damastium 
im Illyria. Wax and honey were probably also articles of ex- 
port, and it is a proof that the natural products of Illyria were 
carefully sought out, when we find a species of iris peculiar to the 
country collected and sent to Corinth, where its root was employ- 
ed to give the special flavor to a celebrated kind of aromatic un- 
guent.' 

Nor was the intercourse between the Hellenic ports and 
Hilyrians inland exclusively commercial. Grecian exiles also 
found their way into Illyria, and Grecian mythes became le- 
calized there, as may be seen by the tale of Kadmus and Har- 
monia, from whom the chiefs of the Illyrian Encheleis professed 
to trace their descent.2 

The Macedonians of the fourth century B.c. acquired, from 
the ability and enterprise of two successive kings, a great per- 
fection in Greek military organization without any of the loftier 
Hellenic qualities. Their career in Greece is purely destructive, 


extinguishing the free movement of the separate cities, and dis- 


the Circassians, and it constitutes the most acceptable present which can 
be offered to them. They weave mats of very great beauty, which find a 
ready market both in Turkey and Russia. They are also ingenious in the 
art of working silver and other metals, and in the fabrication of guns, 
pistols, and sabres. Some, which they offered us for sale, we suspected had 
been procured in ‘Turkey in exchange for slaves. Their bows and arrows 
are made with inimitable skill, and the arrows being tipped with iron, and 
otherwise exquisitely wrought, are considered by the Cossacks and Russians 
as inflicting incurable wounds.” (Clarke's Travels, vol. i, ch. xvi, p. 378.) 

| Theophrast. Hist. Plant. iv, 5,2; ix, 7,4: Pliny, H. N. xiii, 2; xxi, 19: 
Strabo, vii, p. 326. Coins of Epidamnus and Apollonia are found not only 
in Macedonia, but in Thrace and in Italy: the trade of these two cities 
probably extended across from sca to sea, even before the construction of 
the Egnatian way ; and the Inscription 2056 in the Corpus of Boeckh pro- 
claims the gratitude of Odéssus (Varna) in the Euxine sea towards 
citizen of Epidamnus (Barth, Corinthioram Mercatur. List. p. 49; Aristot 
Mirab. Auscult. c. 104). 

3 Herodot. v, 61; viii, 137: Strabo, vii, p. 326. Skylax places the Aide 
of Kadmus and Harmonia among the Illyrian Manii, north of the Enchks 
leis (Diodor. xix, 53; Pausan. ix, 5, 3). 


MACEDONIANS. 9 


arming the citizeu-soldier to make room for the foreign merce 
nary, whose sword was unhallowed by any feelings οἵ patriotism, 
— yet totally incompetent to substitute any good system of central 
or pacific administration. But the Macedonians of the seventh 
and sixth centuries B.C. are an aggregate only of rude inland 
tribes, subdivided into distinct petty principalities, and separated 
from the Greeks by a wider ethnical difference even than the 
Epirots since Herodotus, who considers the Epirotic Molossians 
and Thesprotians as children of Hellen, decidedly thinks the 
contrary respecting the Macedonians.! In the main, however, 
they seem at this early period analogous to the Epirots in char- 
acter and civilization. They had some few towns, but were 
chiefly village residents, extremely brave and pugnacious. The 
customs of some of their tribes enjoined that the man who had 
not yet slain an enemy should be distinguished on some occasions 
by a badge of discredit.? 

‘The original seats of the Macedonians were in the regions east 
of the chain of Skardus (the northerly continuation of Pindus) 
—north of the chain called the Cambunian mountains, which 
connects Olympus with Pindus, and which forms the north-west- 
ern boundary of Thessaly. But they did not reach so far east- 
ward as the Thermaic gulf; apparently not farther eastward than 
Mount Bermius, or about the longitude of Edessa and Berrhoia. 
They thus covered the upper portions of the course of the rivers 
Haliakmén and Erigén, before the junction of the latter with the 
Axius; while the upper course of the Axius, higher than this 
point of junction, appears to have belonged to Pzonia, — though 
the boundaries of Macedonia and Pzonia cannot. be distinctly 
marked out at any time. 

The large space of country included between the above-men- 
tioned boundaries is in great part mountainous, occupied by 
lateral ridges, or elevations, which connect themselves with the 
main line of Skardus. But it also comprises three wide alluvial 
basins, or plains, which are of great extent and well-adapted to 


Herodot. v, 22. 
* Aristot. Polit. vii, 2, 6. That the Macedonians were chiefly village 


residents, appears from Thucyd. ii, 100, iv, 124, though this does not exclude 


some tOWwDS. 


1: 


10 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


cultivation, —- the plain of Tettovo, or Kalkandele (northernmoss 
of the three), which contains the sources and early course of the 
Axius, or Vardar, — that of Bitolia, coinciding to a great degree 
with the ancient Pelagonia, wherein the Erigon flows towards the 
Axius, — and the larger and more undulating basin of Greveno 
and Anaselitzas, containing the upper Haliakmén with its con- 
fluent streams. This latter region is separated from the basin of 
Thessaly by 8 mountainous line of considerable length, but pre- 
senting numerous easy passes.! Reckoning the basin of Thes- 
saly as a fourth, here are four distinct inelosed plains on the east 
side of this long range of Skardus and Pindus, — each generally 
bounded by mountains which rise precipiteusly to an alpine 
height, and each leaving only one cleft for drainage by a single 
river, — the Axius, the Erigén, the Haliakmén, and the Peneius 
respectively. All four, moreover, though of high level above 
the sea, are yet for the most part of distinguished fertility, espe- 
cially the plains of Tettovo, of Bitolia, and Thessaly. The fat, 
rich land to the east of Pindus and Skardus is described as form- 
ing a marked contrast with the light calcareous soil of the Alba- 
nian plains and valleys on the western side. The basins of Bitolia 
and of the Haliakmé6n, with the mountains around and adjoining, 
were possessed by the original Macedonians ; that of Tettovo, on 
the north, by a portion of the Pzonians. Among the four, 
Thessaly is the most spacious; yet the two comprised in the 
primitive seats of the Macedonians, both of them very consider- 
able in magnitude, formed a territory better calculated to nourish 
and to generate a considerable population, than the less favored 
home, and smaller breadth of valley and plain, oceupied by 
Epirots or Illyrians. Abundance οἵ corn easily raised, of pasture 
for cattle, and of new fertile land open to cultivation, would 
suffice to increase the numbers of hardy villagers, indifferent to 
luxury as well as to accumulation, and exempt from that oppres- 
sive extortion of rulers which now harasses the same fine 
regions.” 

! Boué, Voyage en Turquie, vol. i, p.199: “Un bon nombre de 2c!s 
dirigés du nord au sud, comme pour inviter les habitans de passer d’une ἐξ 


ees provinces dans l'autre.” 
2 For the general physical character of the region, both east and west of 


SECTIONS OF THE MACEDONIAN NAME. 1] 


The inhabitants of this primitive Macedonia doubtless differed 
much in ancient times, as they do now, according as they dwelt 
on mountain or plain, and in soil and «imate more or less kind ; 
but all acknowledged a common ethnical name and nationality, 
and the tribes were in many cases distinguished from each other, 
not by having substantive names of their own, but merely by 
local epithets of Grecian origin. Thus we find Elymiote Mace- 
donians, or Macedonians of Elymeia, — Lynkéstz Macedonians, 
or Macedonians of Lynkus, etc. Oreste is doubtless an adjunct 


Skardus, continued by Pindus, see the valuable chapter of Grisebach’s 
Travels above referred to (Reisen, vol. ii, ch. xiii, pp. 125-130; c. xiv, p. 
175; ¢. xvi, pp. 214-216; c. xvii, pp. 244-245). 

Respecting the plains comprised in the ancient Pelagonia, see also the 
Journal of the younger Pouqueville, in his progress from Travnik in Bos- 


nia to Janina. He remarks, in the two days’ march from Prelepe (Prilip) 


‘through Bitolia to Florina, “ Dans cette route on parcourt des plaines lux- 


uriantes couvertes de moissons, de vastes prairies remplies de tréfle, des 
plateaux abondans en pdturages inépuisables, 00 paissent d’innombrables 
troupeaux de beeufs, de chévres, et de menu bétail......Le bié, le miis, et 
les autres grains sont toujours ἃ trés bas prix, a cause de la difficulté des 
débouchés, d’od l'on exporte une grande quantitié de laines, de cotons, de 
peaux d’agneaux, de buffles, et de chevaux, qui passent par le moyen des 
caravanes en Hongrie.” (Pouqueville, Voyage dans la Gréce, tom. ii, ch. 
62, p. 495.) 

Again, M. Boué remarks upon this same plain, in his Critique des Cartes 
de la Turquie, Voyage, vol. iv, p. 483, “La plaine immense de Prilip, de 
Bitolia, et de Florina, n’est pas représentée (sur les cartes) de maniere a ce 
qu’on ait une idée de son étendue, et surtout de sa largeur La plaine 
de Sarigoul est changée en vallée,” etc. The basin of the Haliakmoén he 
remarks to be represented equally imperfectly on the maps: compare also 
his Voyage, i, pp. 211, 299, 300. 

I notice the more particularly the large proportion of fertile plain and 
valley in the ancient Macedonia, because it is often represented (and even 
by O. Miiller, in his Dissertation on the ancient Macedonians, attached to 
his History of the Dorians) as a cold and rugged land, pursuant to the 
statement of Livy (xlv, 29), who says, respecting the fourth region of Ma- 
cedonia as distributed by the Romans, “ Frigida hac omnis, duraque culta, 
et aspera plaga est : cultorum quoque ingenia terre similia habet: ferociores 
eos et accole barbari faciunt, nunc bello exercentes, nunc in pace miscen 
fes ritus suos.” 

This is probably true of the mountaineers included in the region, but. 
is too much generalized. 


12 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


name of the same character. The inhabitants of the more 
northerly tracts, called Pelagonia and Deuriopis, were also por. 
tions of the. Macedonian aggregate, though neighbors of the 
Pwonians, to whom they bore much affinity: whether the Eordi 
and Almopians were of Macedonian race, it is more difficult te 
say. The Macedonian language was different from Illyrian, 
from Thracian, and seemingly also from Pzonian. It was also 
different from Greek, yet apparently not more widel; distinct 
than that of the Epirots, —s:o that the acquisition of Greek was 
comparatively easy to the chiefs and people, though there were 
always some Greek letters which they were incapable of pro- 
nouncing. And when we follow their history, we shall find in 
them more of the regular warrior, conquering in order to main- 
tain dominion and tribute, and less of the armed plunderer, — 
than in the Illyrians, Thracians, or Epirots, by whom it was 
their misfortune to be surrounded. They approach nearer to the 
Thessalians,? and to the other ungifted members of the Hellenic 
family. 

The large and comparatively productive region covered by 
the various sections of Macedonians, helps to explain that in. 
crease of ascendency which they successively acquired over all 
their neighbors. It was not, however, until a late period that 
they became united under one government. At first each section, 
how many we do not know, had its own prince, or chief. The 
Elymiots, or inhabitants of Elymeia, the southernmost portion of 
Macedonia, were thus originally distinct and independent; alse 
the Orestx, in mountain-seats somewhat north-west of the Ely- 


'Polyb. xxviii, 8,9. This is the most distinct testimony which we 
possess, and it appears to me to contradict the opinion both of Mannert 
(Geogr. der Gr. und Rom. vol. vii, p. 492) and of O. Miiller {On the 
Macedonians, sects. 28-36), that the native Macedonians were of Illyrian 
descent. 

The Macedonian military array seems to have been very like that of 
the Thessalians.— horsemen well-mounted and armed. and maintaining 
good order (Thucyd. ii, 101): of their infantry, before the time of Philip 
son of Amyntas, we do not hear much. 

“ Macedoniam, que tantis barbarorum gentibus attingitur, ut semper 
Macedonicis imperatoribus iidem fines imperii fuerint qui gladiorure Δ᾽. 
pilorum.” (Cicero, in Pison. ¢. xvi.) 


SECTIONS OF THE MACEDONIAN NAME. 13 


miots, —the Lynkéste and Eordi, who occupied portiuns of 
territory on the track of the subsequent Egnatian way, between 
Lychnidus (Ochrida) and Edessa,—the Pelagonians,'! with a 
town of the same name, in the fertile plain of Bitolia, — and the 
more northerly Deuriopians. And the early political union was 
usually so loose, that each of these denominations probably in- 


cludes many petty independencies, small towns, and villages. 
That section of the Macedonian name who afterwards swallowed 
up all the rest and became known as The Macedonians, had their 


original centre at Lge, or Edessa, — the lofty, commanding, and 
picturesque site of the modern Vodhena. And though the resi- 
dence of the kings was in later times transferred to the marshy 
Pella, in the maritime plain beneath, yet Edessa was always re- 
tained as the regal burial-place, and as the hearth to which the 
religious continuity of the nation, so much reverenced in ancient 
times, was attached. ‘This ancient town, which lay on the Ro- 
man Eegnatian way from Lychnidus to Pella and Thessalonika, 
formed the pass over the mountain-ridge called Bermius, or that 
prolongation to the northward of Mount Olympus, through which 
the Haliakmon makes its way out into the maritime plain at 
Verria, by a cleft more precipitous and impracticable than that 
of the Peneius in the defile of Tempé. 

This mountain-chain called Bermius, extending from Olympus 
considerably to the north of Edessa, formed the original eastern 
boundary of the Macedonian tribes; who seem at first not to 
have reached the valley of the Axius in any part of its course, 
and who certainly did not reach at first to the Thermaic gulf. 
Between the last-mentioned gulf and the eastern counterforts of 
Olympus and Bermius there exists a narrow strip of plain land 
or low hill, which reaches from the mouth of the Peneius to the 
head of the Thermaic gulf. It there widens into the spacious 
and fertile plain of Salonichi, comprising the mouths of the Ha- 
liakmon, the Axius, and the Echeidérus: the river Ludias, which 
flows from Edessa into the marshes surrounding Pella, and which 
in artiquity joined the Haliakmén near its mouth, has now altered 
its course so as to join the Axius. This narrow strip, between 


! Strabo, lib. vii, Fragm. 90. ed. Tafel. 


14 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the mouths of the Peneius and the Haliakmén, was the original 
abode of the Pierian Thracians, who dwelt close to the foot of 
Olympus, and among whom the worship of the Muses seems te 
have been a primitive characteristic; Grecian poetry teems with 
local allusions and epithets which appear traceable to this early 
fact, though we are unable to follow it in detail. North of the 
Pierians, from the mouth of the Haliakmén to that of the Axius, 
dwelt the Bottiwans.'. Beyond the river Axius, at the lower 


‘ Thave followed Herodotus in stating the original series of occupants on 
the Thermaic gulf, anterior to the Macedonian conquests. Thucydidés in- 
troduces the Ponians between Bottizans and Mygdonians: he says that 
the Pxonians possessed “a narrow strip of land on the side of the Axius, 
down to Pella and the sea,” (ii, 96.) If this were true, it would leave hardly 
any room for the Bottizans, whom, nevertheless, Thueydidés recognizes on 
the coast ; for the whole space between the mouths of the two rivers, Axius 
and Haliakm6n, is inconsiderable; moreover, I cannot but suspect that 
Thucydidés has been led to believe, by finding in the Iliad that the Peo- 
nian allies of Troy came from the Axius, that there must have been old Po- 
nian settlements at the mouth of that river, and that he has advanced the 
inference as if it were a certified fact. The case is analagous to what he 
says about the Beeotians in his preface (upon which O. Miiller has already 
commented); he stated the emigration of the Beotians into Beeotia as 
having taken place after the Trojan war, but saves the historical credit of 
the Homeric catalogue by adding that there had been a fraction of them in 
Beeotia before, from whom the contingent which went to Troy was furnish 
ed (ἀποδασμός, Thucyd. i, 12). 

On this occasion, therefore, having to choose between Herodotus and 
Thucydidés, I prefer the former. Ὁ. Miiller(On the Macedonians, sect. 11) 
would strike out just so much of the assertion of Thucydidés as positively 
contradicts Herodotus, and retain the rest; he thinks that the Peonians 
came down very near to the mouth of the river, but not quite. I confess that 
this does not satisfy me; the more so asthe passage from Livy by which 
he would support his view will appear, on examination, to refer to Peonia 
high up the Axius,--not to a supposed portion of Peonia near the mouth 
(Livy, xlv, 29). 

Again, I would remark that the original residence of the Pierians be- 
tween the Peneius and the Haliakmén rests chiefly upon the authority of 
Thucydidés : Herodotus knows the Pierians in their seats between Mount 
Pangeus and the sea, but he gives no intimation that they had before 
dwelt south of the Haliakmén ; the tract between the Haliakmén and the 
Pencius is by him conc2ived as Lower Macedonia, or Macedonis, reaching 
to the borders of Thessaly (vii, 127-173). I make this remark in reference 
bo sects 7-17 of O. Miiller’s Dissertation, wherein the conception of Herod. 


PEONIANS. 15 


part of its course, began the tribes of the great Thracian race, — 
Myedonians, Krest6nians, Edonians, Bisalte, Sithonians: the 
Mysdonians seem to have been originally the most powerful, 
since the country still continued to be called by their name, Myg- 
donia, even after the Macedonian conquest. These, and various 
other Thracian tribes, originally occupied most part of the coun- 
try between the mouth of the Axius and that of the Strymon; 
together with that memorable three-pronged peninsula which de- 
rived from the Grecian colonies its name of Chalkidiké. It will 
thus appear, if we consider the Bottizans as well as the Pierians 
to be Thracians, that the Thracian race extended originally south- 
ward as far as the mouth of the Peneius: the Bottiwans pro- 
fessed, indeed, a Kretan origin, but this pretension is not noticed 
by either Herodotus or Thucydidés. In the time of Skylax,! 
seemingly during the early reign of Philip the son of Amyntas, 
Macedonia and Thrace were separated by the Strymon, 

We have yet to notice the Pzonians, a numerous and much- 
divided race,— seemingly neither Thracian nor Macedonian nor 
I!lyrian, but professing to be descended from the Teukri of Troy, 
— who oceupied both banks of the Strymon, from the neighbor- 
hood of Mount Skomius, in which that river rises, down to the 
lake near its mouth. Some of their tribes possessed the fertile 
plain of Siris (now Seres),—the land immediately north of 
Mount Pangzeus,— and even a portion of the space through 
which Xerxés marched on his route from Akanthus to Therma. 
Besides this, it appears that the upper parts of the valley of the 
Axius were also occupied by Pzonian tribes; how far down the 
river they extended, we are unable to say. We are not to sup- 
pose that the whole territory between Axius and Strymon was 
continuously peopled by them. Continuous population is not the 
character of the ancient world, and it seems, moreover, that 
while the land immediately bordering on both rivers is in very 


otus appears incorrectly apprehended, and some erroneous inferences found- 
ed upon it. That this tract was the original Pieria, there is sufficient reason 
for believing {compare Strabo, vii, Frag. 22, with Tafel’s note, and ix, p 
410; Livy, xliv, “1: but Herodotus notices it only as Macedonia. 

' Skylax, c.67 The conquests of Philip extenited the boundary beyond 
the Strymon to the Nestus (Strabo, lib. vii. Frag °3. od. Tafel). 


16 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


many places of the richest quality, the spaces between the twe 
are either mountain or barren low hill, — forming a marked 
contrast with the rich alluvial basin of the Macedonian river 
Erigor.! The Pzonians, in their north-western tribes, thus 
bordered upon the Macedonian Pelagonia, —in their northern 
tribes, upon the Illyrian Dardani and Autariate,—in their 
eastern, southern, and south-eastern tribes, upon the Thracians 
and Pierians ;* that is, upon the second seats occupied by the 
expelled Pierians under Mount Pangzus. 

Such was, as far as we can make it out, the position of the 
Macedonians and their immediate neighbors, in the seventh 
century B.c. It was first altered by the enterprise and ability 
of a family of exiled Greeks, who conducted a section of the 
Macedonian people to those conquests which their descendants, 
Philip and Alexander the Great, afterwards so marvellously 
multiplied. 

Respecting the primitive ancestry of these two princes, there 
were different stories, but all concurred in tracing the origin of 
the family to the Herakleid or Temenid race of Argos. Accord- 
ing to one story (which apparently cannot be traced higher than 
Theopompus), Karanus, brother of the despot Pheidon, had 
migrated from Argos to Macedonia, and established himself as 
conqueror at Edessa; according to another tale, which we find 
in Herodotus, there were three exiles of the Temenid race, 
Gauanés, Aéropus, and Perdikkas, who fled from Argos to 
Illyria, from whence they passed into Upper Macedonia, in such 


'See this contrast noticed in Grisebach, especially in referepce to the 
wide but barren region called the plain of Mustapha, no great distance from 
the left bank of the Axius (Grisebach, Reisen, νυ, ii, p. 225; Boué, Voyage 
rol. i, p. 168). i 

For the description of the banks of the Axius (Vardar) and the Strymon, 
see Boud, Voyage en Turquie, vol. i, pp. 196-199. “La plaine ovale de 
Seres est un des diamans de la couronne de Byzance,” etc. He remarks 
how incorrectly the course of the Strymon is depicted on the maps (vol. iv 
p. 482) 

* The expression of Strabo or his Epitomator—rjv Παιονίαν μέχρι 
Πελαγονίας καὶ Πιερίας ἐκτετάσθαι, --τ- seems quite exact, though Tafel finds 
8 difficulty in it. See his Note on the Vatican Fragments of the seventh 
book of Strabo, Fr. 87 The Fragment 40 is expressed much more loosely 
Compare Herodot. v, 13-16, vii, 124; Thucyd. ii, 96 Diodor. xx, 49. 


TEMENID KINGS OF MACEDONIA. hy 


to be compelled to serve the petty king of the town 
the capacity of shepherds. A remarkable prodigy 
happening to Perdikkas, foreshadows the future eminence of his 
family, and leads to his disraissal by the king of Lebea, — fium 
Ἵ he makes his escape with difficulty, by the sudden rise of 
immediately after he had crossed it, so as to become 
impassable by the horsemen who pursued him. To this river, as 
to the saviour of the family, solemn sacrifices were still offered 
by the kings of Macedonia in the time of Herodotus. Perdik 
kas with his two brothers having thus escaped, established him 
self near the spot called the Garden of Midas on Mount Bermius, 
and from the loins of this hardy young shepherd sprang the 
dynasty of Edessa. This tale bears much more the marks of 


poverty as 
Lebza in 


whom h 
a river 


a genuine local tradition than that of Theopompus. And the 
origin of the Macedonian family, or Argeada, from Argos, 
appears to have been universally recognized by-Grecian inquir- 
ers,2 —so that Alexander the son of Amyntas, the contemporary 
of the Persian invasion, was admitted by the Hellanodike to 


contend at the Olympic games as a genuine Greek, though his 
competitors sought to exclude him as a Macedonian. 

The talent for command was so much more the attribute of 
the Greek mind than of any of the neighboring barbarians, that 
we easily conceive a courageous Argeian adventurer acquiring 
to himself great ascendency in the local disputes of the Macedo- 
nian tribes, and transmitting the chieftainship of one of those 
tribes to his offspring. The influence acquired by Miltiadés 
among the Thracians of the Chersonese, and by Phormion among 
the Akarnanians (who specially requested that, after his death, 
his son, or some one of his kindred, might be sent from Athens to 
command them),? was very much of this character: we may add 
the case of Sertorius among the native Iberians. In like man- 
ner, the kings of the Macedonian Lynkéstew professed to be 
descended from the Bacchiade4 of Corinth; and the neighbor- 


Herodot. viii, 137-138. 
? Herodot. v, 22. Argeadse, Strabo, lib. vii, Fragm. 20, ed. Tafel, which 
may probably have been erroneously changed into geade (Justin, vii, 1). 
3 Thucyd. iii, 7; Herodot. vi, 34-37; compare the story of Zalmoxis 
among ‘he Thracians (iv, 94), 
4 Strave, vii, p. 326. ‘ 
VOL, IV. 200, 


18 MISTORY OF GREECE. 


hood of Epidamnus and Apollonia, in both of which doubtless 
members of that great gens were domiciliated, renders this tale 
even more plausible than that of an emigration from Argos. 
The kings of the Epirotic Molossi pretended also to a descent 
from the heroic AZakid race of Greece. In fact, our means of 
knowledge do not enable us to discriminate the cases in which 
these reigning families were originally Greeks, from those iu 
which they were Hellenized natives pretending to Grecian 
blood. 

After the foundation-legend of the Macedonian kingdom, we 
have nothing but a long blank until the reign of king Amyntas 
(about 520-500 B.c.), and his son Alexander, (about 480 B.C.) 
Herodotus gives us five successive kings between the founder 
Perdikkas and Amyntas, — Perdikkas, Argeus, Philippus, Aéro- 
pus, Alketas, Amyntas, and Alexander, — the contemporary and 
to a certain extent the ally of Xerxés.! Though we have no 
means of establishing any dates in this early series, either of 
names or of facts, yet we see that the Temenid kings, beginning 
from a humble origin, extended their dominions successively on 
all sides. They conquered the Briges,2 originally their neigh- 
bors on Mount Bermius,— the Eordi, bordering on Edessa to 
the westward, who were either destroyed or expelled from the 
country, leaving a small remnant still existing in the time of 
Thueydidés at Physka between Strymon and Axius, — the Almo- 
pians, an inland tribe of unknown site, — and many of the inte- 
rior Macedonian tribes who had been at first autonomous. Be 
sides these imland conquests, they had made the still more 
important acquisition of Pieria, the territory which lay between 
Mount Bermius and the sea, from whence they expelled the 
original Pierians, who fownd new seats on the eastern bank of 
the Strymon between Mount Pangieus and the sea. Amyntas 
king of Macedon was thus master of a very considerable territory, 


‘ Herodot. viii, 139. Thucydidés agrees in the number of kings, but does 
not give the names (ii, 100). 

For the divergent lists of the early Macedonian kings, see Mr. Clinton’s 
Fasti Hellenici, vol. ii, p. 221. 

* This may be gathered, I think, from Herodot. vii, 73 and viii, 138. The 
alleged migration of the Briges into Asia, and the change of their name te 
Phryges, is a statement which I do not venture to repeat as credible 


AMYNTAS AND ALEXANUVER. 19 


com) rising the coast of the Thermaic gulf as far north as the 
mouth of the Haliakmén, and also some other territory on the 
same gulf from which the Bottizans had been expelled; but not 
comprising the coast between the mouths of the Axius and the 
Haliakmon, nor even Pella, the subsequent capital, which were 
still in the hands of the bottizans at the period when Xerxés 
passed through.! He possessed also Anthemis, a town and ter- 
ritory in the peninsula of Chalkidiké, and some parts of Mygdo- 
nia, the territory east of the mouth of the Axius; but how much, 
we do not know. We shall find the Macedonians hereafter ex- 
tending their dominion still farther, during the period between 
the Persian and Peloponnesian war. 

We hear of king Amyntas in friendly connection with the 
Peisistratid princes at Athens, whose dominion was in part sus- 
tained by mercenaries from the Strymon, and this amicable 
sentiment was continued between his son Alexander and the 
emancipated Athenians.2 It is only in the reigns of these two 
princes that Macedonia begins to be implicated in Grecian affairs: 
the regal dynasty had become so completely Macedonized, and 
had so far renounced its Hellenic brotherhood, that the claim of 
Alexander to run at the Olympic games was contested by his 
competitors, and he was called upon to prove his lineage before 
the Hellanodike. 


 Herodot. vii, 123. Herodotus recognizes both Bottiseans between the 
Axius and the Haliakmén,—and Bottixans at Olynthus, whom the Mace- 
donians had expelled from the Thermaic gulf, — at the time when Xerxés 
passed (viii, 127). These two statements seem to me compatible, and both 
admissible: the former Bottiseans were expelled by the Macedonians subse- 
quently, anterior to the Peloponnesian war. 

My view of these facts, therefore differs somewhat from that of O. Mtd 
ler (Macedonians, sect. 16). 


" Herodot. i, 59, v, 94; viii, 136. 


HISTORY OF GREECE, 


SmArI Sn Δ ΣΥ͂Σ, 
THRACIANS AND GREEK COLONIES IN THRACE, 


THAT vast space comprised between the rivers Strymon and 
Danube, and bounded to the west by the easternmost Illyrian 
tribes, northward of the Strymon, was occupied by the innumer- 
able subdivisions of the race called Thracians, or Threicians 
They were the most numerous and most terrible race known to 
Herodotus: could they by possibility act in unison or under one 
dominion (he says), they would be irresistible. A conjunction 
thus formidable once seemed impending, during the first years 
of the Peloponnesian war, under the reign of Sitalkés king of 
the Odryse, who reigned from Abdéra at the mouth of the 
Nestus to the Euxine, and compressed under his sceptre a large 
proportion of these ferocious but warlike plunderers ; so that the 
Greeks even down to Thermopyle trembled at his expected ap- 
proach. But the abilities of that prince were not found adequate 
to bring the whole force of Thrace into effective codperation and 
agcression against others. 

Numerous as the tribes of Thracians were, their customs and 
enaracter (according to Herodotus) were marked by great uni- 
formity: of the Getz, the Trausi, and others, he tells us a few 
particularities. And the large tract over which the race were 
spread, comprising as it did the whole chain of Mount Hzemus 
and the still loftier chain of Rhodopé, together with a portion of 
the mountains Orbélus and Skomius, was yet partly occupied by 
level and fertile surface, — such as the great plain of Adrianople, 
and the land towards the lower course of the rivers Nestus and 
tcurus. The Thracians of the plain, though not less warlike, 


were at least more home-keeping, and less greedy of foreign 
plunder, than those of the mountains. But the general character 
of the race presents an aggregate of repulsive features unre 
deemed by the presence of even the commonest domestic affec 


Vol. 4 A 


THRACIANS AND GREEK COLONIES IN THRACE, 2) 


tions! ‘The Thracian chief deduced his pedigree from a god 
called by the Greeks Hermés, to whom he offered up worship 
apart from the rest of his tribe, sometimes with the acceptable 
present of a human victim. He tattooed his body,? and that of 
the women belonging to him, as a privilege of honorable descent. 
he bought his wives from their parents, and sold his children for 
exportation to the foreign merchant: he held it disgraceful to 
cultivate the earth, and felt honored only by the acquisitions of 
war and robbery. The Thracian tribes worshipped deities whom 
the Greeks assimilate to Arés, Dionysus, and Artemis: the great 
sanctuary and oracle of their god Dionysus was in one of the 
lottiest summits of Rhodopé, amidst dense and foggy thickets, -- 
the residence of the fierce and unassailable Satre. To illustrate 
the Thracian character, we may turn to a deed perpetrated by 
the king of the Bisaltee,— perhaps one out of several chiefs of 
that extensive Thracian tribe, — whose territory, between Stry 
mon and Axius, lay in the direct march of Xerxés into Greece, 
and who fled to the desolate heights of Rhodopé, to escape the 
ignominy of being dragged along amidst the compulsory auxiliaries 
of the Persian invasion, forbidding his six sons to take any part 
in it. From recklessness, or curiosity, the sons disobeyed his 
commands, and accompanied Xerxes into Greece; they returned 
unhurt by the Greek spear; but the incensed father, when they 
again came into his presence, caused the eyes of all of them to 
be put out. Exultation of suecess manifested itself in the 
Thracians by increased alacrity in shedding blood ; but as war- 
riors, the only occupation which they esteemed, they were not 
less brave than patient of hardship, and maintained a good front, 
under their own peculiar array, against forces much superior in 
all military efficacy... It appears that the Thynians and Bithy- 


' Mannert assimilates the civilization of the Thracians to that of the 
Gauls when Julius Cesar invaded them,—a great injustice to the latter, 
in my judgment (Geograph. Gr. und Rom. vol. vii, p. 23). 

3 Cicero, De Officiis, ii, 7. “Barbarum compunctum notis Threiciis.” 
Fiutarch (De Sera Numin. Vindict. c. 13, p. 558) speaks as if the women 
only were tattooed, in Thrace: he puts a singular interpretation upon it, as 
& continuous punishment on the sex for having slain Orpheus. 

3 For the Thracians generally, see Herodot. v, 3-9, vii, 110, viii, 116, ix, 
119; Thucyd. ii, 100, vii, 29-30; Xenophon, Anabas. vii, 2, 38, and the 


22 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


nians,| on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, perhaps also the 
Mysians, were members of this great ‘Thracian race, which was 
more remotely connected, also, with the Phryeians. And iP 
whole race may be said to present a character more Asiatic sii 
Suropean, especially in those ecstatic and maddening πάω 
rites, W hich prevailed not less among the Edonian Pheacians thas 
in the mountains of Ida and Dindymon of Asia, though with 
some important differences. ‘The Thracians served to. ἄμα 
the Greeks with mercenary troops and slaves, and the valaben 
of Grecian colonies planted on the coast had the effent of ὡ» 
tially softening the tribes in the immediate vicinity, Aine 
whose chiefs and the Greek leaders intermarriages gen is 
unfrequent. But the tribes in the interior seem to have voltae 
their savage habits with little mitigation, so that the lancuage in 
which ‘Tacitus? deseribes them is an apt continuation Xs thea of 
Herodotus, though coming more than five centuries after. | 
To note the situation of each one among these many different 
tribes, in the large territory of Thrace, which is even now so 
imperfectly known and badly mapped, would be μοθννμινν 
and, indeed, impracticable. I shall proceed to mention the pine 
cipal Grecian colonies which were formed in the aioe 
noticing occasionally the particular Thracian tribes with which 
they came in contact. 
The Grecian colonies established on the Thermaic gulf, as well 
as in the peninsula of Chalkidiké, emanating princip: : ie 
Chalkis and Eretria, though we do μοι know a atten 
ug er precise epoch, 
appear to have been of early date, and probably preceded the 
time when the Macedonians of Edessa extended their con "οἷς 
to the sea. At that early period, they would find the Siasiees 
still between the Peneius and Haliakmén, — also a number of 
petty Thracian tribes throughout the broad part of the Chalkidie 
peninsula; they would find Pydna a Pierian town, and Therma 
Anthemus, Chalastra, ete. Mygdonian. 
The most ancient Grecian colony in these regions seems to 


seventh book of the Anabasis generally, which describes the relations ul 
Xenophon and the ‘Ten Thousand Greeks with Seuthés the Thracias 
prince. 

: Xenopb. Anab. vi, 2, 17; Herodot. vii, 

5 Tacit. Annal. ii, 66; iv, 46 


CITIES ON THE CHALKIDIC reNINSULA 23 


hare been Methdné, founded by the Eretrians in Pieria; nearly 
(if we may trust a statement of rather suspicious 
the date itself is noway improbable) as Korkyra 
It was a 


at the same time 
character, though the 
was settled by the Corinthians, (about 730-720 B.c.)! 
little to the north of the Pierian town of Pydna, and separated 
Bottiwan town of Aldérus, which lay 
We know very little about Methoné, 
and its Hellenism until the 


by about ten miles from the 
north of the Haliakmén.* 

except that it preserved its autonomy 
time of Philip of Macedon, who took and destroyed it. But 
thouch, when once established, it was strong enough to main- 
tain itself in spite of conquests made all around by the Macedo- 
nians of Edessa, we may fairly presume that it could not have 
been originally planted on Macedonian territory. Nor in point 
of fact was the situation peculiarly advantageous for Grecian 
colonists. inasmuch as there were other maritime towns, not 
hood, — Pydna, Alorus, Therma, Chalas- 


(;recian, in its neighbor 
of advantage for a Grecian colony was, 


tra: whereas the point 

to become the exclusive seaport for inland indigenous people. 
The colonies, founded by Chalkis and Eretria on all the three 

peninsula, were numerous, though 


projections of the Chalkidic 
We do not know how far these 


for a long time inconsiderable. 
projecting headlands were occupied before the arrival of the 
settlers from Eubcea,—an event which we may probably place 


at some period earlier than 600 B.c.; for after that period 


Chalkis and Eretria seem rather on the decline, — and it appears 
too, that the Chalkidian colonists in Thrace aided their mother- 
city Chalkis in her war against Eretria, which cannot be muck 
later than 600 s.c., though it may be considerably earlier. 

The range of mountains which crosses from the Thermaic te 
the Strymonic gulf, and forms the northern limit of the Chalki- 


dic peninsula, slopes down towards the southern extremity, so as 


to leave a considerable tract of fertile land between the Tordnaic 
and the Thermaic gulfs, including the fertile headland -alled 
Palléné, — the westernmost of those three prongs of Chalkidiké 
which run out into the AXgean. Of the other two prongs, or pro 
jections, the easternmost is terminated by the sublime Mount 
Athos, which rises out of the sea as a precipitous rock six thou 


“πων 


3 Skylax, c. 67. 


Δ Plutarch, Quest. Grae pw 293, 


94 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


sand four hundred feet in height, connected with the mainiand 
by a ridge not more than half the height of the mountain itself, 
yet still high, rugged, and woody from sea to sea, le saving only 
little occasional spaces fit to be occupied or cultivated. The 
intermediate or Sithonian headland is also hilly and woody, though 
in ἃ less degree, — both less inviting and less productive than 
Ρ alléné. 

/Eneia, near that cape which marks the entrance of the inner 
Thermaic gulf, — and Potidea, at the narrow is thmus of Palléné 
— were both founded by Corinth. Between these two towns tae 
the fertile territory called Krusis, or Krosswa, forming in after 
limes a part of the domain of ( Nynthus, but in the sixth century 
B.C. occupied by petty Thracian townships.2. Within Palléné 
were the towns of Mendé, a colony from Eretria, — Ski ione, 
which, having no legitimate mother-cit y traced its origin to Pelle- 
nian warriors returning from ΤΙ roy, — Aphytis, Neapolis, «2: gé, 
Therambos, and Sané,3 either v holly or partly colonies on 
Eretria. In the Sithonian peninsula were Assa, Pilérus. Sinecus 
Sarté, Tordné, Galépsus, Se ‘rmylé, and Mekyberna; all or Dank 
of these seem to have been of Chalkidie origin, But at the 
head of the Torénaic gulf (which lies between Sithonia and Pal- 
lené) was yew = surrounded by an extensive and 
fertile plain. Original lly ἃ Bottizan town, Ol; nthus will be seen 
xt the time of ses Versian invasion to pass into the hands οὐ the 
Chalkidian Greeks,4 and gradually to incorporate with itself sever 
al of the petty neighboring establishments be ‘longing to that race : 
whereby the Chalkidians ac quired that marked Εἰ that ace 
in the peninsula which they ret: ained, even against the efforts of 
Ai until the d: ys of Philip ot Macedon. 


or the description of ¢ ‘halki liké, see Grrisebach’s 
16, and Leake, Travels in Northern Greece. vol. iii, ch. 

If we read attentive y the description of Chalkidiké as civen by Skvlax 
(c. 67), we shall see that he did not conceive it as three-pronged, but as 
terminating only in the peninsula of Palléné. with Potidwa at its isthmus 

* Herodot. vii, 123 : Skymnus Chins, v, 627 
_* Strabo, x, Ρ. 447; Thucyd. iv, 120-123; Pompon. Mela, ii, 2: Herodot 
vil, 123. ἈΠ 

4 Herodot. vii, 368] viii, 127, Stephanus Byz. (v, Παλλήνη) gives us 
some idea of the mythes of the lost Greek writers. Hegesippus and Thea ’ 
enés about Palléné. i . 


AKANTHUS, STAGEIRA, ETC. 25 


On the scanty spaces, admitted by the mountainous promontory, 
or ridge, ending in Athos, were planted some Thracian and some 
Pelasgic settlements of the same inhabitants as those who occu- 
pied Lemnos and Imbros; a few Chalkidic citizens being domici- 
1 with them, and the people speaking both Pelasgic and 


liated 
But near the narrow isthmus which joins this promon- 


Hellenic. 


tury to Thrace, and along the north-western coast of the Strymo- 


nic guif, were Grecian towns of conside1 ‘able importance, — 
Sané, Akanthus, Stageira, and Argilus, all colonies from Andros, 
which had itself been colonized from Eretria.! Akanthus and 
Staceira are said to have been founded in 654 B.c. 

Following the southern coast of Thrace, from the mouth of the 
river Strymén towards the east, we may doubt whether, in the 
year 560 B.C., any cons siderable independent colonies of Greeks 
had yet been formed upon it. The Ionic colony of Abdéra, east- 
ward of the mouth of the river Nestus, formed from Teds in 
Ionia, is of more recent date, though the Klazomenians® had 
begun an unsuccessful settlement there as sarly as the year 651 
B.C. while Dikxa—the Chian settlement of Maréneia — and 
the Lesbian settlement of Anus at the mouth of the Hebrus, 
are of unknown date. The important and valuable territory 
near the mouth of the Strymén, where, after many ruinous fail- 
ures,4 the Athenian colony of Amphipolis afterwards maintained 
itself, was at the date here mentioned possessed by Edonian 
Thracians and Pierians: the various Thracian tribes, — Satre, 
Edonians, Dersweans, Sapzans, Bistones, Kikones, Peetians, ete. 
— were in force on the principal part of the tract between Stry- 
mon and Hebrus, even to the sea-coast. It is to be remarked, 
however, that the island of Thasus, and that of Samothrace, 
each possessed what in Greek was called a Perza,>® —a strip of 
the adjoining mainland cultivated and defended by means of for- 


' Thucyd. iv, 84, 103,109. See Mr. Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici, ad ann. 
654 B.C 

Ι Solinus, x x, 10. 

3 Herodot. i, 168- vii, 58-59, 109; Skymnus Chius, v, 675. 

" Thucyd. i 100, iv. 102; Herodat. v, 11. Large quantities of corn are 
now exported from this territory to Constantinople (Leake, North. Gr. vol 
tii, ch. 25, p. 172). 

* Herodot. vii, 108-109 ; Thucy 1. i, 101 

VOL. IV. 2 


26 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


tified posts, or small towns: probably, these occupations are of 
very ancient date, since they seem almost indispensable as a 
means of support to the islands. For the barren ‘Thasus, espe- 
cially, merits even at this day the uninviting description applied 
to it by the poet Archilochus, in the seventh century B.c., —“ an 
ass’s backbone, overspread with wild wood :”! so wholly is it com- 
posed of mountain, naked or wooded, and so scanty are tlhe 
patches of cultivable soil left in it, nearly all close to the sea- 
shore. This island was originally occupied by the Phenicians, 
who worked the gold mines in its mountains with a degree of in- 
dustry which, even in its remains, excited the admiration of Her- 
odotus. How and when it was evacuated by them, we do not 
know ; but the poet Archilochus? formed one of a body of 
Parian colonists who planted themselves on it in the seventh 
century B.c., and carried on war, not always successful, against 
the Thracian tribe ealled Saians: on one occasion, Archilochua 
found himself compelled to throw away his shield. By their 
mines and their possessions on the mainland (which contained 
even richer mines, at Skapt@ Hyle, and elsewhere, than those in 
the island) he ‘Chasian Greeks rose to considerable power and 
population. And as they seem to have been the only Greeks, 
until the settlement of the Milesian Histieus on the Strymén 
about 510 B.c., who actively eceneerned themselves in the mining 


districts of Thrace opposite to their island, we cannot be sur- 


d. Schneidewin. 
ΤΥ of this description, even after the lapse of two 
be seen in the Travels of Grisebach, vol. 
Denkwiirdigkeiten des Orients, Th. 
om the sea justifies the title "Hepin ((Επο- 


, Ἐπ. 


᾿ . 256; Steph. Byz. Oaccoc). 

‘Thasus (now Tasso + at present a population of about six thou- 
and Greeks, dispersed in twelve small villages; it exports some good ship- 
of which there is abundance on the island, together 
with some olive oil and wax; but it cannot grow corn enough even for this 
small population. No mines either are now, or have been for a long time. 


timber, principally fir, 


in work. 
* Archiloch. Fragm. 5, ed. Schneidewin ; Aristophan. Pac. 1298, with tha 
Scholia; Strabo, x, p. 487, xii, p. 549; Thacvd. ἐν. 104. 


ISLAND OF THASUS. a 


prised to hear that their clear surplus revenue before the Persian 
onquest, about 493 B.C., after defraying the charges of their 
overnment without any taxation, amounted to the large sum of 
ἐν o hundred talents, sometimes even to three hundred talents, ip 
each year (from forty-six thousand to sixty-six thousand pounds). 

On the long peninsula called the Thracian Chersonese there 
may probably have been small Grecian settlements at an early 


date, though we do not know at what time either the Milesian 


settlement of Kardia, on the western side of the isthmus of that 
peninsula, near the Aigean sea,— or the /olic colony of Sestus on 
the Hellespont, — were founded; while the Athenian ascendency 
in the peninsula begins only with the migration of the first Milti- 
during the reign of Peisistratus at Athens. The Samian 


oe ¥ 
noCcsS 


, 


᾽ . Ξ 4 ace > ah wen (ft ] ᾽ 
colony of Perinthus, on the northern coast of the Propontis,! 18 


poken of as ancient in date, and the Megarian colonies, Selym- 
bria and Byzantium, belong to the seventh century B.C.: the 
latter of these two is assigned to the 30th Olympiad (657 B.c.), 
neighbor Chalkédén, on the opposite coast, was a few 
vears earlier. The site of Byzantium in the narrow strait of 
the Bosphorus, with its abundant thunny-fishery,? which both 
employed and nourished a large proportion of the poorer freemen, 
was alike convenient either for maritime traffic, or for levying 


and its 


contributions on the numerous corn ships which passed from the 
Euxine into the /2eean; and we are even told that it held 
a considerable number of the neighboring Bithynian Thracians 
as tributary Pericki. Such dominion, though probably main- 
tained during the more vigorous period of Grecian city life, 
became in later times impracticable, and we even find the Byzan- 
tines not always competent to the defence of their own small 
surrounding territory. The place, however, will be found to 
possess considerable importance during all the period of this 
history.3 

The Grecian settlements on the inhospitable south-western 
coast of the Euxine, south of the Danube, appear never to have 


Skymnus Chius, 699-715; Plutarch, Quest. Gree. ¢. 57. See M. Raoul 
Rochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecques chs. xi-xiv, vol. ili, pp. 273-298 
5 Aristot. Polit. iv, 4, 1. 
? Polyb. iv, 39, Phylarch. Fragm. 10, ed. Dide* 


28 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


aig any consideration: the principal traffic of Greek ships 

in that sea Ν nt 5 

at sea tended to more northerly ports, on the banks of i 
κι « 5 1 


Borysthenés T 
ys ss and in the Tauric Chers 
ee θαι auric Chersonese. Istria was founded 
ἢ : ᾿ > £ ᾧ »« hd » > » » Ὶ 

4 16 southern embouchure of the Danube 


— Apollonia and Odéssus on the same coast. more to the soutl 
Ι , * » ω Ὁ Ss J ὙΦ 
all probably between 600-560 μ5.0 bs 


2 


The Meo: οἱ i 
i | Megarian or Byz: 
tine co Γ _— "- ὶ yZan- 
Joni wie of Mesambria, seems to have been later than the 
onic revolt; of Kallatis : gi ἡ 
τ Ἷ of Kallatis the age is not known. Tomi north of 
KRallatis and south of Istria. is “7 
; stria, is renowned as the pl . 7 
henighment.| ‘The ni : as the place of Ovid's 
nt. The picture which he gives of th: aun 
spot, which enjoyed but littl ae Τὰ lab uninviting 
I ἰ nl ut little truce from the neighborhood of the 
nurderous Lato nny ga ie ills: ; 
} is Getz, explains to us sufficiently why these towns 
acquired little or no importance. i Ι ἡ 


jy . ὦ " i ἥ Ν 
16. islands of Lemnos and Imbros. in the Ecean, wel 
. ΒΟΌΣ, were al 


this early period i Ἧϊ 
arty iod occupied by Tvrrheni: ; 
| y Tyrrhenian Pelasgi, were con- 


quere ( > Persiz : ; 
| d by the Persians about 508 B.c.. and seem to have ] ] 
me 86 ave passer 


into the power of the | ᾿ ; 
rid er of the Athenians at the time when Ionia revolted 
‘Or 1e years ῳ " . " m - » 
-ersians. If the mythical or poetical stories respecting 


these Tvrrheni: Oe A 
Ib rhenian Pelasgi contain any basis of truth they must 


have bee ace of 

é been a race of buccaneers not less rapacious than 

t one Ϊ 2 λῶ Ω Palacaot nil | nine 

A e time, these Pelasgi seem also to have possessed Samo 
S ὥς, μ We si 


thrace Γ or 

ν γῆμαι but how or when they were supplanted by Greeks, w 
nd no trustworthy ace a 

sch trustworthy account ; the population of Samothrace at 
16 time of the Persian war was Jonic.2 


᾿ ‘kymnus Cl i > ) yt] \ | ) 
, . r 11}. ‘ 20 iA ; Herodot il oe ν 
ne 5 " 5 ll, Ow, Vi. by " i I ἢ] ; 
ἰ: » ἡ vill δ . Ia 7. ’ ‘ Γ᾿ ~— ie Γ on ; 
Sky a | i tw) ἢ N annert, Geograph. Gr. Rom. vol. Vil, ch. & pp 126 140 


ae inscription in Boec ch’s Collection proves the existence of a penta; 

bria, Beran ΤῊΝ cities on this coast. Tomi, iMetin. Wisin: 
4 bnia, are presumed by Blaramberg to have | 

union. See Inscript. No. 2056 c. | 
Synce ye 218), pl 

ame ag (p. 213), places the foundation of I:tria sonsiderably 
* Herodot. viii, 90. 


: 
elonged to thii 


EYRENE AND BARKA.— HESPERIDES, 


CHAPTER XXVII. 
KYRENE AND BARKA.—HESPERIDES. 


mentioned, in a former chapter, that 
, about the middle of the seyenth 
prohibitions which had excluded 
rom his country. In his reign, Grecian mer- 
cenaries were first established in Egypt, and Grecian traders ad- 
er certain regulations, into the Nile. ‘The opening 
of this new market emboldened them to traverse the direct sea 
which separates Kréte from Egypt, —a@ dangerous voyage with 
vessels which rarely ventured to lose sight of land, — and seems 
le them acquainted with the neighboring coast of 

Nile and the gulf called the Great Syrtis. 
foundation of the important colony called 


Ir has been already 
Psammetichus king of Egypt 
century B.C., first removed those 
Grecian commerce 1 


mitted, und 


to have first mat 
Liby a. between the 
Hence arose the 
Kyrene. 

As in the case 
both the foundation and the early history are very im- 
The date of the event, as far as can be made 


of most other Grecian colonies, so in that of 


Kyrene, 
perfectly known. 
out amidst much contrac 
Théra was the mother-city, herself a colony from Lacedzmon ; 
the settlements formed in Libya became no inconsiderable 


liction of statement, was about 630 B.C. I 


and 
ornaments to the Dorian name in Hellas. 

According to the account of a lost historian, Meneklés,? — 
the inhabitants of Théra led to that 


political dissension among 
and the more ample legend- 


emigration which founded Kyreneé ; 
Herodotus collected, partly from Therzan, 
formants, are not positively inconsistent 
indicate more particularly bad 
Both of them dwell em- 


ary details which 
partly trom Kyrenan in 
with this statement, though they 
S€asons, distress, and over-population. 
phatically on the Delphian oracle as the instigator as well as the 


of the era of Kyréné in Thrige, Historia Cyrénés 
2. 23. 24. where the different statements are noticed and compared. 


- 


! See the discussion 


che. 2 
® Schol. ad Pindar. Pyth. iv 


80 TORY OF 
HISTORY OF GREECE. 


directc i ne 19] ts ἵ ~~ ὧν] ὶ | re } 4 Ὥς ] 
4 II Orv the fir I en < l I r - 
- i an S, V i < ἡ Ι 
Θ » OSC Ρ ) “ Cri: lon OT a (11: ὌΝ 


OUS VOVave : é m 
aig, - = an unknown country were very dificult 1 
come. 0th of them affi Ἴ ΣΝ " ἜΤ Ὁ mee 
1 affirmed (ἢ: eae 
selected and consecrated to t] » ra original cekist Battus was 
‘ «τοι 0 the work by tl a 

biel i ‘ y the divine ¢ 
‘Hind Batins the « J 2 command 
call Ι Mi attus the son of Polymnéstus, of the mythical ἢ 1 
‘alied Minyz. ἢ ᾿ ͵ ’ Mythical oreec 
al 2 But on other points there was complete diver 
a een 10 two stori i "ἢ "κε ay’ 

’ " 168, ant ν᾽ ΓΟ. Ἢ : ] 
tow n was partly ms ] Ϊ Ι , d the Ky rena ans themselves. whose 
Y peopled by emigrants from Kréte, described t] 

+, described the 


, 17" Ὶ 2 
mother of Battus as daughter of Etearchus 


gence 


town of Axus.! Bf prince of the Kret: 
th Me 1S, ‘ ᾿ ‘ * ἂ . etlan 
riba Battus had an umpediment in his speech, and it 
as On his intreating fr ᾿ Γ “Cal, 4ΠᾺῚ1 
treating trom the Delphian oracle a cure fer this 1 
Π ils 1Π- 


firmity tl 
! Li A Peacoeive εὐ . 
᾿ iy : he received directions [0 wo as “a eatt] } F 
ΕΙΣ to wabya.” i "hee ll oa & VALLIC-Dreeding 
: ya. he suffering Therpanc ἢ 
ASSIST him, but rie it] men | Φ5 Phe ra ADS were directed ΐ 
ld tl ΠΟΘΙ he nor they knew where Liby 
could they find any resi αἰ ἢ τ ἘΝ Hr 
) any resident in Kr ; il 
ὶ rete wl hs jan wink . 
a ee ον" 10 had ever visited jt 
|Π ἢ Wis the limited reach of < or Vil 1{{ dl δὲν 


υ 


of theo Pea ae wreclan navigation to the south 

ὉΒᾺΝ ‘ty am ven a century after the foundation of Ss 
_— co Sm y pr Se saela - [ Syra- 
shidieick ἃ wh prolonged inquiry, they discovered a 1 
Over in e¢ate woe the ᾿ i pol i ] a man 

dp ay purple shellfish, ἢ: i 1: 

who as y s * 1amed Κι I’ λα... 
aid that he had been once forced by ssi 


the isl; * Di, stress of weather 
island of Platea, close to the shores of J eee 


ibya, : he si 
peta agi nye abya, and on the side 
ston oved trom the western limit of Egypt. Some ΤΊ 
s being se f ᾿ “" Ὁ ν-- ih ᾿ he . ἊΨ" a 1erie- 
: ε nt along with Kordébius to inspect this island, left hi 
ni ii gg ΣΝ a igi i S isiand, leit him 
provisions, and retur Thé 
a ͵“͵" , : eturned to Théra to con- 
oe nigrants. From the seven districts into which ΤῊ | 
as divided, emigrants were drafted for ee 


beine single : the colony, one : ” 
2 singled out by lot from the diff brother 


co  "" erent numerous families. 
tir return to Platea deferred, that the 
* < 8 yr’ 


η kK ¥ 4 ‘ ᾿ 
lu \ xX lau sted, and he W ) only εὐ να d f 
᾽ο | οἱ ΟῚ »b , t ( } 4 < ro! ] 


bial \ εἰ 1oOn ry I le at ( ι( enta arrival ot a We ΠῚ] in "t)] 
I | ] l i | 

A < 
tontrary winds out ot het 


VIS- 


ei p, driven by 
lxeus, the mast ] course on the voyage to Egypt. K 
6 115. > master thie chin fwhnes 2 sli “Ὁ. ° O- 
"api a his ship (whose immense profits made by tl 
Ν᾿ ) ace to | artessu | i ᾿ “ aie’ Vv 12 
. ‘ ‘ mye > have been notice ἤ ων ᾿ Ρ 
on . " i ced in a tor " 
supplie | ΤῊΝ a former chapter) 
ot I ᾿ νὰ νἱὰ provisions for a vear an act of ii ay 
which is said to Lave lai ” year, —an act of kindness 
good teeling αἱ et iy the first foundation of the alliance an l 
Pe ir a terwar ῷ Ι rev: ; « ᾿ ss ( 
5 ‘ revalent betw The - 
S tween Thera. Kvréné 
amos. f ) ra, mvrene. « 
7 At length the expected emigrants reach en — 
5 5 reached the island, 


Ι ΤΊΙ h 
Herodot. ἣν. 70.154 


SITUATION OF KYRENE. 8) 


ult, that they onee 


having found the voyage so perilous and diffic 
only prevented 


returned in despair to Thera, where they were 
The band which accompanied Battue 


by force from relanding. 
d ships, with fifty 


was all conveyed in two pentekonters, — arme 
rowers each. 
which, in the d 
the entire island of Platea.! 

That island, however, though near to Libya, and supposed by 
the colonists to be Libya, was not 80 in reality: the commands 
of the oracle had not been literally fulfilled. Accordingly, the 
settlement carried with it nothing but hardship for the space οἵ 
1 Battus returned with his companions to Delphi, to 
d a bitter disappoint- 
nswer, “ lf 


Thus humble was the start of the mighty Kyréne, 
ays of Herodotus, covered a city-area equal te 


two years, alt 
in that the promised land had prove 
The god, through his priestess, returned for a 
you, who have never visited the cattle-breeding Libya, know it 
better than I, who fave, 1 greatly admire your cleverness.” 
Again the inexorable mandate forced them to return; and this 
lanted themselves on the actual continent of Libya, 
land of Platea, in a district called Aziris, 
by fine woods, and with a running 
urs of residence in this spot, they 
ans to abandon 


eempla 


went. 


lime they p 
nearly over against the is 
surrounded on both sides 
stream adjoining. After six ye 
rsuaded by some of {μθ΄ indigenous Liby 
ey should be conducted to a better 
brought them to the actual site of 
is the place for you to 
The road through which 


were pe 
it, under the promise that th 
situation: and their guides now 
Kyréné, saying, “ Here, men of Hellas, 
well, for here the sky is perforated.”* 

ssed had led through the tempting region of Irasa with its 
guides took the precaution to carry 
in order that they might remain igno- 


they pa 
fountain Thesté, and their 
them through it by night, 
rant of its beauties. 

Such were the preliminary 
brought Battus and his colonists to Kyréne. 
n outlying portion of the eastern territory of 
e trace in the story just related au 


steps, divine and human, which 
In the time of Her- 


odotus, Irasa was a 
this powerful city. But w 


1 Herodot. iv, 15». 
2 Herodot. iv, 158. ἐνθαῦτα yap ὁ οὐρανὸς TETPHTAL. 
scribed to the Byzantian envoys, on occasion of the vaunts of Lysimachus 


Plutarch, De Fortuna Alexandr. Magn. c. 3, p. 338). 


Compare the jest 


39 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


opinion prevalent among his Kyrenzan informants, that Irasa 
with its fountain Theste was a more inviting position than Ky- 
réné with its fountain of Apollo, and ought in prudence to have 
been originally chosen ; out of which opinion, according to the 
general habit of the Greek mind, an anecdote is engendered and 
accredited, explaining how the supposed mistake was committed. 
What may have been the recommendations of Irasa, we are not 
permitted to know: but descriptions of modern travellers, no less 
than the subsequent history of Kyréné, go far to justify the 
choice actually made. The city was placed at the distance οἵ 
about ten miles from the sea, having a sheltered port called 
Apollonia, itself afierwards a considerable town, — it was about 
twenty miles from the promontory Phykus, which forms the 
northernmost projection of the African coast, nearly in the lony- 
itude of the Peloponnesian Cape Tznarus (Matapan). Kyréne 
was situated about eighteen hundred feet above the level of the 
Mediterranean, of which it commanded a fine view, and from 
which it was conspicuously visible, on the edge of a range of 
hills which slope by successive terraces down to the port. The 
soil immediately around, partly calcareous, partly sandy, is de- 
scribed by Captain Beechey to present a vigorous vegetation and 
remarkable fertility, though the ancients considered it inferior in 
this respect both to Barka! and Hesperides, and still more infe- 
rior to the more westerly region near Kinyps. But the abun- 
dant periodical rains, attracted by the lofty heights around, and 
justifying the expression of the “ erforated sky,” were even of 
greater importance, under an Ania sun, than πω 
richness of 5011.3 The maritime regions near Kyréné and Barka, 


' Herodot iv, 198. 

“ See, about the productive powers of Kyréné and its surrounding region 
> 1 ᾽ ᾽ ἘΖ, - 4 { Me “4 “ 2 
erodot. lv, 199; Kallimachus (himself a Kyrenewan), Hymn. ad Apoll 

πα τε the note of Spanheim; Pindar, Pyth. iv, with the Scholia passim ; 
1odor. ili, 49; Arrix ica, xiii, 1: strab ii 37 \yré 

io ; Arri ἴῃ Indica, xliii, 13. Strabo (xvii, p. 837) saw Kyréné 

m the sea in sailing by, and was struck with the view: he does not 

appear to have landed. 

Mi hac of modern observation in that country are given in the Viag- 
. a ἔνι, * . “ἐκ. "is! aie φ 

BIO ὁ ella Cella and in the exploring expedition of Captain Beechey ; see 

ham summary in the History of the Barbary States, by Dr. Russel] 
in yur ν 1 18 - ᾿ ω ν - ry. " ὐ mr - C 

gh, 1835), ch. v, pp. 160-171. The chapter on this subject (c. 6! 


FERTILITY OF THE KYRENAIC REGION. 33 


and Hesperides, produced oil and wine as well as corn, while the 
extensive district between these towns, composed of alternate 
mountain, wood, and plain, was eminently suited for pasture and 
cattle-breeding ; and the ports were secure, presenting conve- 
niences for the intercourse of the Greek trader with Northerr 
Africa, such as were not to be found along all the coasts of the 
Great Syrtis westward of Hesperides. Abundance of applica- 
ble land, — great diversity both of climate and of productive 
eeason, between the sea-side, the low hill, and the upper moun- 
tain, within a small space, so that harvest was continually going 
on, and fresh produce coming in from the earth, during eight 
months of the year, — together with the monopoly of the valua- 
ble plant called the Silphium, which grew nowhere except in the 


Kyrenaic region, and the juice of which was extensively de- 


manded throughout Greece and Italy, — led to the rapid growth 
of Kyréné, in spite of serious and renewed political troubles. 


And even now, the immense remains which still mark its desolate 
site, the evidences of past labor and solicitude at the Fountain of 


in Thrige’s Historia Cyrénés is defective, as the author seems never to have 


seen the careful and valuable observations of Captain Beechey, and pro- 
ceeds chiefly on the statements of Della Cella. 

I refer briefly to a few among the many interesting notices of Captain 
For the site of the ancient Hesperides (Bengazi), and the “ beau- 


seechey. 
a long chain of mountains 


tiful fertile plain near it, extending to the foot of 
ant to the south-eastward,”— see Beechey, Expedi- 


bout fourteen miles dist 
“a great many datepalm-trees in the neighbor. 


tion, ch. xi, pp. 287-315; 
hood,” (ch. xii, pp. 340-345.) 

The distance between Bengazi (Hesperides) 
the port of Barka) is fifty-seven geographical miles, along a fertile and 
beautiful plain, stretching from the mountains to the sea. Between these 
ancient Teucheira (ib. ch. xii, p. 347), about thirty- 
in a country highly productive 


and Ptolemeta (Ptolemais, 


two was situated the 
eight miles from Hesperides (p. 349), 
wherever it is cultivated (pp. 350-355). Exuberant vegetation exists near 
the deserted Ptolemeta, or Ptolemais, after the winter rains (p. 364). The 
cirenit of Ptolemais, as measured by the ruins of its walls, was about three 
and a half English miles (p. 380). 

The road from Barka to Kyréné presents continued marks of ancient 
ch. xiv, p. 406); after passing the plain of Mergé, it be- 
comes hilly and woody, “ but on approaching Grenna (Kyréné) it becomes 
more clear of wood; the valleys produce fine crops of barley, and the hills 
excellent pasturage for cattle,” (p. 409.) Luxuriant vegetation after the 
winter rains in the vicinity of Kyréné (ch. xv, p. 465). 


VOL. IV. 9" 8300. 


diariot-wheels ( 


84 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Apollo, and elsewhere, together with the profusion of excavated 
and ornamented tombs, — attest sufficiently what the grandeur οἵ 
the place must have been in the days of Herodotus and Pindar. 
So much did the Kyrenwzans pride themselves on the Silphium, 
found wild in their back country, from the island of Platea on 
the east to the inner reeess of the Great Syrtis westward, — the 
leaves of which were highly salubrious for cattle, and the stalk 
fur man, while the root furnished the peculiar juice for export, — 
that they maintained it to have first appeared seven years prior 
to the arrival of the first Grecian colonists in their city.! 

But it was not only the properties of the soil which promoted 
the prosperity of Kyrene. Isokratés? praises the well-chosen 
site of that colony because it was planted in the midst of indi- 
genous natives apt for subjection, and far distant from any formi- 
dable enemies. That the native Libyan tribes were made con- 
ducive in an eminent degree to the growth of the Greco-Libyan 
cities, admits of no doubt ; and in reviewing the history of these 
cities, we must bear in mind that their population was not pure 
Greek, but more or less mixed, like that of the colonies in Italy, 
Sicily, or Lonia. Though our information is very imperfect, we 
see enough to prove that the small force brought over by Battus 
the Stammerer was enabled first to fraternize with the indigenous 
Libyans, — next, reinforced by additional colonists and availing 
themselves of the power of native chiefs, to overawe and subju- 
gate them. Kyréné — combined with Barka and Hesperides, 
both of them sprung from her root ὃ --- exercised over the Libyan 
tribes between the borders of Egypt and the inner recess of the 
Great Syrtis, for a space of three degrees of longitude, an ascen- 

ι Theophrast. Hist. Pl. vi, 3, 3; ix, 1,7; Skylax, c. 107. 

 Isokratés, Or. v, ad Philipp. p. 84, (p. 107, ed. Bek.) Théra being a 
colony of Lacedwemon, and Kyréneé of Théra, Isokratés speaks of Kyreéné& 
as a colony of Lacedwmon. 

3 Pindar, Pyth. iv, 26. Κυρήνην -- ἀστέων ῥίζαν In the time of Herodo- 
tus these three cities may possibly have been spoken of as a Tripolis ; but 
no one before Alexander the Great would have understood the expression 
Pentapolis, used under the Romans to denote Kyréné, Apollonia. Ptcle- 
mais, Teucheira, and Bereniké, or Hesperic es. 

Ptelemais, originally the port of Barka hed become autonomcas, apd of 
yreater importance than the latter. 


YNDIGENOUS LIBYAN TRIBES. 85 


dency similar to that which Carthage possessed over the more 
westerly Libyans near the Lesser Syrtis. Within these Kyre- 
nwan limits, and further westward along the shores of the Great 
Syrtis, the Libyan tribes were of pastoral habits; westward, 
beyond the Lake Triténis and the Lesser Syrtis,'! they began to 
be agricultural. Immediately westward of Egypt were the 
Adyrmachide, bordering upon Apis and Marea, the Egyptian 
frontier towns;2 they were subject to the Egyptians, and had 
adopted some of the minute ritual and religious observances 
which characterized the region of the Nile. Proceeding west- 


ward from the Adyrmachide were found the Giligamme, the 
Asbystx, the Auschise, the Kabales, and the Nasamdéones, — the 
latter of whom occupied the south-eastern corner of the Great 


Svrtis ;— next, the Make, Gindanes, Lotophagi, Machlyes, as 
far as a certain river and lake called Triton and Tritonis, which 
sees to have been near the Lesser Syrtis. ‘These last-men- 
tioned tribes were not dependent either on Kyréné οἱ on Car- 
thage, at the time of Herodotus, nor probably during the proper 
period of free Grecian history, (600-300 B.c.) In the third 
century B.C., the Ptolemaic governors of Kyréné extended their 
dominion westward, while Carthage pushed her colonies and 
castles eastward, so that the two powers embraced between them 
the whole line of coast between the Greater and Lesser Syrtis, 
meeting at the spot called the Altars of the Brothers Phileni, — 
so celebrated for its commemorative legend.3 But even in the 
sixth century B.c., Carthage was jealous of the extension of 
Grecian colonies along this coast, and aided the Libyan Maka 


The accounts respecting the lake called in ancient times Tritonis are, 

wever, very uncertain: see Dr. Shaw's Travels in Barbary, p. 127. Strabo 

mentions a lake so called near Hesperides (xvii, p. 836); Pherekydés talks 
it as near Irasa (Pherekyd. Fragm. 33 d. ed. Didot). 

? Eratosthenés, born at Kyréné and resident at Alexandria, estimated the 

\d-journey between the two at five hundred and twenty-five Roman miles 
Pliny, H. N. v, 6). 

3 Sallust, Bell. Jugurth. ο. 75; Valerius Maximus, v,6. Thrige (Histor. 
yr. ¢. 49) places this division of the Syrtis between Kyréné and Carthage 
at some period between 400-330 B.c., anterior to the loss of the independ- 
ence of Kyréné; but I cannot think that it was earlier than the Ptolemies: 
ecmpare Strabo, xvii, p. 836 


36 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


(about 510 B.c.) to expel the Spartan prince Dorieus from mua 
settlement near the river Kinyps. Near that spot was after- 
wards planted, by Phenician or Carthaginian exiles, the town of 
Leptis Magna! (now Lebida), which does not seem to have 
existed in the time of Herodotus. Nor does the latter historian 
notice the Marmaride, who appear as the principal Libyan tribe 
near the west of Egypt, between the age of Skylax and the third 
century of the Christian era. Some migration or revolution 
subsequent to the time of Herodotus must have brought this 
name into predominance.” | 


The interior country, stretching westward from Egypt along 
" ᾿ Oe sar 


the thirtieth and thirty-first parallel of latitude, to the Great 
Syrtis, and then along the southern shore οἱ that gulf, is to a great 
degree low and sandy, and quite destitute of trees; yet atford- 
ing in many parts water, herbage, and a fertile soil.3 But the 


!The Carthaginian establishment Neapolis is mentioned by Skylax 

. 109), and Strabo states that Leptis was another name for the same place 

<Vil, p. 835). 

? Skylax, c. 107; Vopiscus, Vit. Prob. c. 9; Strabo, xvii, p. 838; Pliny, 
H. N. v, 5. From the Libyan tribe Marmaride was derived the name 
Marmarika, applied to that region. 

3 ταπεινῇ τε Kal ψαμμώδης (Herodot. iv, 191); Sallust, Bell. Jugurthin. 
Ce ξὺν, 

Captain Beechey points out the mistaken conceptions which have been 
entertained of this region :— 

“It is not only in the works of early writers that we find the nature of 
the Svrtis misunderstood ; for the whole of the space between Mesurata 
(7. e. the cape which forms the western extremity of the Great Syrtis) and 
Alexandria is described by Leo Africanus, under the title of Barka, as a 
wild and desert country, where there is neither water nor land capable of 
cultivation. He tells us that the most powerful among the Mohammedan 
invaders possessed themselves of the fertile parts of the coast, leaving the 
others only the desert for their abode, exposed to all the miseries and pri- 
vutions attendant upon it; for this desert (he continues) is far removed 
from any habitations, and nothing is produced there whatever. So that if 
these poor people would have a supply of grain, or of any other articles 
necessary to their existence, they are obliged to pledge their children to the 
Sicilians who visit the coast; who, on providing them with these things, 
carry off the children they have received 

“Tt appears to be chiefly from Leo Africanus that modern historians hav3 
derived their idea of what they term the district and desert of Barka. Yet 
the whole of the Cyrenaica is comprehended within the limits which they 


TERRITORY NEAR THE SYRTIS. 37 


maritime region north of this, constituting the projecting bosom 
of the African coast from the island of Platea (Gulf of Bomba) 
on the east to Hesperides (Bengazi) on the west, is of a totally 
different character; covered with mountains of considerable 
elevation, which reach their highest point near Kyréné, inter 
spersed with productive plain and valley, broken by frequent 
ravines which carry off the winter torrents into the sea, and 
never at any time of the year destitute of water. It is this 
latter advantage that causes them to be now visited every sum- 
mer by the Bedouin Arabs, who flock to the inexhaustible Foun- 
tain of Apollo and to other parts of the mountainous region from 
Kyréné to Hesperides, when their supply of water and herbage 
fails in the interior:! and the same circumstance must have 


assign to it; and the authority of Herodotus, without citing any other, 
would be amply sufficient to prove that this tract of country not only was 
no desert, but was at all times remarkable for its fertility......The im 
pression left upon our minds, after reading the account of Herodotus, 
would be much more consistent with the appearance and peculiarities of 
oth. in their actual state, than that which would result from the description 
of any succeeding writer..... The district of Barka, including all the 
country between Mesurata and Alexandria, neither is, nor ever was, SO des- 
titute and barren as has been represented: the part of it which constitutes 
the Cyrenaica is capable of the highest degree of cultivation, and many 
parts of the Syrtis afford excellent pasturage, while some of it is not only 
adapted to cultivation, but does actually produce good crops of barley an 
dhurra.” (Captain Beechey, Expedition to Northern Coast of Africa, ch. Σ 
pp. 263, 265, 267, 269: comp. ch. xi, p. 321.) 

| Justin, xiii, 7. “ Ameenitatem loci et fontium ubertatem.” Captaia 
Beechey notices this annual migration of the Bedouin Arabs : — 

“ Teucheira (on the coast between Hesperides and Barka) abounds in 
wells of excellent water, which are reserved by the Arabs for their summer 
consumption, and only resorted to when the more inland supplies are 
exhausted: at other times it is uninhabited. Many of the excavated tombs 
are occupied as dwelling-houses by the Arabs during their summer visits to 
that part of the coast.” (Beechey, Exp. to North. Afric. ch. xii, p. 354 } 

And about the wide mountain plain, or table-land of Mergé, the site of the 
ancient Barka, “'The water from the mountains inclosing the plain settles 
in pools and lakes in different parts of this spacious valley; and affords a 
emetant supply, during the summer months, to the Arabs who frequent i" 
(ch. xiii. p. 390.) The red earth which Captain Beechey observed in this 
plain is noticed by Herodotus in regard to Libya (ii, 12). Stephan. Β γε, 
notices also the bricks used in building (v. Βάρκη) Derna, too, to the 


38 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


operated in anci2nt times to hold the nomadic Libyans in a sort 
οἱ dependence en Kyréné and Barka. Kyréné pencunsiaiol: tes 
naritime portion of the territory of the Libyan Asbystze if the 
Auschise occupied the region south of Barka, touching the sea 
near Hesperides, —- the Kabales near Teucheira in the territory 
of Barka. Over the interior spaces these Libyan a with 
their cattle and twisted tents, wandered unrestrained, amply fed 
upon meat and milk,? clothed in goatskins, and enjoying better 
health than any people known to Herodotus. Their broad of 
horses was excellent, and their chariots or wagons with four 
horses could perform feats admired even by Girecks: it was to 


these horses that the princes? and magnates of Kyréné and 


, / 
LB: ‘ky , “ιν " ' : > . “ " 
( Κα often owed the success of their chariots in the games of 
Pale oll ) ΤΡ Ϊ ὴ a : τ, 
rrCece. The Libs an Nasamones, leaving their cattle near t] ( 
> hh A «AL LI OF ς Lest; 


>see eh et ᾿ ¢ ] Ἂ ἥ su 
sea, were in the habit of making an annual journe. uy 
= Σ chili sah ΠΕ REX Y ) 


country to the Oasis of Augila, for the purpose of gathering 


eastward of Cyrene on the sea- i lv ic i 
i Γῆς a-Coast, 1S amply PrOVicle d with water ch 
p. 4: 1) 
About Kyréné itself, Captain Beechey states: “ During the time, about a 
fi ὕ i ᾿ ' ᾿ ᾿ vil ᾿ i! « -- Ἢ .Ἅ. ἐἰὶ 4 
rinimat, of our absence from Ky rene, the ΟΠ ΟΣ which had taken pla ‘O 
vy fF να γ ἔν ἐν pre "ὦ aK " ner ᾽ ᾿ i 
in the appearance of the country about it were remarkable. We found the 
hills on our return covered with Arabs, their camels, flocks, and herds; tl 
: ᾿ . ων" i ac? i iC 
‘ore , κί ἐγ" 7 ἐγ ἡ ὦ ὁ o's win . . * - ' 
scart ity of water in the interior at this time having driven the Bedouins 
to the mountains, and particularly to Kyrene, where the spring 
ὶ Ἱ Lit ( { SLi! | ν 
iil times an abundant s “ιν ΠΗ ] ᾿ 
be es an abundant supply. The corn was all cut, and the 
and luxuriant vevetation, which 1 1 ἢ iff 
and | ixurlant veretation, which we had found it so difficult to wad: 
on former occasions, had én eaten down t } 
rh ἢ Mew: τὼ τὴ ON 
(ch. xviii, pp. 517 420.) 
The winter rains are also abund J 
is : also abundant, between Jar ry ig . 
oe ; et eC 1 January and March, at 
ν gazi | ancient tlesperides): sweet springs of water near the town 
On. Mi. BO. ὑπὸ, ae ἢ 
sa PI 2. 219. . About Ptolemeta, or Ptolemais. the port of the 
ancient Barka, 2). ij ie 
| ba } ᾿ 
ey ἯΙ lv 7 Ὶ 
H OGOL LY, » ° rapadia ododpa εὐδαίμων. Strabo, 1 
inhov καὶ πολυκαρπστατας χϑονὸς, Pindar. Pyth. ix, 7. 
Herodot. iv, 180, 187, 189, 190. Νομάδες κροεοφάώγνοι καὶ 


>: ‘ | ΤΩ τ ¢ 
Pindar, Pyth. ix, 127, :trevrai Νομάδες. Pompon. Mela, i, 8 


γα; 

᾿ See the fourth, fifth, and ninth Pythian Odes of Pindar. n the 
description given by Sophoklés (Electra, 695) of the Pythian seine τὸ 
which pretence is made that Orestés has perished, ten contending charkote 
ars supposed, of which two are Libvan, from Barka: of the remaining 
eignt, one only comes from each place named. mitt ; 


MIXTURE OF GREEKS AND LIBY ANS. 89 


date-harvest,! or of purchasing dates, —a journey which the 
Bedouin Arabs from Bengazi still make annually, carrying up 
their wheat and barley, for the same purpose. Each of the 
Libyan tribes was distinguished by a distinct mode of cutting 
the hair, and by some peculiarities of religious worship, though 
generally all worshipped the Sun and the Moon.2 But in the 
jseighborhood of the Lake Tritonis (seemingly the western ex- 
tremity of Grecian coasting trade in the time of Herodotus, who 
knows little beyond, and begins to appeal to Carthaginian au- 
‘horities), the Grecian deities Poseidon and Athéné, together 
with the legend of Jason and the Argonauts, had been local- 
‘zed. There were, moreover, current prophecies announcing 
that one hundred Hellenic cities were destined one day to be 
founded round the lake, — and that one city in the island Phia 
surrounded by the lake, was to be planted by the Lacedxmo- 
nians.3 ‘These, indeed, were among the many unfulfilled prophe- 
cies which from every side cheated the Grecian ear, — proceed- 
ing in this case probably from Kyrenwan or ‘Therxan traders, 
who thought the spot advantageous for settlement, and circulated 
their own hopes under the form of divine assurances. It was 
about the year 510 B.c.4 that some of these Therzans conducted 
the Spartan prince Dorieus to found acolony in the fertile region 
of Kinyps, belonging to the Libyan Make. But Carthage, 
interested in preventing the extension of Greek settlements 
westward, aided the Libyans in driving him out. 

The Libyans in the immediate neighborhood of Kyrené were 
materially changed by the establishment of that town, and con- 
stituted a large part — at first, probably, far the largest part — 
of its constituent population. Not possessing that fierce tenacity 
of habits which the Mohammedan religion has impressed upon 
the Arabs of the present day, they were open to the mingled 
‘nfluence of constraint and seduction applied by Grecian settlers ; 
so that in the time of Herodotus, the Kabales and the Asbystz 


— Ἢ 


1 Herodot. iv, 172-182. Compare Hornemann’s Travels in Africa, ἢ 
43, and Heeren, Verkehr und Handel der Alten Welt, Th. ii, Abth | 
Abschnitt vi, p. 226. 

3 Hercdot. iv, 175-138. 3 Herodot. iv, 178, 179. 195, 196 

Herodot. iv, 42. 


φῦ HISTURY OF GREECE. 


of the interior had come to copy Kyrenzan tastes and customs! 
The Therzan colonists, having obtained not merely the consent 
but even the guidance of the natives to their occupation of Ky- 
τὸ πᾷ, constituted themselves like privileged Spartan citizens in the 
midst of Libyan Perieki.2 They seem to have married Libyan 
wives, whence Herodotus describes the women of Kyréné and 
Barka as following, even in his time, religious observances indig- 
enous and not Hellenic.s Even the descendants of the primitive 
cekist Battus were semi-Libyan. For Herodotus gives us the 
curious information that Battus was the Libyan word for a king, 
deducing from it the just inference, that the name Battus was not 
originally personal to the cekist, but acquired in Libya first as a 
title,’ and that it afterwards passed to his descendants as a 
proper name. For eight generations the reigning princes were 
valled Battus and Arkesilaus, the Libyan denomination alternat- 
ing with the Greek, until the family was finally deprived οὐ its 
power. Moreover, we find the chief of Barka, kinsman of Ar- 
kesilaus of Kyréné bearing the name of Alazir; a name certainly 
not Hellenic, and probably Libyan.» We are, therefore, to con- 
ceive the first Therean colonists as established in their lofty for- 
tified post Kyréné, in the centre of Libyan Periceki, till then 
strangers to walls, to arts, and perhaps even to cultivated land. 
Probably these Periceki were always subject and tributary, in a 
greater or less degree, though they continued for half a century 
to retain their own king. 

To these rude men the Thereans communicated the elements 
of Hellenism and civilization, not without receiving themselves 
much that was non-Hellenic in return; and perhaps the reaction- 
ary influence of the Libyan element against the Hellenic might 
have proved the stronger of the two, had they not been rein 
forced by new-comers from Greece. After forty years of Battus 


! Herodot. iv, 170. 1 γὺς πλείστους μιμέεσϑαι ἐπιτηδεύουσι τοὺς 
Kvpy Ml’. 

3 Herodot. iv. 161 Qyoaiwy Kal τῶν περιοίκων. etc. 

3 Herodot. iv, 186-189. Compare, also, the story in Pindar, Pytn. ix, 
109-126, abcut Alexidamus, the ancestor of Telesikratés the Kyreng#an 
how the former won, by his swiftness in running, a Libyan maiden, daugh 
ter of Anteus cf Irasa.— and Kallimachus, Hymn. Apoll. 86. 

* Herodot iv, 155 > Herodot. iv, 164. 


BATTIAD PRINCES AT KYRENE. Al 


the cekist (about 630-590 B.c.), and sixteen years of his son 
Arkesilaus (about 590-574 B.c.),a second Battus! succeeded, 
called Battus the Prosperous, to mark the extraordinary increase 
of Kyréné during his presidency. The Kyrenzans under him 
took pains to invite new settlers from all parts of Greece with 
out distinction, —a circumstance deserving notice in Grecian 
wlonization, which usually manifested a preference for certain 
races, if it did not positively exclude the rest. To every new- 
comer was promised a lot of land, and the Delphian priestess 
strenuously seconded the wishes of the Kyrenzans, proclaiming 
that “ whosoever should reach the place too late for the land- 
division, would have reason to repent it.” Such promise of new 
land. as well as the sanction of the oracle, were doubtless made 
public at all the games and meetings of Greeks, and a large 
number of new colonists embarked for Kyréné. The exact num- 
ber is not mentioned, but we must conceive it to have been very 
sreat, when we are told that during the succeeding generation, 
not less than seven thousand Grecian hoplites of Kyréné perished 
by the hands of the revolted Libyans,— yet leaving both the 
city itself and its neighbor Barka still powerful. The loss of so 
oreat a number as seven thousand Grecian hoplites has very few 
parallels throughout the whole history of Greece. In fact, this 
second migration, during the government of Battus the Prosper- 
ous, which must have taken place between 574-004 B.c., ought 
to be looked upon as the moment of real and effective coloni- 
zation for Kyréné. It was on this occasion, probably, that the 
port of Apollonia, which afterwards came to equal the city itself 
in importance, was first occupied and fortified, — for this second 
swarm of emigrants came by sea direct, while the original colo- 
nists had reached Kyréné by land from the island of Platea 
through Irasa. The fresh emigrants came from Peloponnesus, 
Krete, and some other islands of the A¢gean. 

To furnish so many new lots of lan-i, it was either necessary, or 
it was deemed expedient, to dispossess many of the Libyan Peri- 
eki, who found their situation in other respects also greatly 


! Respecting the chronology of the Battiad princes, see Boeckh, ad 
Pindar Pyth. iv, p. 265. and Thirge, Histor. Cyrenes, p. 127, seq 


42 HISTORY OF GREECE 


changed for the worse. ‘The Libyan king Adikran, himself among 
the sufferers, implored aid from Apriés king of Egypt, then in the 
height of his power; sending to declare himself and his people 
Egyptian subjects, like their neighbors the Adyrmachids:. d he 
Egyptian prince, accepting the offer, despatched a la ge military 
force of the native soldier-caste, who were constantly in station 
at the western frontier-town Marea, by the route along shore ta 
attack Kyréné. They were met at Irasa by the Greeks ot Ky- 
réné, and, being totally ignorant of Grecian arms and tactics, 
experienced a defeat so complete that few of them reached waged 
The consequences of this disaster in Egypt, where it caused the 
transter of the throne from Apriés to Amasis, have been noticed 
in a former chapter. 

Of course the Libyan Periceki were put down, and the redivi- 
s10n of lands near Κι rene AMON the Greek settlers accomplished, 
to the great increase of the power of the city. And the reign ot 
Bastus the Prosperous marks a flourishing era in the town, and 
a large acquisition of land-dominion, antecedent to years Οἱ clis- 
sension and distress. ‘Che Kyrenzans came into intimate alli- 
ance with Amasis king of Egypt, who encouraged Grecian 
connection in every way, and who even took to wife Ladike, a 
wornan of the Battiad family at Kyréné, so that the Libyan Peri- 
«ki lost all chance of Egyptian aid against the Greeks.2 

New prospects, however, were opened to them during the 
reign of Arkesilaus the Second, son of Battus the Prosperous, 
(about 554-544 κα.) The behavior of this prince incensed and 
alienated his own brothers, who raised a revolt against him, se- 
ceded with a portion of the citizens, and induced a number of 
the Libyan Periccki to take part with them. They founded the 
Greco-Libyan city of Barka, in the territory of the Libyan Aus- 
chisx, about twelve miles from the coast, distant from Kyréné by 
sea about seventy miles to the westward. The space between 
the two, and even beyond Barka, as far as the more westerly 
Grecian colony called Hesperides, was in the days of Skylax 
;revided with commodious ports for refuge or landing 3. at what 


- .......«......ὕὕὕ...... -- a — 


Herodot. iv, 159. 
® Herodot. ii, 180-181 
’ Herodot. iv, 160; Skylax, c. 107; Hekatzus, Fiagm. 300, ed. Klausen. 


ARKESILAUS THE SECOND. . 43 


time Hesperides was founded we do not know, but it existed 
about 010 B.c.!. Whether Arkesilaus obstructed the foundation 
of Barka is not certain; but he marched the Kyrenzan forces 
against those revolted Libyans who had joined it. Unable to 
resist, the latter fled for refuge to their more easterly brethren 
near the borders of Egypt, and Arkesilaus pursued them. At 
length, in a district called Leuk6n, the fugitives found an oppor- 
sunity of attacking him at such prodigious advantage, that they 
almost destroyed the Kyrenzean army, seven thousand hoplites (as 
as been before intimated) being left dead on the tield. Arkesi- 
laus did not long survive this disaster. He was strangled during 
sickness by his brother Learchus, who aspired to the throne ; but 
[ryxd, widow of the deceased prince,’ avenged the crime, by 
using Learchus to be assassinated. 

That the credit of the Battiad princes was impaired by such 
a series of disasters and enormities, we can readily believe. But 
it received a still greater shock from the circumstance, that Bat- 
tus the Third, son and successor of Arkesilaus, was lame and 
deformed in his feet. To be governed by a man thus personally 
disabled, was in the minds of the Kyrenzans an indignity not to 
be borne, as well as an excuse for preéxisting discontents; and 
the resolution was taken to send to the Delphian oracle for 
advice. They were directed by the priestess to invite from 
Mantineia, a moderator, empowered to close discussions and 
provide a scheme of government,—the Mantineans selecting 
Demonax, one of the wisest of their citizens, to solve the same 
problem which had been committed to Solon at Athens. By 
his arrangement, the regal prerogative of the Battiad line was 
terminated, and a republican government established seemingly 
about 543 B.c.; the dispossessed prince retaining both the 

Herodot. iv, 204. 

Herodot. iv, 160. Plutarch (De Virtutibus Mulier. p. 261) and Polyx- 
nus (villi, 41) give various details of this stratagem on the part of Eryx6; 
Learchus being in love with her. Plutarch also states that Learchus main- 
tained himself as despot for some time by the aid of Egyptian troops from 
Amasis, and committed great cruelties. His story has too much the ait 


of a romance to be transcrited into the text, nor do I know from what 
amthority it is taken. 


44 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


landed domains! and the various sacerdotal functions which haa 
belonged to nis predecessors. 

Respecting the government, as newly framed, however, Herod- 
otus unfortunately gives us hardly any particulars. Demdnax 
classified the inhabitants of Kyreéné into three tribes ; composed 
of: 1. Therawans with their Libyan Perioki; 2. Greeks who 
had come from Peloponnesus and Krete; 3. Such Greeks as 
had come from all other islands in the /Egean. It appears, tca, 
that a senate was constituted, taken doubtless from these three 
tribes, and we may presume, in equal proportion. It seems 
probable that there had been before no constitutional classifica- 
tion, nor political privilege, except what was vested in the The- 
reans, — that these latter, the descendants of the original colo- 
nists were the only persons hitherto snown to the constitution, — 
and that the remaining Greeks, though free landed proprictors 
and hoplites, were not permitted tO act as an integral part ot the 
body politic, nor distributed in tribes at all2 The whole powers 


Ilerodot iv. 161 yi ye rel f Τὺ TEMEVEA f = ων Kal inwovrvac, Ta 


“"“ν" ‘ , ' 
ἀλλ παντὰ Τὼ THVTEOV ELVYOV ὁ ασιλεις EC μεν Τὼ δήμω εὐ ΚΕ 


I construe the word τεμένεα as meaning all the domains, doubtless large, 


which had belonged to the Battiad princes ; contrary to Thrige ( Historia 
Cyrénés, ch. 38, p. 150), who restricts the expression to revenues derived 
from sacred property. The reference of Wesseling to Hesych. — Βάττου 
τίλφιον —is of no avail for illustrating this passage. 

The supposition of 0. Miiller, that the preceding king had made himself 
despotic by means of Egyptian soldiers, appears to me neither probable in 
itself, nor admissible upon the simple authority of Plutarch’s romantic 
story, when we take into consideration the silence of Herodotus. Nor is 
Miller correct in affirming that Demon..x “restored the supremacy of the 
community :” that legislator superseded the old kingly political privileges, 
and framed a new constitution (see O. Miller, History of Dorians, b. iii, 
ch. 9. 8. 13.) 

* Both O. Miiller (Dor. b. iii, 4,5), and Thrige (Hist. Cyren. c. 38, p. 
148), speak of Demonax as having abolished the old tribes and created 
new ones. I do not conceive the change in this manner. Demdnax did 
nat abolish any tribes, but distributed for the first time the inhabitants into 
tribes. It is possible indeed that, before his time, the Therzans of Kyréné 
may have been divided among themselves into distinct tribes; but the 
other inhabitants, having emigrated from a great number of different 
places, had never before been thrown into tribes at all. Some forme 


RESTORATION OF ARKESILAUS THE THIRD. 45 


οἱ government, — up to this time vested in the Battiad princes 
subject only to such check, how effective we know not, which the 
citizens of Therzan origin might be able to interpose, — were 
now transferred from the prince to the people ; that is, to certain 
individuals or assemblies chosen somehow from among all the 
citizens. There existed at Kyréné, as at Thera and Sparta, a 
board of Ephors, and a band of three hundred armed _ police,! 
analogous to those who were called the Hippeis, or Horsemen, at 
Sparta : whether these were instituted by Demdénax, we do net 
know, nor does the identity of titular office, in different states, 
afford safe ground for inferring identity of power. ‘This is par- 
ticularly to be remarked with regard to the Periceki at Kyréne, 
who were perhaps more analogous to the Helots than to the 
Pericki of Sparta. The fact that the Periceki were considered 
in the new constitution as belonging specially to the Theraan 
branch of citizens, shows that these latter still continued a privi- 
leged order, like the Patricians with their Clients at Rome in 
relation to the Plebs. 

That the rearrangement introduced by Demonax was wise, 
consonant to the general current of Greek feeling, and calculated 
to work well, there is good reason to believe: and no discontent 
within would have subverted it without the aid of extraneous 
force. Battus the Lame acquiesced in it peaceably during his 
life; but his widow and his son, Pheretimé and Arkesilaus, 
raised a revolt after his death, and tried to regain by force the 
kingly privileges of the family. They were worsted and obliged 
to flee, ——the mother to Cyprus, the son to Samos, — where 
both employed themselves in procuring foreign arms to invade 
and conquer Kyréné. Though Pheretimé could obtain no effec- 
tive aid from Euelth6n prince of Salamis in Cyprus, her son was 
more successful in Samos, by inviting new Greek settlers to 
Kyréné, under promise of a redistribution of the land. A large 


enactment or regulation was necessary for this purpose, to define and sanc- 
tion that religious, social, and political communion, which went to make 
up the idea of the Tribe. It is not to be assumed, as a matter of course 
that there must necessarily have been tribes anterior to Demonax, among 
& population so miscellaneous in its origin. 

δ Hesychius, Τριακάτιοι; Eustath. ad Hom. Odyss. p. 303 ; Herv κ᾽, * ἰὸς 
Pontic. De Polit. c. 4. 


46 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


body of emigrants joined him on this promise ; the period seem- 
ingly being favorable to it, since the Ionian cities had not long 
before become subject to Persia, and were discontented with the 
yoke. But betore he conducted this numerous band against his 
native city, he thought proper to ask the advice of the Delphian 
oracle. Success in the undertaking was promised to him, but 
moderation and mercy after success was emphatically enjoined, 
on pain of losing his life; and the Battiad race was declared by 
the god to be destined to rule at Kyréné for eight generations, 
but no longer,—as far as four princes named Battus and four 
named Arkesilaus.' “More than such eight generations (said 
the Pythia), Apollo forbids the Battiads even to aim at.” This 
oracle was doubtless told to Herodotus by Kyrenzan informants 
when he visited their city after the final deposition of the Bat- 
tiad princes, which took place in the person of the fourth Arke- 
gilaus, between 460-450 bB.c.; the invasion of Kyréné by Ar- 
kesilaus the Third, sixth prince of the Battiad race, to which 
the oracle professed to refer, having occurred about 530 B.c. 
The words placed in the mouth of the priestess doubtless date 
from the later of these two periods, and afford a specimen of the 
way in which pretended prophecies are not only made up by 
antedating after-knowledge, but are also so contrived as to serve 
a present purpose. For the distinct prohibition of the god, “ not 
even to aim at a longer lineage than eight Battiad princes,” 
seems plainly intended to deter the partisans of the dethroned 
family from endeavoring to reinstate them. 

Arkesilaus the Third, to whom this prophecy purports to have 
been addressed, returned with his mother Pheretimé and his 
army of new colonists to Kyréné. He was strong enough to 
carry all before him, — to expel some of his chief opponents and 
seize upon others, whom he sent to Cypress to be destroyed ; 
though the vessels were driven out of their course by storms to 
the peninsula of Knidus, where the inhabitants rescued the 
prisoners and sent them to Théra. Other Kyrenzans, opposed 
t the Battiads, took refuge in a lofty private tower, the ploperty 


' Herodot. iv, 163. ’Emi μὲν τέσσερας Βάττους, καὶ ᾿Α»κεσιλέως τέσσερας 


διδοῖ ὑμῖν Λοξίης βασιλεύειν Κυρήνης " πλέον μέντοι τούτου οἱ δὲ πειρῆσϑα 
WE ΨΡει 


THE BATTIADS SUBMIT TO PERSIA. 47 


of Aglémachus, wherein Arkesilaus caused them all to be anaes 
heaping wood around and setting it on fire. But after this aes 
of triumph and revenge, he became conscious that he ha i 
parted from the mildness enjoined to him by the oracle, _ 
sought to avoid the punishment which it had tireatened by 
retiring from Kyréné. At any rate, he departed from Kyrene 
to Barka, to the residence of the Barkzan prince, his hapeoeaerty 
Alazir, whose daughter he had married. But he found in Barka 
come of the unfortunate men who had fled from wach to 
escape him: these exiles, aided by a few sisciaitesess —— 
a suitable moment to assail him in the market-place, aad slew 
him, together with his kinsman the prince Alazir.! an 

The victory of Arxesilaus at Kyréne, and his assassination - 
Barka, are doubtless real facts ; but they seem to μον asin 
compressed together and incorrectly colored, in order to Εν ta 
the death of the Kyrenzan prince the appearance of a divine 
‘udement. For the reign of Arkesilaus cannot have been very 
short, since events of the utmost importance occurn d within 8 
The Persians under Kambysés conquered Egypt, and both the 
Kyrenean and the Barkan prince sent to Memphis to make 
their submission to the conqueror, — offering presente and impos- 
ing upon themselves an annual tribute. The presents of the 
Kyreneans, five hundred mine of silver, were considered by 
Kambysés so contemptibly small, that he took hold of them at 
once and threw them among his soldiers. And at the moment 
when Arkesilaus died, Aryandes, the Persian satrap after the 
death of Kambysés, is found established in Egypt.? 

During the absence of Arkesilaus at Barka, his mother Phere- 
timé had acted as regent, taking her place at the discussions | in 
the senate; but when his death took place, and the feeling 
against the Battiads manifested itself strongly at Barka, she did 
not feel powerful enough to put it down, and went to Egypt to 
solicit aid from Aryandes. The satrap, being made to believe 
that Arkesilaus had met his death in consequence of steady 
levotion to the Persians, sent a herald to Barka to demand the 
men whe had slain him. The Barkzans assumed the collective 


fierodot. iv, 163-164. 5 Herodot. ii’ 13; iv, 165-166 


.--- fe 


: <a . 


_—— a ὦ 
~ ~ 


48 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


responsibility of the act, saying that he had done them injuries 
both numerous and severe, —a farther proof that his reign 
cannot have been rery short. On receiving this reply, the 
satrap immediately despatched a powerful Persian armament, 
land-force as well as sea-force, in fulfilment of the designs of 
Pheretimé against Barka. They besieged the town for nine 
months, trying to storm, to batter, and to undermine the walls ; 2 
but their efforts were vain, and it was taken at last only by an 
act of the grossest perfidy. Pretending to relinquish the attempt 
in despair, the Persian general concluded a treaty with the 
Barkeans, wherein it was stipulated that the latter should con- 
tinue to pay tribute to the Great King, but that the army should 
retire without farther hostilities: “I swear it (said the Persian 
general), and my oath shall hold good, as long as this earth shall 
keep its place.” But the spot on which the oaths were ex 
changed had been fraudulently prepared: a ditch had been 
excavated and covered with hurdles, upon which again a surface 
of earth had been laid. The Barkzans, confiding in the oath, 
and overjoyed at their liberation, immediately opened their 
gates and relaxed their cuard: while the Persians, breaking 
down the hurdles and letting fall the superimposed earth, so 
that they might comply with the letter of their oath, assaulted 
the city and took jt without difficulty. 

Miserable was the fate which Pheretimé had in reserve for 
these entrapped prisoners. She crucified the chief opponents of 
herself and her Jate son around the walls, on which were also 
affixed the breasts of their wives: then, with the exception of 
such of the inhabitants as were Battiads. and noway concerned in 
the death of Arkesilaus, she consigned the rest to slavery in 
Persia. They were carried away captive into the Persian 
empire, where Darius assizned to them a village in Baktria as 
their place of abode, which still bore the name of Barka, even in 
the days of Herodotus. 

During the course of this expedition, it appears, the Persian 
army advanced as far as Hesperides, and reduced many of the 
Libyan tribes to subjection: these, together with Kyréné and 


‘ Polyzenu. (Strateg. vii, 28) gives a narrative in many respects lifferent 
from this of Herodotus. 


SONSTITUTION OF DEMONAX NOT DURABLE. 49 


Barka, figure among the tributaries and auxiliaries of Xerxés in 
And when the army returned to 


his expedition against Greece. 
Egypt, by order of Aryandés, they were half inclined to seize 
τν F i ‘ : ¥ ; r Υ Ὁ eo 

Kvréné itself in their way, though the opportunity was missed 


aud the purpose left unaccomplished.’ 

Pheretimé accompanied the retreating army to Egypt, where 
she died shortly of a loathsome disease, consumed by worms; 
thus showing, says Herodotus,” that “ excessive cruelty in re- 
venge brings down upon men the displeasure of the gods.” It 
“a be recollected that in the veins of this savage woman the 
Libvan blood was intermixed with the Grecian. Political en- 
mity in Greece proper kills, but seldom if ever mutilates or 
sheds the blood, of women. 

We thus leave Kyréné and Barka again subject to Battiad 
princes, at the same time that they are tributaries of Persia. 
Another Battus and another Arkesilaus have to intervene before 
he glass of this worthless dynasty is run out, between 460-450 
Le I shall not at present carry the reader's attention to this 
last Arkesilaus, who stands honored by two chariot victories in 
(jreece, and two fine odes of Pindar. 

The victory of the third Arkesilaus, and the restoration of the 
Battiads, hited up the equitable constitution established by De- 
monax. His triple classification into tribes must have been 
completely remodelled, though we do not know how. For the 
number of new colonists whom Arkesilaus introduced must have 
necessitated a fresh distribution of land, and it is extremely 
doubtful whether the relation of the Therzan class of citizens 
with their Periceki, as established by Demonax, still continued 
o subsist. It is necessary to notice this fact, because the ar- 
sangements of Demonax are spoken of by some authors as if 
hey formed the permanent constitution of Kyréné; whereas 
hey eannot have outlived the restoration of the Battiads, nor 
an they even have been revived after that dynasty was finally 
»xpelled, since the number of new citizens and the large change 
at ‘property, introduced by Arkesilaus the Third, would render 


hem inapplicable to the sibsequent city. 


' Herodot. iv, 203-204. * Herodot. iv. 205. 


“OL. IV. 4oc. 


HISTORY OF GREECE. 


CRAPTER AA VIE. 


PAN-HELLENIC FESTIVALS — OLYMPIC, PYTHIAN, NEMEAN, 
Ι AND ISTHMIAN. 


ἵν the preceding chapters I have been under the necessity of 
presenting to the reader a picture altogether incoherent and 
destitute of central effect, — to specify briefly each of the two or 
three hundred towns which agreed in bearing the Hellenic 
name, and to recount its birth and early life, as far as our 
evidence goes, — but without being able to point out any action 
and reaction, exploits or sufferings, prosperity or misfortune, 
glory or disgrace, common to all To a great degree, this is 
ih dharadterintic inseparable from the history of (zreece {from its 


} * . . . " Al 4} re " | r liti ne | unit r whit h it ey ) 
es 2 , [ 1} On y MOOLELIC a y er 


receives is the melancholy unity of subjection under all-conquer- 
ine Rome. Nothing short of force will efface in the mind of a 
free Greek the idea of his city as an autonomous and separate 
organization; the village is a fraction, but the city is an unit, — 
and the highest of all political units, not admitting of being con- 
solidated with others into a ten or a hundred, to the sacrifice of 
its own separate and individual mark. Such is the character 
of the race, both in their primitive country and in their colonial 
settlements, — in their early as well as in their late history, — 
eplitting by natural fracture into a multitude of self-administer- 
ing, indivisible cities. But that which marks the early histori- 
cal period before Peisistratus, and which impresses upon it an 
incoherence at once so fatiguing and so irremediable, is, that as 
yet no causes have arisen to counteract this political isolation. 
Each city, whether progressive or stationary, prudent or adven 
turous, turbulent or ranquil, follows out its own thread of exist- 
ence, having no partnership or common purposes with the rest, 
and not yet constrained into any active partnership with them by 
extraneous forces. In like manner, the races which on every 


nected, not yet taken up into any cooperating mass or system. 


POLITICAL ISOLATION CF THE (ΠῚ Ε 5. 52 


Contemporaneously with the accession of Peisistratus, this 
state of things becomes altered both in and out of Hellas, — the 
former as a consequence of the latter: for at that time begins 
the formation of the great Persian empire, which absorbs inte 
itself not only Upper Asia and Asia Minor, but also Phenicia, 
Egypt, Thrace, Macedonia, and a considerable number of the 
Grecian cities themselves; and the common danger, threatening 
ihe greater states of Greece proper from this vast ageregate, 
drives them, in spite of great reluctance and jealousy, into ac- 
tive union. Hence arises a new impulse, counterworking the 
natural tendency to political isolation in the Hellenic cities, 
iid centralizing their proceedings to a certain extent for the two 
centuries succeeding 560 B.c.; Athens and Sparta both availing 
themselves of the centralizing tendencies which had grown out 
of the Persian war. But during the interval between 776-56" 
B.c., no such tendency can be traced even in commencement, 
nor any constraining force calculated to bring it about. Even 
Thucydides, as we may see by his excellent preface, knew of 
nothing during these two centuries except separate city-politics 
and occasional wars between neighbors: the only event, accord- 
ing to him, in which any considerable number of Grecian cities 
vere jointly concerned, was the war between Chalkis and 
tretria, the date of which we do not know. In this war, several 
cities took part as allies; Samos, among others, with Eretria, — 
Milétus with Chalkis:! how far the alliances of either may 
have extended, we have no evidence to inform us, but the 
presumption is that no great number of Grecian cities was 
comprehended in them. Such as it was, however, this war 
between Chalkis and Eretria was the nearest approach, and the 
only approach, to a Pan-Hellenice proceeding which Thucydidés 
indicates between the Trojan and the Persian wars. Both he 
and Herodotus present this early period only by way of preface 
and contrast to that which follows, —when the Pan-Hellenic 
spirit and tendencies, though never at any time predominant, 
yet counted for a powerful element in history, and sensibly 
modified the universal instinct of city-isolation. They tell us 
little about it, either because they could find no trustworth 


* Thueyd. i, 15. 


= 


- 


oe ee 


—_ ἷ- ὅσαι 


—_ 


= a 


= 


~——— ~~~. ee ee ee ee eee —— τῷ 


παπὶ 


52 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


informants, or because there was nothing in it to captivate the 
imagination in the same manner as the Persian or the Pelopon- 
nesian wars. From whatever cause their silence arises, it is 
deeply to be regretted, since the phenomena of the twe centuries 
from 776-560 B.c., though not susceptible of any central group« 
ing, must have presented the most instructive matter for study, 
had they been preserved. In no period of history have there 
ever been formed a greater number of new political communities, 
under such variety of circumstances, personal as well as local. 
And a few chronicles, however destitute of philosophy, reporting 
the exact march of some of these colonies from their commence- 
ment. — amidst all the difficulties attendant on amalgamation 
with strange natives, as well as on a fresh distribution of land, 
- would have added greatly to our knowledge both of Greek 
character and Greek social existence. 

Taking the two centuries now under review, then, it will 
appear that there is not only no srowing political unity among 
the Grecian states, but a tendency even to the contrary, — to 
dissemination and mutual estrangement. Not so, however, in 
regard to the other feelings of unity capable of subsisting between 
men who acknowledge no common political authority, — sympa- 
thies founded on common religion, language, belief of race, 
lecends, tastes and customs, intellectual appetencies, sense of 
proportion and artistic excellence, recreative enjoyments, etc. 
On all these points the manifestations of Hellenic unity become 
more and more pronounced and comprehensive, in spite οἵ 
increased political dissemination, throughout the same period. 
Mhe breadth of common sentiment and sympathy between Greek 

Greek, together with the conception of multitudinous 
periodical meetings as an indispensable portion of existence, 
appears decidedly greater in 060 B.C. than it had been a century 
before. It was fostered by the increased conviction of the 
superiority of Greeks as compared with foreigners, — a convic- 
tion gradually more and more justified as Grecian art and intel- 
lect improved, and as the survey of foreign countries became 
extended, — as well as by the many new efforts of men of genius 
in the field of music, poetry, statuary, and architecture, each of 
whom touched chords of feeling belonging to other Greeks 
hardly less than to his own peculiar city. At the same time, the 


Vol. 4 B 


RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS. 53 


fife of each peculiar city continues distinet, and even gathers te 
itself a greater abundance of facts and internal interests. Se 
that during the two centuries now under review there was in the 
mind of every Greek an increase both of the city-feeling and of 
the Pan-Hellenic feeling, but on the other hand a decline of the 
old sentiment of separate race, — Doric, Tonic, Kolic. 

I have already, in my former volume, touched upon the many- 
sided character of the Grecian religion, entering as it did into 
all the enjoyments and sufferings, the hopes and fears, the atfec- 
tions and antipathies, of the people,—not simply imposing 
restraints and obligations, but protecting, multiplying, and diver- 
sifying all the social pleasures and all the decorations of exist- 
ence. Each city and even each village had its peculiar religious 
festivals, wherein the sacrifices to the gods were usually followed 
by public recreations of one kind or other, — by feasting on the 
victims, processional marches, singing and dancing, or competition 
in strong and active exercises. The festival was originally local, 
but friendship or communion of race was shown by inviting 
others, non-residents, to partake in its attractions. In the case 
of a colony and its metropolis, it was a frequent practice that 
citizens of the metropolis were honored with a privileged seat at 
the festivals of the colony, or that one of their number was 


presented with the first taste of the sacrificial victim.! Recipro- 


cal frequentation of religious festivals was thus the standing 
evidence of friendship and fraternity among cities not polivically 
united. That it must have existed to a certain degree from the 
earliest days, there can be no reasonable doubt ; though in 
Homer and Hesiod we find only the celebration of tuneral 
games, by a chief at his own private expense, in honor of his 
deceased father or friend, — with all the accompanying recrea- 
tions, however, of a public festival, and with strangers not only 


' Thucyd. i, 26. See the tale in Pausanias (v, 25, 1) of the ancient charus 
sent annually from Messéné in Sirily across the strait to Rhegium, to a 
local festival of the Rhegians, — thirty-five boys with a chorus-master gad 
a flute-player: on one unfortunate occasion, all of them perished in cross 
ing. For the Théory (or solemn religious deputation) periodically sent by 
the Athenians to Delos, see Plutarch, Nicias, c. 3; Plato, Phedon, c. 1, p 
ka. Compare also Strabo, ix, p. 419, on the general subject. 


54 HISTORY JF GREECr. 


present, but also contending for valuable prizes.' Vas3ing te 
historical G-:eece during the seventh century B.c., we find 
evidence of two festivals, even then very considerable, and 
frequented by Greeks from many different cities and districts, — 
the festival at Delos, in honor of Apollo, the great place of 
meeting for Jonians throughout the A®vean, — and the Oly mpic 
games. The Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo, which must 
be placed earlier than 600 B.c., dwells with emphasis on the 
splendor of the Delian festival, — unrivalled throughout Greece, 
as it would appear, during all the first period of this history, for 
wealth, finery of attire, and variety of exhibitions as well in 


.}᾽ 


poetical genius as in bodily activity, — equalling probably at that 


time, if not surpassing, the Olympic games. The complete and 
undiminished grandeur of this Delian Pan-Ionic festival is one 
of our chief marks of the first period of Grecian history, before 
the comparative prostration of the Ionic Greeks through the rise 
of Persia: it was celebrated periodically in every fourth year, to 
the honor of Apollo and Artemis. It was distinouished from 
the Olympic games by two circumstances both deserving of 
notice, — first, by including solemn matches not only of πγυθνά; 
tic, but also of musical and poetical excellence, whereas the 
latter had no place at Olympia; secondly, by the admission of 
men, women, and children indiscriminately as spectators, whereas 
women were formally excluded from the Olympic ceremony. 
Such exclusion may have depended in part on the inland situa: 
tion of Olympia, less easily approachable by females than the 
island of Delos; but even making allowance for this cireum- 
stance, both the one distinction and the other mark the rougher 
character of the A<tolo-Dorians in Peloponnesus. The Delian 
festival, which greatly dwindled away during the subjection of 
the Asiatic and insular Greeks to Persia, was revived after- 
wards by Athens during the period of her empire, when she was 


reeking in every way to strengthen her central ascendency in the 


δ Homer, Iliad, xi, 879, xxiii, 679; Hesiod, Opp. Di. 651 
* Homer, Hymn. Apoll. 150; Thucyd. iii, 104. 
3 J ae. ae ᾿ αἰ ΠΠὰ μι " 

Pausan. ν, 6.5; 4 ]ἴ5η, N. H. x, 1; Thucyd. iii, 104. When Ephesus, 
and the festival called Ephesia, had become the great place of lonie 
meeting, the presence of women was still continued (Dionys. Hal. A αὶ 
iv, 25) 


OLYMPIC FESTIVAL. 53 


Aegean. But though it continued to be ostentatiously celebrated 
under her management, it never regained that commanding 
sanctity and crowded frequentation which we find attested in the 
Homeric Hymn to Apollo for its earlier period. 

Very different was the fate of the Olympic festival, — on the 
banks of the Alpheius! in Peloponnesus, near the old oracular 
temple of the Olympian Zeus, — which not only grew up unin- 
terruptedly from small beginnings to the maximum of Pan- 
Hellenic importance, but even preserved its crowds of visitors 
and its celebrity for many centuries after the extinction of 
Greek freedom, and only received its final abolition, after more 
than eleven hundred years of continuance, from the decree of 
the Christian emperor Theodosius in 394 a.p. I have already 
recounted, in the preceding volume of this history, the attempt 
made by Pheidon, despot of Argos, to restore to the Pisatans, or 
to acquire for himself, the administration of this festival, — an 
event which proves the importance of the festival in Pelopon- 
nesus, even so early as 740 8.c. At that time, and for some 
years afterwards, it seems to have been frequented chiefly, if not 
exclusively, by the neighboring inhabitants of central and wes- 
tern Peloponnesus, — Spartans, Messenians, Arkadians, Triphy- 
lians. Pisatans, Eleians, and Achwans,2—and it forms an 
important link connecting the Etolo-Eleians, and their privileges 
as Agonothets to solemnize and preside over it, with Sparta. 
From the year 720 Β.0.. we trace positive evidences of the grad- 
ual presence of more distant Greeks, — Corinthians, Megarians, 
Beeotians, Athenians, and even Smyrnzans from Asia. 

We observe also another proof of growing importance, in the 
increased number and variety of matches exhibited to the specta- 
tors. and in the substitution of the simple crown of olive, an hon- 
rary reward, in place of the more substantial present which the 
Olympic festival and all other Grecian festivals began by confer- 
ring upon the victor. The humble constitution of the Olympic 
games presented originally nothing more than a match of runners 


' Strabo, viii, p. 353; Pindar, Olymp. viii, 2; Xenophon, Hellen. iv, 7, 


* See K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griechischen Staats-Alterthiimes 


sect. 10 


66 HISTORY OF GREECE 


in the measured course called the Stadium: a continuous series 
of the victorious runners was formally inscribed and preserved 


“ΛΝ 


by the Eleians, beginning with Korcebus in 776 B.c., and 


was made to serve by chronological inquirers from the third 
century B.c. downwards, as a means of measuring the chron- 
οἱ ical sequence of Grecian events. It was on the occasion ot 
the 7th Olympiad after Korcebus, that Daiklés the Messenian 
first received for his victory in the stadium no farther recompense 
than a wreath from the sacred olive-tree near Olympia : the 
honor of being proclaimed victor was found sufficient, without any 
pecuniary addition. But until the 14th Olympiad, there was no 
other match for the spectators to witness beside that of simple 
runners in the stadium. On that occasion a second race was first 
introduced, of runners in the double stadium, or up and down the 
course; in the next, or 15th Olympiad (720 B.c.), a third match, 
the long course for runners, or several times up and down the 
stadium. ‘There were thus three races, —the simple stadium, 
the double stadium, or diaulos, and the long course, or dolichos, 
all for runners, —- which continued without addition until the 18th 
Olympiad, when the wrestling-match and the complicated pen- 
tathlon — including jumping, running, the quoit, the javelin, and 
wrestling — were both added. A farther novelty appears in the 
23d Olympiad (688 B.c.), the boxing-match; and another, still 
more important, in the 25th (680 B.c.), the chariot with four full- 
grown horses. ‘This last-mentioned addition is deserving of special 
notice, not merely as it diversified the scene by the introduction 
of horses, but also as it brought in a totally new class of compet- 
itors, — rich men and women, who possessed the finest horses and 
could hire the most skilful drivers, without any personal superi- 
ority, or power of bodily display, in themselves.2. The prodigious 


' Dionys. Halikarn. Ant. Rom. i, 71; Phlegon, De Olympiad. p. 140. Fort 
an illustration of the stress laid by the Greeks on the purely honorary 
rewards of Olympia, and on the credit which they took to themselves as 
cumpetitors, not for money, but for glory, see Herodot. viii, 26. Compare 
the Scholia on Pindar, Nem. and Isthm. Argument, pp. 425-514, ed. 
Boeckh. 

*See the sentiment of Agesilaus, somswhat contemptuous, respecting 
the chariot-race, as described by Xenophon (Agesilaus, ix, 6); the general 
feelirg of Greece, hevever, is more in conformit~ with what Thucydidé« 


PROGRESS OF THE OLYMPIC FESTIVAL. 57 


axhibition of wealth in which the chariot proprietors indulged, ir 
not only an evidence of growing importance in the Olympic games, 
but also served materially to increase that importance, and te 
heighten the interest of spectators. Two farther matches were 
addzd in the 33d Olympiad (648 B.c.),— the pankration, or box- 
ing and wrestling conjoined,' with the hand unarmed or divested 
of that hard leather cestus? worn by the pugilist, which rendered 
the blow of the latter more terrible, but at the same time pre- 
vented him from grasping or keeping hold of his adversary, — 
and the single race-horse. Many other novelties were introduced 
one after the other, which it is unnecessary fully to enumerate, — 
the race between men clothed in full panoply, and bearing each 
his shield, —the different matches between boys, analogous to 
those between full-grown men, and between colts, of the same 
nature as between full-grown horses. At the maximum of its 
attraction the Olympic solemnity occupied five days, but until the 
77th Olympiad, all the various matches had been compressed into 
one, — beginning at daybreak and not always closing before 
dark.3 The 77th Olympiad follows immediately after the success- 


(vi, 16) puts into the mouth of Alkibiadés, and Xenophon into that of 
Simonidés (Xenophon, Hiero, xi, 5). The great respect attached to a 
family which had gained chariot victories is amply attested: see Herodot. 
vi, 35, 36, 103, 126, — oixin τεϑριππότροφος, --- and vi, 70, about Demaratus 
king of Sparta. 

' Antholog. Palatin. ix, 588; vol. ii, p. 299, Jacobs. 

* The original Greek word for this covering (which surrounded the 
middle hand and upper portion of the fingers, leaving both the ends of the 
fingers and the thumb exposed) was ἱμὰς, the word for a thong, strap, or 
whip, of leather: the special word μύρμηξ seems to have been afterwards 
introduced (Hesychius, v, ‘Ilua¢): see Homer, [liad, xxiii, 686. Cestus, or 
Cestus, is the Latin word (Virg. Ain. v, 404), the Greek word κεστὸς is an 
adjective annexed to ἱμὰς -- κεστὸν ἱμάντα ---α πολύκεστος ἱμάς (Iliad, xiv, 
"14; 11,871). See Pausan. viii, 40, 3, for the description of the incident 
which caused an alteration in this hand-covering at the Nemean games. 
ultimately, it was still farther hardened by the addition of iron. 

ὁ ᾿Αέϑλων πεμπαμέρους ἁμίλλας, --- Pindar, Olymp. v, 6: compare Schol. 
ad Pindar. Olymp. iii, 33. 

See the facts respecting the Olympic Agén collected by Corsini (Disser- 
tationes Agonistice, Dissert. i, sects. 8, 9,10), and still more amply ses 
forth with a valuable commentary, by Krause (Olympia, oder Darstellung 
dir grossen Olympischen Spiele, Wien, 1838, sects. 8-11 esperially). 


3* 


= 


-.-- 


ων See ς 


-- ἢὉΦ ~~ a qe gy τ “-Ξ πςλ 


_ κἀς 


— — 


— 6 - 


Ὡς 


-_— 


58 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ful expulsion of the Persian invaders from Greece, when the 
Pan-Hellenic feeling had been keenly stimulated by resistance te 
acommon enemy; and we may easily conceive that this was a 
suitable moment for imparting additional dignity to the chief 
national festival. 

We are thus enabled partially to trace the steps by which, 
during the two centuries succeeding 776 B.c., the festival of the 
Olympic Zeus in the Pisatid gradually passed from a local to 8 
national character, and acquired an attractive force capable of 
bringing together into temporary union the dispersed fragments 
of Hellas, from Marseilles to Trebizond. In this important 
function it did not long stand alone. During the sixth century 
B.c., three other festivals, at first local, became successively 
nationalized, — the Pythia near Delphi, the Isthmia, near Cor. 
inth, the Nemea near Kleénz, between Sikyén and Argos. 

In regard to the Pythian festival, we find a short notice of the 
particular incidents and individuals by whom its reconstitution 
and enlargement were brought about, —a notice the more inter- 
esting, inasmuch as these very incidents are themselves a mani- 
festation of something like Pan-Hellenic patriotism, standing 
almost alone in an age which presents little else in operation 
except distinct city-interests. At the time when the Homerie 
Hymn to the Delphinian Apollo was composed (probably in the 
seventh century B.C.), the Pythian festival had as yet acquired 
little eminence. The rich and holy temple of Apollo was then 
purely oracular, established for the purpose of communicating to 
pious inquirers “the counsels of the immortals.” Multitudes of 
visitors came to consult it, as well as to sacrifice victims and to 
deposit costly offerings; but while the god delighted in the 
sound of the harp as an accompaniment to the singing of pzans, 
he was by no means anxious to encourage horse-races and chariot- 
races in the neighborhood, — nay, this psalmist considers that the 
noise of horses would be “a nuisance,” the drinking of mules a 
desecration to the sacred fountains, and the ostentation of fine- 
built chariots objectionable,! as tending to divert the attention of 
spectators away from the great temple and its wealth. 


‘Hom Hymn. Apoll. 262. 


Πημανέε! σ᾽ αἰεὶ κτυπὸς ἵππων ὠκειάων, 


᾿ ζ ΄ ᾶΪ ᾽ Ν ᾽ | ᾿ Ml 9 " 
Apdupevot τ᾽ οὐρῆες ἐμῶν ἱερῶν ἀπὸ πηγξεων " 


GROUND NEAR THE DELPHIAN TEMPLE. 89 


From such inconveniences the god was protected by placing 
his sanctuary “in the rocky Pytho,”—a rugged and uneven 
recess, of no great dimensions, embosomed in the southern 
declivity of Parnassus, and about two thousand feet above the 
level of the sea, while the topmost Parnassian summits reach a 
height of near eight thousand feet. ‘The situation was extremely 
imposing, but unsuited by nature for the congregation of any 
con siderable number of spectators, — altogether impracticable for 
chariot-races, — and only rendered practicable by later art and 
outlay for the theatre as well as for the stadium; the original 
stadium, when first established, was placed in the plain beneath. 
It furnished little means of subsistence, but the sacrifices and 
presents of visitors enabled the ministers of the temple to live in 
ubundance,' and gathered together by degrees a village around 
it. Near the sanctuary of Pytho, and about the same altitude, 
was situated the ancient Phocian town of Krissa, on a projecting 
spur of Parnassus, —overkung above by the line of rocky 
precipice called the Pbhrdriades, and itself overhanging below 
the deep ravine through which flows the river Pleistus. On the 
other side of this river rises the steep mountain Kirphis, which 
projects southward into the Corinthian gulf,— the river reaching 
that gulf through the troad Krisseean or Kirrhean plain, whick 
stretches westward nearly to the Lokrian town of Amphissa; a 
plain for the most part fertile and productive, though least so im 


‘Evda τις ἀνϑρώπων βουλήσεται εἰσοράασϑαι 

“Ἀρματά τ᾽ εὐποίητα καὶ ὠκυπόδων κτυπὸν ἵππων, 

Ἢ νηόν τε μέγαν καὶ κτήματα πόλλ᾽ ἐνεόντα. 
Also v, 288-394. γυάλων ὑπὸ Παρνῆσοιο ---- 484. ὑπὸ πτυχὶ Παρνήσοι. - 
Pindar, Pyth. viii, 90. Πυϑῶνος ἐν γυάλοις ---- Strabo, ix, p. 418. πετρωδὲς 
τώριον καὶ ϑεατροειδὲς ---- Heliodorus, /Ethiop. ii, 26: compare Will. Gotte, 
Das Delphische Orakel (Leipzig, 1839), pp. 39-42. 

' Βωμοί μ᾽ EpepBov, οὕπιῶών τ᾽ ἀεὶ ξένος, says Ion (in Euripidés, Ion. 334) 
the slave of Apollo, and the verger of his Delphian temple, who waters it 
from the Kastalian spring, sweeps it with laurel boughs, and keeps off with 
his bow and arrows the obtrusive birds (Ion, 105, 143, 154). Whoever 
reads the description of Professor Ulrichs (Reisen und Forschungen in 
Griechenland, ch. 7, p. 110) will see that the birds eagles, vultures, and 
crows —are quite numerous enough to have been exceedingly troublesome. 
The whole play of Ion conveys a lively idea of the Delphian temple and 
ts eeonery. vith which Euripidés was doubtless familiar. 


60 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


its eastern part immediately under the Kirphis, where the sea 
port Kirrha was placed.! The temple, the oracle, and the wealth 
of Pytho, belong to the very earliest periods of Grecian antiquity ; 
but the octennial solenmity in honor of the god included at first 
no other competition except that of bards, who sang each a pan 
with the harp. It has been already mentioned, in my preceding 
volume, that the Amphiktyonic assembly held one of its half- 
yearly meetings near the temple of Pytho, the other at Ther- 
mopy le. 

In those early times when the Homeric Hymn to Apollo was 
composed, the town of Krissa appears to have been great and 
powertul, possessing all the broad plain between Parnassus, 
Kirphis, and the gulf, to which latter it gave its name, — and 
possessing also, what was a property not less valuable, the 


' There is considerable perplexity respecting Krissa and Kirrha, and it 
still remains a question among scholars whether the two names denote the 
same place or different places; the former is the opinion of O. Miiller 
(Orchomenos,.p. 495). Strabo distinguishes the two, Pausanias identifies 
them, conceiving no other town to have ever existed except the seaport 
(x, 37, 4). Mannert (Geogr. Gr. Rom. viii, p. 148) follows Strabo, and 
represents them as different. 

I consider the latter to be the correct opinion, upon the grounds, and 
partly, also, on the careful topographical examination of Professor Ulrichs, 
which affords an excellent account of the whole scenery of Delphi (Reisen 
and Forschungen in Griechenland, Bremen, 1840, chapters 1, 2,3). The 
ruins described by him on the high ground near Kastri, called the Forty 
Saints, may fairly be considered as the ruins of Krissa; the ruins of Kirrha 
are on the sea-shore near the mouth of the Pleistus. The plain beneath 
might without impropriety be called either the Krisszean or the Kirrhean 
plain (Herodot. viii, 32; Strabo, ix, p. 419). Though Strabo was right in 
distinguishing Krissa from Kirrha, and right also in the position of the 
latter under Kirphis, he conceived incorrectly the situation of Krissa; and 
his representation that there were two wars, — in the first of which, Kirrha 
was destroyed by the Krissaans, while in the second, Krissa itself was 
conquered by the Amphiktyons, — is not confirmed by any other authority. 

The mere circumstance that Pindar gives us in three separate passages, 
Kpiog, Κρισαῖον, Κοισαίοις (Isth. 11, 26; Pyth. v, 49, vi, 18), and in five 
other passages, Κίῤῥᾳ, Κίῤῥας, Κίῤῥαϑεν (Pyth. ili, 33, vii, 14, vill, 26, x, 24, 
xi, 20), renders it almost certain that the two names belong to different 
places, and are not merely two different names for the same prace; the 
poet could not in this case have any metrical reason for varying the denom 
ination, as the metre of the two words is similar. 


KRISSA. — KIRRHA. 61 


adjoining sanctuary of Pytho itself, which the Hymn identifies 
with Krissa, not indicating Delphi as 2 separate place. The 
Krisswans, doubtless, derived great profits from the number of 
visitors who came to visit Delphi, both by land and by sea, and 
Kirrha was originally only the name for their seaport. Gradu- 
lly, however, the port appears to have grown in importance at 
the expense of the town, just as Apollonia and Ptolemais came 
to equal Kyréné and Barka, and as Plymouth Dock has swelled 
into Devonport; while at the same time, the sanctuary of Pytho 
with its administrators expanded into the town of Delphi, and 
came to claim an independent existence of its own. The original 
relations between Krissa, Kirrha, and Delphi, were in this man- 
ner at length subverted, the first declining and the two latter 
rising. The Krissezans found themselves dispossessed of the 
management of the temple, which passed to the Delphians, as 
well as of the profits arising from the visitors, whose disburse- 
ments went to enrich the inhabitants of Kirrha. Krissa was 8 
primitive city of the Phocian name, and could boast of a place 
as such in the Homeric Catalogue, so that her loss of importance 
was not likely to be quietly endured. Moreover, in addition to 
the above facts, alr ady sufficient in themselves as seeds of quar- 
rel. we are told that the Kirrheans abused their position as 
masters of the avenue to the temple by sea, and levied exorbit- 
ant tolls on the visitors who landed there, —a number constantly 
increasing from thé multiplication of the transmarine colonies, 
and from the prosperity of those in Italy and Sicily. Besides 
such offence against the general Grecian public, they had also 
incurred the enmity of their Phocian neighbors by outrages 
upon women, Phocian as well as Argeian, who were returning 
from the temple.' 

Thus stood the case, apparently, about oJo B.C., when the 
Amphiktyonic meeting interfered — either prompted by the 


1 Athenseus, xiii, p. 560; Aischinés cont. Ktesiphont. c. 36, p. 406; 
Strabo, ix, p. 418. Of the Akragallide, or Kraugallide, whom Aischinés 
mentions along with the Kirrhzans as another impious race who dwelt in 
the neighborhood of the god, —and who were overthrown along with the 
Kirrheans.- we have no farther information. 0. Miiller’s conjecture 
would identify them with the Dryopes (Dorians, i, 2, 5, and his Orchome 
nos, p. 496); Harpokration, v, Κραυγαλλίδαι 


62 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Phocians, or perhaps on their own spontaneous impulse, out of 
regard to the temple —to punish the Kirrhzans. gre ᾧ : 
Οἱ ten years, the first Sacred War in Greece, this chia : ᾿ 
completely accomplished, by a joint force of Dhisnalicaes | 4a 
Eurylochus, Sikyonians under Kleisthenés, and Ptah ea 
Alkmion ; the Athenian Solon being the person who pany 
and enforced, in the Amphiktyonie council, the ἐδυημμέν δ of 
interference Kirrha appears to have made a strenuous isi 
ance until its supplies from the sea were intercepted by the Ἂ an 
force of the Sikyonian Kleisthenés; and even after this = Ἵ 
was taken, its inhabitants defended themselves va Ua Ἣν . 
on the heights of Kirphis.!. At leneth, however fae : ἘΝ 
thoroughly subdued. Their town was ἀν ange 
subsist merely as a landing-place ; and the whole ae ean as 
bel aga to the Delphian god, whose Pl eee 
ee the sea. Under this sentence, pronou tie ἣν 2 
religious feeling of Greece, and sanctified agen ly κε 
Apia apc inscribed at Delphi, the land was ita Ne 
‘emain untilled and unplanted, without any species of i i 
care, and serving only for the pasturage ee a 
circumstance was convenient to the temple, inasmuch Ne it 
furnished abundance of victims for the pilgrims nmi Leactial “ἢ 
came to sacrifice,—for without preliminary snail no oe 
_ ini the oracle;2 while the entire neubibition of tile 
ae the ΟΕ. means of obviating the growth of another 
trou slesome neighbor on the sea-board. The fate of Kirrha 
in this war is ascertained: that of Krissa is ak aes vas 
nor do we know whether it was destroyed, or left Lee 
in a position of inferiority with regard to Del ἢ] Fr age 
fime forward, however, the Delphian c¢ ‘ a 
substantive and autonomous. acd waar ΤΠ ω, 2 
management of the temple ; though tg aan rae yay — ee 
one occasion, that the Phocians contest this rig gpl a 
us right, and lay claim 


— : 
Schol. ad Pindar. Pyth. Introduct.: Schol ἢ Ἷ 
PN wage arid ᾿ | re -; Bchol. ad Pindar. Nem. ix, 2: 
sn adn cog ᾿ ; Sausan. ul, 9,6. Pansanias (x, 37,4) and Polye 
ei g. lii, ) relate ἃ stratagem of Solon, or of Eurrlochus, to pois 
er of the Kiitheans with hellebore ἢ 
3 Eurip. Ion. 230. 


SACRED WAR.— DESTRUCTION OF KIRRHA. 63 


‘+t for themselves,! —a remnant of that 
oracle stood in the domain of the Pho- 
moreover, to have been a standing 


to the management of 
early period when the 
cian Krissa. There seems, 
antipathy between the Delphians and the Phocians. 

The Sacred War just mentioned, emanating from a solemn 
Amphiktyonic decree, carried on jointly by troops of different 
e do not know to have ever before cooperated, and 
ards an object of common interest, is 1% 


states whom Ww 
directed exclusively tow 
if a fact of high importance as manifesting a decided growth 


lise 
of Pan-Hellenic feeling. 
which seems remarkable when we consider both 
her power, even as ‘t then stood, and her intimate connection 

oracle, — while the Athenians appear as the 


with the Delphian 
prime movers, through the greatest and best of their citizens: 


credit of a large-minded patriotism rests prominently upon 


Sparta is not named as interfering, — 


4 circumstance 


the 


them. 
But if this Sacred War itself is a proof that the Pan-Hellenic 
spirit was growing stronger, the positive result in which it ended 
The spoils of Kirrha were 


reinforced that spirit still farther. 
¢ the Pythian games. 


1 by the victorious allies in foundin 
nnial festival hitherto celebrated at Delphi in honor of 
no other competition except in the harp and 
hensive games on the model 


employe 
The octe 
the god, including 
the pwan, was expanded into compre 
of the Olympic, with matches not only of music, but also of 
gymnastics and chariots,— celebrated, not at Delphi itself, but 
on the maritime plain near the ruined Kirrha,— and under the 
ndence of the Amphiktyons themselves. I have 
already mentioned that Solon provided large rewards for such 
Athenians as gained victories in the Olympic and Isthmian 
games, thereby indicating his sense of the great value of the nae 
’ promoting Hellenic intercommunion 


tional games as a means of 
It was the same feeling which instigated the foundation of the new 


games on the Kirrhzan plain, in commemoration of the vindicated 
honor of Apollo, and in the territory newly made over to him. 
elebrated in the latter half of summer, or first half of 
—the Amphiktyons being the ostensible 
ersons to discharge 


direct superinte 


They were ὁ 
every third Olympic year, 
agonothets, or administrators, and appointing p 


Thocrd. i, 112. 


64 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the duty in their names.' At the first Pythian ceremony (in 
586 B.C.), valuable rewards were given to the different victors; 
at the second (582 B.c.), nothing was conferred but wreaths of 
laurel, — the rapidly attained celebrity of the games being such 
as to render any farther reward superfluous. The Sikyonian 
despot Kleisthenés himself, one of the leaders in the conquest of 
Kirrha, gained the prize at the chariot-race of the second Pythia. 
We find other great personages in Greece frequently mentioned 
as competitors, and the games long maintained a dignity second 
only to the Olympic, over which, indeed, they had some advan- 
tages ; first, that they were not abused for the purpose of pro- 
moting petty jealousies and antipathies of any administering 
state, as the Olympic games were perverted by the Eleians, on 
more than one occasion; next, that they comprised music and 
poetry as well as bodily display. From the circumstances 
» 44 . ¥ é Ἷ » Py ᾿ 

attending their foundation, the Pythian games deserved, even 
more than the Olympic, the title bestowed on them by Demos 
thenés, — “The common Agon of the Greeks.” ? 


' Mr. Clinton thinks that the Pythian games were celebrated in the 
autumn: M. Boeckh refers the celebration to the spring: Krause agrees 
with Boeckh. (Clinton, Fast. Hell. vol. ii, Ρ. 200, Appendix ; πον ad 
Corp. Inscr. No. 1688, p. 813; Krause, Die Pythien, Nemeen und Isthmien 
vol. ii, pp. 29-35.) 

Mr. Clinton’s opinion appears to me nearly the truth; the real time, as 
I conceive it, being about the beginning of August, or end of July. Boeckh 
admits that, with the exception of Thucydidés (v, 1-19), the other authori 
[165 go to sustain it; but he relies on Thucydidés to outweigh them. Now 
the passa ' 

> 


against Boeckh’s γί W AS the rest, 


ge of Thucydidés, properly understood, seems to me as much 


I may remark, as a certain additional reason in the case, that the Isthmia 
appear fo have been celebrated in the third year of each Oiympiad, and in 
the spring (Krause, p. 187). It seems improbable that these two great 
festivals should have come one immediately after the other, which, never- 
theless, must be supposed, if we ad»pt the opinion of Boeckh and Krause. 

The Pythian games would be sometimes a little earlier, sometimes a little 
later, ir consequence of the time of full rioon: notice being always sent 
ryund by the administrators beforehand of the commencement of the 
sacred month. See the references in K. Ἐκ, Hermann, Lehrbuch der 
gottesdienstl. Alterth. der Griechen, ch. 49, not. 12.—-This note has been 
somewhat modified since my first edition —see the note vol. vi, ch liv 

* Demosthen. Philipp ia‘, p. 119. 


NEMEAN AND ISTHMIAN GAMES. ὧδ 


The Olympic and Pythian games continued always to be the 
most venerated solemnities in Greece: yet the Nemea and Isth- 
mia acquired a celebrity not much inferior; the Olympic prize 
counting for the highest of all.! Both the Nemea and the Isth- 
mia were distinguished from the other two festivals by occurring, 
not once in four years, but once in two years; the former in the 
second and fourth years of each Olympiad, the latter in the first 
and third years. To both is assigned, according to Greek custom, 
an origin connected witl: the interesting persons and circum- 
stances of Grecian antiquity: but our historical knowledge of both 
begins with the sixth century B.C. ‘The first historical Nemead 
is presented as belonging to Olympiad 52 or 53 (572-068 B.c.), 
a few years subsequent to the Sacred War above mentioned and 
to the origin of the Pythia. The festival was celebrated in 
honor of the Nemean Zeus, in the valley of Nemea, between 
Phlius and Kleénx,— and originally by the Kleonzans them- 
selyes, until, at some period after 460 B.C., the Argeians deprived 
them of that honor and assumed the honors of administration to 
themselves.2 The Nemean games had their Hellanodike 3. to 
intend, to keep order, and to distribute the prizes, as well as 


super 
Respecting the Isthmian festival, our first histori- 


the Olympic. 
cal information is a little earlier, for it has already been stated 


1 Pindar, Nem. x, 28-33. 
? Strabo, viii, p. 377; Plutarch, Arat. c. 28; Mannert, Geogr. Gr. Rom. 
pt. vili, p. 650. Compare the second chapter in Krause, Die Pythien, 


Nemeen und Isthmien, vol. ii, p. 108, seq. 
That the Kleénxans continued without interruption to administer the 
Nemean festival down to Olympiad 80 (460 p.c.), or thereabouts, is the 
x, 42: compare Nem. iv, 17. Euse- 


rational inference from Pindar, Nem. 
administration for them- 


bius. indeed, states that the Argeians seized the 
selves in Olympiad 53, and in order to reconcile this statement with the 
critics have concluded that the Argeians lost it 
again, and that the Kleonzans resumed it a little before Olympiad 80. I 
take a different view, and am disposed to reject the statement of Eusebius 
altogether; the more so as Pindar’s tenth Nemean ode is addressed to 
an Argeian citizen named Theieus. If there had been at that time a 
standing dispute between Argos and Kleénz on the subject of the adminis- 
tration of the Nemea, the poet would hardly have introduced the mention 
of the Nemean prizes gained by the ancestors of Theizus, under the ante 


above passage in Pindar, 


ward designation of “ prizes received from Klesnzan men.” 
2 See Boeckh, Corp Inscript. No. 1126. 


VOL. IV 50e- 


Py) HISTORY OF GREECE. 


that Solon conferred a premium upon every Athenian citizen 
who gained a prize at that festival as well as at the Olympian, — 
in or after 594 B.c. It was celebrated by the Corinthians at 
their isthmus, in honor of Poseid6n ; and if we may draw any in- 
ference from the legends respecting its foundation, which is 
ascribed sometimes to Theseus, the Athenians appear to have 
identified it with the antiquities of their own state.! 


1K. F. Hermann, in his Lehrbuch der Griechischen Staatsalterthiimer 
(ch. 32, not. 7, and ch. 65, not. 3), and again in his more recent work 
(Lehrbuch der gottesdienstlichen Alterthiimer der Gre ‘hen, part iil, ch. 49, 
also not. 6), both highly valuable publications, maintains, — 1. That the 
exaltation of the Isthmian and Nemean games into Pan-Hellenie impor- 
tance arose directly after and out of the fall of the despots of Corinth and 
Sikyon. 2. That it was brought about by the paramount influence of the 
Dorians, especially by Sparta. 3. That the Spartans put down the despots 
of both these two cities. : 
The last of these three propositions appears to me untrue in respect to 
Sikyon, —improbable in respect to Corinth : my reasons for thinking so 
have been given in a former chapter. And if this be so, the reason for pre- 
suming Spartan intervention as to the Isthmian and Nemean games falls 
to the ground ; for there is no other proof of it, nor does Sparta appear ta 
nave interested herself in any of the four national festivals except the 
Olympic, with which she was from an early period peculiarly connected. 
Nor can I think that the first of Hermann’s three propositions is at all 
tenable. No connection whatever can be shown between Sikyon and thie 
Nemean games ; and it is the more improbable in this case that the Sikyo- 
nians should have been active, inasmuch as they had under Kleisthenés a 
little before contributed to nationalize the Pythian games: a second inter- 
ference for a similar purpose ought not to be presumed without some evi- 
dence. To prove his point about the Isthmia, Hermann cites only a 
passage of Solinus (vii, 14), “Hoe spectaculum, per Cypselum tvrannam 
intermissum, Corinthii Olymp. 49 solemnitati pristine reddiderunt.”. To 
render this passage at all credible, we must read Cypsclidas instead of Cypse- 
ism, which deducts from the value of a witness whose testimony can never 
ander any circumstances be rated high. But granting the alteration. 
there are two reasons against the assertion of Solinus. One, a positive 
reason, that Solon offered a large reward to Athenian victors at the Isth- 
mian games: his legislation falls in 594 B.c., ten years before the time 
when the Isthmia are said by Solinus to have been renewed after a long 
intermission. ‘The other reason (negative, though to my mind also power- 
\ is the silence of Herodotus in that long invective which he puts inte 
the mouth of Sosiklés against the Kypselids (v, 92). If Kypselus had 
reall; been guilty of so great an insult to the feelings of the people as te 


bt AN-HELLENIC FESTIVALS. 67 


We thus perceive that the interval between 600-560 B.C. ex- 
hibits the first historical manifestation of the Pythia, Isthmia, 
and Nemea, — the first expansion of all the three from local inte 
Pan-Hellenic festivals. ΤῸ the Olympic games, for some time the 
at centre of union among all the widely dispersed Greeks, 
are now added three other sacred agénes of the like public, 
open, national character; constituting visible marks, as well as 
lective Hellenism, and insuring to every Greek 


only gre 


tutelary bonds, of col 


who went to compete in the matches, a safe and inviolate transit 
even through hostile Hellenic states. These four, all in or near 
Peloponnesus, and one of which occurred in each year, formed 


the period, or cycle, of sacred games, and those who had gained 
prizes at all the four received the enviable designation of period- 

the honors paid to Olympic victors on their return to 
wrodigious, even in the sixth century B.C., 


onikes 2 
their native city were [| 
and became even more extravagant afterwards. We may remark 
that in the Olympic games alone, the oldest as well as the most 
‘llustrious of the four, the musical and intellectual element was 
wanting: all the three more recent agones included crowns for 
exercises of music and poetry, along with gymnastics, chariots, 
and horses. 

Nor was it onl 
these four great festiva 
ibited itself, during the course of this earliest 
Pursuant to the same tendencies, reli- 


y in the distinguishing national stamp set upon 
Is that the gradual increase of Hellenic 


family-feeling ex! 
period of our history. 
vious festivals in all the considerable towns gradually became more 


and more open and accessible, and attracted guests as well as 


suppress their most solemn festival. the fact would hardly have been 
omitted in the indictment which Sosiklés is made to urge against him. 
Aristotle, indeed, representing Kypselus as a mild and popular despot, 
introduces a contrary view of his character, which, if we admitted it, would 


of itself suffice to negative the supposition that he had suppressed the 


Isthmis. 
! Plutarch, Arat. ¢. 28. καὶ συνεχύϑη τότε πρῶτον (by order of Aratus) 


ἡ δεδαμένη τοῖς ἀγωνισταῖς ἀσυλία καὶ ἀσφάλεια, a deadly stain on the cher- 


acter of Aratus. 
3 Fostus, vy, Perihodos, p. 217, ed. Miiller. See the animated protest of 


the vhilosopher Xenophanés against the great rewards given to Olympie 
victors (240-520 B.c.), Xenophan. Fragment. 2, p 357, ed Bergk. 


os HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ws pao from beyond the border; the dignity of the state, as 

well as the honor rendere idi od, si 
ων 
ἘΠ nag κῃ y μὴ requenting visitors. 
sre is no positive evidence, indeed, of such expansion in the 
Attic festivals earlier than the reign of Peisistratus, who firs 
added the quadrennial or greater Panathenia to the aa i 
nual or lesser Panathenzea; nor can we trace the wei of βία 
ress in regard to Thebes, Orchomenus, Thespix, πῶς Sees, 
Pelléné, Aegina, Argos, ete., but we find full reason for believing 
that such was the general reality. Of the Olympic a Tathuhian 
victors whom Pindar and Simonidés celebrated, sites: ἀνὰ 
a portion of their renown from previous victories acquired at 
several of these local contests,2— victories sometimes nn ie 
erous, as to prove how wide-spread the habit of mutual fre- 
quentation had become ; though we find, even in in third 
century B.C.. treaties of alliance between different cities, in whicl 
it is thought necessary to confer this mutual right hie eae pti 
ulation. Temptation was offered, to the distinguished esis 
or musical competitors, by prizes of great value ; and Thien 
even asserted, as a proof of the overweening pride of Kr asd 
Sy>aris, that these cities tried to neice 2 wont neo a 
preéminence of the 


} ry "ὧν a. . 7 . A 4 »" 

Thucyd. vi, 16. Alkibiadés says, καὶ ὅσα αὖ ἐν τῇ πύλει yoor 

Me = i ‘gy Ν C ION YLaAtC 

GA..G) TQ) A Th μαι. TOC LU Ἷ Ὶ ry ψ ΠῚ Ι . 
i ν Ὶ auTpuvoual, τοις μὲν ἀστοις φϑονεῖται φύυσει, πρὸς de τοὺς Fé 

καὶ αὐτὴ ἰσχὺς Φαίνεται. πὰ χϑὰ νὼ 
Γ᾿ iia meh », , ᾿ . 

The greate! Panathenzea are ascribed to Peisistratus by the Schotliast on 
el ᾿ ; ἡ} ἯΙ i 4 : Aas ᾿ h newas 
Aristeidés, vol. iii, p. 323, ed. Dindorf: judging by what immediately pre 

eedes. the statement seems to come from Aristotle nn 
ς τ: ᾽ ~ . md ea 
Simonidés, Fragm. 154-158, ed. B i 
, Fragm. 1: 58, ed. Bergk; Pindar, Nem. x, 45; C 
* Sim idar, Nem. x, 45; r 
xiii, 107. i se aii 
' The distinguished athlete Theagenés is affirmed to have gained twelve 
undred prizes in these various agénes: according to som fourt 
ee oi ΠΕ some, fourteen 
hundred prizes (Pausan. vi, 11, 2; Plutarch, Precept. Reip. Ger. ὁ 
Ὁ. 811}. | p. Ger. αὶ 18 
‘ An athlete named Apollonius arrived too late for the Olympic games 
av > whores ων - " Ml ~ 51: " 
Ηρ ante 2 away too lone, from his anxiety to get money at vari 
agones in Ionia (Pausan. vy, 21, 5). ie ΩΝ 
2s "τ 
sce τ ν aril τὸ (Py ὦ or « ᾽ » ἷ μιᾷ 5 
᾿ bg partic ularly. the treaty between the inhabitants of Latus and those 
ς rote it > thie {" y a 
’ ς ἶ in Keri . Ν Boeckh ce orp. Inser. No. 9554. wherein this reci 
procity is expressly stipulated. Boeckh places this Inscription in the third 
century B.C 


OWTH OF THE ELEUSINIAN FESTIVAL. 69 


GR 


Olympic games, by instituting games of their own with the richest 
to be celebrated at the same time,! —a statement in itself 
ut nevertheless illustrating the animated 
ail among the Grecian cities, in procuring 
and crowded games. At the time when 


the Homeric Hymn to Démétér was composed, the worship of 
eems to have been purely local at Eleusis ; but 
ar, the festival celebrated by the Athenians 
an Démétér, admitted Greeks 
attended by vast crowds of 


prizes, 
not worthy of credit, b 
rivalry known to prev 
for themselves splendid 


that goddess S 
before the Persian w 
every year, in honor of the Eleusini 
of all cities to be initiated, and was 
them.” 

It was thus th: 
the primitive religious 


it the simplicity and strict local application of 

festival, among the greater states in Greece, 
gradually expanded, on certain great occasions periodically recur- 
ring, into an elaborate and rezulated series of exhibitions, — 
not merely admitting, but soliciting the fraternal presence of all 
Hellenic spectators. In this respect Sparta seems to have formed 
an exception to the remaining states: her festivals were for her- 
ceneral rudeness towards other Greeks was not 
Karneia,? or Hyakinthia, or Gym- 
¢ Dionysia were gradually 
aneous outburst of village 


self alone, and her 
materially softened even at the 
nopediz. On the other hand, the Atti 
ἃ. from their original rude spont 


=e 


exalte 


ed. Didot. The Krotoniates furnished a great 
and to the Pythian games (Herodot. 
Gymnastik und Agonistik der 


1 Timeus, Fragm. 82, 
yer of victors both to the Olympic 


numl 
x, 5, 5—-x, 7, 91 Krause, 


viii, 47; Pausan. 
Hellenen, vol. ii, sect. 29, Pp. 752). 


2 Herodot. viii, 65. καὶ αὐτῶν ὃ τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων 


βουλόμενος καὶ 


μυειται. 

The exclusion of all competitors, natives of Lampsakus, from the games 
celebrated in the Chersonesus to the honor of the ekist Miltiadés, ἰδ 
d by Herodotus as something special (Herodot. vi, 38). 
acedemonian discouragement of stranget- 


Thucydidés into the mouth of 


mentione 

3 See the remarks, upon the I 
visitors at their public festivals, put by 
Periklés (Thucyd. ii, 39). 

Lichas the Spartan gained great renown by treating nospitably the 
girangers who came to the Gymnopediz at Sparta (Xenophon, Memorab. 
i, 2, 62; Plutarch, Kimon, c. 10), —a story which proves that some strangers 
eame to the Spartan festivass, but which also proves that they were not 


many in number, and that to show them hospitality was ἃ striking distine 


tion from the general character of Spartans. 


70 HISTORY OF GREECE 


feeling i ΚΗ " ᾿ 
gint ankfulness to the god, followed by song, dance, and 1 
" ἘΦ Ἐπ λὴ Ὃν 


elry of vaitous kinds 
: y a1 tous kinds, — into costly and diversified performances 
rst, by a trained chorus, next, by actors superadd ad the 
h ‘ peradt ed to it = and the 


dre ‘ : . * a ia , 
See cen nna dees: μυυλεροὰ, μα they ἐμλϊυβιρά 
ection of Grecian art. s . ouied the pers 
1 of Grecian art, so they were eminently calcul: See 
a Pan-Hellenic audi Ἷ ently calculated to invite 
loni ienic audience and to encourage the sentimen: of Hel 
enic unity “νὰ τ». Θ ᾽ ul ὦ el. 
a The dramatic literature of Athens, however, bel 
yroperly Ὁ ων νιν. ; ᾿ er, belongs 
! ‘ . y toa later period; previous to the year 560 B.c.. we g 
on t se CO i en " ie ; . « Pees See 
y those commencements of innovation which drew 1 r 
pis? the rebuke of Sol : ' nich drew upon Thes- 
the P 7 Solon, who himself contributed to impart to 
1e 4 é mar ante ων ᾿ 
. unathenaic festival a more solemn and attractive } t 
me ἃ aula + character 
y checking the license of the rhapsodes, and insuring I ᾿ 
ascent a fi | «Mn suring t¢ 10S 
present a full, orderly recital of the Iliad . 
TI i " r 4 AbcdUle 
le sacre a ae" 
took sacred games and festivals, here alluded to as a 
ook hic ἃ, visio as a Class, 
0k hold of the Greek mind by so creat a variet es 
to counterbalance i 4 © a variety of feelings, as 
» Valance ln a hieh decree ι Qa liti " Ml , 
to bes ᾿ alto { = ὙΠ 56 pout al disseverance, and 
Ἵ ᾿ among their wide-spread cities, in the midst of 
sfant je: sv and fre ᾿ ΤΊ St of con- 
J alousy and frequent quarrel, a teeling of brotherh ] ] 
ΟΟΠΡῸῚ « 1 « " ‘ ὴ a ΝΟΥ Εν οἱ LOOK Ane 
TI | sentiment such as must otherwise have died ay 
we Thebes nee se have died away. 
; 1e6rs, or sacred envoys, who came to Olympia or Delphi 
rom so many different points. all s ni yUipla ΟἹ elphl 
a th J ν I Lite a sacrificed to the same cod and 
e same altar, witnesse ae = 
ag e altar, witnessed the same sports, and contributed 1 
ieir donatives ae sista deihstaaetear sf 
onatives to enrich or adorn one respected ἀπ Ν λ 
must we forge ‘ a ns > uieiscicobe ANOF 
get that the festival afforded opportunity for ¢ sort 


δι. “ἧς » . . 
ig tot. Poetic. c.3 and 4; Maximus Tyrius, Diss ; 
tare 1 catia ἀνέ yrius, Diss. xxi, p. 215; PI 
1, De ¢ upidine Divitiarum, c. ἃ. p. 527: compare tl | i gener 
Ν ᾿ ᾿ * . s i ri r ἐ ; το a oar ΠΤ 
non potest suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum,” 16 oo θολὸ 
oracles uote , ᾿ ' , Ϊ πι ἢ , p- 1098. The 
Mak juoted by Demosthenés, cont. Meidiam (c. 15, p. 531, and fo 
akartat. p. 1072: see also B i \ - tO, P. Ol, and cont 
. 1072: see also Buttmann’s he fe ee 
‘ ᾿ ῃ » ᾿ » - - 
the idea of the anci i ote on the former passage), conve 
ee e ancient simple Athenian festival Ὕ 
Plutarch, Solon, c. 29: see abov i" 
‘soe 6. 29: 806 above, chap. xi, vol. iii, p. 195 
16 orator Lysias, in a fragment of his | I ne 
anne ty ‘ ag us lost Panegyric: ; 
yreservec , δ . : anegyrical Ora 
prese 1 by Dionysius of Halikarnassus (vol. γ᾿ p. 590 R sha 
the influence of the crames with rreat for . Mh Ρ. a2) i. } describes 
£ ‘ Pre: oree and simplicity A 
th 7 Ι SIMPI1¢ ity. iraklé 
ν» founder of them, ἀγώνα μὲν σωμάτων ἐποίησε. φιλ Γ ' ἕῳ = 
γνώμης 0 ἐπίδειξιν ἐν τῷ Kadri ΓΤ, ποίησε, φιλοτιμίαν ἐὲ πλούτιμ 
' DELS Τῷ καλλίστῳ τῆς ‘EAAddcc: ἵνα τού : : 
ἕνεκα ἐς τὸ αὐτὸ ἔλθωμεν, τὰ μὲν ὀψόμενοι. τὰ ὃ ie ecg choi 
nth i JO) Ol, Th C* ὠκουσομεῖοὶι "Hy7 
γὰρ τὸν ἐνθάδε σύλλογον ἀρχὴν γενέσϑαι τς δὰ ΠΠΠΠ Hyjoate 
, ~ » i ν m i de A TH Ὃ» Ny 
BENG Rear o:Aine ¢ LJ jou τῆς πρὺς 


IMPORTANT EFFECT OF THESE FESTIVALS. 

so large a mass of spectators, 
cames themselves, there were 
council-room for those wha 


of fair, including much traffic amid 


and besides the exhibitions of the 


recitations and lectures in a spacious 


chose to listen to them, by poets, rhay 
among which last, the history of Herodotus is said ta 
wublicly read by its author2 Of the wealthy and great 
contended simply for the chariot 


ysodes, philosophers, and his- 


torians, — 


have heen ] 
nen in the various cities, many ‘ 
νόθα <a vietaries, But there wer hers whose at 
eictories and horse victories. But there were otners whose am- 
bition was of a character more strietly personal, and who strip- 


ped naked as runners, wrestlers, boxers, or pankratiasts, having 


throuvrh the extreme fatioue of a complete previous train- 
Kylon, whose unfortunate attempt to usurp the sceptre αἱ 
een recounted, had gained the prize in the Olympic 
the prince of Macedon, 


at Rhodes, 


COTE 


ing. 
Athens has | 
stadium: Alexander son of Amyntas, 
had run for 13 The great family of the Diagorid:e 


3 « Mercatum eum, qui haberetur maximo 
nam ut illie alii corpori 3 
caer " 
8}0} 


Ι Cicero, Ταβο. Quiest. V, 
judorum apparatu totius τοῖα celebritate: 
exercitatis gloriam Οἵ nobilitatem coron® peterent, alii emendi aut vend 
quiestu et lucro ducerentur,” ete. 

(i, 8) and Justin (xii, 5), call the Olympic 


Both Velleius Paterculus, also, 


festival by the name mercatus. 

There were booths all round the Altis, or sacred precinct of Zeus (Schol 
Pindar. Olymp. Xi, 55), during the time of the games. 

Strabo observes with justice, respecting the muititudinous festivals gen- 
erally --- Ἡ πανήγυρις, ἐμπορικόν τι πρᾶγμα (x, p. 486), especially in refer- 
ence to Delos: see Cicero pro Lege Manilia, c. 18: compare Pausanias, X, 
42. 9. about the Panegyris and fair at Tithorea in Phokis, and Becker, 


Chariklés, vol. i, p. 285. 

At the Attic festival of the Herakleia, celebrated by the communior 
called Mesogei, or a certain number of the demes constituting Mesogea, ὃ 
regular market-due, or ἀγοραστικὸν, Was levied upon those who brought 
goods to sell (Inscriptiones Attic nuper reperte 12, by E. Curtius, pp 
3-.7). 

2 Pausan. vi, 23, 5; Diodor. xiv, 109, xv, 7; Lucian, Quomodo Histowe 
See Krause, Olympia, sect. 29, pp. 183-186. 

Eurybatés of Argos (Herodot. vi 

(v, 47; viii, 47); Eualkidés cf 


sit conscribenda, c. 42. 
3 Thucyd. i, 120; Herodot. v, 22-71. 
92); Philippus and Phayllus of Kroton 
Eretria (v, 102); Hermolykus of Athens (ix, 105). 

Pindar (Nem. iv and vi) gives the numerous V 
and Theandride at Agina: also Melissus the pankratiast an 
the Kleonymide of Thebes — τιμάεντες ἀρχᾶϑεν πρόξενοί τ᾽ & 


‘Tsthm. iii, 25) 


ictories of the Basside 
ἃ his ancestor 


_corus 


72 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


who furnished magisirates and generals to their native city, sup 
plied a still greater number of successful boxers and pankratiasts 
at Olympia, while other instances also occur of generals named by 
various cities from the lists of successful Olympic gymnasts ; and 
the odes of Pindar, always dearly purchased, attest how many of 
the great and wealthy were found in that list.! The perfect popu- 
larity and equality of persons at these great games, is a feature not 
less remarkable than the exact adherence to predetermined rule, 
and the self-imposed submission of the immense crowd to a hand- 
ful of servants armed with sticks,2 who executed the orders of the 
Eleian Hellanodikz. ‘The ground upon which the ceremony took 
place, and even the territory of the administering state, was pro- 
tected by a “ Truce of God,” during the month of the festival, the 
commencement of which was formally announced by heralds sent 
round to the different states. Treaties of peace between differ- 


ent cities were often formally commemorated by pillars there 


erected, and the gene ral impression ot the scene suggested nothing 
but ideas of peace and brotherhood among Greeks. And I may 


Respecting the extreme celebrity of Diagoras and his sons, of the Rho 
dian gens Eratidez, Damagétus, Akusilaus, and Dorieus, see Pindar. Olymp. 
vil, 16-145, with the Scholia; Thucyd. iii, 11; Pausan. vi, 7, 1-2; Xeno- 
phon, Hellenic. i, 5, 19: compare Strabo, xiv, p. 655. 

''The Latin writers remark it as a peculiarity of Grecian feeling, as dis- 
tinguished from Roman, that men of great station accounted it an honor te 
contend in the games: see, as a specimen, Tacitus, Dialovus de Orator. « 
9. “ Ac si in Grecia natus esses, ubi ludicras quoque artes exercere hones: 
tum est, ac tibi Nicostrati robur Dii dedissent, non paterer immanes illos et 
ad pugnam natos lacertos levitate jaculi vanescere.” Again, Cicero, pro 
Flacco, ec. 13, in his sarcastic style: “Quid si etiam occisus est a piratis 
Adramyttenus, homo nobilis, cujus est fere nobis omnibus nomen auditum, 
Atinas pugil, Olympionices? hoe est apud Grecos (quoniam de eorum 
gravitate dicimus) prope majus et gloriosius, quam Rom triumphasse ” 

* Lichas, one of the chief men of Sparta, and moreover a chariot-victor, 
received actual chastisement on the ground, from these staff-bearers. for an 
infringement of the regulations (Thucyd. v, 50). 

* Thucyd. v, 18-47, and the curious ancient Inscription in Boeckh’s Cor- 
Fus Inscr. No. 11, p. 28, re: ording the convention between the Eleians and 
the inhabitants of the Arcadian town of Herza. 

The comparison of various passages referring to the Olympia, Isthmia. 
and Nemea (Thucydidés iii, 1 ., viii, 9-10, v, 49-51, and Xenophon, Hellenic 
ty, 7, ; v. 1, 29) shows that ‘rious political business was often discussed 


LYRIC POETRY.— THE SEVEN WISE MEN. 73 


yeanark that the impression of the games as belonging to all 


‘eeks, was 8 5 learer during 
Greeks, and to none but Greeks, was stronger and ὁ g 


the interval between 600-300 B.c., than it came to be afterwards. 


For the Macedonian conquests had the effect of diluting and cor 
rupting Hellenism, by spreading an exterior varnish of Hellenic 
tastes and manners over a wide area of incongrueus foreigners, 
who were incapable of the real elevation of the Hellenic char- 


so that although in later times the games continued undi- 


acter ; . . . . ,. 
' f visitors, the spirit 


minished, both in attraction and in number 0 
of Pan-Hellenic communion, which had once animated the scene, 


was gone forever. 


CHAPTER X XIX. 
LYRIC POETRY. —THE SEVEN WISE MEN. 


ΤΠῊΞ interval between 776-560 B.c. presents to us a remarka- 
ansion of Grecian genius in the creation of their elegiac, 


16 exp zi 
ne λθι diversified 


iambic, lyric, choric, and gnomic poetry, which was : 
in a great many ways and improved by many separate masters. 
The creators of all these different styles — from Kallinus and 
Archilochus down to Stesichorus — fall within the two centuries 
here included; though Pindar and Simonidés, . the proud and 
hieh-crested bards,” ! who carried lyric and choric poetry to the 
maximum of elaboration consistent with full poetical effect, lived 
in the succeeding century, and were contemporary with the trae 
The Grecian drama, comic as well as tragic, 


gedian /Eschylus. ds 
combined the lyric and choric song 


of the fifth century B.C., 


at these cames, — that diplomatists made use of the intercourse for the pur- 
“ « v5 
pose of detecting the secret designs of states whom they suspected, and 


that the administering state often practised manceuvres in respect to the 


sbligations of truce for the Hieromenia, or Holy Month. 


tr “ , 
1 Himerius, Orat. iii, p. 426, Wernsdorf --- ἀγέρωχοι καὶ ὑψαυχένες. 


VOL. IV 4 


74 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


with the living action of iambic dialogue, nine CHS constitutirg the 
last ascending movement in the poetical genius of the race, 
Reserving this for a future time, and for the history of Athens, 
te which it more particularly belongs, I now propose to speak 
only of the poetical movement of the two earlier centuries, 
wherein Athéns had little or no part. So scanty are the rem- 
nants, unfortunately, of these earlier poets, that we can offer 
little except criticisms borrowed at second-hand, and a few gen- 
erai considerations on their workings and tendency.! 

Archilochus and Kallinus both appear to fall about the middle 
of the seventh century B.c., and it is with them that the innova- 
tions in Grecian poetry commence. Before them, we are told 
there existed nothing but the epos, or daktylic hexameter poetry, 
of which much has been said in my former volume, — being 
legendary stories or adventures narrated, together with ad- 
dresses or hymns to the gods. We must recollect, too, that this 
was not only the whole poetry, but the whole literature of the 
age: prose composition was altogether unknown, and writing, if 
beginning to be employed as an aid to a few superior men, was 
at any rate generally unused, and found no reading public. The 
voice was the only communicant, and the ear the only recipient, 
of all those ideas and feelings which productive minds in the 
community found themselves impelled to pour out; both voice 
and ear being accustomed to a musical recitation, or chant, appa- 
rently something between song and speech, with simple rhythm 
and a still simpler occasional accompaniment from the primitive 
four-stringed harp. Such habits and requirements of the voice 
aad ear were, at that time, inseparably associated with the suc- 
cess and popularity of the poet, and contributed doubtless to 
restrict the range of subjects with which he could deal. Tha 


' For the whole subject of this chapter, the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, 
and fourteenth chapters of O. Miiller’s History of the Literature of Ancient 
Greece, wherein the lyric poets are handled with greater length than con 
sists with the limits of this work, will be found highly valuable, — chapters 
abounding in erudition and ingenuity, but not always within the limits of 
the evidence. 

The learned work of Ulrici (Geschichte der Griechischen Poesie — Lyrik 
is still more open to the same remark. 


COMMENCEMENT OF urkiC POETRY. 76 


ype was to a certain extent consecrated, like the primitive 
statues of the gods, from which men only ventured to deviate by 
gradual and almost unconscious innovations. Moreover, in the 
first half of the seventh century B.c., that genius which had once 
created an Iliad and an Odyssey was no longer to be found, ana 
the work of hexameter narrative had come to be prosecuted by 
less gifted persons,— by those Cyclic poets of whom I have 
spoken in the preceding volumes. 

Such, as far as we can make it out amidst very uncertain 
evidence, was the state of the Greek mind immediately before 
elegiac and lyric poets appeared; while at the same time its 
experience was enlarging by the formation of new colonies, and 
the communion among its various states tended to increase by 


the freer reciprocity of religious games and festivals. There 
arose a demand for turning the literature of the age -—— I use this 
word as synonymous with the poetry —to new feelings and 
purposes, and for applying the rich, plastic, and musical lan- 


guage of the old epic, to present passion and circumstance, 
social as well as individual. Such a tendency had become ob- 
vious in Hesiod, even within the range of hexameter verse ; 
but the same causes which led to an enlargement of the subjects 
of poetry inclined men also to vary the metre. 

In regard to this latter point, there is reason to believe that 
the expansion of Greek music was the immediate determining 
cause; for it has been already stated that the musical scale and 
instruments of the Greeks, originally very narrow, were ma- 
terially enlarged by borrowing from Phrygia and Lydia, and 
these acquisitions seem to have been first realized about the 
beginning of the seventh century B.c., through the Lesbian 
harper Terpander,—the Phrygian (or Greco-Phrygian) flute- 
player Olympus,— and the Arkadian or Boeotian fiute-player 
Klonas. Terpander made the important advance of exchanging 
the original four-stringed harp for one of seven strings, embrac- 
ing the compass of one octave or two Greek tetrachords, and 
Olympus as well as Klonas taught many new nomes, or tunes, 
on the flute, to which the Greeks had before been strangers, ~ 
probably also the use of a flute of more varied musical compass. 
Terpander is said to have gained the prize at the first recorded 
celebration of the Lacedemonian festival of the Karneia, in 676 


76 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


.c.: this is one of the best-ascertained points aniong the cbscure 
chronology of the seventh century ; and there seem grounds for 
assigning Olympus and Klonas to nearly the same period, a 
little before Archilochus and Kallinus.!. To Terpander, Olym- 
pus, and Klonas, are ascribed the formation of the earliest musi- 
cal nomes known to the inquiring Greeks of later times: to the 
first, nomes on the harp; to the two latter, on the flute, — every 
nome being the general scheme, or basis, of which the airs ac- 
tually performed constituted so many variations, within certain 


i These early innovators in Grecian music, rhythm, metre, and poetry 
belonging to the seventh century B.c., were very imperfectly known, even tc 
those contemporaries of Plato and Aristotle who tried to get together 
facts for a consecutive history of music. The treatise of Plutarch, De 
Musica, shows what very contradictory statements he found. He quotes 
from four different authors, — Herakleidés, Glaukus, Alexander, and Aris- 
toxenus, who by no means agreed in their series of names and facts. The 
first three of them blend together mythe and history ; while even the Ana- 
graphé or inscription at Sikyon, which professed to give a continuous list 
of such poets and musicians as had contended at the Sikyonian games, 
hegan with a large stock of mythical names, — Amphion, Linus, Pierius, 
etc. (Plutarch, Music. p. 1132.) Some authors, according to Plutarch (p. 
1133), made the great chronological mistake of placing Terpander as con- 
temporary with Hipponax; a proof how little of chronological evidence 
was then accessible. 

That Terpander was victor at the Spartan festival of the Karneia, in 676 
B.c., may well have been derived by Hellanikus from the Spartan registers: 


the name of the Lesbian harper Perikleitas, as having gained the same 
3), probably rests 
on the same authority. That Archilochus was rather later than Terpan- 


erize at some subsequent period (Plutarch, De Mus. p. 113: 


aer, and Thalétas rather later than Archilochus, was the statement oi 
Glaukus (Plutarch, De Mus. p. 1134). Klonas and Polymnéstus are 
piaced later than Terpander; Archilochus later than Klonas: Alkmaz 
is said to have mentioned Polymnéstus in one of his songs (pp. 1133-1135). 
It can hardly be true that Terpander gained four Pythian prizes, if the 
festival was octennial prior to its reconstitution by the Amphiktyons (p. 
1132). Sakadas gained three Pythian prizes after that period, when the 
festival was quadrennial (p. 1134). 

Compare the confused indications in Pollux, iv, 65-66, 78-79. The 
abstract given by Photius of certain parts of the Chrestomathia of Prockus 
‘yablished in Gaisford’s edition of Hephestion, pp. 375-389), is also ex: 
tremely valuable, in spite of its brevity and obscurity, about the lyme and 
enoric poetry of Greece. 


EARLY GRECIAN MUSIC. — TERPANDER. 77 


defined limits.!. Terpander employed his enlarged instrumental 
power as a new accompaniment to the Homeric poems, as well 
as to certain epic procemia or hymns to the gods of his own 
composition. But he does not seem to have departed from the 
hexameter verse and the daktylic rhythm, to which the new 
accompaniment was probably not quite suitable; and the idea 
may thus have been suggested of combining the words also 
according to new rhythmical and metrical laws. 

It is certain, at least, that the age (670-600) immediately 
succeeding Terpander, — comprising Archilochus, Kallinus, Tyr- 
teus, and Alkman, whose relations of time one to another we 
have no certain means of determining,? though Alkman seems to 
have been the latest, — presents a remarkable variety both of 
new metres and of new rhythms, superinduced upon the previ- 


1 The difference between Νόμος and Μέλος appears in Plutarch, De 
Musici, p. 1132— Καὶ τὸν Tépravdpov, κιϑαρῳδικῶν ποιητὴν ὄντα νόμων, 
κατὰ νόμον ἕκαστον τοῖς ἔπεσι τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τοῖς Ομήρου μέλη περιτιϑέντα, 
ἄδειν ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι: ἀποφῆναι δὲ τοῦτον λέγει ὀνόματα πρῶτον τοῖς κιϑαρω- 
δικοῖς νόμοις. 

The nomes were not many in number; they went by special names; and 
there was a disagreement of opinion as to the persons who had composed 
them (Plutarch, Music. p. 1133). They were monodic, not choric, —in- 
tended to be sung by one person (Aristot. Problem. xix, 15). Herodot. i, 
23, about Arion and the Nomus Orthius. 

2 Mr. Clinton (Fasti Hellen. ad ann. 671, 665, 644) appears to me noway 
satisfactory in his chronological arrangements of the poets of this century. 
I agree with O. Miiller (Hist. of Literat. of Ancient Greece, ch. xii, 9) in 
thinking that he makes Terpander too recent, and Thalétas too ancient; 
I also believe both Kallinus and Alkman to have been more recent than 
the place which Mr. Clinton assigns to them; the epoch of Tyrtzus will 
depend upon the date which we assign to the second Messenian war. 

How very imperfectly the chronology of the poetical names even of the 
sixth century B.c.— Sappho, Anakreon, Hipp6énax— was known even to 
writers of the beginning of the Ptolemaic age (or shortly after 300 B.c.), 
we may see by the mistakes noted in Athenzus, xiii, p. 599. Hermesianax 
of Kolophon, the elegiac poet, represented Anakreon as the lover of Sap 
pho; this might perhaps be not absolutely impossible, if we supposed in 
Sappho an old age like that of Ninon de l’Enclos ; but others (even earlier 
than Hermesianax, since they are quoted by Chameleon) represented 
Anakreon, when in old age, as addressing verses to Sappho, still young 
Again, the comic writer Diphilus introduced both Aychilochus and Hip 
ponax as the lovers of Sappho 


78 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ous daktylic hexameter. The first departure from this latter is 
found in the elegiac verse, employed seemingly more or less by 
all the four above-mentioned poets, but chiefly by the first two, 
and even ascribed by some to the invention of Kallinus. Tyr- 
tus in his military march-songs employed the anapwstic metre, 
Sut in Archilochus as well as in Alkman we find traces of a 
much larger range of metrical variety, — iambic, trochaic, an- 
apwstic, ionic, etc.,— sometimes even asynartetic or compound 
metres, anapwestic or daktylic, blended with trochaie or iambic. 
What we have remaining from Mimnermus, who comes about 
the close of the preceding four, is elegiac; his contemporaries 
Alkeus and Sappho, besides employing most of those metres 


which they found existing, invented each a peculiar stanza of 


5: ᾿ 
their own, which is familiarly known under a name derived 
from each. In Solon, the younger contemporary of Mimnermus, 
we have the elegiac, iambic, and trochaic: in Theognis, yet later, 
the elegiac only. But both Arion and Stesichorus appear to 
have been innovators in this department, the former by his im- 
provement in the dithyrambiec chorus or circular song and dance 
in honor of Dionysus, — the latter by his more elaborate choric 
compositions, containing not only a strophé and antistrophé, but 
also a third division or epode succeeding them, pronounced by 
the chorus standing still. Both Anakreon and Ibykus likewise 
added to the stock of existing metrical varieties. And we thus 
see that, within the century and a half succeeding Terpander, 
Greek poetry (or Greek literature, which was then the same 
thing) berame greatly enriched in matter as well as diversified 
in form. 

To a certain extent there seems to have been a real connection 
between the two: new forms were essential for the expression 
οἵ new wants and feelings, — though the assertion that elegiac 


- 


metre is especially adapted for one set οὔ feelings,! trochaic for 


' The Latin poets and the Alexandrine critics seem to have both insisted 
on the natural mournfulness of the elegiac metre (Ovid, Heroid. xv, 7; 
Horat. Art. Poet. 75): see also the fanciful explanation given by Didymas 
in the Etymologicon Magnum, v, "EAeyoe. 

We learn from Hephestion (c. viii, p. 45, Gaisf.) that the anay estie 
march-metre of ‘T'yrtsus was employed by the comic writers also, fo: ¢ 


INSUFFICIENCY OF THE HEXAMETER VERSE. 79 


a second, and iambic for a third, if true at all, can only ba 
admitted with great latitude of exception, when we find so many 
of them employed by the poets for very different subjects, — gay 
or melancholy, bitter or complaining, earnest or sprightly, — 
seemingly with little discrimination. 

But the adoption of some new metre, different from the per- 
petual series of hexameters, was required when the poct desired 
to do something more than recount a long story or fragment ot 
heroic legend, — when he sought to bring himself, his friends, his 
enemies, his city. his hopes and fears with regard to matters 
recent or impending, all before the notice of the hearer, and that, 
too, at once with brevity and animation. The Greek hexameter, 
like our blank verse, has all its limiting conditions bearing upon 
each separate line, and presents to the hearer no predetermined 
resting-place or natural pause beyond.'! In reference to any 


long composition, either epic or dramatic, such unrestrained 


license is found convenient, and the case was similar for Greek 
epos and drama,—the single-lined iambic trimeter being gen- 
erally used for the dialogue of tragedy and comedy, just as the 
daktylic hexameter had been used for. the epic. The metrical 
changes introduced by Archilochus and his contemporaries may 
be compared to a change from our blank verse to the rhymed 
couplet and quatrain: the verse was thrown into little systems 
of two, three, or four lines, with a pause at the end of each; 
and the halt thus assured to, as well as expected and relished by, 
the ear, was generally coincident with a close, entire or partial, 


totally different vein of feeling. See the Dissertation of Franck, Callinus, 
pp. 37-48 (Leips. 1816). 

Of the remarks made by O. Miiller respecting the metres of these early 
poets (History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. xi, 5. 8-12, ete. ; ch. 
xii, s. 1-2, etc.), many appear to be uncertified and disputable. 

For some good remarks on the fallibility of men’s impressions respecting 
the natural and inherent ἦϑος of particular metres, see Adam Smith (The- 
ory of Moral Sentiment, part v, ch. i, p. 829), in the edition of his works 
by Dugald Stewar%. 

"1 See the observations in Aristotle (Rhetor. iii, 9) on the λέξις εἰρομένη 
as compared with λέξις Kateotpaupévn — λέξις εἰρομένη, ἣ οὐδὲν ἔχει τέλος 
αὐτὴ καϑ' αὐτὴν, ἂν μὴ τὸ πρᾶγμα τὸ Aeyouevov τελειώϑη *— κατεστραμμένη 
δὲ, ἡ ἐν περιόδοις" λέγω δὲ περίοδον, λέξιν ἔχουσαν ἀρχὴν καὶ τελευτὴ 
αὐτὴν καϑ' αὐτὴν καὶ μέγεϑος εὐσύνοπτον. 


80 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


in the sense, which thus came to be distributed with greater point 
and effect. The elegiac verse, or common hexameter and pen 
tameter (this second line being an hexameter with the third and 
sixth thesis,! or the last half of the third and sixth foot, sup- 
pressed, and a pause left in place of it), as well as the epode (or 
iambic trimeter followed by an iambic dimeter) and some other 
binary combinations of verse which we trace among the frag- 
ments of Archilochus, are conceived with a view to such increase 
of effect both on the ear and the mind, not less than to the direct 
pleasures of novelty and variety. 

The iambic metre, built upon the primitive lambus, or coarse 
and licentious jesting,2 which formed a part of some Grecian 


1 employ, however unwillingly, the word thesis here (arsis and thesis) in 
the sense in which it is used by G. Hermann (* Illud tempus, in quo ictus 
eat. arsin ; cm tem yp ra, quae carent ictu, thesin vocamus,” Element. Doctr 
Metr. sect. 15), and followed by Boeckh, in his Dissertation on the Metres 
of Pindar (i, 4), though I agree with Dr. Barham (in the valuable Preface 
to his edition of Hephzstion, Cambridge, 1843, pp. 5-8) that the opposite 
sense of the words would be the preferable one, just as it was the original 
sense in which they were used by the best Greek musical writers: Dr. Bar- 
ham’s Preface is very instructive on the difficult subject of ancient rhythm 
generally. 

3 Homer, Hymn. ad Cererem, 202; Hesychius, v, Τεφυρὶς ; Herodot. v, 
83: Diodor. v, 4. ‘There were various gods at whose festivals scurrility 
(τωϑασμὸς) was a consecrated practice, seemingly different festivals in 
different places (Aristot. Politic. vii, 15, 8). 

The reader will understand better what this consecrated scurrility means 
by comparing the description of a modern traveller in the kingdom of 
Naples (Tour through the Southern Provinces of the Kingdom of Naples, 
by Mr. Keppel Craven, London, 1821, ch. xv, p. 287) :— 

“] returned to Gerace (the site of the ancient Epizephyrian Lokri) by 
one of those moonlights which are known only in these latitudes, and which 
no pen or pencil ean portray. My path lay along some cornfields, in 
which the natives were employed in the last labors of the harvest, and I 
was not a little surprised to find myself saluted with a volley of opprobri- 
ous epithets and abusive language, uttered in the most threatening voice, 
and accompanied with the most insulting gestures. This extraordinary 
custom is οἵ the most remote antiquity, and is observed towards all stran- 
gers during the harvest and vintage seasons; those who are apprized of it 
will keep their temper as well as their presence of mind, as the loss of 
either would only serve as a signal for still louder invectives, and prolong 8 
centest in which success would be as hopeless as undesirable.” 


ARCHILOCHUS. 81 


festivals (especially of the festivals of Démétér as well in Attica 
as in Paros, the native country of the poet), is only one amongst 
many new paths struck out by his inventive genius; whose 
exuberance astonishes us, when we consider that he takes his 
start from little more than the simple hexameter,!' in which, too, 
he was a distinguished composer, — for even of the elegiac verse 
he is as likely to have been the inventor as Kallinus, just as he 
ras the earliest popular and successful composer of table-songs, 
or Skolia, though Terpander may have originated some such 
before him. The entire loss of his poems, excepting some few 
fragments, enables us to recognize little more than one character- 
istic, —the intense personality which pervaded them, as well as 
that coarse, direct, and out-spoken license, which afterwards lent 
such terrible effect to the old comedy at Athens. His lampoons 
are said to have driven Lykambés, the father of Neobuleé, to 
hang himself: the latter had been promised to Archilochus in 
marriage, but that promise was broken, and the poet assailed both 
father and daughter with every species of calumny.? In addi- 
tion to this disappointment, he was poor, the son of a slave- 
mother, and an exile from his country, Paros, to the unpromising 
colony of Thasos. The desultory notices respecting him betray 
a state of suffering combined with loose conduct which vented 
itself sometimes in complaint, sometimes in libellous assault ; and 
he was at last slain by some whom his muse had thus exasper- 
ated. His extraordinary poetical genius finds but one voiee of 
encomium throughout antiquity. His triumphal song to Hera 


' The chief evidence for the rhythmical and metrical changes introduced 
by Archilochus is to be found in the 28th chapter of Plutarch, De Musica, 
pp. 1140-1141, in words very difficult to understand completely See 
ULrici. Geschichte der Hellenisch. Poesie, vol. ii, p. 381. 

The epigram ascribed to Theokritus (No. 18 in Gaisford’s Poets Mine 
res) shows that the poet had before him hexameter compositions of Archil- 
echus, as well as lyric: — 


ὡς ἐμμελῆς τ᾽ Eyevto κἀπιδέξιος 
ἔπεά τε ποιεῖν, πρὸς λύραν τ᾽ ἀείδειν. 
See the article on Archilochus in Welcker’s Kleine Schriften, pp. 71-82, 
which has the merit of showing that iambic bitterness is far from being the 
only marked feature in his character and genius. 
3 See Meleager, Epigram cxix, 3; Horat. Epist. 19, 23, and Epod, vi, 1 
with the Scholiast ; lian, V H. x, 13. 
VOL. IV 4* 6ac- 


89 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


klés was still popularly 
centuries after his death, in the days of Pindar; but that majes- 


lenounces the malignity, and 


sung by the victors at Olympia near two 


tic and complimentary poet at once « 
attests the retributive suffering, of the great Purian iambist.! 
Amidst the multifarious veins in which Archilochus displayed 
his genius, moralizing or gnomic poetry is not wanting, while his 
contemporary Simonidés, of Amorgos, devotes the iambic metre 
especially to this destination, afterwards followed out by Solon 
and Theognis. But Kallinus, the earliest celebrated elegiac 
poet, so far as we can judge from his few fragments, employed 
the elegiac metre for exhortations of warlike patriotism; and 
the more ample remains which we possess of Tyrtzus are ser- 
mons in the same strain, preaching to the Spartans bravery 
against the foe, and unanimity as well as obedience to the law at 
home. They are patriotic effusions, called forth by the circum- 
stances of the time, and sung by single voice, with accompani- 
ment of the flute,? to those in whose bosoms the flame of courage 
was to be kindled. For though what we peruse is in verse, we 
arc still in the tide of real and present life, and we must suppose 
ourselves rather listening to an orator addressing the citizens 
when danger or dissension is actually impending. It is only in 
the hands of Mimnermus that elegiac verse comes to be devoted 
to soft and amatory subjects. His few fragments present a vein 
of passive and tender sentiment, illustrated by appropriate 
matter of legend, such as would be cast into poetry in all ages, 
and quite different from the rhetoric of Kallinus and Tyrtzus. 
‘Lhe poetical career of Alkman is again distinct from that of 


any of his above-mentioned contemporaries. Their compositions, 


besides hymns to the gods, were principally expressions of feel- 


© 


ing intended to be sung by individuals, though sometimes also 
suited for the kémus, or band of festive volunteers, assembled on 
some occasion of common interest: those of Alkman were prin- 
cipally choric, intended for the song and accompanying dance of 


' Pindar, Pyth. ii, 55; Olymp. ix, 1, with the Scholia; Eunpid. Hereul 
Furens, 583-683. The eighteenth epigram of Theokritus (above alluded 
to) conveys a striking tribute of admiration to Ar hilochus: compare 
Quintilian, x, 1, and Liebel, ad Archilochi Fragmenta, sects. 5, 6.7 

* Athenzus, xiv, p. 630 


CHORIC PERFORMANCES AT SPARTA. 83 


the chorus. He was a native of Sardis in Lydia, or at least his 
family were so; and he appears to have come in early life te 
Sparta, though his genius and mastery of the Greek language 
disecountenance the story that he was brought over to Sparta asa 
slave. The most ancient arrangement of music at Sparta, gener. 
ally ascribed to Terpander,' underwent considerable alteration, 
not only through the elegiac and anapexstic measures of Tyrtzus, 
but also through the Kretan Thalétas and the Lydian Alkman 
The harp, the instrument of ‘Terpander, was rivalled and in part 
superseded by the flute or pipe, which had been recently rendered 
more effective in the hands of Olympus, Klonas, and Polymnéstus, 
and which gradually became, for compositions intended to raise 
strong emotion, the favorite instrument of the two, — being em- 
ployed as accompaniment both to the elegies of Tyrtzeus, and to 
the hyporchemata (songs, or hymns, combined with dancing) of 
Thalétas ; also, as the stimulus and regulator to the Spartan mil- 
itary march.? 

These elegies (as has been just remarked) were sung by one 
person, in the midst of an assembly of listeners, and there were 
doubtless other compositions intended for the individual voice. 
But in general such was not the character of music and poetry 
at Sparta; everything done there, both serious and recreative, 
was public and collective, so that the chorus and its performances 
received extraordinary development. It has been already stated, 
that the chorus usually, with song and dance combined, consti- 
tuted an important part of divine service throughout all Greece, 
and was originally a public manifestation of the citizens gener- 


' Plutarch, De Musica, pp. 1134, 1135; Aristotle, De Lacedzmon. Re- 
publica, Fragm. xi, p. 132, ed. Neumann; Plutarch, De SerA Numin 
Vindict. c. 13, p. 558. 

* Thucyd. v, 69-70, with the Scholia, — μετὰ τῶν πολεμικῶν vopwr...... 
Λακεδαιμόνιοι δὲ βραδέως καὶ ὑπὸ αὐλητῶν πολλῶν νόμῳ ἐγκαϑεστώτων, ob 
τοῦ ϑείου χάριν, ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα ὁμαλῶς μετὰ ῥυθμοῦ βαίνοιεν, καὶ μὴ διασπασϑείη 
αὐτοῖς ἡ τάξις. 

Cicero, Tuscul. Qu. ii, 16. “ Spartiatarum quorum procedit Mora ad 
tibiam, neque adhibetur ulla sine anapestis pedibus hortatio.” 

The flute was also the instrument appropriated to Kémus, or the excited 
movement of half-intoxicated revellers (Hesiod, Scut. Hercul. 280; A‘hena 
xiv, pp. 617-618). 


84 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ally, —a large proportion of them being actively engaged iy it, 
and receiving some training for the purpose as an ordinary 
branch of education. Neither the song nor the dance, under 
such conditions, could be otherwise than extremely simple. But 
in process of time, the performance at the chief festivals tended 
to become more elaborate, and to fall into the hands of persons 
expressly and professionally trained, — the mass of the citizens 
gradually ceasing to take active part, and being present merely 
as spectators. Such was the practice which grew up in most 
parts of Greece, and especially at Athens, where the dramatic 
chorus acquired its highest perfection. But the drama neve! 
found admission at Sparta, and the peculiarity of Spartan life 
tended much to keep up the popular chorus on its ancient footing. 
It formed, in fact, one element in that never-ceasing drill to which 
the Spartans were subject from their boyhood, and it served a 
9, in accustoming them 


Pe 


purpose analogous to their military trainin 
to simultaneous and regulated movement, — insomuch that the 
comparison between the chorus, especially in his Pyrrhic, or war- 
dances, and the military enomoty, seems to have been often dwelt 
upon.2 In the singing of the solemn pan in honor of Apollo, at 
the festival of the Hyakinthia, king Agesilaus was under the or- 
ders of the chorus-master, and sang in the place allotted to him ;° 
while the whole body of Spartans without exception, — the old, 


1 Plato, Legg. vii, p. 803. ϑύοντα καὶ ἄδοντα καὶ ὀρχούμενον, ὥστε τοὺς 
μὲν ϑεοὺς ἱλέως αὐτῷ παρασκευάζειν δυνατὸν εἶναι, ete.: compare p. 799; 
Maximus Tyr. Diss. xxxvii, 4; Aristophan. Ran. 950-975 ; Athenzeus, xiv, 
p. 626; Polyb. iv, 50; Lucian. De Saltatione, c. 10, 11, 16, 31. 

Compare Aristotle (Problem xix, 15) about the primitive character and 
subsequent change of the chorus; and the last chapter of the eighth book 
of his Politica: also, a striking passage in Plutarch (De Cupidine Divitia- 
rum, c. 8, p. 527) about the transformation of the Dionysiac festival at 
Cheeroneia from simplicity to costliness. 

8 Athenus, xiv, p. 628; Suidas, vol. iii, p. 715, ed. Kuster; Plutarch, 
Instituta Laconica, c. 32, — κωμῳδίας καὶ τραγῳδίας οὐκ ἠκρόωντο͵ ὅπως μῆτε 
ἐν σπουδῇ, μῆτε ἐν παιδίᾳ, ἀκούωσι τῶν ἀντιλεγόντων τοῖς νόμοις, — which 
exactly corresponds with the ethical view implied in the alleged conversa- 
tion between Solon and Thespis (Plutarch, Solon, c. 29: see above, ch. xi, 
vol. ii, p. 195), and with Plato, Legg. vii, p. 817. 

8 Xenophon, Agesilaus, ii, 17. oixade ἀπελϑὼν εἰς τὰ Ὑακίνϑια. ὅποι 
᾿γάχϑη ὑπὸ Tot νορυοπουιοῦ, τὸν παιᾶνα TO ϑεῷ συνετετέλει 


Vol. 4 C 


VARIED GENIUS OF ALKMAN. Q5 


the middle-aged, and the youth, the matrons, and the virgins, ~ 
were distributed in various choric companies,! and trained ta 
harmony both of voice and motion, which was publicly exhibited 
at the solemnities of the Gymnopedie. The word dancing must 
be understood in a larger sense than that in which it is now em- 
ployed, and as comprising every variety of rhythmical, accentu- 
ated, conspiring movements, or gesticulations, or postures of the 
body, from the slowest to the quickest ;? cheironomy, or the dec- 
srous and expressive movement of the hands, being especially 
practised. 

We see thus that both at Sparta and in Kréte (which ap- 
proached in respect to publicity of individual lite most nearly to 
Sparta), the choric aptitudes and manifestations occupied a larger 
space than in any other Grecian city. And as a certain degree of 
musical and rhythmical variety was essential to meet this want, 
while music was never taught to Spartan citizens individually, — 
we farther understand how strangers like Terpander, Polymnés- 
tus, Thalétas, Tyrtzus, Alkman, ete., were not only received, but 
acquired great influence at Sparta, in spite of the preponderant 
spirit of jealous seclusion in the Spartan character. All these 
masters appear to have been effective in their own special voca- 
tion, —the training of the chorus, — to which they imparted 
new rhythmical action, and for which they composed new music. 
But Alkman did this, and something more; he possessed the 


genius of a poet, and his compositions were read afterwards 


1 Plutarch, Lykurg. ὁ. 14, 16, 21; Athensus, xiv, pp. 631-632, xv, p. 678; 
Xenophon, Hellen. vi, 4, 15; De Republic. Lacedem. ix, 5; Pindar, Hypor- 
chemata, Fragm. 78, ed. Bergk. 

Λάκαινα μὲν παρϑένων ἀγέλα. 
Also, Alkman, Fragm. 13, ed. Bergk ; Antigon. Caryst. Hist. Mirab. ¢. 27. 

2 How extensively pantomimic the ancient orchésis was, may be seen hy 
the example in Xenophon, Symposion, vii, 5, ix, 3-6, and Plutarch, Sy n- 
posion ix, 15, 2: see K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der gottesdienstliches 
Alterthiimer der Griechen, ch. 29. 

“ Sane ut in religionibus saltaretur, hec ratio est: quod nullam majores 
nostri partem corporis esse voluerunt, qu non sentiret religionem : nam 
cantus ad animum, saltatio ad mobilitatem corporis pertinet.” (Servius δὴ 
Virgil. Eclog. v, 73.) 

3 Aristot. Politic. viii, 4, 6. Οἱ Λάκωνες ---οὐ μανϑάνοντες Smog 
δύνανται κρίνειν ὀρϑῶς, ὥς φασι, τὰ χρηστὰ καὶ τὰ μὴ τῶν μέλων. 


86 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


with pleasure by those who could not hear them sung or see them 
danced. In the little of his poems which remains, we recognize 
that variety of rhythm and metre for which he was celebrated. 
In this respect he (together with the Kretan Thalétas, who is said 
to have introduced a more vehement style both of music and 
dance, with the Kretic and Psonic rhythm, into Sparta!) sur- 
passed Archilochus, and prepared the way for the complicated 
choric movements of Stesichorus and Pindar; some of the frag- 
ments, too, manifest that fresh outpouring of individual sentiment 
and emotion which constitutes so much of the charm of popular 
poetry. Besides his touching address in old age to the Spartan 
virgins, over whose song and dance he had been accustomed te 
preside, — he is not afraid to speak of his hearty appetite, satis- 
fied with simple food and relishing a bowl of warm broth at the 
winter tropic.2 And he has attached to the spring an epithet, 
which comes home to the real feelings of a poor country more 
than those captivating pictures which abound in verse, ancient as 
well as modern: he calls it “the season of short fare,” — the crop 
of the previous year being then nearly consumed, the husband- 
man is compelled to pinch himself until his new harvest comes 


1! Homer, Hymn. Apoll. 340. Οἱοΐ re Κρητῶν παιῆονες, etc.: see Boeckh, 
De Metris Pindari, ii, 7, p. 143; Ephorus ap. Strabo, x, p. 480; Plutarch, De 
Musica, p. 1142. 

Respecting Thalétas, and the gradual alterations in the character of 
music at Sparta, Hoecklh has given much instructive matter , Kreta, vol. iii 
pp. 340-377). Respecting Nympheus of Kydonia, whom J®lian (V. II. xii, 
50) puts in juxtaposition with Thalétas and Terpander, nothing is known. 

After what is called the second fashion of music (κατάσταοις) had thus 
been introduced by Thalétas and his contemporaries, — the first fashion 
being that of Terpander,—no farther innovations were allowed. The 
ephors employed violent means to prohibit the mtended innovations of 
Phrynis and Timotheus, after the Persian war: see Plutarch Agis, c. 10. 

* Alkman, Fragm. 13-17, ed. Bergk, 6 πάμφαγος ᾿Αλκμάν : compare Fr. 
63. Aristides calls him ὁ τῶν παρϑένων ἐπαινέτης καὶ σύμβουλος (Or. xlv, 
vol. ii, p. 40, I)indorf). 

Of the Partneneia of Alkman (songs, hymns, and dances, composed tut 
a chorus of maidens) there were at least two books (Stephanus Byzant. v, 
Ἐρυσίχη). He was the earliest poet who acquired renown in this species 
ef composition, afterwards much pursued by Pindar, Bacchylidés, and 
Simoridés of Keds: see Welcker, Alkman. Fragment. p. 10. 


DORIC DIALECT EMPLUYED IN THE CHORUS. 91 


1 ‘Those who recollect that in earlier periods of our history, 
οὐ in all countries where there is little accumulated stock, an 
often experienced in the price of corn 
will feel the justice of Alkman’s 


in.! 


exorbitant difference is 
hefore and after the harvest, 
description. : ve 
Judging from these and from a few other fragments ot this peet, 

τ = ἢ . _” ω wa - ue m ἡ . 
Alkman appears to have combined the life and exciting vigor of 
Archilochus in the song properly so called, sung by himself individ- 
ually, —with a larger knowledge of musical and rhythmical effect 
ἴω reaard to the choric performance. He composed in the Laco- 
nian dialect, —a variety of the Doric with some intermixture of 

εἰέδι Ald 5 c c WW) 

olisms. And it was from him, jointly with those other com pos- 
; who figured at Sparta during the century after Terpander, as 
taneous development of the choric muse* 


γι 


well as from the simul 
ais 
Sikyon, Arcadia, and other parts of Peloponnesus, 


in Argos, 
that the Doric dialect , 
the only proper dialect for choric compositions. Continued by 
: lar, this habit passed even to the Attic dram- 
a great measure Dorie, 


; Kl ‘ ᾿ θην. 
acquired permanent looting in Greece, as 


Stesichorus and Pin 
atists, whose choric songs are thus in ! 
while their dialogue is Attic. At Sparta, as well as in other 
parts of Peloponnesus,3 the musical and rhythmical style appears 
to have been fixed by Alkman and his contemporaries, and to 
have been tenaciously maintained, for two or three centuries, 
with little or no innovation ; the more 80, as the flute-players at 


Sparta formed an hereditary profession, who followed the routine 


of their fathers.4 


1 Alkman, Frag. 64, ed. Bergk. 
“Ὥρας δ᾽ ἐσῆκε τρεῖς, ϑέρος 
Καὶ χεῖμα κ᾽ ὠπώραν τρίταν " 
Καὶ τέτρατον τὸ ip, ὅκα 
Σάλλει μὲν, ἐσϑίειν δ᾽ ἄδαν 
Οὐκ ἐστί. 
3 Plutarch, De Musicd, c. 9, p. 1154. 
Ahrens, De Dialecto Molica, sects. 2, 4; 


Alkman. Fragm. pp. 10-12. 
3 Plutarch, De Musica, c. 32, p. 1142, c. 37, p. 1144; Athenzus, xiv, Ὁ. 


632, In Kréte, also, the popula .ty of the primitive musical composers was 
maintained, though along vith the innovator Timotheus: see Insenptien 


No. 3053, ap. Boeckh, Corp. Ins. 
4 Herodot. vi. 60. They were probably a γένος with an heroic progeniter 


like the heralds, to whom the historian compares them. 


About the dialect of Alkman, see 
about his different metres, Welcker, 


88 HISTORY OF GREEUE. 


Alkman was the last poet who addressed himself to the pepu- 
lar chorus. Both Arion and Stesichorus composed for a body of 
trained men, with a degree of variety and involution such ag 
could not be attained by a mere fraction of the people. The 
primitive dithyrambus was a round choric dance and songz in 
honor of Dionysus,! common to Naxos, ‘Thebes, and seemingly 
to many other places, at the Dionysiac festival, —a spoutancenn 
effusion of drunken men in the hour of revelry, wherein the poet 
Archilochus, “ with the thunder of wine full upon his mind,” had 
often taken the chief part.2. Its exciting character approached to 
the worship of the Great Mother in Asia, and stood in contrast with 
the solemn and stately pwan addressed to Apollo. Arion intro- 
duced into it an alteration such as Archilochus had himself brought 
about in the scurrilous iambus. [le converted it into an elahorate 
composition in honor of the god, sung and danced by a chorus of 
fifty persons, not only sober, but trained with στοαὶ strictness ; 
though its rhythm and movements, and its equipment in the 
character of satyrs, presented more or less an imitation of the 
primitive license. Born at Methymna in Lesbos, Arion appears 
as a harper, singer, and composer, much favored by Periander at 
Corinth, in which city he first “" composed, denominated, and 
aught the dithyramb,” earlier than any one known to Herodo- 
tus.2 He did not, however, remain permanently there, but trav- 
elled from city to city, exhibiting at the festivals for money, — 
especially to Sicilian and Italian Greece, where he acquired arin 
gains. We may here again remark how the poets as well as the 
festivals served to promote a sentiment of unity among the dis- 
persed Greeks. Such transfer of the dithyramb, from ‘the fieid 


' Pindar, Fragm. 44, ed. Bergk: Schol. ad Pindar. Olymp. xiil, 25; Pro- 
12-14, ad cale. Hephest. Gaisf. Ρ. 382: compare 
W. ΜΝ. Schmidt, In Dithyrambum Poctarumque Dithyrambicorum Re 
liquias, pp. 171-183 (Berlin, 1845). i 
* Archiloch. Fragm. 72, ed. Bergk. 


. 
δ Αὐ ἀμ a mi me 
ὥς Διωνύσου ἄνακτος καλὸν ἐξάρξαι μέλος 


clus, Chrestomathia, c. 


Olda διϑύρομϑον, οἴνῳ Evyxepavvadelc φρένας. 

The old oracle quoted in Demosthen. cont. Meidiam, about the Dionysie 
at Athens, enjoins — Διονύσῳ δημοτελῆ ἱερὰ τελεῖν, καὶ κρατῆοα κερῶ 
σαι, καὶ χοροὺς ἱστάναι 

1 i * " Γ᾿ ᾿ ᾿ " ν᾿ 5 . me 

Herodot. i, 23; Suidas, v, "Apiav; Pindar, Olym}. xiii, 25. 


ARION. — STESICHORUS. ὃ 


ous nature into the garden of art,! constitutes the first 
efinement of Dionysiac worship; which will here- 
exalted in the form of the Attic 


of spontane 
stage in the r 
after be found still farther 
drama. 

The date of Arion seems about 600 B.c., shortly after Alk- 
man: that of Stesichorns is a few years later. To the latter the 
k chorus owed a high degree of improvement, and in par 


Gree 
ticular the last finished distribution of its performance into the 


strophé, the antistrophé, and the epddus 
and the rest, —the rhythm and metre of the song during each 
strophé corresponded with that during the antistrophé, but was 
varied during the epddus, and again varied during the following 
Until this time the song had been monostrophic, con- 
sisting of nothing more than one uniform stanza, repeated from 
the beginning to the end of the composition ;? so that we may 
easily see how vast was the new complication and difficulty intro- 
duced by Stesichorus, — not less for the performers than for the 
composer, himself at that time the teacher and trainer of per- 
formers. Both this poet and his contemporary the flute-player 
Sakadas of Argos, — who gained the prize at the first three 
Pythian games founded after the Sacred War, — seem to have 

the breadth of subject which they 


embraced, borrowing from the inexhaustible province of ancient 
legend, and expanding the choric song into 8 well-sustained 
, these Pythian games opened a new 


: the turn, the return, 


strophés. 


surpassed their predecessors in 


epical narrative. Indeed 


1 Aristot. Poetic. c. 6, 
again, to the same effect, ibid. c. 9. 
2 Alkman slightly departed from this rule: in one of his compositions of 
fourteen strophés, the last seven were in a different metre from the first 
xv, p. 134, Gaisf. ; Hermann, Elementa Doctrin. 
᾿Αλκμανικὴ καινοτομία καὶ Στησιχύρειος (Plu- 


ἐγέννησαν τὴν ποίησιν ἐκ τῶν αὐτοσχεδιασμάτων: 


seven (Hepheestion, c. 
Metric, c. xvii, sect. 595). 
tarch, De Musica, p. 1135) 

3 Pausanias, vi, 14, 4; x, 
an Ἰλίου πέρσις (Athenzeus, xiii, p. 609). 

“ Stesichorum (observes Quintilian, x, 1) quam sit ingemio validus, ma- 
teri quoque ostendunt, maxima bella et clarissimos canentem duces, et 
2eddit enim personis in agendo 
ac si tenuisset modum, videtut 
sed redundat, atque effanditur 


7.3. Sakadas, as well as Stesichorus, composed 


epici carminis onera lyra sustinentem. 

simul loquendoque debitam dignitatem : 
emulari proximus Homerum potuisse : 
rod, ut est reprehendendum, ita copie vitium est.” 


90 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


carver to musical composers just at the time when Sparta begas 
* . , ‘© 7 
to be closed avainst musical novelties. 
ren ᾿ «ἃ a4 4}, ἡ τὼν » 
Alkzus and Sappho, both natives of Lesbos, appear about con- 
temporaries with Arion, p.c. 610-580. Of their once celebrated 
Φ ὦ ni Ἵ — 
lyric compositions, scarcely anything remains. But the criti- 
cisms which are preserved on both of them place them in strong 
ea i. ae , “ 
contrast with Alkman, who lived and composed under the more 
restrictive atmospliere of Sparta, — and in considerable analogy 
Pl . | νι} _— ͵ ‘ τὰς 
with the turbulent vehemence of Archilochus,' though without 
his intense private malignity. Both composed for their own lc- 
eal audience, and in their own Lesbian /Zolic dialect; not be- 
eause there was any peculiar fitness in that dialect to express 
their vein of sentiment, but because it was more familiar to their 
hearers. Sappho herself boasts of the pre ‘minence of the Les- 
bian bards; and the celebrity of Terpander, Perikleitas, and 
éarion, ermits a SUPDOse : \ ᾿ of 
rion, permits us to suppose that there may have been before 
Seep « r Ἄν αν ΙΝ μη μ Ω 
ber many popular bards in the island who did not attain to Hel- 
lenic celebrity. Alkzeus included in his songs the fiercest bursts 
δ' enenlat coe λα νιν ὁ ᾿ νην μὲ ws | a: 
οὐ political feeling, the stirring alternations of war and exile, and 
ie , «. 
Rit 1@ ardent relis] A SUSCe il » : or i ‘ 
all tl ardent relish of a susceptible man for wine and love. 
Phe love-song seems to have formed the principal theme of Sap- 
pho, who, however, also composed odes or songs! on a great vari 
c Fan! c a wa 
Sit ᾿ nies ) CPOs he ys cr ! 2 \ 4 
mMmonid of Keos (Frag. 19, ed. Bergk) puts Homer and Stesichorus 
together : see the epigram of Antipater in the Anthologia, t.i, p. 328, ed Ja- 
cobs, and Dio Chrysostom, Or. 55, vol. ii, p. 284, Reisk. Compare Kleine 
Stesir hori Fragment. pp. 30-34 (Berlin 1828), and O. Miiller, History of the 
Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. xiv, sect. 5. ' 
' re musical composers of Argos are affirmed by Herodotus to have been 
t " most renowned in Greece, half a century after Sakadas (Her. iii, 131) 
Hurat. Epistol. i, 19, 23. 
Φ ὦ, , Pen or \ 
" : appho, Fragm. 93, ed. Bergk. See also Plehn, Lesbiaca, pp. 145-165. 
especting the poetesses, two or three of whom were noted, contemporary 
aie Sappho, see Ulrici, Gesch. der Hellen. Poesie, vol. ii, p. 370. 
ὧν ’ / > " »". δ κῃ 55 ite 
. Diony s. Hal. Ant. Rom. v, 82; Horat. Od. i, 32, ii, 13; Cicero, De Nat. 
γι Ὁ ) ᾿ = . o i . " ore 
es 23; the striking passage in Plutarch, Symposion iii, 1, 3, ap. Bergk 
m 9 ὰ me | . tM 7 . . it 
Η ἣν 42. In the view of Dionysius, the olic dialect of Alkeeus and 
apph diminished the value of their compositions: the Holic accent 
ri Ἢ 2 at) j 
analogous to the Latin, and acknowledging scarcely any oxyton words 
— have rendered them much less agreeable in recitation or song. 
See Plutarch, De Music. p. 1136; Dionys. Hal. de Comp. Verb. ς 38 


GNOMIC PUETS. 9] 


serious as well as satirical, and is said far 
an mode in music. It 
ical and rhythmical nov- 


ety of other subjects, 
ther to have first employed the Mixolydi 
displays the tendency of the age to metr 
elty, that Alkzeus and Sappho are said to have each invented the 


ar stanza, well-known under their respective names, —- com- 
actyl, trochee, and iambus, analogous to the 
they by no means confined 


peculi 
binations of the ἃ 
asynartetic verses of Archilochus ; 
themselves, however, to Alkaic and Sapphic metre. Both the one 
end the other composed hymns to the gods; indeed, this isa 
all the lyric and choric poets, whatever may 


theme common to 
Most of their compositions 


be their peculiarities in other ways. 
were songs for the single voice, not for the chorus. The poetry 


of Alkwus is the more worthy of note, as it Is the earliest in- 


stance of the employment of the Muse in actual political war- 
fare, and shows the incr .ased hold which that motive was acquir- 
ing on the Grecian mind. 

The gnomic poets, or moralists in verse, approach by the tone 
of their sentiments more to the nature of prose. They begin 
with Simonidés of Amorgos or of Samos, the contemporary of 
Archilochus: indeed, the latter himself devoted some composi- 

ative fable, which had not been unknown even 


tions to the illustr 
to Hesiod. In the remains of Simonidés of Amorgos we trace 


nothing relative to the man personally, though he too, like 
Archilochus, is said to have had an individual enemy, Orode- 
kidés, whose character was aspersed by his muse.! His only 


p. 173, Reisk, and some striking passages of Himerius, in respect to Sappho 
(i. 4, 16, 19; Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. xxiv, 7-9), and the encomium of 
the critical Dionysius (De Compos. Verborum, c. 23, p. 173). 

The author of the Parian marble adopts, as one of his chronological 
spochs (Epoch 37), the flicht of Sappho, or exile, from Mityléné to Sicily, 
somewhere between 604-596 ΒΟ. There probably was something remark- 
able which induced him to single out this event ; but we do not know what, 
nor can we trust the hints suggested by Ovid (Heroid. xv, 51). 

Nine books of Sappho’s songs were collected by the later literary Greeks, 
arranged chiefly according to the metres (C. F. Neue, Sapphonis Fragm. p 
11, Berlin 1827). ‘There were ten books of the songs of Alkwus (Athe- 
neeus, xi, p. 481), and both Aristophanés (Grammaticus) and Aristarchus 
published editions of them. (Hephestion, c. xv, p. 184, Gaisf.) Dikearchua 
wrote a commentary upon his songs (Athenzeus, xi, p. 461 ). 


1 Welcker, Simonidis Amorgini Iambi qui supersunt, p. 9 


92 HISTORY OF GRZECE. 


considerable poem extant is devoted to a survey of the charae- 
ters of women, in iambic vers ἣν | 
3 iambic verse, and by way of comparison with 


various animals,—- the mare, the ass, the bee, ete. It follows 


out the Hesiodie vein respecting the social and economical mis- 


chiet usually caused by women, with some few honorable excep- 


tions; but the poet shows a much larger range of observation 
and illustration, if we compare him with his winedeieoscoe Phased 
moreover, his illustrations come fresh from life and indie, We 
find in this early iambist the same sympathy with industry and 
its due rewards which are observable in [esiod, ὠωεδνο with i 
still more melancholy sense of the uncertainty of “reli events. 
OF Solon and Theognis I have spoken in former chapters. 
They reproduce in part the moralizing vein of Simonidés, though 
with a strong admixture of personal feeling and a direct apolien- 
tion to passing events. The mixture of political with social 
morality, which we find in both, marks their more advanced age : 
Solon bears in this respect the same relation to Ricnaliala as 
his contemporary Alkeus bears to Archilochus. | 


far as we can judge by the frag ae 
᾿ 2 can judg by the tragments remaining, appear to have 


been short occasional effusions, — with the exception of the epic 
poem respecting the submerged island of Atlantis; which he 
began towards the close ot his life, but never finished. ‘They 


His poems, as 


are elegiac, trimeter iambic, and trochaic tetrameter: in his 
hands certainly neither of these metres can be said to have any 
special or separate character. If the poems of Solon are short 
those of Theognis are much shorter, and are indeed so singh 
broken (as they stand in our present collection), as to read like 
separate epigrams or bursts of feeling, which the poet had not 
taken the trouble to incorporate in any definite scheme or series. 
They form a singular mixture of maxim and passion,— of gen- 
eral precept with personal affection towards the youth Kyrnos 
— which surprises us if tried by the standard of literary aan 
ition, but which seems a very genuine manifestation of an im- 
poverished exile’s complaints and restlessness. What remains to 
us of Phokylidés, another of the gnomic poets nearly contempo- 
rary with Solon, is nothing more than a few maxims in verse, — 
couplets, with the name of the author in several cases embeilie’ 
in them. ἡ 


Amidst all the variety of rhythmical and metrical innovations 


RELATION OF POETRY TO MUSIC. 93 


which have been enumerated, the ancient epic continued to be 

recited by the rhapsodes as before, and some new epical compos 

sitions were added to the existing stock : Eugammon of Kyreéné, 

about the 50th Olympiad, (580 Β. 0.) appears ἴο be the last of 

the series. At Athens, especially, both Solon and Peisistratus 

manifested great solicitude as well for the recitation as for the 
correct preservation of the Iliad. Perhaps its popularity may 
have been diminished by the competition of so much lyric and 
choric poetry, more showy and striking in its accompaniments, as 
well as more changeful in its rhythmical character. Whatever 
secondary effect, however, this newer species of poetry may 
have derived from such helps, its primary effect was produced 
by real intellectual or poetical excellence, — by the thoughts, 
sentiment, and expression, not by the accompaniment. For a 
long time the musical composer and the poet continued generally 
to be one and the same person; and besides those who have 
acquired suflicient distinction to reach posterity, we cannot doubt 
that there were many known only to their own contemporaries. 
But with all of them the instrument and the melody constituted 
only the inferior part of that which was known by the name of 
music, — altogether subordinate to the “thoughts that breathe 
and words that burn.”! Exactness and variety of rhythmical 
pronunciation gave to the latter their full effect upon a delicate 
ear; but such pleasure of the ear was ancillary to the emotion 
of mind arising out of the sense conveyed. Complaints are 
made by the poets, even so early as 500 B.c., that the accompani- 
ment was becoming too prominent. But it was not until the age 
of the comic poet Aristophanes, towards the end of the fifth cen- 
tury B.C., that the primitive relation between the instrumental 
accompaniment and the words was really reversed, — and loud 
were the complaints to which it gave rise ;2 the performance of 


1 Aristophan. Nubes, 536. 
"AAD αἱ TH Καὶ τοῖς ἔπεσιν πιστεύουσ᾽ ἐλήλυϑεν. 
2See Pratinas ap. Athenxum, xiv, p. 617, also p. 636, and the striking 
fragment of the lost comic poet Pherekratés, in Plutarch, De Musica, p 
1141, containing the bitter remonstrance of Music (Μονυσικὴ) against the 
wrong which she had suffered from the dithyrambist Melanippidés: com 
pare also Aristophanés, Nubes, 951-972; Athenseus, xiv, p.617; Horat 


94 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the flute ar 
ite or harp then became more elaborate, showy, and 
powering, while the words all y, and over 
the ses ω ie words were so put together as to show πῇ 
player’s execution. 1 : ; a, 
: ) >xecution. notice briefly this subs 
i ἃ, ὡς ᾿ ᾿ y this subsequent revolu- 
2 purpose of setting fe ss 
lectual character of - forth, by contrast, the truly intel- 
cia che 2r of the original lyric and choric poetry of 
eece; and of showine 7 visual 
δ Wing how . > 17. i . atin 
+) much the vague sentiment arising 


from mel Ὁ musical sound WwW εἰ ὸ ] s j I 
> ἢ , le J } € Iie¢ rated 
Tl < f ant ᾿ t I ) Ὗ | if ¢ ἣν {1(} m ms OI sa y~- 
ἣν 18 eC Me nh ot ες C Ἢ Υ̓͂ 4) ἣν > =) ( ( ) ( ᾿ν \ ( l } int 
| , e ww 5s « 
᾿ 0 t 1€ ῃ S 5 be ( ] "}) I | { I ( ᾿ : vit γ Ν με rte ὦ J 
mo st f Ϊ } Is ars rib | a a l a Un la 1c 4 ¢ f | h t ν a 
to € | ( ᾿ , \ ~) δε " a ic ὃ [ 
β « le at I \ 
»: τὶς oD ( ( ἱ Γ ' 1O 0 Cer ᾶ ΐ ( ( we O < Act OmM- 
recitu [4] ) ν ᾿ « - ν Oo be | = > 0 
Le 1g poetr Υ, and for making “mart and Ie ady an WwW rs ε | 
es I ‘ t " 
1 , ) UO 4 ae AA , ω l ‘ 10 nex , (ες Ὠ- 


Art. Poetic. 205 ne anid WW Vi ( ! Tl lt Li ibé 
~ "ἃ + eee etd. ae latr ye it di ViVi Vill 
ΡΡ. iy) 965. t PLive ith ] ith rambum., ch. 1, 
Te 7 sa ΜΛ viii > 
oO GO Καὶ TepL J I I 
ΐ “wt -the character Ι 
. . «εἰ A ot the newe I i [ ͵ 
τ : : Wi A ς NuUusic ti mye 
Agi - . 10) as contrasted with ‘OC δ ! “i ‘ 
(} lutarch De M i i 
ὶ ‘ ‘ A USICA, vi Sup.) ᾧ 6 Τὸ 4 Ϊ : ’ t x t 
‘ 755} " ε ntation εἰ ΐ 3, ὧν ᾽ i Ϊ ἊΝ 
I nd att ( ted di play, agains 


seriousness anid 91 Ι 
‘ simplicity. It is by in tl 
: is by no means certain that these 


v καὶ ἀπερίεργον of the old music 


agains ; Ὃ rec : e reproaches 
t the more recent music of the Greeks were well founded : _ i 
Cre well rounded ; 


well be rendered mistrustful of thei ae os 
{111 ἱ I Herr accuracy when re | Ὶ I i 
marks and contrast ] , ιν Rm We neal similar f 
} ntrasts advanced with rerard I 3 
r 111] γι τὸ the Music f ἢ : 
centuries Che ct , δ ᾿ ; : ARN OF OUl last three 
" aracter OF Carre ik ) ry j vt 
! at i il ΟΣ oetryv certs lv te 1 
after Euripidés. ] ᾿ rtainty t nd to degenerate 
ὶ Bi: ἡ ic t 
ias of Priéné co : 
ne composed ; : Γ f 
tion of Ionia (Di . eda poem of two thousand verses, on the condi 
‘ logen. Laért. i, 85). fr hil 7 
: : δ, 1, 89). from which, perhaps. Her 
nave derived either directly νὼ» ai , Perhaps, erodotus Ty 
ascribes to tl} ' ie CLIPTed tly or indirectly, the judicious advice which he 
“i " se "" ᾿ i } nl . ‘ < ¥ 
, tp lilosopher on the occasion of the first Persi 
of Ionia ( Herod. i, 170). | ΠΝ" 


Not merely Xeno; 
nerely Xe nophaneés the ohilosopher (Di . ν +s 
out long after him Parmenidé ] μ᾿ logen. Laért. viii, 36, ix, 20), 
oe armenidés and Empedoklés, ¢ adi : 
26 pedoklés, composed in vers 
- ΕῚ ΕἾ « “y* i ἫΝ Ἴ 
KI πὴ the account riven hy Herodotus (vi att of tl " hi 
Masala yo αν , 1 29) of the way in which 
Ν } tested the Cor γὴν " i 
iN ; : in iparative educat j ) of 
Farious suitors w " iii CATION | TALVEVCLC 
ἙΝ SULTOTS who came to woo Nis daughter οἱ δὲ ν ' ἴα mil ices 
ἀμφὶ te μοι σικῇ κω γὼ Neveu sh »—~ OL θὲ μνηστηρεὲς ἔριν etyor 
t bt C TO μεσον. 


THE SEVEN WISE MEN. 95 


tury of Grecian history, when philosophy came to be a mater of 
discussion and argumentation, were spoken of with great eulogy, 
onfused, in part even contradictory. 


__all the statements are Ὁ 
given by all authors 


Neither the number, nor the names, are 
alike. Dikeearchus numbered ten, Hermippus seventeen: the 
names of Solon the Athenian, Thalés the Milesian, Pittakus the 
Mitylenean, and Bias the Prienean, were comprised in all the 
tists, —and the remaining names as viven by Plato! were, Kle- 
obulus of Lindus in Rhodes, Myson of Chéne, and Cheilon of 
Sparta. By others, however, the names are differently stated : 

rtainly distribute among them the sayings, or mot- 
days the Amphiktyons conferred the 
|phian temple: Know thyself, — 
ortunity, — Suretyship is the 
as an excellent judge, and 


nor can we ce 
toes, upon which in later 
honor of inscription in the De 
Nothing too much, — Know thy opp 
precursor of ruin. Bias is praised 
Myson was declared by the Delphian oracle to be the most dis- 
erect man among the Greeks, according to the testimony of the 
satirical poet Hipponax. This is the oldest testimony (54 8.0.) 
which can be produced in favor of any of the seven; but Kle- 
obulus of Lindus, far from being universally extolled, is pro 
nounced by the poet Simonidés to be a fool. Dikzarchus, 
however, justly observed, that these seven or ten persons were 
‘n the sense which those words 


not wise men, or philosophers, 
bore in his day, but persons of practical discernment in reference 
to man and society,? —of the same turn of mind as their con- 


1 Plato, Protagoras, c. 
3 Hippénax, Fragm. , ed. 
Πριηνέος κρείττων. 
τς νιν. «Καὶ Μύσων, ὃν ὡς πολλὼν 
᾿Ανεῖπεν ἀνδρῶν σώφρονεστατον πώντων. 


Fr. 6. ed. Bergk — μωροῦ φωτὸς ade Bova. 


Bergk — καὶ δικάσσασϑαι Βίαντος τοῦ 


Simonidés, Diogen. Laért 
i, 6, 2. 

Simonidés treats P 
opinion delivered by him 
p. 339). 

3 Dikwarchus ap. Diogen. Laért. 
τητα πολιτικὴν καὶ δραστήριον σύνεσιν. 

About the story of the tripod, which is said to have 
these Seven Wise Men, see Menage ad Diogen. Laért. i, 28, p. 17. 


ittakus with more respect, though questioning an 
(Fragm. 8, ed. Bergk ; Plato, Protagoras, ὁ. 26, 


; 40. συνετοὺς καὶ ν)μοϑετικοὺς ber » 


Plutarch, Themistoklés, c. 2. 
gone the round of 


‘ 
, 
᾿ 
i 
[ 
᾿ 
Υ 


v6 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


temporary the fabulist A®sop, though not employing the same 
mode of illustration. Their appearance forms an epoch in Gre- 
cian history, inasmuch as they are the first persons who ever 
acquired an Hellenic reputation grounded on mental competency 
apart from poetical genius or effect, —a proof that political and 
social prudence was beginning to be appreciated and admired on 
its own account. Solon, Pittakus, Bias, and Thalés, were all 
men of influence — the first two even men of ascendency,! — in 
_— respective cities. Kleobulus was despot of Lindus, and 
Periander (by some numbered among the seven) of Corinth. 
Thalés stands distinguished as the earliest name in physical phi- 
losophy, with which the other contemporary wise men are not 
said to have meddled; their celebrity rests upon moral, social, 
and political wisdom exclusively, which came into greater honor 
as the ethical feeling of the Greeks improved and as their expe- 
rience became enlarged. 

In these celebrated names we have social philosophy in its early 
and infantine state,— in the shape of homely anvines or nite. 
nitions, either supposed to be self-evident, or to rest upon some 
great authority divine or human, but neither accompanied by 
reasons nor recognizing any appeal to inquiry and discussion as 
the proper test of their rectitude. From such unsuspecting ac- 
quiescence, the sentiment to which these admonitions owe their 
force, we are ;artially liberated even in the poet Simonidés of 
Keds. who (as betore alluded t everely criticizes the song of 
Kleobulus as well as its anthor. The half-century whitch fol- 
lowed the age of Simonidés (the interval between about {80-430 
B.c.) broke down that sentiment more and more, by familiarizing 
the public with argumentative controversy in the public RA ey 
the popular judicature, and even on the dramatic stage. And the 
increased self-working of the Grecian mind, thus created, mani- 
fested itself in Sokratés, who laid open all ethical and social doc- 
trines to the scrutiny of reason, and who first awakened among 
his countrymen that love of dialectics which never left them, — 
an analytical interest in the mental process of inquiring out, ver- 
ifying, proving, and expounding truth. To this capital item of 


5 Cicero, De Republi, 7; Plutarch, in Delph. p. 385; Bernhardy, Gran 
¢driss ier Griechischen Litteratur, vol. i, sect. 66, not. 3. 


UOMMENCEMENT OF PROSE-WRITING. 97 


human progress, secured through the Greeks — and _ through 
them only —to mankind generally, our attention will be called 
at a later period of the history; at present, it is only mentioned 
in contrast with the naked, dogmatical laconism of the Seven 
Wise Men, and with the simple enforcement of the early poets: 
8. state in which morality has a certain place in the feelings, — but 
no root, even among the superior minds, in the conscious exerciss 
of reason. 

The interval between Archilochus and Solon (660-580 B.c.) 
seems, as has been remarked in my former volume, to be the 
period in which writing first came to be applied to Greek poems, 
—to the Homeric poems among the number ; and shortly after 
the end of that period, commences the era of compositions with- 
out metre or prose. ‘The philosopher Pherekydés of Syros, 
about 550 B.c., is called by some the earliest prose-writer ; but 
no prose-writer for a considerable time afterwards acquired any 
celebrity, — seemingly none earlier than Hekatewus of Milétus,' 
about 510-490 B.c ,— prose being a subordinate and ineffective 
apecies of composition, not always even perspicuous, but requir- 
ine no small practice before the power was acquired of rendering 
it interesting.2 Down to the generation preceding Sokratés, the 
poets continued to be the grand leaders of the Greek mind: until 
then, nothing was taught to youth except to read, to remember, 
to recite musically and rhythmically, and to comprehend poetical 
composition. The comments of preceptors, addressed to their 
pupils, may probably have become fuller and more instructive, but 
the text still continued to be epic or lyric poetry. We must re- 
collect also that these poets, so enunciated, were the best masters 
for acquiring a full command of the complicated accent and 
rhythm of the Greek language, — essential to an educated man 
‘n ancient times, and sure to be detected if not properly acquired. 
Not to mention the Choliambist Hippénax, who seems to have baen 
possessed with the devil of Archilochus, and in part also with his 


Pliny, H. N. vii, 57. Suidas v, Ἑκαταῖος. 
$H. Ritter (Geschichte der Philosophie, ck. vi, p. 243) has some rood 
remarks on the difficulty and obscurity of the early Greek prose-writers, i 
-eference to the darkness of expression and meaning aniversally charged 
upon the philosopher Herakleitus. 
VOL. IV. 5 7 0c. 


— Ὁ 


᾿ 
; 
' 
ι 
᾿ 
‘ 
: 


98 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


gemius, --- Anakreon, Ibykus, Pindar, Bacchylidés, Simonidés, and 
the dramatists of Athens, continue the line of eminent poets 
without intermission. After the Persian war, the requirements 
of public speaking created a class of rhetorical teachers, while 
the gradual spread of physical philosophy widened the range of 
instruction ; so that prose composition, for speech or for writing, 
occupied a larger and larger share of the attention of mea, 
and was gradually wrought up to high perfection, such as 
we see for the first time in Herodotus. But before it became 
thus improved, and acquired that style which was the condition 
of wide-spread popularity, we may be sure that it had been 
silently used as a means of recording information; and that 
neither the large mass of geographical matter contained in the 
Periegésis of Hekateus, nor the map first prepared by his 
contemporary, Anaximander, could have been presented to the 
world, without the previous labors of unpretending prose writers, 
who set down the mere results of their own experience. The 
acquisition of prose-writing, commencing as it does about the age 
of Peisistratus, is not less remarkable as an evidence of past, 
than as a means of future, progress. 

Of that splendid genius in sculpture and architecture, which 
shone forth in Greece after the Persian invasion, the first linea- 
ments only are discoverable between 600-560 Β. Ο.. in Corinth, 
ZEzina, Samos, Chios, Ephesus, ete., — enough, however, to give 
evidence of improvement and progress. Glaukus of Chios is 
said to have discovered the art of welding iron, and Rheckus, οἱ 
his son Theodérus of Samos, the art of casting copper or brass in 
a mould: both these discoveries, as far as can be made out, ap- 
pear to date a little before 600 B.c.! The primitive memorial, 


‘See Ὁ. Miiller, Archiologie der Kunst, sect. 61; Sillig, Catalogus 
Artificium, — under Theodérus and Teleklés. 

Thiersch (Epochen der Bildenden Kunst, pp. 182-190, 2d edit.) places 
Rheekus near the beginniny of the recorded Olympiads ; and supposes two 
artists named Theodérus, one the grandson of the other; but this seems tc 
me not sustained by any adequate authority (for the loose chronology of 
Pliny about the Samain school of artists is not more trustworthy thar 
about the Chian school, — compare xxxv, 12, and xxxvi, 3), and, moreover. 
intrinsically improbable. Herodotus (i, 51) speaks of “the Samian Theo- 
doras.” and scems to have known only ore person so called: Diodéras 


EARLY SCULPTURE. 99 


erected in honor of a god, did not even pretend to be an image, 
but was often nothing more than a pillar, a board, a shapeless 
stone, a post, δίς. fixed so as to mark and consecrate the local- 
ity, and receiving from the neighborhood respectful care and deo- 
oration, as well as worship. Sometimes there was a real statue, 
though of the rudest character, carved in wood: and the families 
of carvers, — who, from father to son, exercised this profession, 
represented in Attica by the name of Diedalus, and in the gina 
by the name of Smilis, — adhered long, with strict exactness, to 
the consecrated type of each particular god. Gradually, the 
wish grew up to change the material, as well as to correct the 
rudeness, of such primitive idols; sometimes the original wood 
was retained as the material, but covered in part with ivory or 
cold, — in other cases, marble or metal was substituted. Dipee- 
aus and Skyllis of Kréte acquired renown as workers in marble, 
about the 50th Olympiad (580 B.c.), and from them downwards 
a series of names may be traced, more or less distinguished ; 
moreover, it seems about the same period that the earliest temple- 
offerings, in works of art, properly so called, commence, — the 
golden. statue of Zeus, and the large carved chest, dedicated by 
the Kypselids of Corinth at Olympia.! The pious associations, 
however, connected with the old type were so strong, that the 


(i, 98) and Pausanias (x, 38, 3) give different accounts of Theodorus, but 
the positive evidence does not enable us to verify the genealogies either of 
Thiersch or Ὁ. Miiller. Herodotus (iv, 152) mentions the ‘Hpaiov at Samos 
in connection with events near Olymp. 37; but this does not prove that the 
great temple which he himse:f saw, a century anda half later, had been 
begun before Olymp. 37, as Thiersch would infer. The statement of O. 
Miiller, that this temple was begun in Olymp. 35, is not authenticated 
(Arch. der Kunst, sect. 53). 

! Pausanias tells us distinctly that this chest was dedicated at Olympia 
by the Kypselids. descendants of Kypselus ; and this seems credible enough. 
But he also tells us that this was the identical chest in which the infant 
Kypselus had been concealed, believing the story as told in Herodotus 
(ν, 92). In this latter belief I cannot go along with him, nor do I think 
that there is any evidence for believing the chest to have been of more 
sncient date than the persons who dedicated it, — in spite of the opinions 
of O. Miiller and Thiersch to the contrary (Ὁ. Miiller, Archiéol. der Kunst, 
sect. 57; Thiersch, Epochen ‘er Griechischen Kunst, p. 169, 2 edit 
Pausan. v, 17, 2) 


100 HISTORY Ur GREECE 


nand of the artist was greatly restrained in dealing with statues 
of the gods. It was in statues of men, especially in those of the 
victors at Olympia and other sacred games, that genuine ideas of 
beauty were first aimed at and in part attained, from whence 
they passed afterwards to the statues of the gods. Such statues 
of the athletes seem to commence somewhere between Olympiad 
§3-58, (468-548 B.c.) 

Nor is it until the same interval of time (between 600-550 
B.C.) that we find any traces of these architectural monuments, 
by which the more important cities in Greece afterwards at- 
tracted to themselves so much renown. ‘The two greatest tem- 
ples in Greece known to Herodotus were, the Artemision at 
Ephesus, and the Herzon at Samos: the former of these seems 
to have been commenced, by the Samian Theodorus, about 600 
B.C., — the latter, begun by the Samian Khoekus, can hardly be 
traced to any higher antiquity. The first attempts to decorate 
Athens by such additions proceeded from Peisistratus and his 
sons, near the same time. ΑΒ far as we can judge, too, in the 
absence of all direct evidence, the temples of Pwstum in Italy 
and Selinus in Sicily seem to fall in this same century. Of 
painting, during these early centuries, nothing can be affirmed ; 
it never at any time reached the same perfection as sculpture, 
and we may presume that its years of infancy were at least 
equally rude. 

The immense development of Grecian art subsequently, and 
the great perfection of Grecian artists, are facts of great impor- 
ance in the history of the human race. And in regard to the 
Greeks themselves, they not only acted powerfully on the taste 
of the people, but were also valuable indirectly as the common 
doast of Hellenism, and as supplying one bond of fraternal sym- 
pathy as well as of mutual pride, among its widely-dispersed 
sections. It is the paucity and weakness of these bonds which 
renders the history of Greece, prior to 060 B.c., little better than 
a series of parallel, but isolated threads, each attached to a sep- 
arate city; and that increased range of joint Hellenic feeling 
and action, upon which we shall presently enter, though arising 
doubtless in great measure from new and common dangers 
threatening many cities at once,— also springs in part from 
those other causes which have been enumerated in this chapter 


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NATIONALIZING EFFECTS OF ART. 101 


as acting on the Grecian mind. It proceeds from the stimulut 
applied to all the common feelings in religion, art, and recrea- 
tion. — from the gradual formation of national festivals, appeal- 
ing in various ways to tastes and sentiments which animated 
every Hellenic bosom, __ from the inspirations of men of genius, 
poets, musicians, sculptors, architects, who supplied more or less 
in every Grecian city, education for the youth, training for the 
chorus, and ornament for the locality, — from the gradual expan 
sion of science, philosophy, and rhetoric, during the coming 
period of this history, which rendered one city the intellectual 
capital of Greece, and brought to Isokrates and Plato pupils 
from the most distant parts of the Grecian world. It was this 
fund of common tastes, tendencies, and aptitudes, which caused 
the social atoms of Hellas to gravitate towards each other, and 
which enabled the Greeks to become something better and 
greater than an aggregate of petty disunited communities like 
the Thracians or Phrygians. And the creation of such common, 
extra-political Hellenism, is the most interesting phenomenon 
which the historian has to point out in the early period now 
under our notice. He is called upon to dwell upon it the more 
forcibly, because the modern reader has generally no idea of 
national union without political union, — an association foreign 
to the Greek mind. Strange as it may seem to find a song- 
writer put forward as an active instrument of union among his 
follow-Hellens, it is not the less true, that those poets, whom we 
have briefly passed in review, by enriching the common lan- 
guage, and by circulating from town to town either in person or 
in their compositions, contributed to fan the flame of Pan-Hel- 
lenic patriotism at a time when there were few circumstances to 
sooperate with them, and when the causes tending to pi rpetuate 
eolation seemed in the ascendant. 


nISTORY OF GREECE. 


CHAPTER XXX. 


GRECIAN AFFAIRS DURING THE GOVERNMENT OF PEISISTRATUS 
AND HIS SONS AT ATHENS. 


WE now arrive at what may be called the second period uf 
Grecian history, beginning with the rule of Peisistratus at 
Athens and of Creesus in Lydia. 

It has been already stated that Peisistratus made himself 
despot of Athens in 060 B.c.: he died in 527 B.c., and was “- 
ceeded by his son Hippias, who was deposed and expelled Ἢ 


510 B.C., thus making an entire space of fifty years between the 
first exaltation of the father and the final expulsion of the son. 
These chronological points are settled on good evidence: but the 
thirty-three years covered by the reign of Peisistratus are inter- 
rupted by two periods of exile, — one of them lasting not less 
than ten years, — the other, five years. And the exact place of 
the years of exile, being nowhere laid down upon authority, hag 


been differently determined by the conjectures of chronologers.! 
Partly from this half-known chronology, partly from a very 
scanty collection of facts, the history of the half-century now 
before us man only be given very imperfectly: nor can we Won- 
der at our ignorance, when we find that even among the Athe- 
nians themselves, only a century afterwards, utintemnente the most 
incorrect and contradictory respecting the Peisistratids were ω 
circulation, as Thucydidés distinctly, and somewhat repreachfully, 
acquaints us. 

More than thirty years had now elapsed since the promulga- 
tion of the Solonian constitution, whereby the annual seonte οἱ 
Four Hundred had been created, and the public assembly pews 
ceded in its action as well as aided and regulated by this senate) 
invested with a power of exacting responsibility from the maaie 


Mr. Fynes Clinton | Fast. Hellen. vol. ii, Appendia, c. 2, p. 201) has 
stated and discussed the different opinions on the chronology of Peisistrs 
tus and his sons. j 


DESPOTISM OF PEISISTRATUS. 103 


trates after their year of office. The seeds of the subsequent 
democracy had thus been sown, and no doubt the administration 
of the archons had been practically softened by it; but nothing 
in the nature of a democratical sentiment had yet been created. 
A hundred years hence, we shall find that sentiment unanimous 
and potent among the enterprising masses of Athens and Peirx- 
eus, and shall be called upon to listen to loud complaints of the 
difficulty of dealing with “that angry, waspish, intractable little 
old man, Démus of Pnyx,” — so Aristophanes ! calls the Athe- 
nian people to their faces, with a freedom which shows that he 
at least counted on their good temper. But between 560-510 
5.0. the people are as passive in respect to political rights and 
securities as the most strenuous enemy of democracy could 
desire, and the government is transferred from hand to hand by 
bargains and cross-changes between two or three powerful men,* 
at the head of partisans who echo their voices, espouse their 
personal quarrels, and draw the sword at their command. It 
was this ancient constitution — Athens as it stood before the 
Athenian democracy — which the Macedonian Antipater pro- 
fessed to restore in 322 B.c., when he caused the majority of the 
poorer citizens to be excluded altogether from the political fran- 
chise.$ 

By the stratagem recounted in a former chapter,’ Peisistratus 


1 ΤΑγροῖκος ὀργὴν, κυαμοτρὼξ, ἀκράχολος 
Δῆμος Πνυκίτης, δύσκολον γεροντίον. --- Aristoph. Equit. 41. 

I need hardly mention that the Pnyx was the place in which the Athe 
nian public assemblies were held. 

2 Plutarch (De Herodot. Malign. c. 15, p. 858) is angry with Herodotus 
for imparting so petty and personal a character to the dissensions between 
the Alkma6nids and Peisistratus ; his severe remarks in that treatise, how- 
ever, tend almost always to strengthen rather than to weaken the credibility 
of the historian. 

3 Plutarch, Phokion, c. 27, 
ξυμμαχίαν, ἐκδοῦσι μὲν τοὺς 
δὲ τὴν πάτριαν ἀπὸ τιμῆμ 
Μουνυχίαν, ἔτι δὲ χρήματα 
pare Diodor. xviii, 18. 

Twelve thousand of the poorer citizens were disfranchised by this changes 

Plutarch, Phokion, c. 28). 
« See the preceding volume, ch. xi, p. 155. 


ἀπεκρίνατο φιλίαν ἔσεσϑαι τοῖς ᾿Αϑηναίοις καὶ 
περὶ Δημοσϑένη καὶ Ὑπερίδην, πολιτευομένοις 
ατος πολιτείαν, δεξαμένοις δὲ φρουρὰν εἰς τὴν 
τοῦ πολέμου καὶ ζημίαν προσεκτίσασιν. Com- 


104 HISTORY Of GREECE. 


had obtained from the public assembly a guard which te had 
employed to acquire forcible possession of the acropolis. He 
thus became master of the administration; but he employed his 
power honorably and well, not disturbing the existing forms 
farther than was necessary to insure to himself full mastery. 
Nevertheless, we may see by the verses of Solon! (the only con- 
temporary evidence which we possess), that the prevalent senti- 
ment was by no means favorable to his recent proceeding, and 
that there was in many minds a strong feeling both of terror 
and aversion, which presently manifested itself in the armed 
coalition of his two rivals, — Megaklés at the head of the Parali, 
or inhabitants of the sea-board, and Lykurgus at the head of 
those in the neighboring plain. As the conjunction of the two 
formed a force too powerful for Peisistratus to withstand, he was 
driven into exile, after no long possession of his despotism. 

But the time came, how soon we cannot tell, when the twa 
rivals who had expelled him quarrelled, and Megaklés made 
propositions to Peisistratus, inviting him to resume the sover- 
eignty, promising his own aid, and stipulating that Peisistratus 
should marry his daughter. The conditions being accepted, a 
plan was laid between the two new allies for carrying them into 
effect, by a novel stratagem,— since the simulated wounds and 
pretence of personal danger were not likely to be played off a 
second time with success. The two conspirators clothed a 
stately woman, six feet high, named Phyé, in the panoply and 
costume of Athené, -— surrounded her with the processional ac- 
companiments belonging to the goddess, — and placed her in a 
chariot with Peisistratus by her side. In this guise the exiled 
despot and his adherents approached the city and drove up to 
the acropolis, preceded by heralds, who cried aloud to the people : 
“ Athenians, receive ye cordially Peisistratus, whom Athéné has 
honored above all otber men, and is now bringing back into her 
own acropolis.” The people in the city received the reputed 
goddess with implicit belief and demonstrations of worship, 
while among the country cantons the report quickly spread 


(yr 
o 


" Solon. Fragm. 10, ed. Bergk. — 
ee oe (ig el oy 
ki δὲ πεπόνϑατε λυγρὰ dv’ ὑμετέρην κακότητα, 


Μήτι ϑεοῖς τούτων μοῖραν ἐπαμφέρετε, etc. 


LEISISTRALUS DISPOSSESSED AND RESTORED. 1065 


that Athéné had appeared in person to restore Peisistratus 
who thus found himself, without even a show of resistance, in 
possession of the acropolis and of the government. His own 
varty, united with that of Megaklés, were powerful enough to 
maintain him, when he had once acquired possession ; and prob- 
ably all, except the leaders, sincerely believed in the epiphany 
of the goddess, which came to be divulged as having been 8 
deception, only after Peisistratus and Megaklés had quarrelled.' 


| Herodot. i, 60, καὶ ἐν τῷ ἄστεϊ πειϑόμενοι τὴν γυναῖκα εἶναι a ὑτὴν τὴν 
ϑεὺν, προσεύχοντό τε τὴν ἄνϑρωπον καὶ ἐδέκοντο τὸν Πεισίστρατον. <A latet 
statement (Athenzeus, xiii, p. 609) represents Phyé to have become after 
wards the wife of Hipparchus. 

Of this remarkable story, not the least remarkable part 1s the criticism 
with which Herodotus himself accompanies it. He treats it as a proceed- 
ing infinitely silly (πρῆγμα εὐηϑέστατον, ὡς ἐγὼ εὑρίσκω, waxpyw); he can- 
not conceive, how Greeks, so much superior to barbarians, —and even 
Athenians, the cleverest of all the Greeks, — could have fallen into such a 
trap. To him the story was told asa deception from the beginning, and 
he did not perhaps take pains to put himself into the state of feeling of 
those original spectators who saw the chariot approach, without any warn- 
ing or preconceived suspicion. But even allowing for this, his criticism 
brings to our view the alteration and enlargement which had taken place in 
the Greek mind during the century between Peisistratus and Periklés. 
Doubtless, neither the latter nor any of his contemporaries could have suc 
ceeded in a similar trick. 

The fact, and the criticism upon it, now before us, are remarkably illus 
trated by an analogous case recounted in a previous chapter, (vol. ii, p. 421 
chap. viii.) Nearly at the same period as this stratagem of Peisistratus, 
the Lacedzemonians and the Argeians agreed to decide, by a combat of three 
hundred select champions, the dispute between them as to the territory of 
Kynuria. The combat actually took place, and the heroism of Othryades, 
sole Spartan survivor, has been already recounted. In the eleventh year 
of the Peloponnesian war, shortly after or near upon the period when we 
may conceive the history of Herodotus to have been finished, the Argeians 
concluded a treaty with Lacedemon, and introduced as a clause into it the 
liberty of reviving their pretensions to Kynuria, and of again deciding the 
dispute by a combat of select champions. To the Lacedzmonians of that 
time this appeared extreme folly, —the very proceeding which had been 
actually resorted to a century before. Here is another case, in which 
the change in the point of view, and the increased positive tendencies in 
the Greek mind, are brought to our notice not less forcibly then by the 
eriticism of Herodotus upon Phyé-Athéneé 

δὰ 


106 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The daughter of Megaklés, according to agreement, quickly 
became the wife of Peisistratus, but she bore him no children; 
and it became known that her husband, having already adult 
sons by a former marriage, and considering that the Kylonian 


curse rested upon all the Alkmzéonid family, did not intend that 
she should become a mother.' Megaklés was so incensed at 
this behavior, that he not only renounced his alliance with Peisis 
tyatus, but even made his peace with the third party, the adhe- 
rents of Lykurgus,—and assumed so menacing an attitude, that 
the despot was obliged to evacuate Attica. He retired to Ere- 
tria in Eubcea, where he remained no less than ten years; but a 
considerable portion of that time was employed in making prep- 
arations for a forcible return, and he seems to have exercised, 
even while in exile, a degree of influence much exceeding that 


N wy? 
[1- 


Istrus (one of the Atthido-graphers of the third century B.c.) and An 
klés published books respecting the personal manifestations or epiphanies 
of the σοᾶϑ, -- ᾿Απόλλωνος ἐπιφανεῖαι : see Istri Fragment. 33-37, ed. Didot 
If Peisistratus and Megaklés had never quarrelled, their joint stratagem 
mizht have continued to pass for a genuine epiphany, and might have 
been included as such in the work of Istrus. I will add, that the real pres- 
ence of the gods, at the festivals celebrated in their honor, was an idea con- 
tinually brought before the minds of the Greeks. 

The Athenians fully believed the epiphany of the god Pan to Pheidip 
pidés the courier, on his march to Sparta, a little before the battle of Mara- 
thon (Herodot. vi, 105, καὶ ταῦτα ᾿Αϑηναῖοι πιστεύσαντες εἶναι dAnvéa), and 
even Herodotus himself does not controvert it, though he relaxes the posi- 
tive character of history so far as to add —“as Pheidippidés himself’ said 
and recounted publicly to the Athenians.” His informants in this case 
were doubtless sincere believers; whereas, in the case of Phyé, the story 
was told to him at first as a fabrication. 

At Gela in Sicily, seemingly not long before this restoration of Peisis- 
tratus, Télinés (ancestor of the despot Gelon) had brought back some 
exiles to Gela, “without any armed force, but merely through the sacred 
ceremonies and appurtenances of the subterranean goddesses,” — ἔχων 
οὐδεμιὴν ἀνδρῶν δύναμιν, ἀλλ᾽ ἱρὰ τούτεων τῶν ϑεῶν --- τούτοισι δ' ὧν πίσυ 
νος ἐὼν, κατήγαγε (Herodot. vii, 153). Herodotus does not tell us the de- 
tails which he had heard of the manner in which this restoration at Gela 
was brought about; but his general language intimates, that tiey were 
remarkable details, and they might have illustrated the story of Phyé 
Athéné. 

: Herodot.i 61. Peisistratus — ἐμίχϑη οἱ ob κατὰ νόμον. 


SECOND EXILE OF PEISISTRATUS. 207 


of a ptivat: man. Ile lent valuable aid to Lygdamis of Naxos, 
in co. sti..ting himself despot of that island, and he possessed, 
we know not how, the means of rendering valuable service to 
different cities, ‘Thebes in particular. They repaid him by 
large contributions of money to aid in his reéstablishment: 
mercenaries were hired from Argos, and the Naxian Lygda- 
mis came himself, both with money and with troops. Thus 
equipped and aided, Peisistratus landed at Marathon in Attica 
How the Athenian government had been conducted during his 
ten years’ absence, we do not know; but the leaders of it per- 
mitted him to remain undisturbed at Marathon, and to assemble 
his partisans both from the city and from the country: nor was it 
until he broke up from Marathon and had reached Palléné on 
his way to Athens, that they took the field against him. More- 
over, their conduct, even when the two armies were near to- 
gether, must have been either extremely negligent or corrupt; 
for Peisistratus found means to attack them unprepared, routing 
their forces almost without resistance. In fact, the proceedings 
have altogether the air of a concerted betrayal: for the defeated 
troops, though unpursued, are said to have dispersed and re- 
turned to their homes forthwith, in obedience to the proclama- 
tion of Peisistratus, who marched on to Athens, and found him- 
selt a third time ruler.? 

On this third suecessful entry, he took vigorous precautions 
for rendering his seat permanent. ‘The Alkmezoénide and their 
immediate partisans retired into exile; but he seized the chil- 
dren of those who remained, and whose sentiments he suspected, 
as hostages for the behavior of their parents, and placed them in 
Naxos, under the care of Lygdamis. Moreover, he provided 
himself with a powerful body οἵ Thracian mercenaries, paid by 
taxes levied upon the people : 9. nor did he omit to conciliate the 
favor of the gods by a purification of tle sacred island of Delos 


ΝΒΟΒΟΟΝΟΝΝΝΝ ΤΠ ΠΕΟΒΗΝΙΝΟΤΟΝ ΝΝΝΝΕΝΗΟΝΝΝΕΕΕΝΜΕΝΜΝΠΝΕΝΟΜΙΝΝ ΜῈΝ -«-ὦ 


: About Lygdamis, see Athenzeus, viii, p. 348, and his citation from th’ 
lost work of Aristotle on the Grecian Πολιτεῖαι ; also, Aristot. F 1 v-. 
Β1, 

3 Herndot. 1, 63. 

3 hrerodot. i, θ4. ἐπικούροισί τε πολλοῖσι, καὶ χρημάτων συνόὲξ ιο., 1% 
μὲν αὐτόϑεν, τῶν δὲ ἀπὸ Στρύμονος ποτάμου προσιόντων. 


108 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


all the dcad bodies which had been buried within sight of tha 
temple of Apollo were exhumed and reinterred farther off. At 
this time the Delian festiva:,— attended by the Asiatic Ionians 
and the islanders, and with which Athens was of course pecu- 
liarly connected, — must have been beginning to decline from its 
pristine magnificence ; for the subjugation of the continental 
Ionic cities by Cyrus had been already achieved, and the power 
of Samos, though increased under the despot Polykratés, seems 
to have increased at the expense and to the ruin of the smaller 
Ionic islands. From the same feelings, in part, which led to the 
purification of Delos, — partly as an act of party revenge, — 
Peisistratus caused the houses of the Alkmz6nids to be levelled 
with the ground, and the bodies of the deceased members of that 
family to be disinterr ἃ and cast out of the country.! 

This third and last period of the rule of Peisistratus lasted 
several years, until his death in 527 B.c: it is said to have been 
so mild in its character, that he once even suffered himself to be 
cited for trial before the Senate of Areopagus; yet as we know 
that he had to maintain a large body of Thracian mercenaries 
out of the funds of the people, we shall be inclined to construe 


this eulogium comparatively rather than positively. Thucy- 
didés affirms that both he and his sons governed in a wise and 
virtuous spirit, levying from the people only an income-tax ot 


five per cent.2 This is high praise coming from such an au- 


1 Isokratés, Or. xvi, De Bigis, c. 351. 

2 For the statement of Boeckh, Dr. Arnold, and Dr. Thirlwall, that Pei- 
sistratus had levied a tythe or tax of ten per cent., and that his sons re- 
duced it to the half, 1 find no sufficient warrant: certainly, the spurious 
letter of Peisistratus to Solon in Diogenes Laértius (i, 53) ought not to be 
considered as proving anything. Boeckh. Public Economy of Athens, B 
iii, c. 6 (i. 351 German); Dr. Arnold ad Thucyd. vi, 34; Dr. Thirlwall 
Hist. of Gr. ch. xi, pp. 72-74. Idomeneus (ap. Athen. xii, p. 533) consid- 
ers the sons of Peisistratus to have indulged in pleasures to an extent more 
costly and oppressive to the people than their father. Nor do I think that 
there is sufficient authority to sustain the statement of Dr. Thirlwall (p. 
68), “ He (Peisistratus) possessed lands on the Strymon in Thrace, which 
yielded a large revenue.” Herodotus (i, 64) tells us that Peisistratus 
brought mercenary soldiers from the Strymon, but that he levied the 
money to pay them in Attica — ἐῤῥίζωσε τὴν τυραννίδα ἐπικούροισέ Te TOA- 
λοῖσι, καὶ χρημάτων συνύδοισι, τῶν μὲν αὐτόϑεν, τῶν δὲ ἀπὸ Lipuscr , 


MILD GOVERNMENT OF PEISISTRATUS. 109 


thority, though it seems that we ought to make some allowar.ce 
for the circumstance of Thucydidés being connected by descent 
with the Peisistratid family.! The judgment of Herodotus is 
also very favorable respecting Peisistratus; that of Aristotle 
favorable, yet qualified, — since he includes these despots among 
the list of those who undertook public and sacred works with the 
deliberate view of impoverishing as well as of occupying their 
subjects. This supposition is countenanced by the prodigious 
scale upon which the temple of Zeus Olympius at Athens was 
begun by Peisistratus, —a scale much exceeding either the 
Parthen6én or the temple of Athéné Polias, both of which were 
erected in later times, when the means of Athens were decidedly 
larger,? and her disposition to demonstrative piety certainly no 
way diminished. It was left by him unfinished, nor was it ever 
completed until the Roman emperor Hadrian undertook the 
task. Moreover, Peisistratus introduced the greater Panathe- 
naic festival, solemnized every four years, in the third Olympic 


ποταμοῦ συνιόντων. It is, indeed, possible to construe this passage so as 
to refer both τῶν μὲν and τῶν δὲ to χρημάτων, which would signify that 
Peisistratus obtained his funds partly from the river Strymon, and thus 
serve as basis to the statement of Dr. Thirlwall. But it seems to me that 
the better way of construing the words is to refer τῶν μὲν to χρημάτων 
συνόδοισι, and τῶν δὲ to επικούροισι, ---- treating both of them as genitives 
absolute. It is highly improbable that he should derive money from the 
Strymon: it is highly probable that his mercenaries came from thence. 

' Hermippus (ap. Marcellin. Vit. Thucyd. p. ix,) and the Scholiast on 
Thucyd. i, 20, affirm that Thucydidés was connected by relationship with 
the Peisistratide. His manner of speaking of them certainly lends counte- 
nance to the assertion; not merely as he twice notices their history, once 
briefly (i, 20) and again at considerable length (vi, 54-59), though it does 
not lie within the direct compass of his period,— but also as he so emphati- 
cally announces his own personal knowledge of their family relations,— 
Ὅτι δὲ πρεσβύτατος Ov “Ἱππίας ἦρξεν, εἰδὼς μὲν καὶ ἀκοῇ ἀκριβέστερον 
ἄλλων ἰσχυρίζομαι (vi. 55). 

Aristotle (Politic. v, 9, 31} mentions it as a report (φασι) that Peisistra 
tus obeyed the summons to appear before the Areopagus; Plutarch adds 
thnt the person who had summoned him did not appear to bring the caus« 
te trial (Vit. Solon 31), which is not at all surprising: compare Thacyd 
τὶ. 56, 57. 

 Aristot. Politic. v, 9, 4 Dikearchus, Vita Grecia, pp. 140-166. ad 
Fuhr; Pausan. i, 18, 8. 


᾿ 


—— = ee 


_——_— 
—— 


agg et -- . -ο-.-----Ες-ς--ς 


110 HISTORY Uc GREECE. 


year: the annual Panathenaic festival, henceforward called the 


Lesser, was still continued. 

I have already noticed, at considerable length, the care which 
he bestowed in procuring full and correct copies of the Homeric 
poems, as well as in improving the recitation of them at the 
Panathenaic festival,—a proceeding for which we owe him 
much gratitude, but which has been shown to be erroneously in- 
terpreted by various critics. He probably also collected the 
works of other poets,— called by Aulus Gellius,' in language 
rot well suited to the sixth century B.c.,a library thrown open 
to the public; and the service which he thus rendered must have 
been highly valuable at a time when writing and reading were 
not widely extended. His son Hipparchus followed up the same 
taste, taking pleasure in the society of the most eminent poets 
of the day,2—Simonidés, Anakreon, and Lasus; not to mention 
the Athenian mystic Onomakritus, who, though not pretending to 
the gift of prophecy himself, passed for the proprietor and editor 
of the various prophecies ascribed to the ancient name of Mu- 
seus. The Peisistratids were well versed in these prophecies, 
and set great value upon them; but Onomakritus, being detected 
on one occasion in the act of interpolating the prophecies of Mu- 
seus, was banished by Hipparchus in consequence.* ‘The statues 
of Hermés, erected by this prince or by his personal friends in 
various parts of Attica,‘ and inscribed with short moral sen- 
tences, are extolled by the author of the Platonic dialogue called 
Hipparchus, with an exaggeration which approaches to irony , 
but itis certain that both the sons of Peisistratus, as well as 
himself, were exact in fulfilling the religious obligations of the 
state, and ornamented the city in several ways, especially the 
public fountain Kallirrhoé. They are said to have maintained 
the preéxisting forms of law and justice, merely taking care 
always to keep themselves and their adherents in the effective 


δ Aul. Gell. N. A. vi, 17. 
5 Herodot. vii, 6; Pseudo-Plato, slipparchus, p. 229. 
Herodot. v, 93, vii, 6. ᾿Ονομάκρετον, χρησμολόγον καὶ διαϑετὴην τῶν χρη 
μὼν τῶν Μουσαίου. See Pausan. i. 22,7. Compare, about the literary tea 
@encies of the Peisistratids, Nitzsch, De Historid Homeri, ch. 30, p. 168. 


4 Philochor Frag. 69, ed. Didot ; Plato, Hipparch. p. 230 


HARMODIUS AND ARISTOGEITON. lll 


offices of state, and in the full reality of power. They were, 
moreover, modest and popular in their personal demeanor, and 
charitable to the poor; yet one striking example occurs of υἱ- 
scrupulous enmity, in their murder of Kimén, by night, through 
the agency of hired assassins.! There is good reason, however, 
for believing that the government both of Peisistratus and of his 
sons was in practice generally mild until after the death of Hip- 
parchus by the hands of Harmodius and Aristogeitoén, after 
which event the surviving Hippias became alarmed, cruel, and 
oppressive during his last four years. And the harshness of this 
concluding period left upon the Athenian mind? that profound 
and imperishable hatred, against the dynasty gene rally, which 
Thucydidés attests, — though he labors to show that it was not 
deserved by Peisistratus, nor at first by Hippias. 

Peisistratus left three legitimate sons, — Hippias, Hipparchus, 
and Thessalus: the general belief at Athens among the contem- 
poraries of Thucydidés was, that Hipparchus was the eldest of 
the three and had succeeded him; but the historian emphatically 
pronounces this to be a mistake, and certifies, upon his own re- 
sponsibility, that Hippias was both eldest son and successor. 
Such an assurance from him, fortified by certain reasons in them- 
selves not very conclusive, is sufficient ground for our belief, — 
the more so as Herodotus countenances the same version. But 
we are surprised at such a degree of historical carelessness in the 
Athenian public, and seemingly even in Plato,’ about a matter 
both interesting and comparatively recent. In order to abate 
this surprise, and to explain how the name of Hipparchus came 
to supplant that of Hippias in the popular talk, Thucydidés re- 
counts the memorable story of Harmodius and Aristogeitén. 

Of these two Athenian citizens,’ both belonging to the ancient 


' Herodot. vi, 38-103; Theopomp. ap. Athene. xii, p. 533. 
3 Thucyd. vi, 53; Pseudo-Plato, Hipparch. p. 230; Pausan. 1, 23, 1. 
3 Thucyd. i. 20, about the general belief of the Athenian public in his 
time —’AUnvaiwr γοῦν τὸ πλῆϑος οἴονται ὑφ᾽ ‘Apyodiov καὶ ᾿Αριστογείτονος 
[ππαοχον τύραννον ὄντα ἀποϑανεῖν, καὶ οὐκ ἴσασιν ὅτι Ἱππίας πρεσβύτατος 
ὧν ἦρχε τῶν Πεισιστράτου παιδῶν, etc. 

The Pseudo-Plato in the dialogue called Hipparchus adopts this telief, 
and the real Plato in his Symposion (c. 9, p. 182) seems to countenance it. 
4 Herodot. v. 55-58. Harmodius is affirmed by Plutarch to have been of 


the deme Aphidnz (Plutarch, Symposiacon, i, 10, p. 628) 


11¢ HISTORY OF GREECE. 


gens called Gephyri, the former was a beautiful youth, attached 
to the latter by a mutual friendship and devoted intimacy, which 
Grecian manners did not condemn. Hipparchus made repeated 
propositions to Harmodius, which were repelled, bit which, on 
becoming known to Aristogeiton, excited both his jealousy and 
his fears lest the disappointed suitor should employ force, — fears 
justified by the proceedings not unusual with Grecian despots,! 
ard by the absence of all legal protection against outrage from 
such a quarter. Under these feelings, he began to look about, in 
the best way that he could, for some means of putting down the 
Meanwhile Hipparchus, though not entertaining any 


despotism. 
was so incensed at the refusal of Harmodius, 


designs of violence, 
that he could not be satisfied without doing something to insult of 
humiliate him. In erder to conceal the motive from which the 
really proceeded, he offered it, not directly to Harmodius, 


insult 
He caused this young maiden to be one day 


but to his sister. 
summoned to take her station in a religious procession as one of 
the kanéphore, or basket carriers, according to the practice 
usual at Athens; but when she arrived at the place where het 
fellow-maidens were assembled, she was dismissed with scorn as 


unworthy of so respectable a function, and the summons ad- 
dressed to her was disavowed.2 An insult thus publicly offered 


It is to be recollected that he died before the introduction of the Ten 


Tribes, and before the recognition of the demes as political elements in the 


commonwealth. 

1 For the terrible effects produced by this fear of ὕβρις εἰς τὴν ἡλικίαν, 
see Plutarch, Kimon, 1; Aristot. Polit. v, 9, 17. 

2 Thucyd. vi, 56. Τὸν δ᾽ οὖν ᾿Αρμόδιον ἀπαρνηϑέντα τὴν πείρασιν, ὥσπερ 
ὃ evoeiro, προυπηλάκισεν " ἀδελφὴν γὰρ αὐτοῦ, κόρην, ἐπαγγείλαντες ἥκειν 
κανοῦν οἴσουσαν ἐν πομπῇ τινι, ἀπήλασαν, λέγοντες οὐδὲ ἐπαγγεῖλαι ἀρχὴν, 
διὰ τὸ μὴ ἀξίαν εἶναι. 

Dr. Arnold, in his note, supposes that this exclusion of the sister of 
Harmodius by the Peisistratids may have been founded on the circumstance 
that she belonged to the gens Gephyrei (Herodot. v, 57); her foreign 
blood, and her being in certain respects ἄτιμος, disqualified her (he thinks) 
from ministering to the worship of the gods of Athens. 

There is no positive reason to support the conjecture of Dr. Arnold, 
which seems, moreover, virtually discountenanced by the narrative of Thu: 
eydidés, who plainly describes the treatment of this young woman as 8 de 


Li»rate, preconcerted insult. Had t} ere existed any assignable ground οἱ 


ASSASSINATION OF HIPPARCHUS. 114 


filled Harmodius with indignation, and still farther exasperated 
the feelings of Aristogeitén: both of them, resolving at all haz 
ards to put an end to the despotism, concerted means for aggres- 
sion with a few select associates. They awaited the festival of 
the Great Panathenea, wherein the body of the citizens were 
accustomed to march up in armed procession, with spear and 
shield, to the acropolis; this being the only day on which an 
armed body could come together without suspicion. The con- 
spirators appeared armed like the rest of the citizens, but carry- 
ing concealed daggers besides. Harmodius and Aristogeitén 
undertook with their own hands to kill the two Peisistratids, 
while the rest promised to stand forward immediately for their 
protection against the foreign mercenaries; and though the 
whole number of persons engaged was small, they counted upon 
the spontaneous sympathies of the armed bystanders in an effort 
to regain their liberties, so soon as the blow should once be struck. 
The day of the festival having arrived, Hippias, with his for- 
eign body-guard around him, was marshalling the armed citizens 
for procession, in the Kerameikus without the gates, when Har- 
modius and Aristogeit6n approached with concealed daggers to 
execute their purpose. On coming near, they were thunder- 
struck to behold one of their own fellow-conspirators talking 
familiarly with Hippias, who was of easy access to every man 

and they immediately concluded that the plot was betrayed. Ex 

pecting to be seized, and wrought up toa state of desperation, 
they resolved at least not to die without having revenged them- 
selves on Hipparchus, whom they found within the city gates 
near the chapel called the Ledkorion, and immediately slew him. 
His attendant guards killed Harmodius on the spot ; while Aris- 
toxeitén, rescued for the moment by the surrounding crowd, was 


exclusion, such as that which Dr. Arnold supposes, leading to the inference 
that the Peisistratids could not admit her without violating religious cus- 
tom, Thucydidés woull hardly have neglected to allude to it, for it would 
have lightened the insult; and indeed, on that supposition, the sending 
of the original summons might have been made to appear as an accidental 
mistake. I will add, that Thucydidés, though no way forfeiting his obliga 
tions to historical truth, is evidently not disposed to omit anything whick 
ean be truly said in favor of the Peisis‘ratids. 


TOL. IV. Sor 


114 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


afterwards taken, and perished in the tortures applied to make 
him disclose his accoraplices.' 

The news flew quickly to Hippias in the Kerameikus, whe 
heard it earlier than the armed eitizens near him, awaiting his 
order for the commencement of the procession. With extraor- 
dinary self-command, he took advantage of this precious instant 
of foreknowledge, and advanced towards them, — commanding 
them to drop their arms for a short time, and assemble on an ad- 
joining ground. They unsuspectingly obeyed, and he immedi- 
ately directed his guards to take possession of the vacant arms. 
He was now undisputed master, and enabled to seize the persons 
of all those citizens whom he mistrusted, — especially all those 
who had daggers about them, which it was not the practice to 


carry in the Panathenaic procession. 
Such is the memorable narrative of Harmodius and Aristo- 

geiton, peculiarly valuable inasmuch as it all comes from Thu- 

eydidés.2 To possess great power, — to be above legal restraint, 


— to inspire extraordinary fear, — is a privilege so much coveted 
by the giants among mankind, that we may well take notice of 
those cases in which it brings misfortune even upon themselves. 
The fear inspired by Hipparchus, — of designs which he did not 
really entertain, but was likely to entertain, and competent to 


execute without hindrance,— was here the grand caxse of his 


destruction. ! 

The conspiracy here detailed happened in 014 B.c., during the 
thirteenth year of the reign of Hippias,— which lasted four years 
longer, unti! 510 B.c. And these last four years, in the belief 
of the Athenian public, counted for his whole reign; nay, many 
of them made the still greater historical mistake of eliding these 
last four years altogether, and of supposing that the conspiracy 
of Harmodius and Aristogeitén had deposed the Peisistratid gov- 


1 Thucyd. vi, 58, οὐ ῥᾳδίως διετέϑη : compare Polyzn. i, 22; Diodorus, 
Fragm. lib. x, p. 62, vol. iv, ed. Wess. ; Justin, ii, 9. See, also, ἃ good note 
of Dr. Thirlwall on the passage, Hist. of Gr. vol. ii, ch. x1, p. 77, 2d ed. I 
agree with him, that we may fairly construe the indistinct phrase of Tha- 
eydidés by the more precise statements of later authors, who mention thé 
torture. 

® Thucyd. i, 20, vi, 54-59; Herodot. v, 55, 56, vi, 123; Aristot. 
8,9 


Polit. ¥ 


GRATEFUL RECOLLECTION OF THE DEED. 115 


ernment and liberated Athens. Both poets and philosophers 
shared ihiis faith. which is distinctly put forth in the beautiful and 
popular Skolion or song on the subject: the two friends are thera 
celebrated as the authors of liberty at Athens, —“ they slew the 
despot and gave to Athens equal laws.”! So inestimable a pres- 
ent was alone sufficient to enshrine in the minds of the subse- 
quent democracy those who had sold their lives to purchase it: 
and we must farther recollect that the intimate connection be- 
tween the two, so repugnant to the modern reader, was regarded 
at Athens with sympathy, —so that the story took hold of the 
Athenian mind by the vein of romance cenjointly with that of 
patriotism. Harmodius and Aristogeitén were afterwards com- 
memorated both as the winners and as the protomartyrs of 
Athenian liberty. Statues were erected in their honor shortly 
after the final expulsion of the Peisistratids; immunity from 
taxes and public burdens was granted to the descendants of their 
families ; and the speaker who proposed the abolition of such 
immunities, at a time when the number had been abusively mul- 
tiplied, made his only special exception in favor of this respected 

lineage.2 And since the name of Hipparchus was universally 

notorious as the person slain, we discover how it was that he 

came to be considered by an uncritical public as the predominant 

member of the Peisistratid family, — the eldest son and successor 

of Peisistratus,— the reigning despot,— to the comparative neg- 

lect of Hippias. ‘The same public probably cherished many 


' See the words of the song — 

Ori τὸν τύραννον κτανέτην 
᾿Ἰσονόμους τ᾽ ᾿Αϑήνας ἐποιησώτην -το- 
ap. Athenzum, xv, p. 691. 

The epigram of the Keian Simonidés, (Fragm. 132, ed. Bergk —ap. 
Hephestion. c. 14, p. 26, ed. Gaisf.) implies a similar belief: also, the pas- 
sages in Plato, Symposion, p. 182, in Aristot. Polit. v, 8,21, and Arrian, 
Exped. Alex. iv, 10, 3. 

* Herodot. vi, 109; Demosthen. adv. Leptin. c. 27, p.495; cont. Meidiam, 
δ. 47, p. 569; and the oath prescribed in the Psephism of Demophantus, 
Andokidés, De Mysteriis, p.13; Pliny, H. N. xxxiv, 4-8; Pausan. i, 8, 5. 
Plutarch, Aristeidés, 27. 

The statues were carried away from Athens by Xerxés, and restored te 
the Athenians by Alexander after his conquest of Persia (Arrian. Ex Al 
tii, 14. 16; Pliny, H. N. xxxiv, 4-8) 


116 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


other anecdotes,! not the less eagerly believed because they could 
not be authenticated, respecting this eventful period. 

Whatever may have been the moderation of Hippias before, 
indignation at the death of his brother, and fear for his own 
safety,2 now induced him to drop it altogether. It is attested 
both by Thucydides and Herodotus, and admits of no doubt, that 
his power was now employed harshly and cruelly, — that he put 
to death a considerable number of citizens. We find also a 
statement, noway improbable in itself, and affirmed both in Pau- 
sanias and in Plutarch, — inferior authorities, yet still in this case 
sufficiently credible, — that he caused Lena, the mistress of 
Aristogeitén, to be tortured to death, in order to extort from her 
a knowledge of the secrets and accomplices of the latter. But 
as he could not but be sensible that this system of terrorism was 
full of peril to himself, so he looked out for shelter and support 
in case of being expelled from Athens ; and with this view he 
sought to connect himself with Darius king of Persia, — a con- 
nection full of consequences to be hereafter developed. an- 
tidés. son of Hippoklus the despot of Lampsakus on the 
Hellespont, stood high at this time in the favor of the Persian 
monarch, which induced Hippias to give him his daughter Arch- 
ediké in marriage; no small honor to the Lampsakene, in the 
estimation of Thucydidés.4 To explain how Hippias came to fix 


upon this town, however, it is necessary to Say a few words on 
the foreign policy of the Peisistratids. 


1 One of these stories may be seen in Justin, ii, 9,— who gives the name 
of Dioklés to Hipparchus, — “ Diocles, alter ex filiis, per vim stuprata vir 
gine, a fratre puelle interficitur.” 

3 Ἡ γὰρ δειλία φονικώτατόν ἔστιν ἐν ταῖς Tupavvioww — observes Ε]αΓΑΓαῖΝ, 
(Artaxerxés, c. 25). 

3 Pausan. i, 23, 2; Plutarch, De Garrulitate, p. 897; Polyzn. viii, 45; 
Athenzus, xiii, p. 596. 

4 We can hardly be mistaken in putting this interpretation on the words 
of Thucydidés — ᾿Αϑηναῖος ὧν, Λαμψακηνῷ ἔδωκε (vi, 59). 

Some financial tricks and frauds are ascribed to Hippias by the author 
of the Pseudo-Aristotelian second book of the CEconomica (ii, 4). I place 
little reliance on the statements in this treatise respecting persons of early 
date, such as Kypselus or Hippias: in respect to facts of the subsequent 
period of Greece, between 450-300 B.c., the author’s means of infortaatiou 
will doubtless render him a better witness. 


VoL. 4 D 


MILTIADES GOES TO THE CHERSONESE. 117 


It has already been mentioned that the Athenians, even so far 
back as the days of the poet Alkzus, had occupied Sigeium in the 
Troad, and had there carried on war with the Mityleneans ; 80 
that their acquisitions in these regions date much before the time 
of Peisistratus. Owing probably to this circumstance, an appli 
cation was made to them in the early part of his reign from the 
Dolonkian Thracians, inhabitants of the Chersonese on the oppo- 
site side of the Hellespont, for aid against their powerful neigh- 
bors the Absinthian tribe of Thracians ; and opportunity was thus 
offered for sending out a colony to acquire this valuable peninsula 
for Athens. Peisistratus willingly entered into the scheme, and 
Miltiadés son of Kypselus, a noble Athenian, living impatiently 
under his despotism, was no less pleased to take the lead in 
executing it: his departure and that of other malcontents as 
founders of a colony suited the purpose of all parties. Accord- 
ing to the narrative of Herodotus, — alike pious and picturesque, 
—and doubtless circulating as authentic at the annual games 
which the Chersonesites, even in his time, celebrated to the 
honor of their cekist,— it is the Delphian god who directs the 
scheme and singles out the individual. The chiefs οὐ the dis- 
tressed Dolonkians went to Delphi to crave assistance towards 
procuring Grecian colonists, and were directed to choose for 
their ceckist the individual who should first show them hospitality 
on their quitting the temple. They departed and marched all 
along what was called the Sacred Road, through Phocis and 
Beeotia to Athens, without receiving a single hospitable invita- 
tion; at length they entered Athens, and passed by the house of 
Miltiadés, while he himself was sitting in front of it. Seeing 
men whose costume and arms marked them out as strangers, he 
invited them into his house and treated them kindly: they then 
apprized him that he was the man fixed upon by the oracle, and 
abjured him not to refuse his concurrence. After asking for him- 
self personally the opinion of the oracle, and receivirg an affirm- 
ative answer, he consented; sailing as cekist, at the head of a 
body of Athenian emigrants, to the Chersonese.! 

Having reached this peninsula, and having been constituted 
despot of the mixed Thracian and Athenian population, he leat 


’ Herodot vi 36-37 


118 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


no t.ye in fortifying the narrow isthmus by a wall reachirg al! 
across from Kardia to Paktya, a distance of about four miles and 
a half; so that the Absinthian invaders were for the time effect- 
ually shut out,! though the protection was not permanently kept 
up. He also entered into a war with Lampsakus, on the Asiatic 
side of the strait, but was unfortunate enough to fall into an am- 
puseade and become a prisoner. Nothing preserved his life 
except the immediate interference of Croesus king of Lydia, 
coupled with strenuous menaces addressed to the Lampsakenes, 
who found themselves compelled to release their prisoner; Muilti- 
adeés having acquired much favor with this prince, in what man- 
ner we are not told. He died childless some time afterwards, 
while his nephew Stesagoras, who succeeded him, perished by 
assassination, some time subsequent to the death of Peisistratus 
at Athens.? 

The expedition of Miltiadés to the Chersonese must have 
occurred early after the first usurpation of Peisistratus, since 
even his imprisonment by the Lampsakenes happened before the 
‘ain of Croesus, (546 5.6.) But it was not till much later, — 
robably during the third and most powerful period of Peisistra- 

;, — that the latter undertook his expedition against Sigeium 
n the Troad. This place appears to have fallen into the hands 
of the Mityleneans: Peisistratus retook 1.3 and placed there his 
Ulegitimate son Hegesistratus as despot. The Mityleneans may 


' Thus the Scythians broke into the Chersonese even during the govern 
ment of Miltiadés son of Kimén, nephew of Miltiadés the cekist, about 
forty years after the wall had been erected (Herodot. vi, 40). Again, 
Periklés reéstablished the cross-wall, on sending to the Chersonese a fresh 
band of one thousand Athenian settlers (Plutarch, Periklés, c. 19): lastly, 
Derkyllidas the Lacedxemonian built it anew, in consequence of loud com- 
plaints raised by the inhabitants of their defenceless condition, — about 397 
sa. ‘Xenophon, Hellen. iii, 2, 8-10.) So imperfect, however, did the pro- 
tection preve, that about half a century afterwards, during the first years 
of the conquests of Philip of Macedon, an idea was entertained of digging 
through the isthmus, and converting the peninsula into an island (Demes- 
thenés, Philippic ii, 6, p. 92, and De Haleneso, c. 10, p. 86); an idea, how- 
ever, never carried into effect. 

? Herodot. vi 38, 39. 

4 Herodot. v, 94. I have already said that I conceive this as a different 

from that in which the poet Alkgwus was engaged. 


SECOND MILTIADES A! THE CHERSONESE. 119 


have been enfeebled at this time (somewhere between 537-527 
B.c.) not only by the strides of Persian conquest on the mainland, 
but also by the ruinous defeat which they suffered from Polyk- 
ratés and the Samians.! Hegesistratus maintained the place 
against various hostile attempts, throughout all the reign of Hip- 
pias, so that the Athenian possessions in those regions compre- 
hended at this period both the Chersonese and Sigeium.2 To 
the former of the two, Hippias sent out Miltiadés, nephew of 
the first cekist, as governor, after the death of his brother Ste- 
sagoras. ‘The new governor found much discontent in the penin- 
sula, but succeeded in subduing it by entrapping and imprisoning 
the principal men in each town. He farther took into his pay a 
regiment of five hundred mercenaries, and married Hegesipylé, 
daughter of the Thracian king Olorus.3 It appears to have been 


about 515 B.c. that this second Miltiadés went out to the Cher- 


sonese4 He seems to have been obliged to quit it for a time, 
after the Scythian expedition of Darius, in consequence of having 
incurred the hostility of the Persians; but he was there from the 
beginning of the Ionic revolt until about 493 B.c., or two or three 
years before the battle of Marathon, on which occasion we shall 


find him acting commander of the Athenian army. 

Both the Chersonese and Sigeium, though Athenian posses: 
sions were, however, now tributary and dependent on Persia 
And it was to this quarter that Hippias, during his last years of 
alarm, looked for support in the event of being expelled fron 
Athens: he calculated upon Sigeium as a shelter, and upon an- 
tidés, as well as Darius, as an ally. Neither the one nor the 


other failed him. 


tlerodot. iii, 39. 3 Herodot. vi, 104, 139, 140. 

> Herodot. vi, 39-103. Cornelius Nepos, in his Life of Miltiadés, con- 
bunds in one biography the adventures of two persons, — Miltiadés son of 
Kypselus, the cekist,— and Miltiadés son of Kimén, the victor of Marathon, 
— the uncle and the nephew. 

4 There is nothing that I know to mark the date except that it was earlicr 
than the death of Hipparchus in 514 B.c., and also earlier than the expedi- 
tion of Darius against the Scythians, about 516 8.c., in which expedition 
Miltiadés was engaged : see Mr. Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici, and J. M. Schult:. 
Beitrag zu genaueren Zeitbestimmungen der Hellen. Geschichten von det 
b3sten bis zur 79sten Olympiade. p. 165. in the Kieler Philologische Studien 


[841]. 


120 HISTORY OF GREEcr. 


The same cit 2umstances which alarmed Hippias, and rendered 
his dominion in Attica at once more oppressive and more odious, 
tended of course to raise the hopes of his enemies, the Athenian 
exiles, with the powerful Alkmzonids at their head. Believing 
the favorable moment to be come, they even ventured upon an 
invasion of Attica, and occupied a post called Leipsydrion in the 
mountain range of Parnés, which separates Attica from Beeotia.! 
But their schemes altogether failed: Hippias defeated and drove 
them out of the country. His dominion now seemed confirmed, 
for the Lacedemonians were on terms of intimate friendship with 
him; and Amyntas king of Macedon, as well as the Thessalians 
were his allies. Yet the exiles whom he had beaten in the open 
fiela succeeded in an unexpected manceuvre, which, favored by 
circumstances, proved his ruin. 

By an accident which had occurred in the year 548 B.c.,2 the 


Delphian temple was set on fire and burnt. To repair this grave 


loss was an object of solicitude to all Greece; but the outlay re- 
quired was exceedingly heavy, and it appears to have been long 
before the money could be collected. The Amphiktyons decreed 
that one-fourth of the cost should be borne by the Delphians them- 
selves, who found themselves so heavily taxed by this assessment, 
that they sent envoys throughout all Greece to collect subscriptions 
in aid, and received, among other donations, from the Greek set- 
tlers in Egypt twenty mina, besides a large present of alum from 
the Egyptian king Amasis: their munificent benefactor Croesus 
fell a victim to the Persians in 546 B.c., so that his treasure was no 
longer open tothem. The total sum required was three hundred 
talents (equal probably to about one hundred and fifteen thousand 
pounds sterling).? — a prodigious amount to be collected from the 


' Herodot. v, 62. The unfortunate struggle at Leipsydrion became after 
wards the theme of a popular song ( Athenzus, xv, p. 695): see Hesychius, 
v, Λειψύδριον, and Aristotle, Fragm. ᾿Αϑηναίων Πολιτεία, 37, ed. Neumann 

If it be true that Alkibiadés, grandfather of the celebrated Alkibiadés 
took part with Kleisthenés and the Alkmzonid exiles in this struggle (see 
Isokratés, De Bigis, Or. xvi, p. 351), he must have been a mere youth. 

* Pansan. x, 5, 5. 

* Herodot. i, 50, ii, 180. I have taken the three hundred talents of Herodo 
wis as being ginean talents, which are to Attic talents in the ratio of 5:3 


REBUSLDING OF THE DELPHIAN TEMPLE. 121 


dispersed Grecian cities, who acknowledged no common sov- 
ereign authority, and among whom the proportion reasonable to 
ask from each was so difficult to determine with satisfaction to 
all parties. At length, however, the money was collected, and 
the Amphiktyons were in a situation to make a contract for the 
building of the temple. The Alkmzoénids, who had been in exile 
ever since the third and final acquisition of power by Peisistratus, 
took the contract; and in executing it, they not only performed the 
work in the best manner, but even went much beyond the terms 
stipulated ; employing Parian marble for the frontage, where the 
material prescribed to them was coarse stone.! As was before 
remarked in the case of Peisistratus when he was in banishment, 
we are surprised to find exiles whose property had been confis- 
cated so amply furnished with money, — unless we are to suppose 
that Kleisthenés the Alkmaénid, grandson of the Sikyonian 
Kleisthenés,? inherited through his mother wealth independent of 
Attica, and deposited it in the temple of the Samian Héré. But 
the fact is unquestionable, and they gained signal reputaticn 
throughout the Hellenic world for their liberal performance of 30 
important an enterprise. That the erection took considerable 
time, we cannot doubt. It seems to have been finished, as far as 


The Inscriptions prove that tle accounts of the temple were kept by the 
Amphiktyons on the /éginwan scale of money: see Corpus Insecrip. 
Boeckh, No. 1688, and Boeckh, Metrologie, vii, 4. 

' Herodot. vi, 62. The words of the historian would seem to implv that 
they only began to think of this scheme of building the temple after ths 
defeat of Leipsydrion, and a year or two before the expulsion of Hippias; 
& supposition quite inadmissible, since the temple must have taken some 
years in building. 

The loose and prejudiced statement in Philochorus, affirming that the 
Peisistratids caused the Delphian temple to be burnt, and also that they 
were at last deposed by the victorious arm of the Alkmzénids (Philochor: 
Fragment. 70, ed. Didot) makes us feel the value of Herodotus and Thucy- 
didés as authorities. 

* Herodot. vi, 128; Cicero, De Legg. ii, 16. The deposit here mentioned 
by Cicero, which may very probably have been recorded in an inscription 
in the temple, must have been made before the time of the Persian con- 
quest of Samos, — indeed, before the death of Polykratés in 522 ΒΟ. after 
which period the island fell at once into a precarious situation, and very 
oon afterwards into the greatest calamities. 


GOL. Iv. 6 


122 WISTORY OF GREECE. 


we can conjecture, about a year or two after the death of 
Hipparchus, — 512 B.c., — more than thirty years after the com 
flagrat icon. 

To the Delphians, especially, the rebuilding of their temple on 
so superior a scale was the most essential of all services, and 
their gratitude towards the Alkmaénids was proportionally 
great. Partly through such a feeling, partly through pecuniary 
presents, Kleisthenés was thus enabled to work the oracle fer 
political purposes, and to call forth the powerful arm of Sparta 
against Hippias. Whenever any Spartan presented himself to 
consult the oracle, either on private or public business, the answer 
of the priestess was always in one strain, “ Athens must be liber- 
ated.” The constant repetition of this mandate at length extorted 
from the piety of the Lacedwmonians a reluctant compliance. 
Reverence for the cod overcame their strong feeling of friendship 
towards the Peisistratids, and Anchimolius son of Aster was 
despatched by sea to Athens, at the head of a Spartan force to 
expel them. On landing at Phalérum, however, he found them 
already forewarned and prepared, as well as farther strengthened 
by one thousand horse specially demanded from their allies in 
Thessaly. Upon the plain of Phalérum, this latter force was 
found peculiarly effective, so that the division of Anchimolius 
was driven back to thei: ships with great loss and he himself 
slain.! The defeated armament had probably been small, and its 
repulse cnly provoked the Lacedemonians to send a larger, under 
the command of their king Kleomenés in person, who on this oc- 
casion marched into Attica by land. On reaching the plain of 
Athens, he was assailed by the Thessalian horse, but repelled 
them in so gallant a style, that they at once rode off and returned 
to their native country; abandoning their allies with a faithless- 
ness not unfrequent in the Thessalian character. Kleomenés 
marched on to Athens without farther resistance, and found 
himself, together with the Alkmz6nids and the malcontent Athe- 
nians generally, in possession of the town. At that time there 
was no fortification except around the acropolis, into which Hip- 
pias retired with his mercenaries and the citizens most faithful te 
him ; having taken care to provision it well beforehand, so that it 


! Hero lent Ww (2 63. 


GREECE DURING PE:SISTRATUS. 123 


ens not less secure against famine than against assault. He 
might have defied the besieging force, which was noway preparec 
for a long blockade; but, not altogether confiding in his position, 
he tried to send his children by stealth out of the country; and in 
this proceeding the children were taken prisoners. To procure 
their restoration, Hippias consented to all that was demanded of 
him, and withdrew from Attica to Sigeium in the Troad within 
the space of five days. 

Thus fell the Peisistratid dynasty in 510 B.c., fifty years after the 
first usurpation of its founder.'' It was put down through the aid 
of foreigners,? and those foreigners, too, wishing well to it in their 
hearts, though hostile from a mistaken feeling of divine injunction. 
Yet both the circumstances of its fall, and the course of events 
which followed, conspire to show that it possessed few attached 
friends in the country, and that the expulsion of Hippias was 
welcomed unanimously by the vast majority of Athenians. His 
family and chief partisans would accompany him into exile, — 
probably as a matter of course, without requiring any formal sen- 
tence of condemnation; and an altar was erected in the acrop- 
olis, with a column hard by, commemorating both the past 
iniquity of the dethroned dynasty, and the names of all its 
members. 


' Terodot. v, 64, 65. * Thucyd. vi, 56, 57. 


3 Thucyd. vi, 55. ὡς 6 τε βωμὸς σημαΐνει, καὶ ἡ στῆλη περὶ τῆς τῶν τυράν 


νων ἀδικίας, 7 ἐν τῇ ᾿Αϑηναίων ἀκροπόλει σταϑεῖσα. 

Dr. Thirlwall, after mentioning the departure of Hippias, proceeds as 
follows: “ After his departure many severe measures were taken against his 
adherents, who appear to have been for a long time afterwards a formidable 
party. They were punished or repressed, some by death, others by exile or 
by the loss of their political privileges. The family of the tyrants was 
condemned to perpetual banishment, and appears to have been excepted 
‘rom the most comprehensive decrees of amnesty passed in later times.” 
‘Hist. of Gr. ch. xi, vol. ii. p. 81.) 

I cannot but think that Dr. Thirlwall has here been misled by insufficient 
authority. He refers to the oration of Andokidés de Mysteriis, sects. 106 
and 78 (sect. 106 coincides in part with ch. 18, in the ed. of Dobree). An 
attentive reading of it will show that it is utterly unworthy of credit in 
regard to matters anterior to the speaker by one generation or more. The 
orators often permit themselves great license in speaking of past facts, but 
Andokidés in this chapter passes the bonnds even of rhetorical license 
First, he states something not bearing the least analogy to the narrative of 


194 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Heroaetus as to the circumstances preceding the expulsion of the Peisis 
tratids, and indeed tacitly setting aside that narrative ; next, he actually 
jumbles together the two capital and distinct exploits of Athens, — the 
battle of Marathon and the repulse of Xerxés ten years after it. I state 
this latter charge in the words of Sluiter and Valckenaer, before I consider 
the former charge: “ Verissime ad hee verba notat Valckenaerius — Con 
fandere videtur Andocidés diversissima; Persica sub Miltiade et Dario et 
victoriam Marathoniam (v, 14) — quseque evenere sub Themistocle, Xerxis 
gesta. Hic urbem incendio delevit, non ille (v, 20). Nihil magis mani 
fustum est, quam diversa ab oratore confundi.” (Sluiter, Lection. Andoci 
dex p 147.) 

The criticism of these commentators is perfectly borne out by the words 
of the orator, which are too long to find a place here. But immediately 
prior to those words he expresses himself as follows, and this is the passage 
which serves as Dr. Thirlwall’s authority: Οἱ yap πατέρες of ὑμέτεροι, yevo 
μένων TH πόλει κακῶν μεγάλων, ὅτε of τύραννοι εἶχον τὴν πόλεν, ὁ δὲ δῆμος 
ἔφυγε, νικήσαντες μαχόμενοι τοὺς τυράννους ἐπὶ Παλληνίῳ, στρατηγοῦντος 
Λεωγόρον τοῦ προπάππου τοῦ ἐμοῦ, καὶ Χαρίου ov ἔκεινος τὴν ϑυγατέρα εἶχεν 
ἐξ ἧς ὁ ἡμέτερος ἣν πάππος, κατελϑόντες εἰς τὴν πατρίδα Tove μὲν ἀπέκτειναν, 
τῶν δὲ φυγὴν κατέγνωσαν, τοὺς δὲ μένειν ἐν τῇ πόλει ἐάσαντες ἤτίμωσαν. 

Both Sluiter (Lect. And. p. 8) and Dr. Thirlwall (Hist. p. 80) refer this 
alleged victory of Leogoras and the Athenian demus to the action described 
by Herodotus (v, 64) as having been fought by Kleomenés of Sparta 
against the Thessalian cavalry. But the two events have not a single cir- 
cumstance in common, except that each is a victory over the Peisistratida 
or their allies: nor could they well be the same event, described in different 
terms, seeing that Kleomenés, marching from Sparta to Athens, could not 
have fought the Thessalians at Palléné, which lay on the road from Mara- 
thon to Athens. Palléné was the place where Peisistratus, advancing from 
Marathon to Athens, on occasion of his second restoration, gained his com 
plete victory over the opposing party, and marched on afterwards to Athens 
without farther resistance (Herodot. i, 63). 

If, then, we compare the statement given by Andokidés of the preceding 
circumstances, whereby the dynasty of the Peisistratids was put down, with 
that given by Herodotus, we shall see that the two are radically different 
we cannot blend them together, but must make our election between them 
Not less different are the representations of the two as to the circumstances 
which immediately ensued on the fall of Hippias: they would scarcely 
appear to relate to the same event. That “the adherents of the Peisistra- 
tide were punished or represseu, some by death, others by exile, or by the 
loss of their political privileges,” which is the assertion of Andokidés ané 
Dr. Thirlwall, is not only not stated by Herodotus, but is highly improba- 
ble, if we accer’ she facts which he does state ; for he tells us thet Hippias 
capitulated and agreed to retire while possessing ample means of resistance, 
—simply from regard to the safety of his children. It is not to be supposed 
that he would leave his intimate partisans exposed to danger; such of them 


GREECE DURING PEISISTRATLS. 125 


as felt themselves obnoxious would naturally retire along with hira 5 and 
if this be what is meant by “ many persons condemned to exile,” here is no 
reason to call it in question. But there is little probability that any ODA 
was pat to death, and still less probability that any were punished by the 
loss of their political privileges. Within a year afterwards came the com- 
prehensive constitution of Kleisthenés, to be described in the following 
chapter, and I consider it eminently unlikely that there were ἃ considerable 
class of residents in Attica left out of this constitution, under the category 
of partisans of Peisistratus: indeed, the fact cannot be so, if it be true that 
the very first person banished under the Kleisthenean ostracism w4s ἃ per- 
son named Hipparchus, a kinsman of Peisistratus (Androtion, Fr. 5, ed. 
Didot ; Harpokration, v, Ἵππαρχος) ; and this latter circumstance depends 
upon evidence better than that of Andokidés. That there were a party im 
Attica attached to the Peisistratids, I do not doubt ; but that they were “a 
powerful party,” (as Dr. Thirlwall imagines,) I see nothing to show; and 
the extraordinary vigor and unanimity of the Athenian people under the 
Kleisthenean constitution will go far to prove that such could not have been 
the case. mal 

I will add another reason to evince how completely Andokidés miscon- 
ceives the history of Athens between 510-480 B.c. He says that when the 
Peisistratids were put down, many of their partisans were banished, many 
others «allowed to stay at home with the loss of their political privileges ; 
but that afterwards, when the overwhelming dangers of the Persian invasion 


supervened, the people passed a vote to re tore the exiles and to remove 


the existing disfranchisements at home. He would thus have us believe 
that the exiled partisans of the Peisistratids were all restored, and the dis 
franchised partisans of the Peisistratids all enfranchised, ust at the moment 
and with the view of enabling Athens better to 


of the Persian invasion, ὃ 
repel that grave danger. This is nothing less than a glaring mistake ; for 
the first Persian invasion was undertaken with the express view of restoring 
Hippias, and with the presence of Hippias himself at Marathon; while the 
second Persian invasion was also brought on in part by the instigation of 
his family. Persons who had remained in exile or in a state of disfran 
chisement down to that time, in consequence of their attachment to the 
Peisistratids, could not in common prudence be called into action at the 
moment of peril, to help in repelling Hippias himself. It is very true that 
the exiles and the disfranchised were readmitted, shortly before the invasion 
of Xerxés, and under the then pressing calamities of the state. But these 
persons were not philo-Peisistratids ; they were a number gradually accu- 
mulated from the sentences of exile and (atimy or) disfranchisement every 
year passed at Athens, — for these were punishments applied by the Athe- 
tian law to various crimes and public omissions, — the persons 80 s¢€ atenced 
were not politically disaffected, and their aid would then be :f use 15 
defending the state against a foreign enemy. Ἢ 

In regard to “the exception of the family of Peisistratus from the moat 


, τὼν ἡμὴ oe 
comprehensive decrees of amnesty passed in later times,” I will alse 


126 MISTORY OF GR.AECE. 


remark that, in the decree of amnesty, there is no mentiou of them by 
name, nor any special exception made against them: among a list of vart 
ous categories excepted, those are named “who have been condemned te 
death or exile either as murderers or as despots,” (ἢ σφαγεῖσιν ἢ τυράννοις, 
Andokid. c. 13.) It is by no means certain that the descendants οὗ Peisis- 
tratus would be comprised in this exception, which mentions only the per- 
son himself condemned; but even if this were otherwise, the exception is 
a mere continuance of similar words of exception in the old Solonian law, 
anterior to Peisistratus; and, therefore, affords no indication of particular 
feeling against the Peisistratids. 

Andokidés is a useful authority for the politics of Athens in his own 
time (between 420-390 s.c.), but in regard to the previous history of Athens 
between 510-480 B.c., his assertions are so loose, confused, and unscrupu- 
lous, that he is a witness of no value. The mere circumstance noted by 
Valckenaer, that he has confounded together Marathon and Salamis, would 
be sufficient to show this; but when we add to such genuine ignorance his 
mention of his two great-grandfathers in prominent and victorious leader 
ship, which it is hardly credible that they could ever have occupied, — 
when we recollect that the facts which he alleges to have preceded and 
accompanied the expulsion of the Peisistratids are not only at variance 
with those stated by Herodotus, but so contrived as to found a factitious 
analogy for the cause which he is himself pleading,— we shall hardly be 
able to acquit him of something worse than ignorance in his deposition 


CRAPTER RAAL. 


GRECIAN AFFAIRS AFTER THE EXPULSION OF THE .EISISTRA- 
TIDS.—REVOLUTION OF KLEISTHENES AND ESTABLISHMENT 
OF DEMOCRACY AT ATHENS 


Wits Hippias disappeared the mercenary Thracian garrison, 
upon which he and his father before him had leaned for defence 
as well as for enforcement of authority ; and Kleomenés with his 
Lacedemonian forces retired also, after staying only long enough 
to establish a personal friendship, productive subsequently of 
important consequences, between the Spartan king and the 
Athenian Ikagoras. The Athenians were thus left to them 


CS 


REVOLUTION EFFECTED BY KLEISTHENES. 127 


selves, without any foreign interference to constrain them in their 
political arrangements. 

It has been mentioned in the preceding chapter, that the Pei- 
sistratids had for the most part respected the forms of the Soio- 
nian constitution: the nine archons, and the probouleutic or 
preconsidering Senate of Four Hundred (both annually changed), 
still continued to subsist, together with occasional meetings of the 
people, — or rather of such portion of the people as was com- 
prised in the gentes, phratries, and four Ionic tribes. The 
timocratic classification of Solon (or quadruple scale of income 
and admeasurement of political franchises according to it) also 
continued to subsist, — but all within the tether and subservient 
to the purposes of the ruling family, who always kept one of 
their number as real master, among the chief administrators, 
and always retained possession of the acropolis as well as of the 
mercenary force. 

That overawing pressure being now removed by the expulsion 
of Hippias, the enslaved forms became at once endued with 
freedom and reality. There appeared again, what Attica had 
not known for thirty years, declared political parties, and pro- 
nounced opposition between two men as leaders, —on one side, 
Isagoras son of Tisander, a person of illustrious descent, — on 
the other, Kleisthenés the Alkmz6nid, not less illustrious, and 


possessing at this moment a claim on the gratitude of his coun- 


trymen as the most persevering as well as the most effective foe 
of the dethroned despots. In what manner such opposition was 
aarried on we are not told. It would seem to have been not 
ltogether pacific ; but at any rate, Kleisthenés had the worst of 
, and in consequence of this defeat, says the historian, “ he took 
into partnership the people, who had been before excluded from 
everything.”! His partnership with the people gave birth to 
the Athenian democracy: it was a real and important revolu- 
tion. 
The political franchise, or the character of an Athenian citizen, 
both before and since Solon, had been confined to the primiti-s 


ι Herodot. v, 66-62 ἑσσούμενος dé ὁ Κλεισϑένης τὸν δῆμον προσεταιρίζε- 
rat —we γὰρ δὴ τὸν Αϑηναίων δῆμον, πρότερον ἀπωσμένον πάντων TOTS 
πρὸς τὴν ἑω ὑτοῦ μοίρην προσεϑήκατο, etc. 


ΝΙΝ 


CLS Ὁ 


ΠΝ 


Ὄ- 


---- 


-- ‘ 
-- --.- ὦ 
_ 4--- ᾿.-- 


πᾶς. 
= 


-_ 


128 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


four Ionic tribes, each of which was an aggregate of so many 
elose corporations or quasi-families, — the gentes and the phra- 
tries. None of the residents in Attica, therefore, except those 
included in some gens or phratry, had any part in the political 
franchise. Such non-privileged residents were probably at all 
times numerous, and became more and more so by means ot 
fresh settlers: moreover, they tended most to multiply in Athens 
and Peirxus, where emigrants would commonly establish them- 
selves. Kleisthenés broke down the existing wall of privilege, 
and imparted the polijical franchise to the excluded mass. But 
this could not be done by enrolling them in new gentes or phra- 
tries, created in addition to the old; for the gentile tie was found- 
ed upon old faith and feeling, which, in the existing state of the 
Greek mind, could not be suddenly conjured up as a bond of 
union for comparative strangers: it could only be done by dis- 
connecting the franchise altogether from the Ionic tribes as well 
as from the gentes which constituted them, and by redistributing 
the population into new tribes with a character and purpose ex- 
clusively political. Accordingly, Kleisthenés abolished the four 
Ionic tribes, and created in their place ten new tribes founded 
upon a different principle, independent of the gentes and phra- 
tries. Each of his new tribes comprised a certain number of 
demes or cantons, with the enrolled proprietors and residents in 
each of them. The demes taken altogether included the entire 
surface of Attica, so that the Kleisthenean constitution admitted 
to the political franchise all the free native Athenians; and not 
merely these, but also many Metics, and even some of the supe- 
rior order of slaves.' Putting out of sight the general body of 

' Aristot. Polit. iii, 1,10, vi, 2,11. Κλεισϑένης, -το πολλοὺς ἐφυλέτευσε 
ξένους καὶ δούλους μετοίκους. 

Several able critics, and Dr. Thirlwall among the number, consider this 
passage as affording no sense, and assume some conjectural emendation to 
be indispensable ; though there is no particular emendation which suggests 
itself as preéminently plausible. Under these circumstances, I rather pre- 
fer to make the best of the words as they stand; which, though unusual, 
seem to me not absolutely inadmissible. The expression ξένος μέτοικος 
(which is a perfectly good one, as we find in Aristoph. Equit. 347, ---- εἴπου 
δικιδίον εἶπας εὖ κατὰ ξένοι» μετοίκου) may be considered as the correlative 
to δούλους μετοίκους, --- the last word being construed both with δούλους and 
with ξένους. [apprehend that there aiways must have beem in Attica 8 


THE KLEISTHENEAN CONSTITUTION. 12? 


slaves, and regarding only the free inhabitants, it was in point of 
fact a scheme approaching to universal suffrage, both political 
and judicial. 

The slight and cursory manner in which Herodotus announces 
this memorable revolution tends to make us overlook its real 
importance. He dwells chiefly on the alteration in the num- 
ber and names of the tribes: Kleisthenés, he says, despised 
tLe Ionians so much, that he would not tolerate the continuance 
in Attica of the four tribes which prevailed in the Ionic cities,! 
deriving their names from the four sons of Ion, —just as his 
grandfather, the Sikyonian Kleisthenés, hating the Dorians, had 
degraded and nicknamed the three Dorian tribes at Sikyén. 
Such is the representation of Herodotus, who seems himself to 
have entertained some contempt for the Ionians,? and therefore 
to have suspected a similar feeling where it had no real exist- 
ence. But the scope of Kleisthenés was something far more 
extensive : he abolished the four ancient tribes, not because they 
were Ionic, but because they had become incommensurate with 
the existing condition of the Attic people, and because such abo- 
lition procured both for himself and for his political scheme new 
as well as hearty allies. And indeed, if we study the circum 
stances of the case, we shall see very obvious reasons to suggest 
the proceeding. For more than thirty years — an entire gener- 
ation — the old constitution had been a mere empty formality, 
working only in subservience to the reigning dynasty, and strip- 
ped of all real controlling power. We may be very sure, there- 
fore, that both the Senate of Four Hundred and the popular 


certain number of intelligent slaves living apart from their masters (χωρὶς 
οἰκοῦντες), in a state between slavery and freedom, working partly on con- 
dition of afixed payment to him, partly for themselves, and perhaps con- 
tinuing to pass nominally as slaves after they had bought their liberty by in- 
stalments. Such men would be δοῦλοι μέτοικοι : indeed, there are cases in 
which δοῦλοι signifies freedmen (Meier, De Gentilitate Attica, p. 6): they 
must have been industrious and pushing men, valuable partisans to a polit- 
ical revolution. See K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech. Staats Alterth 
eh. 111, not. 15. 

* Herodot. v, 69. Κλεισϑένης --- ὑπεριδὼν Ἴωνας, iva un σφισι ai αὐταὶ 
ἔωσι φυλαὶ καὶ Ἴωσι. 

* Such a disposition seems evident in Herodot. i, 143 

VOL. Iv 6* 900. 


130 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


not only all their value but all th2ir charm, had come to be of 
little public estimation, and were probably attended oly by a 
few partisans ; and thus the difference between qualified citizens 
and men not so qualified,— between members of the four old 
tribes, and men not members, — became during this period prac: 
tically effaced. This, in fact, was the only species of good which 
a Grecian despotism ever seems to have done: it confounded the 
privileged and the non-privileged under one coercive authority 
common to both, so that the distinction between the two was not 
easy to revive when the despotism passed away. As soon as 
Hippias was expelled, the senate and the public assembly re- 
gained their efficiency. But had they been continued on the old 
footing, including none except members of the four tribes, these 
tribes would have been reinvested with a privilege which in re- 
ality they had so long lost, that its revival would have seemed an 


odious novelty, and the remaining population would probably not 
have submitted to it. If, in addition, we consider the political 
excitement of the moment, — the restoration of one body of men 
from exile, and the departure of another body into exile, — the 
outpouring of long-suppressed hatred, partly against these very 


forms, by the corruption of which the despot had reigned,— we 
shall see that prudence as well as patriotism dictated the adop- 
tion of an enlarged scheme of government. Kleisthenés had 
learned some wisdom during his long exile ; and as he probably 
continued, for some time after the introduction of his new consti- 
tution, to be the chief adviser of his countrymen, we may con- 
sider their extraordinary success as a testimony to his prudence 
and skill not less than to their courage and unanimity. 

Nor does it seem unreasonable to give him credit for a more 
senerous forward movement than what is implied in the literal 
account of Herodotus. Instead of being forced against his will 
to purchase popular support by proposing this new constitution, 
Kleisthenés may have proposed it before, during the discussions 
which immediately followed the retirement of Hippias; so that 
the rejection of it formed the ground of quarrel — and no other 
ground is mentioned — between him and Isagoras. The latter 
doubtless found sufficient support, in the existing senate and pub- 
lic assembly, to prevent it from being carried without an actual 
appeal to the people, and his opposition to it is not difficult te 


THE KLEISTHENES N CONSTITUTION. 181 


anderstand. For, necessary as the change had become, it was 
not the less a shock to ancient Attic ideas. It radically altered 
the very idea of a tribe, which now became an aggregation of 
demes, net of gentes, —of fellow-demots, not of fellow-gentiles ; 
and it thus broke up those associations, religious, social, and po- 
litical, between the whole and the parts of the old system, which 
operated powerfully on the mind of every old-fashioned Athe- 
zian. The patricians at Rome, who composed the gentes and 
curiz, — and the plebs, who had no part in these corporations, — 
formed for a long time two separate and opposing fractions in the 
same city, each with its own separate organization. It was only 
by slow degrees that the plebs gained ground, and the political 
value of the patrician gens was long maintained alongside of and 
apart from the plebeian tribe. So too in the Italian and Ger- 
man cities of the Middle Ages, the patrician families refused tc 
part with their own separate political identity, when the guilds 
grew up by the side of them; even though forced to renounce a 
portion of their power, they continued to be a separate fraternity, 
and would not submit to be regimented anew, under an altered 
category and denomination, along with the traders who had 
grown into wealth and importance.‘ But the reform of Kleis- 
thenés effected this change all at once, both as to the name and 
as to the reality. In some cases, indeed, that which had been 
the name of a gens was retained as the name of a deme, but 
even then the old gentiles were ranked indiscriminately among 
the remaining demots; and the Athenian people, politically con- 
sidered, thus became one homogeneous whole, distributed for con 
venience into parts, numerical, local, and politically equal. It is, 
however, to be remembered, that while the four Ionic tribes were 
abolished, the gentes and phratries which composed them were 
left untouched, and continued to subsist as family and religious 
associations, though carrying with them no political privilege. 
The ten newly-created tribes, arranged in an established order 
of precedence, were called, — Erechthéis, ZEgéis, Pandidnis, 


In illustration of what is here stated, see the account of the modifica 
tions of the constitution of Zurich, in Bliintschli, Staats und Rechts Gesch 
ichte der Stadt Zurich, book iii, ch. 2, p. 322; also, Kortiim, Entstehungs 
Gesehichte der Freistédtischen Biinde im Mittelalter, ch. 5, pp. 74-75. 


132 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Leontis, Akamantis, (2néis, Kekrdpis, Hippothoomis, -Eantiq 
Antiochis ; names borrowed chiefly from the respected heroes of 
Attic lerend.!. This number remained unaltered until the year 
295 .c.. when it was increased to twelve by the addition of two 
new tribes, Antigonias and Demetrias, afterwards designated 
anew by the names of Ptolemais and Attalis. The mere names 
of these last two, borrowed from living kings, and not from legen- 
jJary heroes, betray the change from freedom to subservience at 
Athens. Each tribe comprised a certain number of demes, — 
cantons, parishes, or townships, — in Attica. But the total num- 
ber of these demes is not distinctly ascertained; for though we 
know that, in the time of Polemé (the third century B.C.), it was 
one hundred and seventy-four, we cannot be sure that it had 
always remained the same ; and several critics construe the words 
of Herodotus to imply that Kleisthenés at first recognized exactly 
one hundred demes, distributed in equal proportion among his 
ten tribes.2 But such construction of the words is more than 
doubtful, while the fact itself is improbable ; partly because if 
the change of number had been so considerable as the difference 
between one-hundred and one hundred and seventy-four, some 
positive evidence of it would probably be found, — partly be- 
cause Kleisthenés would, indeed, have a motive to render the 
amount of citizen population nearly equal, but no motive to ren- 
der the number of demes equal, in each of the ten tribes. It is 
well known how great 1s the force of local habits, and how unal- 
terable are parochial or cantonal boundaries. In the absence of 


! Respecting these Eponymous Heroes of the Ten Tribes, and the legends 
πιτάφιος Λόγος, erroneously 


eonnected with them, see chapter viii of the 
ascribed to Demosthenes. 
4 Herodot. v, 69. δέκα δὲ καὶ τοὺς δήμους κατένεμε ἐς τὰς φυλάς. 
Schémann contends that Kleisthenés established exactly one hundred 
demes to the ten tribes (De Comitiis Atheniensium, Pref. p. xv and p. 363, 
and Antiquitat. Jur. Pub. Gree. ch. xxii, p. 260), and K. F. Hermasn 
(Lehrbuch der Griech. Staats Alt. ch. 111) thinks that this is what He- 


rodotus meant to affirm though he does not believe the fact to have really 


stood so. 
I incline, as the least difficulty in the case, to construe δέκα with ὀυλὰς 


and not with δήμους, as Wacksmuth (i, 1, Ρ. 271) and Dieterich (De 
Clisthene, a treatise cited by K F. Hermann, but which I have not seen} 


eonstrue it. 


THE DEMES OF EACH TRIBE NOT CONTIGUOUS. 14a 


proof to the contrary, therefore, we may reasonably suppose the 
umber and circumscription of the demes, as found or modified 
vy Kleisthenés, to have subsisted afterwards with little alteration, 
at least until the increase in the number of the tribes. 

There is another point, however, which is at once more certain, 
and more important to notice. The demes which Kleisthenés 
assigned to each tribe were in no case all adjacent to each other ; 
a:d therefore the tribe, as a whole, did not correspond with any 
ecntinuous pertion of the territory, nor could it have any peculiar 
local interest, separate from the entire community. Such system- 
atic avoidance of the factions arising out of neighborhood will 
appear to have been more especially necessary, when we recollect 
that the quarrels of the Parali, the Diakrii, the Pediaki, during 
the preceding century, had all been venerated from local feud, 
though doubtless artfully fomented by individual ambition. More- 
over, it was only by this same precaution that the local predomi- 
nance of the city, and the formation of a city-interest distinct from 
that of the country, was obviated; which could hardly have 
failed to arise had the city by itself constituted either one deme 
or one tribe. Kleisthenés distributed the city (or found it already 
distributed) into several demes, and those demes among several 
tribes; while Peireus and Phalérum, each constituting a sepa- 
rate deme, were also assigired to different tribes; so that there 
were no local advantages either to bestow predominance, or to 
create a struggle for predominance, of one tribe over the rest.! 


1 The deme Melité belonged to the tribe Kekropis ; Kollytus, to the tribe 
Egéis; Kydathencon, to the tribe Pandionis; Kerameis, or Kerameikus, to 
the Akamantis; Skambénide, to the Leontis. 

All these five were demes within the city of Athens, and all belonged te 
different tribes. 

Peireus belonged to the Hippothoontis ; Phalérum, to the Hantis ; Xypeté, 
to the Kekropis; Thymatade, to the Hippothodntis. These four demes, 
adjoining to each other, formed a sort of quadruple local union, for festivals 
and other purposes, among themselves ; though three of them belonged te 
different tribes. 

See the list of the Attic demes, with a careful statement of their localities 
in 90 far as ascertained, in Professor Ross, Die Demen von Attika, Halle, 
1246. The distribution of the city-demes, aad of Peirzus and Phalérum, 
among different tribes, appears to me a clear proof of the intention of the 
original distributors. It shows that they wished from the beginning te 


334 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Each deme had its own local interests to watch over: but tha 
tribe was a mere aggregate of demes for politival, military, and 
religious purposes, with no separate hopes or fears, apart from 
the whole state. Each tribe had a chapel, sacred rites and fest- 
vals, and a common fund for such meetings, in honor of its epony- 
mous hero, administered by members of its own choice ;' and the 
statues of all the ten eponymous heroes, fraternal patrons of the 
democracy, were planted in the most conspicuous part of the agora 
of Athens. In the future working of the Athenian government, 
we shall trace no symptom of disquieting local factions, — a capi 
tal amendment, compared with the disputes of the preceding 
century, and traceable, in part, to the absence of border-relations 
between demes of the same tribe. 

The deme now became the primitive constituent element of the 
commonwealth, both as to persons and as to property. It had 
its own demarch, its register of enrolled citizens, its collective 
property, its public meetings and religious ceremonies, its taxed 
levied and administered by itself. The register of qualified citi 
zens? was kept by the demarch, and the inscription of new citizen: 
took place at the assembly of the demots, whose legitimate sons 
were enrolled on attaining the age of eighteen, and their adopted 
sons at any time when presented and sworn to by the adopting 
citizen. The citizenship could only be granted by a public vote 
of the people, but wealthy non-freemen were enabled sometimes 
t» evade this law and purchase admission upon the register of 
some poor deme, probably by means of a fictitious adoption. At 


make the demes constituting each tri »e discontinuous, and that they desired 
to prevent both the growth of separate tribe-interests and ascendency of 
one tribe over the rest. It contradicts the belief of those who suppose that 
the tribe was at first composed of continuous demes, and that the breach 
of continuity arose from subsequent changes. 

Of course there were many cases in which adjoining demes belonged 
to the same tribe; but not one of the ten tribes was made up altogether of 
adjoining demes. Ἴ 

"566 Boeckh, Corp. Inscriptt. Nos. 85, 128, 213, ete.: compare Demosthen. 
eont. Theokrin. c. 4, p. 1526 R. 

? We may remark that this register was called by a special name, the 
Lexiarchic register; while the primitive register of phrators and gentiles 
always retained, even in the time of the orators, its original name ef the 
common register — Harpnkration, v. Κοινὸν γραμματεῖον καὶ ληξιαρχικόν. 


SOLON’ LUNSTITUTION MODIFIED. 135 


the meetings of the demots, the register was called over, and it 
sometimes happened that some names were expunged, — in which 
ease the party thus disfranchised had an appeal to the popular 
judicature.! So great was the local administrative power, how 
ever, of these demes, that they are described as the substitute, 
under the Kleisthenean system, for the naukraries under the Se 
lonian and ante-Solonian. ‘The trittyes and naukraries, though 
nominally preserved, and the latter (as some affirm) augmented 
in number from forty-eight to fifty, appear henceforward as of 
little public importance. 

Kleisthenés preserved, but at the same time modified and ex- 
panded, all the main features of Solon’s political constitution ; the 
public assembly, or ekklesia, — the preconsidering senate, com- 
posed of members from all the tribes, — and the habit of annual 
clection, as well as annual responsibility of magistrates, by and to 
the ekklesia. The full value must now have been felt of pos- 
sessing such preéxisting institutions to build upon, at a moment 
of perplexity and dissension. But the Kleisthenean ekklesia ac- 
quired new strength, and almost a new character, from the great 
‘nerease of the number of citizens qualified to attend it; while the 
annually-changed senate, instead of being composed of four hun- 
dred members taken in equal proportion from each of the old four 
tribes, was enlarged to five hundred, taken equally from each of 
the new ten tribes. It now comes before us, under the name of 
Senate of Five Hundred, as an active and indispensable body 
throughout the whole Athenian democracy : and the practice now 
seems to have begun (though the period of commencement cannot 
be decisively proved), of determining the names of the senators by 
lot, Both the senate thus constituted, and the public assembly, 
were far more popular and vigorous than they had been under 
the original arrangement of Solon. 

The new constitution of the tribes, as it led to a change in 
the annual senate, so it transformed, no less directly, the military 


1 See Schémann, Antiq. Jur. P. Grec. ch. xxiv. The oration of Demos- 
thenés against Eubulidés is instructive about these proceedings of ‘he 
assembled demots: compare Harpokration, v, Διαψήφισις, and Meier, De 


Bonis Damnatorum, ch. xii, p. 78, etc. 
9 Aristot. Fragment. de Republ., ed. Neumann, — ᾿Αϑην. πολιτ. Fr. 40 


Ρ. 88; Schol. ad Aristhophan. Ran. 37 ; Harpokration, v, Δήμαρχος --- Nav 
κραοικά ; Photius, v, Ναυκραρία. 


136 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


arrangements of the state, both as to soldiers and as to officere 
The citizens called upon to serve in arms were now marstalled 
according to tribes, — each tribe having its own taxiarcls as offi- 
eers for the hoplites, and its own phylarch at the head of the 
horsemen. Moreover, there were now created for the first time 
ten stratégi, or generals, one from each tribe; and two hipparchs, 
for the supreme command of the horsemen. Under the prior 
Athenian constitution if. appears that the command of the military 
force had been vested in the third archon, or polemarch, no stra- 
tegi then existing; and even after the latter had been created, under 
the Kleisthenean constitution, the pclemarch still retained a joint 
right of command along with them,—as we are told at the battle 
of Marathon, where Kallimachus the polemarch not only enjoyed 
an equal vote in the council of war along with the ten stratégi, 
but even occupied the post of honor on the right wing.! The 
ten generals, annually changed, are thus (like the ten tribes) a 
fruit of the Kleisthenean constitution, which was at the same time 
powerfully strengthened and protected by such remodelling of the 
military force. The functions of the generals becoming more 
extensive as the democracy advanced, they seem to have acquired 
gradually not merely the direction of military and naval affairs, 
but also that of the foreign relations of the city generally, — 
while the nine archons, including the polemarch, were by degrees 
lowered down from that full executive and judicial competence 
which they had once enjoyed, to the simple ministry of police 
and preparatory justice. Eneroached upon by the stratégi on one 
side, they were also restricted in efficiency by the rise of the pop- 
ular dikasteries or numerous jury-courts, on the other. We may 
be very sure that these popular dikasteries had not been permit- 
ted to meet or to act under the despotism of the Peisistratids, and 
that the judicial business of the city must then have been con- 
ducted partly by the Senate of Areopagus, partly by the archons ; 
perhaps with a nominal responsibility of the latter at the end of 
their year of office to an acquiescent ekklesia. And if we even 
assume it to be true, as some writers contend, that the habit of 
direct popular judicature, over and above this annual trial of re 


‘ Herodct. vi, 109-111 


FINANCE.— SENATE OF FIVE HUNDRED. 137 


been discontinued during the.long coercion exercised by the super 
vening dynasty. But the outburst of popular spirit, which lent 
force to Kleisthenés, doubtless carried the people into direct action 
as jurors in the aggregate Heliza, not less than as voters in the 
ekklesia, — and the change was thus begun which contributed to 
degrade the archons from their primitive character as judges, into 
the lower function of preliminary examiners and presidents of a 


jary. Such convocation of numerous juries, beginning first with 


ihe aggregate body of sworn citizens above thirty years of age, 
and subsequently dividing them into separate bodies or pannels, 
for trying particular causes, became gradually more frequent and 
more systematized: until at length, in the time of Perikleés, it 
was made to carry a small pay, and stood out as one of the most 
prominent features of Athenian life. We cannot particularize 
the different steps whereby such final development was attained, 
and the judicial competence of the archon cut down to the mere 
power of inflicting a small fine; but the first steps of it are 
found in the revolution of Kleisthenés, and it seems to have been 
consummated by the reforms of Periklés. Of the function exer- 
cised by the nine archons as well as by many other magistrates 
and official persons at Athens, in convoking a dikastery, or jury- 
court, bringing on causes for frial,— and presiding over the trial, 
a function constituting one of the marks of superior magistracy, 
and called the Hegemony, or presidency of a dikastery, —I shall 
speak more at length hereafter. At present, I wish merely to bring 
to view the increased and increasing sphere of action on which the 
people entered at the memorable turn of affairs now before us. 
The financial affairs of the city underwent at this epoch as 
complete a change as the military: in fact, the appointment of 
magistrates and officers by tens, one from each tribe, seems to 
have become the ordinary practice. A board of ten, called 
Apodektz, were invested with the supreme management of the 
exchequer, dealing with the contractors as to those portions of 
the revenue which were farmed, receiving all the taxes from the 
collectors, and disbursing them under competent authority. The 
first nomination of this board is expressly ascribed to Kleisthe 


nés,' as a substitute for certain persons called Kolakretz, whe 


1 Harpokration, v, ᾿Αποδέκται. 


138 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


had performed the same function before, and who were now 
retained only for subordinate services. The duties of the apo- 
dektz: were afterwards limited to receiving the public income, 
and paying it over to the ten treasurers of the goddess Athéné, 
by whom it was kept in the inner chamber of the Parthenon, 
and disbursed as needed; but this more complicated arrangement 
cannot be referred to Kleisthenés. From his time forward too, 
the Senate of Five Hundred steps far beyond its original duty 
of preparing matters for the discussion of the ekklesia: it em- 
braces, besides, a large circle of administrative and general 
superintendence, which hardly admits of any definition. Its 
sittings become constant, with the exception of special holiday 5, 
and the year is distributed into ten portions called Prytanies, — 
the fifty ‘senators of each tribe taking by turis the duty of con- 
stant attendance during one prytany, and receiving during that 
time the title of The Prytanes: the order of precedence among 
the tribes in these duties was annually determined by lot. In 
the ordinary Attic year of twelve lunar months, or three hun- 
dred and fifty-four days, six of the prytanies contained thirty-five 
days, four of them contained thirty-six: in the intercalated years 
of thirteen months, the number of days was thirty-eight and 
thirty-nine respectively. Moreover, a farther subdivision of the 
prytany into five periods of seven days each, and of the fifty 
tribe-senators into five bodies of ten each, was recognized: each 
body of ten presided in the senate for one period of seven days, 
drawing lots every day among their number for a new chairman, 
called Epistatés, to whom during his day of office were confided 
the keys of the acropolis and the treasury, together with the city 
seal. "The remaining senators, not belonging to the prytanizing 
tribe, might of course attend if they chose ; but the attendance 
of nine among them, one from each of the remaining nine tribes, 


Ψ Φ . . ᾽ν ν > + « γε } . ; or © 
was imperatively necessary to constitute a valid meeting, and to 


insure a constant representation of the collective people. 

During those later times known to us through the great ora- 
tors, the ekklesia, or formal assembly of the citizens, was con- 
voked four times regularly during each prytany, or oftener if 
necessity required, —- usually by the senate, though the strategi 
had also the power of convoking it by their own authority. It 
was presided over by the prytanes, and questions were put to the 


EKKLESIA, OR PUBLIC ASSEMBLY. 139 


vote by their epistatés, or chairman; but the nine representatives 
m the non-prytanizing tribes were always present as a matter of 
course, and seem, indeed, in the days of the orators, to have ac 
quired to themselves the direction of it, together with the right 
of putting questions for the vote,! — setting aside wholly or par- 
tially the fifty prytanes.) When we carry our attention back, 
however, to the state of the ekklesia, as first organized by Kleis- 
thenés (I have already remarked that expositors of the Athe- 
nian constitution are too apt to neglect the distinction of times. 
and to suppose that what was the practice between 400-330 5,0 
had been always the practice), it will appear probable that he 
provided one regular meeting in each prytany, and no more; 
giving to the senate and the stratégi power of convening special 
meetings if needful, but establishing one ekklesia during each 
prytany, or ten in the year, as a regular necessity of state. Low 
often the ancient ekklesia had been convoked during the interval 
between Solon and Peisistratus, we cannot exactly say, — proba- 
bly but seldom during the year. But under the Peisistratids, its 
convocation had dwindled down into an inoperative formality ; 
and the reéstablishment of it by Kleisthenés, not merely with plen- 
ary determining powers, but also under full notice and prepara- 
tion of matters beforehand, together with the best securities for 
orderly procedure, was in itself a revolution impressive to the 
mind of every Athenian citizen. To render the ekklesia effi 
cient, it was indispensable that its meetings should be both fre 
quent and free. Men thus became trained to the duty both of 
speakers and hearers, and each man, while he felt that he exer- 
cised his share of influence on the decision, identified his own 
safety and happiness with the vote of the majority, and became 
familiarized with the notion of a sovereign authority which he 
neither could nor ought to resist. This is an idea new to the 
Athenian bosom ; and with it came the feelings sanctifying free 
speech and equal law,— words which no Athenian citizen ever 
afterwards heard unmoved: together with that sentiment of the 
entire commonwealth as one and indivisible, which always over. 


' See the valuable treatise of Schémann, De Comitiis, passim; also his 
Antiq. Jur. Publ. Gr. ch. xxxi; Harpokration, v, Kupia ’ExxAjous ; Pcllax, 
riii, 95. 


140 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ruled, though it did not supplant, the local and cantonal special 
ties. It is not too much to say that these patriotic and en aobling 
impulses were a new product in the Athenian mind, to which 
nothing analogous occurs even in the time of Solon. They were 
kindled in part doubiless by the strong reaction against the Pei 
sistratids, but still more by the fact that the opposing leader, 
Kleisthenés, turned that transitory feeling to the best possible 
account, and gave to it a vigorous perpetuity, as well as a well- 
defined positive object, by the popular elements conspicuous in 
his constitution. His name makes less figure in history than we 
should expect, because he passed for the mere renovator of So- 
lon’s scheme of government after it had been overthrown by 
Peisistratus. Probably he himself professed this object, since it 
would facilitate the success of his propositions: and if we con- 
fine ourselves to the letter of the case, the fact is in a great 
measure true, since the annual senate and the ekklesia are both 
Solonian, — but both of them under his reform were clothed in 
totally new circumstances, and swelled into gigantic proportions 
How vigorous was the burst of Athenian enthusiasm, altering 
instantaneously the position of Athens among the powers of 
Greece, we shall hear presently from the lips of Herodotus, and 
shall find still more unequivocally marked in the facts of his 
history. 

But it was not only the people formally installed in their 
ekklesia, who received from Kleisthenés the real attributes of 
sovereignty, — it was by him also that the people were first called 
into direct action as dikasts, or jurors. I have already re- 
marked, that this custom may be said, in a certain limited sense, 
to have begun in the time of Solon, since that lawgiver invested 
the popular assembly with the power of pronouncing the judg- 
ment of accountability upon the archons after their year of office. 
Here, again, the building, afterwards so spacious and stately, was 
erected on ἃ Solonian foundation, though it was not itself Solo 
nian. That the popular dikasteries, in the elaborate form in 
which they existed from Periklés downward, were introduced all 
at once by Kleisthenés, it is impossible to believe ; yet the steps 
by which they were gradually wrought out are not distinctly dis 
coverable. It would rather seem, that at first only the aggregate 
body of citizens above thirty years of age exercised judicial 


THE PEOPLE ΑΜ OIKASTS, OR HELLEA. 14] 


tunctions, being specially convoked and sworn to try persons ac 
eused of public crimes, and when so employed bearing the name 
of the helizea, or heliasts; private offences and disputes between 
man and man being still determined by individual magistrates in 
the city, and a considerable judicial power still residing in the 
Senate of Areopagus. There is reason to believe that this wat 
the state of things established by Kleisthenés, and which after- 
wards came to be altered by the greater extent of judicial duty 
gradually accruing to the heliasts, so that it was necessary to 
subdivide the collective heliawa. According to the subdivision, 
as practised in the times best known, six thousand citizens above 
thirty years of age were annually selected by lot out of the whole 
number, six hundred from each of the ten tribes: five thousand 
of these citizens were arranged in ten pannels or decuries of five 
hundred each, the remaining one thousand being reserved to fill 
up vacancies in case of death or absence among the former. 
The whole six thousand took a prescribed oath, couched in very 
striking words, and every man received a ticket inscribed with 
his own name as well as with a letter designating his decury. 
When there were causes or crimes ripe for trial, the thesmothets, 
cr six inferior archons, determined by lot, first, which decuries 
should sit, according to the number wanted, — next, in which 
court, or under the presidency of what magistrate, the decury B 
or E should sit, so that it could not be known beforehand in whut 
cause each would be judge. In the number of persons who ac- 
tually attended and sat, however, there seems to have been 
much variety, and sometimes two decuries sat together.! The 


arrangement here described, we must recollect, is given to us as 
belonging to those times when the dikasts received a regular 
pay, after every day’s sitting; and it can hardly have long con- 


' See in particular on this subject the treatise of SchOmann, De Sorti- 
tione Judicum (Gripswald, 1820), and the work of the same author, Antiq. 
Jur. Publ. Greece. ch. 49-55, p. 264, segg.; also Heffter, Die Athenaische 
Gerichtsverfassung, part ii, ch. 2, p. 51, segg.; Meier und Schémann, Der At- 
tische Prozess, pp. 127-135. 

The views of Schémann respecting the sortition of the Athenian jurors 
have been bitterly attacked, but in no way refuted, by F. V. Fritzsche (De 
Sortitione Judicum apud Athenienses Commentatio, Leipsic, 1835). 

Two or three of these dikastic tickets, marking we Hume aud the deme 


142 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


tinued without that condition, which was not realized befcre the 
time of Periklés. Each of these decuries sitting in judicature 
was called 7%e Heli@a,—a name which belongs properly to the 
collective assembly of the people ; this collective assembly hav: 
ing been itself the original judicature. I conceive that the prac 
tiee of distributing this collective assembly, or heliza, into sec- 
tions of jurors for judicial duty, may have begun under one form 
or another soon after the reform of Kleisthenés, since the direct 
interference of the people in public affairs tended more and more 


to increase. But it could only have been matured by degrees 


into that constant and systematic service which the pay of Pert- 
Ι 
i 


klés called forth at last in completeness. Under the last-men- 
tioned system the judicial competence of the archons was annul- 
led, and the third archon, or polemarch, withdrawn from all 
military functions. Still, this had not been yet done at the time 
of the battle of Marathon, in which Kallimachus the 

not only commanded along with the stratégi, but enjoyed a sort 
of preéminence over them: nor had it been done during the year 
after the battle of Marathon, in which Aristeidés was archon, — 
for the magisterial decisions of Aristeidés formed one of the prin- 
cipal foundations of | is honorable surname, the Just.' 

With this question, as to the comparative extent of judicial 
power vested by Kleisthenés in the popular dikastery and the 
archons, are in reality connected two others in Athenian consti- 
tutional law; relating, first, to the admissibility of all citizens 
for the post of archon, — next, to the choosing of archons by lot. 
It is well known that, in the time of Periklés, the archons, and 


of the citizen, and the letter of the decury to which during that particular 
year he belonged, have been recently dug up pear Athens : — 
A. Διόδωρος E. Δεινίας 
Φρεάῤῥιος. ᾿Αλαιεύς. 
(Boeckh, Corp. Inscrip. Nos. 207-908.) 

Fritzsche (p. 73) considers these to be tickets of senators, not of dikasts 
contrary to all probability. 

For the Heliastic oath, and its remarkable particulars, see Demosthen 
cont. Timokrat. p. 746. See also Aristophanés, Plutus, 277 (with the val 
uable Scholia, though from different hands and not all of equal correctnes® 
and 972; Ekklesiazuse, 678, seqq. 

! Plutarch, Arist. 7; Herodot. vi, 109-111. 


ADMISSIBILITY TO OFFICE.— THE LOT. 143 


various other individual functionaries, had come to be chosen by 
lot, — morecver, all citizens were legally admissible, and might 
give in their names to be drawn for by lot, subject to what was 
ealled the dokimasy, or legal examination into their status of 
citizen, and into various moral and religious qualifications, be- 
fore they took office ; while at the same time the function of the 
archon had become nothing higher than preliminary examina- 
tion of parties and witnesses for the dikastery, and presidence 
over it when afterwards assembled, together with the power of 
imposing by authority a fine of small amount upon inferior 
offenders. 

Now all these three political arrangements hang essentially 
together. The great value of the lot, according to Grecian 
democratical ideas, was that it equalized the chance of office 
between rich and poor. But so long as the poor citizens were 
legally inadmissible, choice by lot could have no recommenda- 
tion either to the rich or to the poor; in fact, it would be less 
democratical than election by the general mass of citizens, be- 
cause the poor citizen would under the latter system enjoy an 
important right of interference by means of his suffrage, though 
he could not be elected himself.! Again, choice by lot could 


! Aristotle puts these two together; election of magistrates by the mass 
of the citizens, but only out of persons possessing a high pecuniary qualifi- 
cation; this he ranks as the least democratical democracy, if one may use 
the phrase (Politic. iii, 6-11), or a mean between democracy and oligarchy, 
—an ἀριστοκρατία, or πολιτεῖα, in his sense of the word (iv, 7,3). He puts the 
smployment of the lot as a symptom of decisive and extreme democracy, 
such as would never tolerate a pecuniary qualification of eligibility. 

So again Plato (Legg. iii, p. 692), after remarking that the legislator of 
iparta first provided the senate, next the ephors, as a bridle upon the 
.ings, says of the ephors that they were “something nearly approaching to 
un authority emanating from the lot,” — οἷον ψάλιον ἐνέβαλεν αὐτῇ τὴν τῶν 
ἱφόρων δύναμιν, ἐγγὺς τῆς κληρωτῆς ἀγαγὼν δυνάμεως. 

Upon which passage there are some good remarks in SchOmann’s edition 
 Plutarch’s Lives of Agis and Kleomenés (Comment. ad Ag. c. 8, p. 119). 
ii is to be recollected that the actual mode in which the Spartan ephors 
were chosen, as I have already stated in ny first volume, cannot be clearly 
made out, and has been much debated by critics : — 

“Mihi hee verba, quum illud quidem manifestum faciant, quod etiam 
rliunde constat, sorte captos ephoros non esse, tum hoc alterum, quod Her- 
mannus statuit. ereationem sortitioni non absimilem fuisse, nequaquam 


144 HISTOR) OF GREECE. 


never under any circumstances be applied to those posts where 


special competence, and a certain measure of attributes pos- 


sessed only by a few, could not be dispens2d with without ob- 
applied, throughout the whele 


to the stratégi, or generals, whe 


vious peril,—nor was it ever 


history of democratic Ὁ] Athens, 
were always electe 2d by show of hands of the assembled citizens. 


Accordingly, we may regard it as certain that, at the time when 
the archons first came to be chosen by lot, the superior and 


responsible duties once attached to that office had been, or were 
in course of being, detached from it, and transferred either to 
the popular dikasts or to the ten elected stratégi: so that there 
remained to these archons only a routine of police and adminis- 
indeed to the state, yet such as could be 


tration, important 
of average probity, diligence, and 


executed by any citizen 
‘apacity. At least there was no obvious absurdity in thinking 
so; and the dokimasy excluded from the office men of notori- 
cusly discreditable life, even after they might have drawn the 
though chosen stratégus, year after 


successful lot. Periklés,! 
and it may even be 


year successively, was never archon ; 
doubted whether men of first-rate talents and ambition often 
gave in their names for the office. To those of smaller aspira- 
tions 2 it was doubtless a source of importance, but it imposed 


troublesome labor, gave no pay, and entailed a certain degree 


of peril upon any y archon who might have given offence to pow- 


Nimirum nihil aliud nisi prope e accedere ephororum 


demonstrare videntur. 
Sortitis autem magistrati- 


Ag ad eos dicitur, qui sortito capiantur. 
bus hoc maxime proprium est, ut promiscue — non ex genere, censu, dignitate -—a 
guolibet capi possint: quamobrem quum ephori quoque fere promiscue fierent 

ex omni multitudine civium, poterat haud dubie magistratus eorum ἐγγὺς 

κληρωτῆς δυνάμεως esse dici, etiamsi αἱρετοὶ essent —h. 6. suffraziis 


τῆς 
Et video Lachmannum quogue, p. 165, not. 1, de Platonis loco sim 


creati. 


iliter judicare.” 
The employment of the iot, as SchOmann remarks, implies universal ad- 


though the converse does not hold gond, 


missibility of all citizens to office : 
Now. as we know that 


~~ the latter does not of necessity imply the former. 
universal admissibility did not become the law of Athens until after the 
battle of P..cea, so we may conclude that the employment of the lot bad 
no place before that epoch, —7. 6. had no place under the constitution of 


Kleisthenés. 
' Plutarch, Periklés, «. 9-16. 
τ See a passage about such charactera in Plato, Republic, v, p. 475 Β. 


POINTS OF CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY. 145 


erful men, when he came to pass through the trial of accounta- 
bility which followed immediately upon his year of office. There 
was little to make the office acceptable either to very poor men 
or to very rich and ambitious men; and between the middling 
persons who gave in their names, any one might be taken with- 
put great practical mischief, always assuming the two guarantees 
of the dokimasy before, and accountability after, office. This 
was the conclusion —in my opinion a mistaken ccnelosibn and 
such as would find no favor at present —to which the demoseats 
of Athens were conducted by their strenuous desire to equalize 
the chances of office for rich and poor. But their sentiment 
acems to have been satisfied by a partial enforcement of the lot 
to the choice of some offices, — especially the archons, as the 
primitive chief magistrates of the state, — without applying it to 
all, or to the most responsible and difficult. Nor would they 
have applied it to the archons, if it had been indispensably 
necessary that these magistrates should retain their original 
very serious duty of judging disputes and condemning offenders. 
I think, therefore, that these three points: 1 . The opening 
of the post of archon to all citizens indiverbainatoky ; 2. The 
choice of archons by lot; 2, The diminished range of the ar- 
chon’s duties and responsibilities, through the extension of those 
belonging to the popular courts of justice on the one hand and to 
the stratégi on the other —are all connected together, and must 
have been simultaneous, or nearly simultaneous, in the time of 
introduction: the enactment of universal admissibility to office 
certainly not coming after the other two, and probably coming a 
little before them. : 
Now in regard to the eligibility of all Athenians indiscrimi- 
nately to the office of archon, we find-a clear and positive testi- 
mony as to the time when it was first introduced. Plutarch 
tells us! that the oligarchical,? but high-principled Aristeidés, 
was himself the proposer of this constitutional change, — shortly 
after the battle of Platwa, with the consequent expulsion of the 
Persians from Greece, and the return of the refugee Athenians 


' Plutarch, Arist. 22. 
* So at least the supporters of the constitution of Kleisthenés were called 
by the contemporaries of Periklés. 


- 


VOL. gs . Jiloe 


ISTORY OF GREECE. 
146 HISTORY OF GREEC 


to their ruined city. Seldom has it happened in the history of 
mankind, that rich and poor have been so completely equalized 
as among the population of Athens in that memorable expatria- 
tion and heroic struggle. Nor are we at all surprised to hear 
that the mass of the citizens, coming back with freshly-kizdled 
patriotism as well as with the consciousness that their country 
iad only been recovered by the equal efforts of all, would πὸ 
longer submit to be legally disqualified from any office of ~’ ate. 
It was on this occasion that the constitution was first made really 
“eommon” to all, and that the archons, stratégi, and all func- 


ionaries, first beg: » chose all Athenians withou 
tionaries, first began to be chosen from all Athenians \ ith t 
any difference of legal eligibility.!. No mention is made of the 


lot, in this important statement of Plutarch, which appears to 
me every way worthy of credit, and which teaches us that, down 
to the invasion of Xerxés, not only had the exclusive principle 
of the Solonian law of qualification continued in force (whereby 
the first three classes on the census were alone admitted to all 
individual offices, and the fourth or Thétic class excluded), but 
also the archons had hitherto been elected by the citizens, — not 
taken by lot. 

Now for financial purposes, the quadruple census of Solon 
was retained long after this period, even beyond the Pelopon- 
nesian war and the oligarchy of Thirty. But we thus learn that 
Kleisthenés in his constitution retained it for political purposes 
also, in part at least: he recognized the exclusion of the great 
mass of the citizens from all individual offices, — such as the 
archon, the stratégus, etc. In his time, probably, no complaints 
were raised on the subject. His constitution gave to the collec- 
tive bodies — senate, ekklesia, and heliwa, or dikastery —a de- 
gree of power and importance such as they had never before 
known or imagined : and we may well suppose that the Athenian 
people of that day had no objection even to the proclaimed sys- 
tem and theory of being exclusively governed by men of wealth 
and station as individual magistrates,— especially since many 
of the newly-enfranchised citizens had been previously metica 
and slaves. Indeed, it is to be added that, even under the full 


' Plutarch, Arist. ut sup. γράφει ψήφισμα, κοινὴν εἶναι τὴν πολιτείαν, καὶ 
φὺς ἄρχοντας ἐξ ᾿Αϑηναίων πάντων αἱρεῖσϑαι. 


ADMISSIBILITY LIMITED BY KLEISTHENES. 147 


democracy of later Athens, though the people had then become 
passionately attached to the theory of equal admissibility of all 
citizens to office, yet, in practice, poor men seldom obtained 
offices which were elected by the general vote, as will appear 
more fully in the course of this history.! 

The choice of the stratégi remained ever afterwards upon the 
footing on which Aristeidés thus placed it. But the lot for the 
choice of archon must have been introduced shortly after his 
proposition of universal eligibility, and in consequence too of the 
same tide of democratical feeling, — introduced as a farther cor- 
rective, because the poor citizen, though he had become eligible, 
was nevertheless not elected. And at the same time, I imagine, 
that elaborate distribution of the Heliwa, or aggregate body of 
dikasts, or jurors, into separate pannels, or dikasteries, for the 
decision of judicial matters, was first regularized. It was this 
change that stole away from the archons so important a part of 
their previous jurisdiction: it was this change that Perikles 
more fully consummated by insuring pay to the dikasts. But 
the present is not the time to enter into the modifications which 
Athens underwent during the generation after the battle of 
Platwa. They have been here briefly noticed for the purpose of 
reasoning back, in the absence of direct evidence, to Athens as 
it stood in the generation before that memorable battle, after the 
reform of Kleisthenés. His reform, though highly democratical, 


' So in the Italian republics of the twelfth and thirteenth century, the 
nobles long continued to possess the exclusive right of being elected to the 
consulate and the great offices of state, even after those offices had come to 
be elected by the people: the habitual misrule and oppression of the nobles 
gradually put an end to this right, and even created in many towns a reso- 
lution positively to exclude them. At Milan, towards the end of the 
twelfth century, the twelve consuls, with the Podestat, possessed all the 
powers of government: these consuls were nominated by one hundred 
electors chosen by and among the people. Sismondi observes: “ Cepen- 
dant le peuple imposa lui-méme ἃ ces électeurs, la régle fondamentale de 
choisir tous les magistrats dans le corps de la noblesse. Ce n’étoit point 
encore la possession des magistratures que l’on contestoit aux gentilshom- 
mes: on demandoit seulement qu’ils fussent les mandataires immédiats de 
la nation. Mais plus d’une fois, en dépit du droit incontestable des cito 
yens, les consuls regnant s’attribuérent |’élection de leurs successeurs. 
\Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, chap. xii, vol ii, p. 240.) 


148 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


stopped short of the mature democracy which prevailed from 
Periklés to Demosthenés, in three ways especially, among vari- 
ous others; and it is therefore sometimes considered by the 
later writers as an aristocratical constitution:! 1. It still recog- 
nized the archons as judges to a considerable extent, and the 
third arckon, or polemarch, as joint military commander along 
with the stratégi. 2. It retained them as elected annually by 
Ω 


the body of citizens, not as chosen by lot.2 8, It still excluded 


' Plutarzn, Kimon, c. 15. τὴν ἐπὶ Κλεισϑένους ἐγείρειν ἀριστοκρατίαν 
κειρωμένου : Compare Plutarch, Aristeidés, c. 2, and Isokratés, Areopagi- 
ticus, Or. vii, p. 143, p. 192, ed. Bek. 

* Herodotus speaks of Kallimachus the Polemarch, at Marathon, as ὁ τῷ 
cvauw λαχὼν Πολέμαρχος (vi, 110). 

I cannot but think that in this case he transfers to the year 490 B.c. the 
practice ot his own time. The polemarch, at the time ‘of the battle of 
Marathon, was in a certain sense the first stratégus ; and the stratégi were 
never taken by lot, but always chosen by show of hands, even to the end of 
the democracy. It seems impossible to believe that the stratégi were 
elected, and that the nin at the time when his saci cull dis 
same as theirs, was chosen by lot. 

Herodotus seems to have conceived the choice of magistrates by lot as 
being of the essence of a democracy (Herodot. iii, 30). | ‘ 

Piutarch also (Periklés, c. 9) seems to have conceived the choice of 
archuns by lot as a very ancient institution of Athens: nevertheless, it 
results ftom the first chapter of his life of Aristeidés, — an obscure chapter, 
in which conflicting authorities are mentioned without being well discrim- 
inated, — that Aristeidés was chosen erchon by the people,—not drawn by 
lot: an additional reason for believing this is, that he was archon in the 
year following the battle of Marathon, at which he had been one of the ten 
generals. Idomeneus distinctly affirmed this to be the fact,— οὐ κυαμευτὸν, 
aad’ ἑλομένων ᾿Αϑηναίων (Plutarch, Arist. ο. 1). | 

Isokratés also (Areopagit. Or. vii, p. 144, p. 195, ed. Bekker) conceived 
the constitution of Kleisthenés as including all the three points noticed in 
the text: 1. A high pecuniary qualification of eligibility for individual 
offices. 2. Election to these offices by all the citizens, and accountability 
to the same after office. 3. Noemployment of the lot.— He even contends 
that this election is more truly democratical than sortition ; since the latter 
process might admit men attached to oligarchy, which would not happen 
under the former, -- ἔπειτα καὶ δημοτεκωτέραν ἐνόμιζον ταύτην τὴν κατώσ- 
τασιν ἢ τὴν διὰ τοῦ λαγχάνειν γιγνομένην" ἐν μὲν γὰρ τῇ κληρώσει τὴν τύχην 
ϑραβεύσειν, καὶ πολλάκις λήψεσϑαι τὰς ἀρχὰς τοὺς τῆς ὀλιγαρχίας ἐπιϑυ- 
wodvrac, etc. This would be a good argument if there were no pecuniary 
qualification for eligibility, — such pecuniary qualification is a provisions 


Vol. 4 E 


KLEISTHENES AND PERIKLES. 149 


the fourth class of the Solonian census from all individual office, 
the archonship among the rest. The Solonian law of exclusion, 
however, though retained in principle, was mitigated in practice 
thus far, — that whereas Solon had rendered none but members 
of the highest class on the census (the Pentakosiomedimni) 
eligible to the archonship, Kleisthenés opened that dignity te 
all the first three classes, shutting out only the fourth. That he 
did this may be inferred from the fact that Aristeidés, assuredly 
not a rich man, became archon. 

I am also inclined to believe that the Senate of Five Hundred, 
as constituted by Kleisthenés, was taken, not by election, but by 
lot, from the ten tribes, — and that every citizen became eligible 
to it. Election for this purpose —that is, the privilege of 
annually electing a batch of fifty senators, all at once, by each 
tribe — would probably be thought more troublesome than 
valuable ; nor do we hear of separate meetings of each tribe for 
purposes of election. Moreover, the office of senator was a 
collective, not an individual office; the shock, therefore, to the 
feelings of semi-democratized Athens, from the unpleasant idea 
of a poor man sitting among the fifty prytanes, would be less 
than if they conceived him as polemarch at the head of the 
right wing of the army, or as an archon administering justice. 

A farther difference between the constitution of Solon and that 
of Kleisthenés is to be found in the position of the Senate of 
Areopagus. Under the former, that senate had been the princi- 
pal body in the state, and he had even enlarged its powers; 
under the latter, it must have been treated at first as an enemy, 
and kept down. For as it was composed only of all the past 
archons, and as, during the preceding thirty years, every archon 
had been a creature of the Peisistratids, the Areopagites collec- 
tively must have been both hostile and odious to Kleisthenés and 
his partisans, — perhaps a fraction of its members might even 
retire into exile with Hippias. Its influence must have been 


which he lays down, but which he does not find it convenient to insist apen 
emphatically. 

I do not here advert to the γραφὴ παρανόμων, the νομοφύλακες, and the 
sworn νομόϑεται, ---- ἈΠ of them institutions belonging to the time of Per 
klés at the earliest ; not to that of Kleisthenés. 


150 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


sensibly lessened by the change of party, until it came to be 
gradually filled by fresh archons springing from the bosom of the 
Kleisthenean constitution. But during this important interval. 
the new-modelled Senate of Five Hundred, azu the popular 
assembly, stepped into that ascendency which they never after- 
wards lost. From the time of Kleisthenés forward, the Areopa- 
gites cease to be the chief and prominent power in the state: 
yet they are still considerable; and when the second fill of the 
democratical tide took place, after the battle of Platewa, they 
became the focus of that which was then considered as the party 
οἱ oligarchical resistance. I have already remarked that the 
archons, during the intermediate time (about 509-477 3.C.), Were 
all elected by the ekklesia, not chosen by lot,—and that the 
fourth (or poorest and most numerous) class on the census were 
by law then ineligible; while election at Athens, even when 
every citizen without exception was an elector and eligible, had 
a natural tendency te fall upon men of wealth and station. We 
thus see how it happened that the past archons, when united in 
the Senate of Areopagus, infused into that body the sympathies, 
prejudices, and interests of the richer classes. Tt was this which 
brought them into conflict with the more democratical party 
headed by Periklés and Ephialtés, in times when portions of the 
Kleisthenean constitution had come to be discredited as too much 
imbued with oligarchy. 

One other remarkable institution, distinctly ascribed to Kleis- 
thenés, yet remains to be noticed, — the Ostracism ; upon which 
I have already made some remarks,! in touching upon the mem- 
orable Solonian proclamation against neutrality in a sedition. It 
is hardly too much to say that, without this protective process 
none of the other institutions would have reached maturity. 

By the ostracism, a citizen was banished without special accu- 
sation, trial, or defence, for a term of ten years, — subsequently 
diminished to five. His property was not taken away, nor his 
reputation tainted ; so that the penalty consisted solely in the 
banishment from his native city to some other Greek city. Aa 
to reputation, the ostracism was a compliment rather than other 
wise ;° and so it was vividly felt to be, when, about ninety yeary 


- "ΩΝ ΔΑΝ ΔΝ 


' See above, chap. xi, vol. iii, p. 145. 
@ ΄ . "» - " " ** 
Aristcidés Rhetor. Orat. xlvi, vol. ii, Ὁ. 317, ed. Dindorf 


THE OSTRACISM. lol 


after Kleisthenés, the conspiracy between Nikias and Alkibiades 
fixed it upon Hyperbolus. The two former had both recom- 
mended the taking of an ostracizing vote, each hoping to cause 
the banishment of the other; but before the day arrived, they 
accommodated the difference. To fire off the safety-gun of the 
republic against a person so little dangerous as Hyperbolus, was 
denounced as the prostitution of a great political ceremony : “it 
was not against such men as him (said the comic writer, Plato),' 


Plutarch (Nikias, c. 11; Alkibiad. c. 13; Aristeid. c. 7): Thucyd. viii, 
73. Plato Comicus said, respecting Hyperbolus — 
Οὐ γὰρ τοιούτων οὕνεκ᾽ ὄστραχ᾽ ηὐρέϑη. 

Theophrastus had stated that Pheax, and not Nikias, was the rival of 
Alkibiadés on this occasion, when Hyperbolus was ostracized; but most 
authors, says Plutarch, represent Nikias as the person. It is curious that 
there should be any difference of statement about a fact so notorious, and 


m the best-known time of Athenian history. 
Taylor thinks that the oration which now passes as that of Andokidés 


ywainst Alkibiadés, is really by Phaax, and was read by Plutarch as the 
pration of Phwax in an actual contest of ostracism between Phaax, Nikias, 
and Alkibiadés. He is opposed by Ruhnken and Valckenaer (see Sluiter’s 
preface to that oration, c. 1, and Ruhnken, Hist. Critic. Oratt. Greecor. p. 
135). I cannot agree with either: I cannot think with him, that it isa 
real oration of Phzax; nor with them, that it is a real oration in any gen- 
nine cause of ostracism whatever. It appears to me to have been composed 
efter the ostracism had fallen into desuetude, and when the Athenians had 
not only become somewhat ashamed of it, but had lost the familiar con- 
ception of what it really was. For how otherwise can we explain the fact, 
that the author of that oration complains that he is about to be ostracized 
without any secret voting, in which the very essence of the ostracism con- 
sisted, and from which its name was borrowed (οὔτε διαψηφισαμένων κρυβδὴν, 
2)? His oration is framed as if the audience whom he was addressing 
were about to ostracize one out of the three, by show of hands. But the 
process of ostracizing included no meeting and haranguing, — nothing but 
simple deposit of the shells im a cask; as may be seen by the description of 
the special railing-in of the agora, and by the story (true or false) of the 
unlettered country-citizen coming into the city to give his vote, and asking 
Aristeidés, without even knowing his person, to write the name for him on 
the shell (1'lutarch, Aristeid. c. 7). There was, indeed, previous discussion 
in the senate as well as in the ekklesia, whether a vote of ostracism shovld 
be entered upon at all; but the author of the oration to which I allude 
does not address himself to that question; he assumes that the vote ia 
acteally about to be taken, and that one of the three — himself, Nikias, or 
Alkibiadés — must be ostracized (c.1). Now, doubtless, in practice, the de 


152 HISTORY OF GuZECE. 


that the oyster-shell (or potsherd) was intended to be used 
The process of ostracism was carried into effect by writing upon 


a shell, or potsherd, the name of the person whom a citizen thought 
it prudent for a time to banish; which shell when deposited in 
the proper vessel, counted for a vote towards the sentence. 

I have already observed that all the governments of the 
Grecian cities, when we compare them with that idea which a 
modern reader is apt to conceive of the measure of force belong: 
ing to a government, were essentially weak, the good as well 
as the bad, — the democratical, the oligarchical, and the despotic 
The force in the hands of any government, to cope with conspira- 
tors or mutineers, was extremely small, with the single exception 
of a despot surrounded by his mercenary troop ; so that no tolera- 
bly sustained conspiracy or usurper could be put down except by 
the direct aid of the people in support of the government; which 
amounted to a dissolution, for the time, of constitutional authority, 
and was pregnant with reactionary consequences such as no man 
could foresee. To prevent powerful men from attempting usur- 
pation was, therefore, of the greatest possible moment; and a 
despot or an oligarchy might exercise preventive means at pleas- 
ure,! much sharper than the ostracism, such as the assassination 
of Kimon, mentioned in my last chapter, as directed by the Pei- 
sistratids. At the very least, they might send away any one, 
from whom they apprehended attack or danger, without incurring 

even so much as the imputation of severity. But in a democ- 
racy, Where arbitrary action of the magistrate was the thing of 


cision commonly lay between two formidable rivals ; but it was not publicl 
or formally put so before the people: every citizen might write upon re 
shell such name as he chose. Farther, the open denunciation of the injus- 
tice of ostracism as a system (c. 2), proves an age later than the banishment 
of Hyperbolus. Moreover, the author having begun by remarking that he 
stands in contest with Nikias as well as with Alkibiadés, says nothing more 
about Nikias to the end of the speech. 7 

' See the discussion of the ostracism in Aristot. Politic. iii, 8, where he 
recognizes the problem as one common to all governments. if 

Compare, also, a good Dissertation —J. A. Paradys. De Ostracisma 
Atheniensium, Lugduni Batavor. 1793; K. F. Hermann. Lehrbuch ‘der 
Griechischen Staatsalterthimer, ch. 130; and Schémann. Antiq. Jur. Pub 
Greec ch. xxxv, p. 233 | 


THE OSTRACISM. 154 


all others most dreaded, and where fixed laws, with trial and 
defwunce as preliminaries to punishment, were conceived by the 
ordinary citizen as the guarantees of his personal security and 
as the pride of his social condition, — the creation of such an 
exceptional power presented serious difficulty. If we trausport 
vurselves to the times of Kleisthenés, immediately after the 
expulsion of the Peisistratids, when the working of the demo- 
cratical machinery was as yet untried, we shall find this difficulty 
at its maximum; but we shall also find the necessity of vesting 
such a power somewhere absolutely imperative. For the great 
Athenian nobles had yet to learn the lesson of respect for any 
constitution ; their past history had exhibited continual struggles 
between the armed factions of Megaklés, Lykurgus, and Peisis- 
tratus, put down after a time by the superior force and alliances 
of the latter. And though Kleisthenés, the son of Megaklés, 
might be firmly disposed to renounce the example of his father, 
and to act as the faithful citizen of a fixed constitution, — he 
would know but too well that the sons of his father’s companions 
and rivals would follow out ambitious purposes without any 
regard to the limits imposed by law, if ever they acquired suffi- 
cient partisans to present a fair prospect of success. Moreover, 
when any two candidates for power, with such reckless disposi- 
tions, came into a bitter personal rivalry, the motives to each of 
them, arising as well out of fear as out of ambition, to put down 
his opponent at any cost to the constitution, might well become 
irresistible, unless some impartial and discerning interference 
could arrest the strife in time. “If the Athenians were wise 
(Aristeidés is reported to have said,' in the height and peril of 
his parliamentary struggle with Themistoklés), they would cast 
both Themistoklés and me into the barathrum.”2 And whoever 


1 Plutarch, Aristeid. c. 3. 
2 The barathrum was a deep pit, said to have had iron spikes at the bot- 


tom, into which criminals condemned to death were sometimes cast. 
Though probably an ancient Athenian punishment, it seems to have become 
at the very least extremely rare, if not entirely disused, during the times 
of Athens historically known to us; but the phrase continued in speeoh 
after the practice had become obsolete. The iron spikes depend on the 
evidence of the Schol. Aristophan. Plutus, 431,—a very doubtful authas 
ity, when we read the legend which he blends with his statement. . 


7* 


154 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


reads the sad narrative of the Korkyrzan sedition, in the third 
book of Thucydides, tegether with the reflections of the historian 
upon it,' will trace the gradual exasperation of these party feuds, 
beginning even under democratical forms, until at length they 
break down the barriers of public as well as of private morality. 

Against this chance of internal assailants Kleisthenés had to 
protect the democratical constitution, — first, by throwing impedi- 
ments in their way and rendering it difficult for them to procure 
the requisite support ; next, by eliminating them before any vio- 
lent projects were ripe for execution. To do either the one or 
the other, it was necessary to provide such a constitution as would 
not only conciliate the good-will, but kindle the passionate attach- 
ment, of the mass of citizens, insomuch that not even any consid- 
erable minority should be deliberately inclined to alter it by force. 
It Was necessary to create in the multitude, and through them to 
force upon the leading ambitious men, that rare and difficult sen- 
timent which we may term a constitutional morality ; a para- 
mount reverence for the forms of the constitution, enforcing 
obedience to the authorities acting under and within those forma, 
yet combined with the habit of open speech, of action subject 
only to definite legal control, and unrestrained censure of those 
very authorities as to all their public acts, — eombined too with 
a perfect confidence in the bosom of every citizen, amidst the 
bitterness of party contest, that the forms of the constitution will 
be not less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own. 
This coexistence of freedom and self-imposed restraint, —of obedi- 
ence to authority with unmeasured censure of the persons exer. 
cising it, — may be found in the aristocracy of England (since 
about 1688) as well as in the democracy of the American United 
States: and because we are familiar with it, we are apt to sup 
pose it a natural sentiment : though there seem to be few senti. 
ments more difficult to establish and diffuse among a community 
judging by the experience of history. We may see how debian: 
fectly it exists at this day in the Swiss cantons ; and the many 
violences of the first French revolution illustrate. among various 
other lessons, the fatal effects arising from its absence, even 
emong a people high in the scale of intelligence. Yet the dif. 


---- 


 Thucyd. iii, 70, 81, 82. 


THE OSTRACISM 158 


fusion of such constitutional morality, not merely among the ma 
jority of any community, but throughout the whole, is the indise 
pensable condition of a government at once free and peaceable; 
since even any powerful and obstinate minority may render the 
working of free institutions impracticable, without being strong 
enough to conquer ascendency for themselves. Nothing less 
than unanimity, or so overwhelming a majority as to be tanta- 
mount to unanimity, on the cardinal point of respecting constitu- 
tional forms, even by those who do not wholly approve of them, 
ean render the excitement of political passion bloodless, and yet 
expose all the authorities in the state to the full license of pacific 
criticism. 

At the epoch of Kleisthenés, which by a remarkable coinci 
dence is the same as that of the regifuge at Rome, such constitu 
tional morality, if it existed anywhere else, had certainly no 
place at Athens; and the first creation of it in any particular 
society must be esteemed an interesting historical fact. By the 
spirit of his reforms, — equal, popular, and comprehensive, far 
beyond the previous experience of Athenians,— he secured the 
hearty attachment of the body of citizens; but from the first 
generation of leading men, under the nascent democracy, and 
with such precedents as they had to look back upon, no self-im 
posed limits to ambition could be expected: and the problem re- 
quired was to eliminate beforehand any one about to transgress 
these limits, so as to escape the necessity of putting him down 
afterwards, with all that bloodshed and reaction, in the midst of 
which the free working of the constitution would be suspended at 
least, if not irrevocably extinguished. To acquire such influ- 
ence as would render him dangerous under democratical forms, a 
man must stand in evidence before the public, so as to afford 
some reasonable means of judging of his character and purposes , 
and the security which Kleisthenés provided, was, to call in the 
positive judgment of the citizens respecting his future promise 
purely and simply, so that they might not remain too long neu- 
tral between two formidable political rivals, — pursuant in a cer- 
tain way to the Solonian proclamation against neutrality in a 
sedition, as | have already remarked in a former chapter. He 
incorporated in the constitution itself the principle of privilegium 
(to employ the Roman phrase, which signifies, not a peculiar 


156 RISTORY OF GREECE. 


fav r F 4 4 : ᾿ 

Γ ἃ anted to any one, buta peculiar inconvenience imposed), 
7 +. a adi 3 “ ᾿ " " nh 8) 
y diag y unde! circumstances solemn and well defined, with full 
notice and discussion beforehand, and by the 


» ' 7 Ositive secret vo 
of a large proportion of the citizens. . 


“ No law sl 

' I aw shall be mad 
ri. mao ade 
against any single citizen, without the same bein: 


all Athenian c1tiz n ᾽ $$] ὃ e « | 
, “ζἵ, 7 » un oe it shall SO 5 [ein - 0d to Six tl ou 
€ i le he Pas δ᾿ ῳ Sé€ OKC νὼ i - 


sand citizens voting secretly.” ! 


᾿ Such was that sener: as 
2 lla ay Somstiateem, under which the vate ona ana 
ular case. Before the vote of ostracism could be ὐνω ; 
was to be made out in the senate and the public ἀίδιον, ; ἔρον 
tify it. In the sixth prytany of the year, these ‘ti | yt 
bated and determined whether the state of “. ἘΠΕῚ cir or 
ee enough to call for such an exceptional bt or aa 
decided in the affirmative, a day was named, the aca was Rs 
- separace casks or vessels for depositing the ae ἴδιο 
consisted of a shell, or a potsherd, with the seins he ag τ τ ᾿ 
written on it whom each citizen designed to banish At aa 
of the day, the number of votes wan πὲ se "ὦ Ἢ : = 
thousand votes were found to have been given “gale 


round, with ten entrances left for the citizens of 


against any one 
2eTs ‘ are reg . ; + it : 
I aes dia person was ostracized; if not, the ceremony ended 
in nothing’ ‘Ten days wer 1 7 a Sa. 

g- ays were allowed or settli is af 
, i y to him for settling his af 


' Andokidé ie τ᾿ 
ndokidés, De Mysteriis ‘ an 
ἀν τ " ᾽ De M) sterus, p.12,¢c.13. Μηδὲ νόμον ἐπ᾽ ἀνδρὶ ἐξεῖν 
ἕέναι, ἐὼν μὴ τὸν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ πᾶσιν ᾿Αϑηναίοις " gar ogg 


᾿ ae ἐὰν μὴ ἑξακισγχιλί Fy 
κρυβδὴν Ψηφιζομένοις. According to the usual Postel in i on ig ἡ 
name of Solon, this has been called ἃ law of Solon ieee P ti ] e er ρα 
188), though it certainly cannot be older than Kleisthenés ΤΠ" 
᾿ Privilegia ne irroganto,” said the law of the Tw 8] 6 T 
(Cicero, Legg. iii, 4-19). vii 
ἐ eae “ὦ. , 
Phi totle and Philochorus, ap. Photium, App. p. 672 and 675, ed. 


“ables at Rome 


I Β ar by 
ων Mi rather appear by that passage that the ostracism was never for 
" = Bi φορῆ and that even in the later times, to which the descriptior 
Se e refers, the form was still preserved of putting the question 
ether the public safety called for an ostracizing vote. long afte 
ee both out of use and out of mind. ΄ ὙΠ 
Philochorus, ut 
s, ut supra; Plutarch, Aristei 7 
: ; +h, steid.c.7; Schol. ac is an 
Kquit. 851; Pollux, viii, 19. Festina 
There is a di opini 
PRs rn oe of opinion among the authorities, as well as among 
μηδ i igi whether the minimum of six thousand applies to the votes 
all, or to the vetes given against any one name. Iembrace the 


r it had 


PROCESS OF OSTRACISN 157 


fairs, after which he was required to depart trom Attica for teu 
years, but retained his property, and suffered no other penalty. 

It was not the maxim at Athens to escape the errors of the 
people, by calling in the different errors, and the sinister interest 
besides, of an extra-popular or privileged few; nor was any 
third course open, since the principles of representative govern- 
ment were not understood, nor indeed conveniently applicable to 
very small communities. Beyond the judgment of the people — 
so the Athenians felt — there was no app2al; and their grand 
study was to surround the delivery of that judgm@ with the 
best securities for rectitude and the best preservatives against 
haste, passion, or private corruption. Whatever measure of 
good government could not be obtained in that way, could not, 
in’ their opinion, be obtained at all. I shall illustrate the Athe- 
nian proceedings on this head more fully when I come to speak 
of the working of their mature democracy : meanwhile, in respect 
to this grand protection of the nascent democracy, — the vote of 
ostracism, — it will be found that the securities devised by Kleis- 
thenés, for making the sentence effectual against the really dan- 
gerous man, and against no one else, display not less foresight 
than patriotism. The main object was, to render the voting an 
f deliberate public feeling, as distinguished from 


expression 0 
arge minimum of votes required, 


mere factious antipathy: the 1 
one-fourth of the entire citizen population, went far to insure 
this effect, —the more so, since each vote, taken as it was ina 


_ - ΄ 


latter opinion, which is supported by Philochorus, Pollux, and the Schol. 


though Plutarch countenances the former. Boeckh, in 
his Public Economy of Athens, and Wachsmuth, (i, 1, p. 272) are in favor 
of Plutarch and the former opinion; Paradys (Dissertat. De Ostr. p. 25), 
Platner, and Hermann (see K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Gr. Staatsalt. ch. 
130, not. 6) support the other, which appears to me the right one. 

For the purpose, so unequivocally pronounced, of the general law deter- 
absolute minimum necessary for a privilegium, would by no 
mong six thousand 


on Aristophanés, 


mining the 
means be obtained, if the simple majority of votes, a 
voters in all, had been allowed to take effect. A person might then be 


ostracized with a very small number of yotes against him, and withez! 


able presumption that he was dangerous to the consti- 
of Kleisthenés, or the 
ἃ to bea 


creating any reason 
tution; which was by no means either the purpose 
well-unders:ood operation of the ostracism, so long as it continue 


reality. 


158 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Beeret mannei, counted unequivocally for the expression of a 
ΘΙ * Or) 1¥) 4 2 , ς Ϊ : τ 
genuine and independent sentiment, and could neither be co reed 
nor bor Thon ont lei Bs di Shi 
᾿ 0 ight. hen again, Kleisthenés did not permit the process 
ΟἹ Ostracizing to be opened against any one citi; Peel 
if opened at ἢ l] , νν" J = ΌΣΟΙ exclusively, 
. pe at all, every one without exception was exposed t 
the sentence; ὃς τί ἷ ia eee 
56 ; so that the friends of " i 
ee βτμ ἐρυωηβνμει ἢ s of Themistoklés could not 
} against 4 risteidés,' nor those of the latter against tl 
former, without exposing their own leader to tl a , f 
1 “ing er to the same chance of 
cxile. It was not likely to be invoked at all, tl : 
οἱ εν ἱ < € 4 
exasperation had proceeded so far 


ierefore, until 
ον to Mids Chinen ἃ ᾿ ἰο render both parties 
ARE EE MNS aa a et precise index of that growing 
aay postility, which the ostracism prevented from οἱ ica 
Ἢ ahead. Nor could it even then be ratified, unless a οἱ oe 
age to convince the more neutral portion of the ae ihe 
wang ekklesia : moreover, after all, the ekklesia did μ᾿ Shige 
ostracize, but a future day was named, and the whole F _ dy 
the citizens were solemnly invited to vote. chee 


It was in is 
sh va S in this way 
that security was taken not only for m Ἢ 


ual in proteeting the constitution nial Ser gers rete 
, = » 4 o hinder it from being 
employ ed ἴον any other purpose. And we must recollect μ᾿ 
exercised its tutelary influence, not merely on ete’ ie : 
when it was actually employed, but by the mere aoa 4 sg 
it might be employed, and by the restraining effect hich a 
knowledge produced oa the conduct of the reat aa yrs 


git | Again 
ostracism, though essentially of an ge 


' e€XCep é ΐ re f 
” an ἜΝ sanctified and limited by Μὴ, Dig hn 
so that the citizen, in giving his ostracizing vote did με aie ; 
ae depart from the constitution or lose his ravenn ; ie 
The issue placed before him — «Is there hepsi 
think vitally dangerous to the state ? if - 
vague, was yet raised directly and legally. 
ostracism, it might probably haye been raised both indir 
and illegally, on the occasion of some special im vated wit ΤΣ 
suspected political leader, when accused before ; amet : ; 
" f itty 


any man whom you 
0, Whom? ” — thouch 
Had there been no 


' he practical work : 
mm he = tical working of the ostracism nade Ge bs 
Ὁ contending leaders. are : ' ᾿ > 10 as 3 
ath ing leaders, accompanied with chance of banishme <a 
TIALS πρὸς τὸν Θουκυδίδην εἰς éveve περὶ . it to oth ars 


istruggle between 


Tow ὀστράκου καταστας, κα 


διακιυδυνεύσας, ἐκεῖνον μὲν ἐξέβαλε, κατέλυ ) yy ὦ 
» κατέλυσε Ve τὴν ἀντιτεταγμένην τα 


aeiav (Plutarch, Periklés. ¢ : 
ch, Periklés, c. 14; compare Plutorch, Nikias, ο. 11) 


SECURITIES AGAINST ABUSE OF OSTRACISM. 159 


—a perversion, involving all the mischief of the ostracism, 
without its protective benefits. 

Care was taken to divest the ostracism of all painful conse- 
quence except what was inseparable from exile; and this is not 
one of the least proofs of the wisdom with which it was devised. 
Most certainly, it never deprived the public of candidates fo 
political influence : and when we consider the small amount cf 


individual evil which it inflicted, — evil too diminished, in the 
a reactionary sentiment 


eases of Kimon and Aristeidés, by ὁ 
which augmented their subsequent popularity after return, — 
two remarks will be quite sufficient to offer in the way of justifi- 
cation. First, it completely produced its intended effect ; for 
the democracy grew up from infancy to manhood without a 
single attempt to overthrow it by force,'— ἃ result, upon which 
no reflecting contemporary of Kleisthenés could have ventured 


to ealeulate. Next, through such tranquil working of the 


democratical forms, a constitutional morality quite sufficiently 
complete was produced among the leading Athenians, to enable 
the people after a certain time to dispense with that exceptional 
the ostracism offered.2 To the nascent democ- 


security which 


1 It is not necessary in this »emark to take notice, either of the oligarchy 
of Four Hundred, or that of Thirty, called the Thirty Tyrants, established 
during the closing years of the Peloponnesian war, and after the ostracism 
had been discontinued. Neither of these changes were brought about by 
the excessive ascendency of any one or few men: both of them grew cut 
of the embarrassments and dangers of Athens in the latter period of her 
great foreign war. 

2 Aristotle (Polit. ili, 8, 6) seems to recognize the political necessity of 
the ostracism, as applied even to obvious superiority of wealth, connection, 
etc. (which he distinguishes pointedly from superiority of merit and char 
acter), and upon principles of symmetry only, even apart from dangerous 
designs on the part of the superior mind. No painter, he observes, will 

rmit a foot, in his picture of a man, to be of disproportionate size with 
the entire body, though separately taken it may be finely painted ; nor will 


the chorus-master allow any one voice, however beautiful, to predominate 


beyond a certain proportion over the rest. 

His final conclusion is, however, that the legislator ought, if possible, so 
to construct his constitution, as to have no need of such exceptional 
remedy ; but, if this cannot be done, then the second-best step is to apply 


the ostracism. Compare also v, 2, 5. 
The last century of the free Athenian democracy realized the first of 


these alternatives. 


100 HISTORY OF GREECcxr. 


racy, it was absolutely indispensable ; to the growing yet mili 
Ty atr ᾿ re + +« ' . ν" Ἢ ἡ 

tant democracy, it Was salutary ; but the full-crown democracy 

both could and did stand without it. The ostrac 

ὃ c 

Hyperbolus, about ninety years after Kle 

occasion of its employment. 


cism passed upon 
isthenés, was the last 
sidered as a serious instance _ sling ~~ wennetesletiniae 
bared a0 ἃ 8. insté : It was a trick concerted between 
two distinguished Athenians (Nikias and Alkibiadés), to turn to 
their own po'itical account a process already coming a be anti 
qaated. Nor would such a manceuvre have been possibile if t : 
contemporary Athenian citizens had been nenclirsted with iia 
same serious feeling of the value of ostracism as a safeguard ; 
democracy, as had been once entertained by their iiaivews fs? 
grandtathers. Between Kleisthenés and 2 EP μὰ τῇ 


sia 2 hear 
of about ten different persons as havi 


1g been banished by ostr 

| ‘ 5 anished Dy oOstra- 

cism. virs ‘ archus of t 

First of all, Hipparchus of the deme Cholargus 
= 


of Charmus, ; bbe 


ey ὶ relative of the recently-expelled Peisistratid 
despots ;' then Aristeidés, Themistok]és Kin 


ΡΟΝ | 10n, and Thucy- 
didés son of Melésias. all of tl "a 


1em renowned political le: 
a ) sel iy ᾿ J a eade ΓΒ: 
also Alkibiadés and Megaklés (the paternal and m 


fathers of the distinguished Alkibiadés) 
to another eminent family at Athens;2 lastly Damon, the pr 
ce itor 0 . > , Mal δια . "ὦ q me « , , C- 
ptor of Perikle in poeiry and music, and eminent for his 
acquisitions in philosophy. | 


aternal grand- 
Y . - 
, and Kallias, belonging 


In this last case comes out the 


vulgar side of humanity, aristocratical as well as democr 
for with both. , | 
philosophers are wont to be alike unpopular. 
himself is said 


the process of ilos , θα 

process of philosophy and the persons of 
7 Even Kleisthenés 
to nave been ostracized under his own law, and 
Xanthippus ; but beth upon authority too weak to trust.4 Mil 
tiadés was not ostracized at all. but tried en Daas 


and punished for mis 
i ΜΝ . Γ ἣ i all 
conduct in his command. i 


] Ἂν heads 


1 T* . ΠῚ 
: Plutarch, Nikias, ¢. 11: Harpokration, Υ 
Lysias cont. Alkibiad. A 3; 
8 ᾿ - 44. C. 11, p. 143; Harpokrati ae 
pi a arpokration, v. ᾿Αλκιβιάδης : 
— cont. Alkibiad. ¢. 11-12, pp. 129, 130: this last oration i 
ord evidence as to the facts mentioned in it, thouch I c 4 
to be either genuine or belonging to the time to whic 
7 been observed in a previous note. 
; gg Periklés, c. 4; Plutarch. Aristeid. οὶ i. 
an, V. H. xiii, 24; Herakleidés. περὶ Πολιτειῶν, c. 1, ed. Kokler 


Ἵππαρχος. 


annot imagine it 
h it professes to refer 


MISREPRESENTATIONS OF OSTRACISM. 161 


peculiar institution of Kleisthenés, if the erroneous accusations 
against the Athenian democracy, — of envy, injustice, and ill- 
treatment of their superior men, had not been greatly founded 
upon it, and if such criticisms had not passed from ancient times 
to modern with little examination. In monarchical governments, 
a pretender to the throne, numbering a certain amount of sup- 
porters, is, as a matter of course, excluded from the country. 
The duke of Bordeaux cannot now reside in France, — nor 
could Napoleon after 1815,— nor Charles Edward in England 
durirg the last century. No man treats this as any extravagant 
injustice, yet it is the parallel of the ostracism, — with a stronger 
ease in favor of the latter, inasmuch as the change from one 
regal dynasty to another does not of necessity overthrow all the 
collateral institutions and securities of the country. Plutarck 
has affirmed that the ostracism arose from the envy and jealousy 
inherent in a democracy,! and not from justifiable fears, — an 
observation often repeated, yet not the less demonstrably untrue. 
Not merely because ostracism so worked as often to increase the 
influence of that political leader whose rival it removed, — but 
still more, because, if the fact had been as Plutarch says, this 
institution would have continued as long as the democracy ; 
whereas it finished with the banishment of Hyperbolus, at a 
period when the government was more decisively democratical 
‘han it had been in the time of Kleisthenés. It was, in truth, a 
product altogether of fear and insecurity,? on the part both of 
the democracy and its best friends, — fear perfectly well- 
grounded, and only appearing needless because the precau- 
tions taken prevented attack. So soon as the diffusion of a 
constitutional morality had placed the mass of the citizens 
above all serious fear of an aggressive usurper the ostracism 
was discontinued. And doubtless the feeling, that it might 
safely be dispensed with, must have been strengthened by the 
long ascendency of Periklés,—by the spectacle of the great. 


! Platarch, Themistoklés, 22; Plutarch, Aristeidés, 7, παραμυϑία φϑόνου 
καὶ κουφισμός. See the same opinions repeated by Wachsmuth, Hellen- 
ische Alterthumskunde, ch. 48, vol. i, p. 272, and by Platner, Prozess und 
Klagen bey den Attikern, vol. i, p. 386. 

3 Thucyd. viii, 73, διὰ δυνάμεως καὶ ἀξιώματος φόβον. 

VOL. IV. lloc. 


162 HISTORY OF GREECE 


est statesman whom Athens ever produced, acting steadily within 
the limits of the constitution; as well as ἣν the ill-suecess 
of his two opponents, Kimon and Thueydidés, το sided he ae 
tuerous partisans and by the great comic writers, ata period wh “ 
comedy was a power in the state such as it has never heen 
before or since, — in their attempts to get him ostracized. They 
succeeded in fanning up the ordinary antipathy of the shies 
towards philosophers, so far as to procure the ostracism of his 
friend and teacher Damén: but Periklés himself, to παν tins 
complaint of his bitter enemy, the comic poet Mratiens:! “ ois 
out of the reach of the oyster-shell.” If Periklés was wt con- 
ceived to be dangerous to the constitution, none of his ci 
were at all likely to be so regarded. Damén and Brpcveeles 
were the two last persons ostracized: both of them were ine 
and the only cases, of an unequivocal abuse of the ination tion 
because, whatever the grounds of displeasure against them nom 
have been, it is impossible to conceive either of them as sins 
ing to the state, — whereas all the other known sufferers wer: 
men of such position and power, that the six or eight ancien 
citizens who inscribed each name on the shell, or at ‘least a ἴων 
proportion of them, may well have done so under the most me 
scientious belief that they were guarding the constitution apse t 
real danger. Such a change, in the character of the saan 
ostracized, plainly evinces that the ostracism had ἰόν ὅν. 
ered from that genuine patriotic prudence which originally ne 
dered it both legitimate and popular. It had sarved for tec 
generations an inestimable tutelary purpose, — it lived to be 
twice dishonored, — and then passed, by universal acquiescence. 
into matter of history. i | 
A process analogous to the ostracism subsisted at Argos,?2 at 
Syracuse, and in some other Grecian democracies. Mrlatotin 
states that it was abused for factious purposes: and at Syracuse, 


‘ Kratinus ap. Plutarch, Periklés, 13. 
Ὁ σχινοκέψφαλος Ζεὺς ὁδὶ προσέρχεται 
Περικλέης, τῷδεϊον ἐπὶ τοῦ κρανίου 
ἽΝ Ἔχων, ἐπειδὴ τοὔστρακον παροίχεται, 
or the attacks of the cemic writers 5 tarc 
I ᾿ ters upon Da Peri 
wae I mon, see Plutarch, 


* Aristct Polit. iii 84 vy 2.5 


ERFECT OF THE KLEISTHENEAN REVOLUTION. 163 


where it was introduced after the expulsion of the Gelonian 
dynasty, Diodorus affirms that it was so unjustly and profusely ap- 
plied, as to deter persons of wealth and station from taking any part 
in public affairs ; for which reason it was speedily discontinued. 
We have no particulars to enable us to appreciate this general 
statement. But we cannot safely infer that because the ostracism 
worked on the whole well at Athens, it must necessarily have 
worked well in other states, —the more so, as we do not know 
whether it was surrounded with the same precautionary formalities, 
nor whether it even required the same large minimum of votes to 
make it effective. This latter guarantee, so valuable in regard to 
an institution essentially easy to abuse, is not noticed by Diodo- 
rus in his brief account of the Petalism,—so the process was 
denominated at Syracuse.! 

Such was the first Athenian democracy, engendered as well 
by the reaction against Hippias and his dynasty as by the mem- 
orable partnership, whether spontaneous or compulsory, between 
Kleisthenés and the unfranchised multitude. It is to be distin- 
guished, both from the mitigated oligarchy established by Solon 
before, and from the full-grown and symmetrical democracy which 
prevailed afterwards from the beginning of the Peloponnesian 
war towards the close of the career of Periklés. It was, indeed, a 
striking revolution, impressed upon the citizen not less by the 
sentiments to which it appealed than by the visible change which 
it made in political and social life. He saw himself marshalled 
in the ranks of hoplites, alongside of new companions in arms,— 
he was enrolled in a new register, and his property in a new 
schedule, in his deme and by his demarch, an officer before 
unknown, —he found the year distributed afresh, for all legal 


purposes, into ten parts bearing the name of prytanies, each 
marked by a solemn and free-spoken ekklesia, at which he had a 
right to be present, — that ekklesia was convoked and presided 
by senators called prytanes, members of a senate novel both as 
to number and distribution, — his political duties were now per- 
formed as member of a tribe, designated by a name not before 


' Diodor. xi, 55-87. This author describes very imperfectly the Athenian 
ostracism, transferring to it apparently the circumstances of the Syracuzap 


Pctalisu. 


164 HISTORY OF GREEC2. 


pronounced in common Attic life, connected with one of ten 
heroes whose statues he now for the first time saw in the agora, 
and associating him with fellow-tribemen from all parts of Attica. 
All these and many others were sensible novelties, felt in the 
daily proceedings of the citizen. But the great novelty of ali 
was, the authentic recognition of the ten new tribes as a sover- 
eign démos, or people, apart from all specialties of phratric or 
gentile origin, with free speech and equal law ; retaining no dis- 
tinction except the four classes of the Solonian property-schedule 
with their gradations of elegibility. To a considerable proportion 
of citizens this great novelty was still farther endeared by the 
fact that it had raised them out of the degraded position of met- 
ics and slaves; and to the large majority of all the citizens, it 
furnished a splendid political idea, profoundly impressive to the 
Greek mind, — capable of calling forth the most ardent attach- 
ment as well as the most devoted sense of active obligation and 
obedience. We have now to see how their newly-created patriot 

ism manifested itself. 

Kleisthenés and his new constitution carried with them so 
completely the popular favor, that Isagoras had no other way of 
opposing it except by calling in the interference of Kleomenés and 
the Lacedemonians. Kleomenés listened the more readily to 
this call, as he was reported to have been on an intimate footing 
with the wife of Isagoras. He prepared to come to Athens; but 
his first aim was to deprive the democracy of its great leader 
Kleisthenés, who, as belonging to the Alkmzénid family, was 
supposed to be tainted with the inherited sin of his great-grand- 
father Megaklés, the destroyer of the usurper Kylén. Kleom- 
enés sent a herald to Athens, demanding the expulsion “of the 
accursed,” — so this family were called by their enemies, and so 
they continued to be called eighty years afterwards, when the 
same manceuvre was practised by the Lacedemonians of that 
day against Periklés. This requisition had been recommended 
by Isagoras, and was so well-timed that Kleisthenés, not ventur- 
ing to disobey it, retired voluntarily, so that Kleomenés, though 
arriving at Athens only with a small force, found himself master 
ot the city. At the instigation of Isagoras, he sent into exile 
seven hundred families, selected from the chief partisans of 
Kleisthenés: his next attempt was to dissolve the-new Senate of 


ATTEMPT TG PUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT. 165 


Five Hundred and place the whole government in the hanes “ 
three hundred adherents of the chief whose cause he espous 

But now was seen the spirit infused into the people by ae new 
constitution. At the time of the first usurpation of Peisistratus, 
the Senate of that day had not only not resisted, but even ἘΝ wd 
selves to the scheme. But the new Senate of Kleisthenés resolutely 
sed to submit to dissolution, and the citizens manifested them- 
selves in a way at once so hostile and so determined, vega peo 
enés and Isagoras were altogether batiled. ‘They were Wied εν 
to retire into the acropolis and stand upon the ae 
this symptom of weakness was the signal for a Joie ee μὴ 
the Athenians, who besieged the Spartan king on the oly rock. 
ntly come without any expectation of finding, or 


retu 


He had evide 

2 5 Ὁ 
any means of overpowering, resistance ; for at the end of tw 
© 


days his | [4] PAO O ~ ere e) - , t cap υ 


᾿ =] Ὁ Υ ra] Ὁ "AQ Ww re 
late. He and his Lacedemonians, as well as Isagoras, we 


allowed to retire to Sparta; but the Athenians of τῇ party 
alone with him were imprisoned, condemned,! and execute 
. Ὁ 


tured 
by the people. 


Kleisthenés, with the seven hundred exiled families, was 1Π|- 


mediately recalled, and his new constitution materially strength- 
ened by ‘this first success. Yet the prospect of renewed punted 
attack was sufficiently serious to induce him to ee oe 
Artaphernés, the Persian satrap at Sardis, prog pas 
sion of Athens into the Persian alliance : he probably mE 
the intrigues of the expelled Hippias in the goo teen cae 
phernés, having first informed himself who the τὰ enl anc 
and where they dwelt, — replied that, if they chose bag a pea 
and water to the king of Persia, they might τὸς seas = ee 
but upon no other condition. Such were the feelings ᾿ a ane 
which the envoys had quitted Athens, that wait wen cage 
of promising this unqualified token of pre soagand peal 
countrymen, on their return, disavowed them 

ες τον 

“" pee a this time that the first connection pen με βημμϑήρο 
Athens and the little Boeotian town of Plata, situa 


compare Schol. ad Aristophan. Lysistr. 274. 


1 Herodot. v, 70-72: 
5 Herodot. v, 73. 


166 HISTORY OF GREECE 


northern slope of the range of Kithwron, between that mountain 
and the river Asépus,—on the road from Athens to Thebes; 
and it is upon this first occasion that we become acquainted ith 
the Beotians and their polities. In one of my preceding vol- 
umes,! the Boeotian federation has alre: Ἁγ been briefly describ ed, 
as composed of some twelve or thirteen autonomous ‘towns under 
the headship of Thebes, which was, or sient to have been 
their mother-city. Plata had been, so the Thebans a ἢ 
their latest foundation ;? it was ill-used by them, and discontente J 
with the alliance. Ac ‘ordingly, as Kleomenés was on his way 
back from Athens, the Platzans took the op portunity of address- 
ing themselves to him, craved the protection of Sparta against 
The bes, and surrendered their town and territor y without reserve. 
The Spartan king, having no motive to undertake a trust which 
promised nothing but trouble, advised them to solicit the protec- 
tion of Athens, as nearer and more accessible for the ἢ in ease of 
need. He foresaw that this would embroil the Athenians with 
Beeotia; and such anticipation was in fact his chief motive for 
giving the advice, which the Platzans followed. Selecting an 
occasion of public sacrifice at Athe ‘ns, they dispatched thither 
envoys, who sat down as suppliants at the altar, surrendered their 
town to Athens, and implored protection against Thebes. Su ᾿ 
an appeal was not to be resisted, and protection was promised ; 
was soon needed, for the Thebans invaded the Platwan te rritory 
and an Athenian foree marched to defend it. Battle was about ω 
be joined, when the Corinthians interposed with their medi: ation, 
which was accepte < by both partie rv They decided alt together 
in favor of Platwa, pronouncing that the Thebans had no right to 
employ force against any seceding member of the Beotian feder- 
ation.’ But the Thebans, finding the decision against them, 
refused to abide by it, and, attacking the Athenians on their re- 
turn, sustained a complete defeat: the latter avenged this breach 
of faith by joining to Platea the portion of Theban te rritcry 
south of the Asdépus, and making that river the limit between 


’ See vol. ii, p. 295, part ii, ch. 3. * Thucyd. ἢ, 61. 

: Herodot. vi, 108. ἐᾶν Θηβαίους Βοιωτῶν τοὺς μὴ βουλομένους ἐ ἐς Βοιρτοῦι 
τελέειν. ae is an imp*rtant circumstance iv regard « Grecian political 
feeling: I shall advert to it hexeafter. 


ATHENS AND PLATA. 167 


the two. By such success, however, the Athenians gained 
nothing, except the enmity of Boeotia, — as Kleomenés hud fore- 
seen. Their alliance with Platewa, long continued, and present- 
ing in the course of this history several incidents touching te 
our sympathies, will be found, if we except one splendid occasien,! 


' Herodot. vi, 108. Thucydidés (iii, 58), when recounting the capture 
of Platza by the Lacedwmonians in the third year of the Peloponnesian 
war, states that the alliance between Platea and Athens was then in its 
93d year of date; according to which reckoning it would begin in the year 
519 μος where Mr. Clinton and other chronologers place it. 

I venture to think that the immediate circumstances, as recounted in the 
text from Herodotus (whether Thucydidés conceived them in the same 
way, cannot be determined), which brought about the junction of Platwa 
with Athens, cannot have taken place in 519 B.c., but must have happened 
after the expulsion of Hippias from Athens in 510 B.c.,— for the following 
reasons :-— 

1. No mention is made of Hippias, who yet, if the event had happened 
in 519 b.c., must have been the person to determine whether the Athenians 
should assist Platwa or not. The Platwzan envoys present themselves at 
a public sacrifice in the attitude of suppliants, so as to touch the feelings 
of the Athenian citizens generally: had Hippias been then despot, he 
would have been the person to be propitiated and to determine for or 
against assistance. 

2. We know no cause whici. should have brought Kleomenés with a 
Lacedzmonian force near to Platza in the year 519 B.c.: we know from 
the statement of Herodotus (v, 76) that no Lacedzmonian expedition 
against Attica took place at that time. But in the year to which I have 
referred the event, Kleomenés is on his march near the spot upon a known 
and assignable object. From the very tenor of the narrative, it is plain 
that Kleomenés and his army were not designedly in Bootia, nor meddling 
with Beotian affairs, at the time when the Platzans solicited his aid; he 
declines to interpose in the matter, pleading the great distance between 
Sparta and Platza as a reason. 

3. Again, Kleomenés, in advising the Platzxans to solicit Athens, does 
not give the advice through good-will towarcs them, but through a desire to 
harass and perplex the Athenians, by entangling them in a quarrel with the 
Beeotians. At the point of time to which I have referred the incident, this 
was a very natural desire: he was angry, and perhaps alarmed, at the 
recent events which had brought about his expulsion from Athens. But 
what was there to make him conceive such a feeling against Athens during 
the reign of Hippias? That despot was on terms of the closest intimacy 
with Sparta: the Peisistratids were {ξεήνους --- ξεινίους ταμάλιστα --- Hered 
v, 63, 90, 91) “the particular guests” of the Spartans, who were onlj 
induced to take part against Hippias from a reluctant obedience to the 


168 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


productive only of vurden to the one party, yet insufficient as a 
protection to the other. 

Meanwhile Kleomenés had returned to Sparta full of resent- 
ment against the Athenians, and resolved on punishing them, as 
well as on establishing his friend Isagoras as despot over them. 
Having been taught, however, by humiliating experience, that 
this was no easy achievement, he would not make the attempt, 
without having assembled a considerable force; he summoned 
allies from all the various states of Peloponnesus, yet without 
venturing to inform them what he was about to undertake. He 
at the same time concerted measures with the Beotians, and 
with the Chalkidians of Eubcea, for a simultaneous invasion of 
Attica on all sides. It appears that he had greater confidence 
in their hostile dispositions towards Athens than in those of the 
Peloponnesians, for he was not afraid to acquaint them with his 


oracles procured, one after another, by Kleisthenés. The motive. therefore 
assigned by Herodotus, for the advice given by Kleomenés to the Platxans 
can have no application to the time when Hippias was still despot. 

4. That Herodotus did not conceive the victory gained by the Athenians 


over Thebes as having taken place before the expulsion of Hippias, is evi 
dent from his emphatic contrast between their warlike spirit and success 
when liberated from the despots, and their timidity or backwardness while 
under Hippias (᾿Αϑηναῖοι τυραννευόμενοι μὲν, οὐδαμῶν τῶν σφέας περιοι- 
κεόντων ἔσαν τὰ πολέμια ἀμείνους, ἀπαλλαχϑέντες δὶ τυράννων, μακρῳ 
τρῶτοι ἐγένοντο" δηλοὶ ὧν ταῦτα, ὅτι κατεχύμενοι μὲν, ἐϑελοκάώκεον, ete. Υ, 
78). The man who wrote thus cannot have believed that, in the year 519 
B.c., while Hippias was in full sway, the Athenians gained an important 
victory over the Thebans, eut off a considerable portion of the Theban 
territory for the purpose of joining it to that of the Platwans, and showed 
from that time forward their constant superiority over Thebes by protecting 
her inferior neighbor aguinst her. 

These different reasons, taking them altogether, appear to me to show 
that the first alliance between Athens and Platza, as Herodotus conceives 
and describes it, cannot have taken place before the expulsion of Hippias, 
in 510 B.c.; and induce me to believe, either that Thucydidés was mistaken 
in the date of that event, or that Herodotus has not correctly described the 
facts. Not seeing any reason to suspect the description given by the latter, 
I have departed, though unwillingly, from the date of Thucydidés, 

The application of the Plateans to Kleomenés, and his advice grounded 
thereupon, may be connected more suitably with his first expedition te 
Athens, af‘er the expulsion of Hippias, than with his second. 


ATTACK UPON ATTICA. 180 


gesign, - - apd probably the Beeotians were incensed with the re- 
cent interference of Athens in the affair of Platea. As soon as 
these preparations were completed, the two kings of Sparta, 
Kleomenés and Demaratus, put themselves at the head of the 
united Peloponnesian force, marched into Attica, and advanced 
as far as Eleusis on the way to Athens. But when the allies 
came to know the purpose for which they were to be employed, 
a spirit of dissatisfaction manifested itself among them. They 
had no unfriendly sentiment towards Athens; and the Corinthi- 
ans especially, favorably disposed rather than otherwise towards 
that city, resolved to proceed no farther, withdrew their contin- 
gent from the camp, and returned home. At the same time, 
king Demaratus, either sharing in the general dissatisfaction, or 
moved by some grudge against his colleague which had not be- 
fore manifested itself, renounced the undertaking also. And 
these two examples, operating upon the preéxisting sentiment of 
the allies generally, caused the whole camp to break up and re- 
turn home without striking a blow.! 

We may here remark that this is the first instance known in 
which Sparta appears in act as recognized head of an obligatory 
Peloponnesian alliance,2 summoning contingents from the cities 
to be placed under the command of her king. Her headship, 
previously recognized in theory, passes now into act, but in an 
unsatisfactory manner, so as to prove the necessity of precaution 
and concert beforehand, — which will be found not long wanting. 

Pursuant to the scheme concerted, the Beeotians and Chalki- 
dians attacked Attica at the same time that Kleomenés entercd 
it. The former seized (ποῦ and Hysia, the frontier demes of 
Attica on the side towards Platza, while the latter assailed the 
northeastern frontier, which faces Eubawa. Invaded on three 
sides, the Athenians were in serious danger, and were compelled 
to concentrate ail their forces at Eleusis against Kleomenés, 
leaving the Beotians and Chalkidians unopposed. But the un- 
expected breaking up of the invading army from Peloponnesus 


' Herodot. v, 75. 

" Compare Kortum, Zur Geschichte Hellenischer Staats-Verfassunger, 
. 35 (Heidelberg, 1821). 

I doubt, however, his interpretation of the words in Herodotus (v. 63) — 
‘re ἰδίῳ στόλῳ, εἴτε δημοσίῳ χρησόμενοι. 

VOL. Iv. 


170 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


proved their rescue, and enabled them to turn the whole of ti er 


attention to the other frontier. They marched into Beotia to the 
strait called Euripus, which separates it from Eubea, intending 
to prevent the junction of the Beeotians and Chalkidians. and to 
attack the latter first apart. But the arrival of the Beotians 
caused an alteration in {Ποῖ} scheme; they attacked the Beeotians 
first, and gained a victory of the most complete character, -— kill- 
ing a large number, and capturing seven hundred prisoners. On 
the very same day they crossed over to Eubeea, attacked the 
“halkidians, and gained another victory so decisive that it at 
once terminated the war. Many Chalkidians were taken, as well 
as Beeotians, and conveyed in chains to Athens, where after a 
certain detention they were at last ransomed for two minz per 
man; and the tenth of the sum thus raised was employed in the 
fabrication of a chariot and four horses in bronze, which was 
placed in the acropolis to commemorate the victory. Herodotus 
saw this trophy when he was at Athens. He saw too, what was 
a still more speaking trophy, the actual chains in which the prison- 
ers had been fettered, exhibiting in their appearance the damage 
undergone when the acropolis was burnt by Xerxés: an in- 
scription of four lines described the offerings and recorded the 
victory out of which they had sprung.! 

Another consequence of some moment arose out of this victory. 
The Athenians planted a body of four thousand of their  citi- 
zens as kléruchs (lot-holders) or settlers upon the lands of the 
wealthy Chalkidian oligarchy called the Hippobotz, — proprie- 
tors probably in the fertile plain of Lélantum, between Chalkis 
and Eretria. This is a system which we shall “nd hereafter ex- 
tensively followed out by the Athenians in the days of their 
power ; partly with the view of providing for their poorer citi- 
zens, — partly to serve as garrison among a population either 
hostile or of doubtful fidelity. These Attic kléruchs (I can find 
no other name by which to speak of them) did not lose their 
birthright as Athenian citizens: they were not colonists in the 
Grecian sense, and they are known by a totally different name, 
~——but they corresponded very nearly to the colonies formally 
planted out on the conquered lands by Rome. The increase of 


Herodot. v, 77; lian, V. H. vi, 1; Pausan i, 28, 2. 


THEBES OBTAINS AID FROM GINA. 1%] 


she poorer population was always more or less painfully felt ia 
every Grecian city. For though the aggregate population never 
seems to have increased very fast, yet the multiplication of chil- 
dren in poor families caused the subdivision of the smaller lots 
of land, until at last they became insufficient for a maintenance; 
and the persons thus impoverished found it difficult to obtain 
subsistence in other ways, more especially as the labor for the 
richer classes was so much performed by imported slaves. Doubt- 
less some families possessed of landed property became extinct; 
but this did not at all benefit the smaller and poorer proprietors; 
for the lands thus rendered vacant passed, not to them, but by 
inheritance, or bequest, or intermarriage, to other proprietors, for 
the most part in easy circumstances, — since one opulent family 
usually intermarried with another. I shall enter more fully at a 
future opportunity into this question,—the great and serious 
problem of population, as it affected the Greek communities gen- 
erally, and as it was dealt with in theory by the powerful minds 
of Plato and Aristotle. At present it is sufficient to notice that 
the numerous kléruchies sent out by Athens, of which this to 
Eubcea was the first, arose in a great measure out of the multi- 
plication of the poorer population, which her extended power 
was employed in providing for. Her subsequent proceedings 
with a view to the same object will not be always found so justi- 
fiable as this now before us, which grew naturally, according to 
the ideas of the time, out of her success against the Chalkidians, 

The war between Athens, however, and Thebes with her 
Beeotian allies, still continued, to the great and repeated disad- 
vantage of the latter, until at length the Thebans in despair sent 
to ask advice of the Delphian oracle, and were directed to “so- 
licit aid from those nearest to them.”! “ How (they replied) are 
we to obey? Our nearest neighbors, of Tanagra, Koréneia, and 
Thespiz, are now, and have been from the beginning, lending us 
all the aid in their power.” An ingenious Theban, however, 
coming to the relief of his perplexed fellow-citizens, dived into 
the depths of legend and brought up a happy meaning. “ Those 
nearest to us (he said) are the inhabitants of “gina: for Thébé 
{the eponym of Thebes) and A2gina (the eponym of that islard) 


' [Ierodot. vy, 80. 


172 HISTORY OF GREFECYF. 


were both sisters, daughters of Asépus: let us send to erave 
assistance from the Aéginetans.” If his subtle interpretation 
(founded upon their descent from the sam: legendary progenitors) 
did not at once convince all who heard it, at least no one had any 
better to suggest ; and envoys were at once sent to the Avgine- 
tans, — who, in reply to a petition founded on legendary claims, 
sent to the help of the Thebans a reinforcement of legendary, but 
venerated, auxiliaries, —the A®akid heroes. We are left to sup- 
pose that their effigies are here meant. It was in vain, however, 


that the glory and the supposed presence of the AZakids Tela- 


m6n and Péleus were introduced into the Theban camp. Vice- 
tory still continued on the side of Athens; and the discouraged 
Thebans again sent to A®gina, restoring the heroes,! and praying 
for aid of a character more human and positive. Their request 
was granted, and the A{ginetans commenced war against Athens 


Ι 


without even the decent preliminary of a herald and declaration.2 

This remarkable embassy first brings us into acquaintance with 
the Dorians of AX gina, — oligarchical, wealthy, commercial, and 
powerful at sea, even in the earliest days; more analogous to 
Corinth than to any of the other cities called Dorian. The hos- 


' In the expression of Herodotus, the AZakid heroes are real/y sent from 
AEgina, and really sent back by the Thebans (v. 80-81) — Οἱ dé od: al> ovet 
ἱπικουρίην τοὺς Αἰακίδας συμπέμπειν ἔφασαν, αὗτις οἱ Θηβαῖοι πέμψαντες, 
τοὺς μὲν Αἰακίδας σφι ἀπεδίδοσαν, τῶν δὲ ἀνδρῶν ἐδέοντο 
Compare again v,75; viii,64; and Polyb. vii, 9,2. Seay τῶν συστρατευομένων. 

Justin gives a narrative of an analogous application from the Epizephyrian 
Lokrians to Sparta (xx, 3): “ Territi Locrenses ad Spartanos decurrunt: 
auxilium supplices deprecantur: illi longingud militid gravati, auxilium a 
Castore et Polluce petere eos jubent. Neque legati responsum socie urbis 
spreverunt ; profectique in proximum templum, facto sacrificio, auxilium 
deorum implorant. Litatis hostiis, obtentogue, ut rebantur, quod petebant — 
hand secus lati quam si deos ipsos secum avecturi essent — pulvinaria iis in navi 
componunt, faustisque profecti ominibus, solatia suis pro auriliis deportant.” 
In comparing the expressions of Herodotus with those of Justin, we see 
that the former believes the direct literal presence and action of the Zakid 
herces (“the Thebans sent back the heroes, and asked for men”), while the 
latter explains away the divine intervention into a mere fancy and feeling 
on the part of those to whom it is supposed to be accorded. This was the 
tone of those later authors whom Justin followed: compare aiso Pausan 
1%, 39, 2. 

* Herodot. v, 81-82 


CONGRESS OF PELOPONNESIAN ALLIES. 173 


tility which they now began without provocation against Athena, 
— repressed by Sparta at the critical moment of the battle οἱ 
Marathon, — then again breaking out, — and hushed for a while 
by the common dangers of the Persian invasion under Xerxés, 
was appeased only with the conquest of the island about twenty 
years after that event, and with the expulsion and destruction of 
its inhabitants some years later. There had been indeed, accord- 
ing to Herodotus,! a feud of great antiquity between Athens and 
/Egina, — of which he gives the account in a singular narrative, 
blending together religion, politics, exposition of ancient customs, 
etc. ; but at the time when the Thebans solicited aid from A®gina, 
the latter was at peace with Athens. The A®ginetans employed 
their fleet, powerful for that day, in ravaging Phalérum and the 
maritime demes of Attica; nor had the Athenians as yet any 
fleet to resist them.2 It is probable that the desired effect was 
produced, of diverting a portion of the Athenian force from 
the war against Boeotia, and thus partially relieving Thebes. 
But the war of Athens against both of them continued for a con- 
siderable time, though we have no information respecting its 
details. 

Meanwhile the attention of Athens was called off from these 
combined enemies by a more menacing cloud, which threatened 
to burst upon her from the side of Sparta. Kleomenés and his 
countrymen, full of resentment at the late inglorious desertion 
of Eleusis, were yet more incensed by the discovery, which 
appears to have been then recently made, that the injunctions of 
the Delphian priestess for the expulsion of Hippias from Athens 
had been fraudulently procured. Moreover, Kleomenés, when 
shut up in the acropolis of Athens with Isagoras, had found there 
various prophecies previously treasured up by the Peisistratids, 
many of which foreshadowed events highly disastrous to Sparta. 
And while the recent brilliant manifestations of courage, and 
repeated victories, on the part of Athens, seemed to indicate that 
such prophecies might perhaps be realized,— Sparta had to 
reproach herself, that, from the foolish and mischievous conduct 


1 Herodot. v, 83-88. 
* Herodot. v, 81-89, μεγάλως ᾿Αϑηναίους ἐσινέοντο. 
" Herodot. νυ. 90. 


174 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


wf Kleumenés, she had undone the effect of her previous aid 
avainst the Peisistratids, and thus lost that return of gratitude 
which the Athenians would otherwise have testified. Under 
such impressions, the Spartan authorities took the remarkable 
step of sending for Hippias from his residence at Sigeium te 
Peloponnesus, and of summoning deputies from all their allies te 
meet him at Sparta. 

The convocation thus summoned deserves notice as the com- 
mencement of a new era in Grecian politics. ‘The previous 
expedition of Kleomenés against Attica presents to us the first 
known example of Spartan headship passing from theory into 
act: that expedition miscarried because the allies, though willing 
to follow, would not follow blindly, nor be made the instruments 
of executing purposes repugnant to their feelings. Sparta had 
now learned the necessity, in order to insure their hearty con- 
currence, of letting them know what she contemplated, so as to 
ascertain at least that she had no decided opposition to appre- 
hend. Here, then, is the third stage in the spontaneous move- 
ment of Greece towards a systematic conjunction, however 
imperfect, of its many autonomous units. First we have Spar- 
tan headship suggested in theory, from a concourse of circum- 
stances which attract to her the admiration of all Greece, — 


power, unrivalled training, undisturbed antiquity, ete.: next, the 


theory passes into act, yet rude and shapeless: lastly, the act 
becomes clothed with formalities, and preceded by discussion and 
determination. The first convocation of the allies at Sparta, for 
the purpose of having a common object submitted to their consid- 
eration, may well be regarded as an important event in Grecian 
political history. The proceedings at the convocation are no 
less important, as an indication of the way in which the Greeks 
of that day felt and acted, and must be borne in mind as a 
contrast with times hereafter to be described. 

Ilippias having been presented to the assembled allies, the 
Spartans expressed their sorrow for having dethroned him, — 
their resentment and alarm at the new-born insolence of Athens,! 
already tasted by her immediate neighbors, and menacing to 
every state represented in the convocation, —and their anxiety to 


' Herodot. v, 90, 91. 


PROTEST OF THE CORINTHIANS. 175 


restore Hippias, not less as a reparation for past wrong, than ag 
a means, through his rule, of keeping Athens low and dependent 
But the proposition, though emanating from Sparta, was listened 
to by the allies with one common sentiment of repugnance. 
They had no sympathy for Hippias,—no dislike, still less any 
fear, of Athens,— and a profound detestation of the character 
of a despot. The spirit which had animated the armed contin- 
gents at Eleusis now reappeared among the deputies at Sparta, 
and the Corinthians again took the initiative. Their deputy 
SosiklSs protested against the project in the fiercest and most 
indignant strain: no language can be stronger than that of the 
long harangue which Herodotus puts into his mouth, wherein the 


δ 


bitter recollections prevalent at Corinth respecting Kypselus and 
Periander are poured forth. “Surely, heaven and earth are 
about to change places,—the fish are coming to dwell on dry 
land, and mankind going to inhabit the sea,— when you, Spar- 
tans, propose to subvert the popular governments, and to set up 
in the cities that wicked and bloody thing called a Despot.! 
First try what it is, for yourselves at Sparta, and then force it 
upon others if you can: you have not tasted its calamities as we 
have, and you take very good care to keep it away from your- 
selves. We adjure you, by the common gods of Hellas, — plant 
not despots in her cities: if you persist in a scheme so wicked, 
know that the Corinthians will not second you.” 

This animated appeal was received with a shout of approba 
tion and sympathy on the part of the allies. All with one 
accord united with Sosiklés in adjuring the Lacedwronians ! 
*not to revolutionize any Hellenic city.” No one listened to 
Hippias when he replied, warning the Corinthians that the time 
would come, when they, more than any one else, would dread 
and abhor the Athenian democracy, and wish the Peisistratidz 
back again. He knew well, says Herodotus, that this would be, 
for he was better acquainted with the prophecies than any man. 
But no one then believed him, and he was forced to take his 


1 Herodot. v, 92... . «τυραννίδας ἐς τὰς πόλις κατά ειν παρασκευάζεσϑε 
“οὐ οὔτε ἀδικώτεροι οὐδέν ἐστι κατ᾽ ἀνϑρώπους οὔτε μιαιφονώττ:ρον. 
3 Herodot. v, 93. μὴ ποιέειν μηδὲν νεώτερον περὶ πόλιν 'Ἑλλώδο 


176 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


departure back to Sigeium: the Spartans not venturim, «@ 
espouse his cause against the determined sentiment of the ali αἱ 

That determined sentiment deserves notice, because it marke 
the present period of the Hellenic mind: fifty years later it will 
be found materially altered. Aversion to single-headed rule, 
and bitter recollection of men like Kypselus and Periander, are 
now the chords which thrill in an assembly of Grecian deputies : 
the idea of a revolution, implying thereby a great and compre- 
hensive change, of which the party using the word disapproves, 
consists in substituting a permanent One in place of those peri- 
odical magistrates and assemblies which were the common 
attribute of oligarchy and democracy: the antithesis between 
these last two is as yet in the background, nor does there prevail 
either fear of Athens or hatred of the Athenian democracy. 
But when we turn to the period immediately before the Pelo- 
ponnesian war, we find the order of precedence between these 
two sentiments reversed. The anti-monarchical feeling has not 
perished, but has been overlaid by other and more recent political 
antipathies, — the antithesis between democracy and oligarchy 
having become, not indeed the only sentiment, but the uppermost 
sentiment, in the minds of Grecian politicians generally, and the 
soul of active party-movement. Moreover, a hatred of the most 
deadly character has grown up against Athens and her democracy 
especially in the grandsons of those very Corinthians who now 
stand forward as her sympathizing friends. The remarkable 
change of feeling here mentioned is nowhere so strikingly exhib- 
ited as when we contrast the address of the Corinthian Sosiklés, 
just narrated, with the speech of the Corinthian envoys at Sparta, 
immediately antecedent to the Peloponnesian war, as given to us 
in Thueydidés.2. It will hereafter be fully explained by the 
intermediate events, by the growth of Athenian power, and by 
the still more miraculous development of Athenian energy. 

Such development, the fruit of the fresh-planted democracy as 
well as the seed for its sustentation and avorandizement, con- 
tinued progressive during the whole period just adverted to. 
But the first unexpected burst of it, under the Kleisthenean 
constitution, and after the expulsion of Hippias, is described by 


! Herodot. v, 93-94. 3 Thucydid. i, 68-71, 120-124 


EFFICACY OF THE DEMOCRATICAL IDEA. 177 


Herodotus in terms too emphatic to be omitted. After narrating 
the successive victories of the Athenians over both Bveotians 
and Chalkidians, that historian proceeds: “ Thus did the Athe- 
nians grow in strength. And we may find proof, not merely in 
this instance but everywhere else, how valuable a thing freedom 
is: since even the Athenians, while under a despot, were not 
superior in war to any of their surrounding neighbors, but, so 
300n as they got rid of their despots, became by far the first of 
all. These things show that while kept down by one man, they 
were slack and timid, like men working for a master; but when 
they were liberated, every single man became eager in exertions 
for his own benefit.” The same comparison reappears a short 
time afterwards, where he tells us, that “the Athenians when 
free, felt themselves a match for Sparta; but while kept down 
by any man under a despotism, were feeble and apt for sub- 
mission.” ! 

Stronger expressions cannot be found to depict the rapid 
improvement wrought in the Athenian people by their new 


‘Jemocracy. Of course this did not arise merely from suspension 


of previous cruelties, or better laws, or better administration. 


These, indeed, were essential conditions, but the active trans- 
forming cause here was, the principle and system of which such 


.mendments formed the detail: the grand and new idea of the 


sovereign People, composed of free and equal citizens, — or 
liberty and equality, to use words which so profoundly moved 
the French nation half a century ago. It was this comprehen- 
sive political idea which acted with electric effect upon the 
Athenians, creating within them a host of sentiments, motives, 
sympathies, and capacities, to which they had before been stran- 
gers. Democracy in Grecian antiquity possessed the privilege, 


soiree _— ΕΒΗΝΕΝΝΝΡΕΝΡΝΜΕΙΝΗΝΕΝΕΙΝΕΗΝΝΜΕΝΝΒΕΗΝΡΉΝΝΝΝΣ 


! Herodot. v, 78-91. ᾿Αϑηναῖοι μὲν νυν ἤυξηντο' δηλοῖ δὲ οὐ κατ᾽ ἕν 
αύνον ἀλλὰ πανταχῆ. ἡ ἰσηγορίη ὡς ἔστι χρῆμα σπουδαῖον, εἰ καὶ ᾿Αϑηναῖοι 
τυραννευόμενοι μὲν, οὐδαμῶν τῶν σφέας περιοικεδυτων ἔσαν τὰ πολέμια ἀμεί: 
νους, ἀπαλλαχϑέντες δὲ τυράννων, μακρῷ πρῶτοι ἐγένοντο δηλοῖ ὧν ταῦτα, 
bri κατεχόμενοι μὲν, ἐϑελοκάκεον, ὡς δεσπότῃ ἐργαζόμενοι, ἐλευϑερωϑέντων 
δὲ, αὐτὸς ἕκαστος ἑωυτῷ προϑυμέετο κατεργάζεσθαι. : i 

(c. 91.) Of Λακεδαιμόνιοι ---- νόῳ λαβόντες, ὡς ἐλεύϑερεν μὲν ἐὸν τὸ γένος 
τὸ ᾿Αττικὸν, ἰσόῤῥοπον τῷ ἑωῦτῶν ἂν γένοιτο, κατεχόμενον δὲ ὑπό Tow τυμῶ« 
vids, ἀσϑενὲς καὶ πειϑαρχέεσθϑαι ἑτοῖμον. 

VOL. IV. 8* 120° 


178 HISTORY UF GREECE. 


not only of kindling an earnest and unanimous attachment te 
the constitution in the bosoms of the citizens, but also of creating 
wun energy of public and private action, such as could never be 
obtained under an oligarchy, where the utmost that could be 
hoped for was a passive acquiescence and obedience. Mr. Burke 
has remarked that the mass of the people are generally very 
iuditferent about theories of government; but such indifference 
—although improvements in the practical working of all govern 
ments tend to foster it— is hardly to be expected among any 
people who exhibit decided mental activity and spirit on other 
matters; and the reverse was unquestionably true, in the year 
509 B.c., among the communities of ancient Greece. ‘Theories 
of government were there anything but a dead letter: they were 
connected with emotions of the strongest as well as of the most 
opposite character. ‘The theory of a permanent ruling One, for 
example, was universally odious: that of a ruling Few, though 
acquiesced in, was never positively attractive, unless either 
where it was associated with the maintenance of peculiar educa- 
tion and habits, as at Sparta, or where it presented itself as the 
only antithesis to democracy, the latter having by peculiar cir- 
cumstances become an object of terror. But the theory of 
democracy was preeminently seductive; creating in the mass 
of the citizens an intense positive attachment, and disposing them 
to voluntary action and suffering on its behalf, such as no coer- 
cion on. the part of other governments could extort. Herodotus,! 
in his comparison of the three sorts of government, puts in the 
front rank of the advantages of democracy, “its most splendid 
name and promise,”-— its power of enlisting the hearts of the 
citizens in support of their constitution, and of providing for all 
a common bond of union and fraternity. This is what even 
democracy did not always do: but it was what no other govern- 
ment in Greece could do: a reason alone sufficient to stamp it as 


‘ Herodot. iii, 80. Πλῆϑος δὲ ἄρχον, πρῶτα μὲν, οὔνομα πάντων 
auhdAtorov ἔχει, ἰσονομίην" δεύτερα δὲ, τούτων τῶν ὁ μόναρχος, ποιέει 
οὐδέν" πάλῳ μὲν ἀρχὰς ἄρχει, ὑπεύϑυνον δὲ ἀρχὴν ἔχει, βουλεύματα δὲ 
πάντα ἐς τὸ κοινὸν ἀναφέρει. 

The demovratical speaker at Syracuse, Athenagoras, also puts this name 
and promise in the first rank of advantages —(Thucyd. vi, 39)— ἐγὼ δὲ 
oma, πρῶτα μὲν, δῆμον ξύμπαν ὠνόμασϑαι, ὀλιγαρχίαν δὲ, μέρος, ete 


EFFICACY OF THE DEMOCRATICAL IDEA. 178 


the best government, and presenting the greatest chance ot 
beneficent results, for a Grecian community. Among the Athe 
nian citizens, certainly, it produced a strength and unanimity of 
positive political sentiment, such as has rarely been seen in the 
history of mankind, which excites our surprise and admiration 
the more when we compare it with the apathy which had pre- 
eeded, — and which is even implied as the natural state of the 
public mind in Solon’s famous proclamation against neutrality in 
a sedition.! Because democracy happens to be unpalatable to 
most modern readers, they have been accustomed to look upon 
the sentiment here described only in its least honorable manifes- 
tations, —in the caricatures of Aristophanés, or in the empty 
common-places of rhetorical declaimers. But it is not in this 
way that the force, the earnestness, or the binding value, of 
democratical sentiment at Athens is to be measured. We must 
listen to it as it comes from the lips of Periklés,2 while he is 
strenuously enforcing upon the people those active duties for 
which it both implanted the stimulus and supplied the courage ; 
or from the oligarchical Nikias in the harbor of Syracuse, when 
he is endeavoring to revive the courage of his despairing troops 
for one last death-struggle, and when he appeals to their demo- 
cratical patriotism as to the only flame yet alive and burning 
even in that moment of agony. From the time of Kleisthenés 
downward, the creation of this new mighty impulse makes an 
entire revolution in the Athenian character. And if the change 
still stood out in so prominent a manner before the eyes of 
Herodotus, much more must it have been felt by the contempo- 
raries among whom it occurred. 

The attachment of an Athenian citizen to his democraticai 
constitution comprised two distinct veins of sentiment: first, his 
rights, protection, and advantages derived from it, — next, his 
bligatior.s of exertion and sacrifice towards it and with reference 


' See the preceding chapter xi, of this History, vol. iii, p. 145, respecting 


the Solonian declaration here adverted to. 

*See the two speeches of Periklés in Thucyd. ii, 35-46, and ii, 60-64. 
Compare the reflections of Thucydidés upon the two democracies of Athena 
and Syracuse, vi, 69 and vii, 21-55. 

* Thueyd. vii, 69. Πατρίδος re τῆς ἐλευϑερωτάτης ὑπομιμνάσκων καὶ τῆς 
ty αὐτῇ ἀνεπιτακτοῦ πᾶσιν ἐς τὴν ὁὀίαιτο ἐξουσίας, ete. 


180 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


to it. Neither of these two veins of sentiment was ever wholly 
absent; but according as the one or the other was present at 
different times in varying proportions, the patriotism of the 
citizen was a very different feeling. That which Herodotus 
remarks is, the extraordinary efforts of heart and hand which 
the Athenians suddenly displayed, —the efficacy of the active 
sentiment throughout the bulk of the citizens; and we shall 
«bserve even more memorable evidences of the same phenome- 
ron in tracing down the history from Kleisthenés to the end of 
the Peloponnesian war: we shall trace a series of events and 
motives eminently calculated to stimulate that self-imposed labor 
and discipline which the early democracy had first called forth. 
But when we advance farther down, from the restoration of the 


democracy after the Thirty Tyrants to the time of Demosthenés, 


—fI venture upon this brief anticipation, in the conviction that 
one period of Grecian history can only be thoroughly understood 
by contrasting it with another, — we shall find a sensible change 
in Athenian patriotism. ‘The active sentiment of obligation 15 
comparatively inoperative, —the citizen, it is true, has a keen 
sense of the value of the democracy as protecting him ana 
insuring to him valuable rights, and he is, moreover, willing to 
perform his ordinary sphere of legal duties towards it; but he 
looks upon it as a thing established, and capable of maintaining 
itself in a due measure of foreign ascendency, without any such 
personal efforts as those which his forefathers cheerfully imposed 
upon themselves. ‘The orations of Demosthenés contain melan- 
choly proofs of such altered tone of patriotism, — of that lan- 
guor, paralysis, and waiting for others to act, which preceded the 
catastrophe of Chzeroneia, notwithstanding an unabated attach- 
ment to the democracy as a source of protection and good govern- 
ment.! That same preternatural activity which the allies of 
Sparta, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, both de- 
nounced and admired in the Athenians, is noted by the orator as 
now belonging to their enemy Philip. 


' Compare the remarkable speech of the Corinthian envoys at Spartr 
(Thucyd. i, 68-71), with the φιλοπραγμοσύνη which Demosthenés so em- 
phatically notices in Philip (Olynthiac. i, 6, p. }3): also Philippic. i, 2, and 
the Philippics and Olynthiacs generally. 


Vol. 4 Ε 


EARLIER AND LATER DEMOCRACY CONTRASTED. 181 


Such variations in the scale of national energy pervade his 
tory, modern as well as ancient, but in regard to Grecian history, 
especially, they can never be overlooked. For a certain meas- 
ure, not only of positive political attachment, but also of active 
self-devotion, military readiness, and personal effort, was the 
indispensable condition of maintaining Hellenic autonomy, either 
in Athens or elsewhere; and became so more than ever when 
the Macedonians were once organized under an enterprising and 
semi-Hellenized prince. The democracy was the first creative 
eause of that astonishing personal and many-sided energy which 
marked the Athenian character, for a century downward from 
Kleisthenés. That the same ultra-Hellenic activity did not 
longer continue, is referable to other causes, which will be here- 
after in part explained. /No system of government, even sup- 
posing it to be very much better and more faultless than the 
Athenian democracy, can ever pretend to accomplish its legiti- 
mate end apart from the personal character of the people, or to 
supersede the necessity of individual virtue and vigor. During 
the half-century immediately preceding the battle of Chzroneia, 
the Athenians had lost that remarkable energy which distin- 
guished them during the first century of their democracy, and 
had fallen much more nearly to a level with the other Greeks, 
in common with whom they were obliged to yield to the pres- 
sure of a foreign enemy. I here briefly notice their last period 
of languor, in contrast with the first burst of democratical fervor 
under Kleisthenés, now opening, — a feeling which will be found, 
as we proceed, to continue for a longer period than could have 
been reasonably anticipated, but which was too high-strung te 
become a perpetual and inherent attribut: of any communit;. 


HISTORY OF GREECE. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 
RISE OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. — CYRUS. 


In the preceding chapter, I have followed the history of Cen 
tral Greece very nearly down to the point at which the history 
of the Asiatic Greeks becomes blended with it, and after which 
the two streams begin to flow to a great degree in the same 
channel. I now revert to the affairs of the Asiatic Greeks. and 
of the Asiatic kings as connected with them, at the point in 
which they were left in my seventeenth chapter. 

The concluding facts recounted in that chapter were of sad 
nnd serious moment to the Hellenic world. The Ionic and 
JEolic Greeks on the Asiatic coast had been conquered and 
made tributary by the Lydian king Croesus: “down to that 


time (says Herodotus) all Greeks had been free.” Their con- 


queror Croesus, who ascended the throne in 560 B.C., appeared 
to be at the summit of human prosperity and power in his unas- 
sailable capital, and with his countless treasures at Sardis. His 
dominions comprised nearly the whole of Asia Minor, as far as 
he river Halys to the east ; on the other side of that river be- 
gan the Median monarchy under his brother-in-law Astyagés, 
extending eastward to some boundary which we cannot define, 
but comprising in a southeastern direction Persis proper, or 
Farsistan, and separated from the Kissians and Assyrians on 
the west by the line of Mount Zagros — the present boundary- 
line between Persia and Turkey. Babylonia, with its won- 
drous city, between the Euphrates and the Tigris, was occupied 
by the Assyrians, or Chaldzans, under their king Labynétus: a 
territory populous and fertile, partly by nature, partly by prod- 
igies of labor, to a degree which makes us mistrust even an 
honest eye-witness who describes it afterwards in its decline, — 
but which was then in its most flourishing condition. The 
Chaldwan dominion under Labynétus reached to the borders of 
Egypt, including, as dependent territories, both Judza and Phe 


RISE OF CYRUS. 183 


nicia in Egypt, reigned the native king Amasis, powerful and 
affluent, sustained in his throne by a large body of Grecian mer- 
cenaries, and himself favorably disposed to Grecian commerce 
and settlement. Both with Labynétus and with Amasis, Croesus 
was on terms of alliance; and as Astyagés was his brother-in- 
law, the four kings might well be deemed out of the reach of 
calamity. Yet within the space of thirty years or a little more, 
the whole of their territories had become embodied in one vast 
empire, under the son of an adventurer as yet not known even 
by name. 

The rise and fall of Oriental dynasties has been in all times 
distinguished by the same general features. A brave and adven- 
turous prince, at the head of a population at once poor, warlike, 
and greedy, acquires dominion, — while his successors, abandon- 
ing themselves to sensuality and sloth, probably also to oppres- 
sive and irascible dispositions, become in process of time victims 
to those same qualities in a stranger which had enabled their 
own father to seize the throne. Cyrus, the great founder of the 
Persian empire, first the subject and afterwards the dethroner 
of the Median Astyagés, corresponds to this general description, 
as far at least as we can pretend to know his history. For in 
truth, even the conquests of Cyrus, after he became ruler of 
Media, are very imperfectly known, whilst the facts which pre- 
ceded his rise up to that sovereignty cannot be said to be known 
at all: we have to choose between different accounts at variance 
with each other, and of which the most complete and detailed is 
stamped with all the character of romance. The Cyropzdia of 
Xenophon is memorable and interesting, considered with refer. 
cnce to the Greek mind, and as a philosophical novel:! that it 
shouid have been quoted so largely as authority on matters of 
history, is only one proof among many how easily authors have 
been satisfied as to the essentials of historical evidence. The 
narrative given by Herodotus οἱ the relations between Cyrus 
and Astyagés, agreeing with Xenophon in little more than the 
fact that it makes Cyrus son of Kambysés and Mandané, and 


-- .--.ςἘς. 


' Among the lost productions of Antisthenés, the contemporary of Xeno 
phon and Plato, and emanating like them from the tuition of Sokratés, was 
one Κῦρος, ἢ περὶ Βαπιλείας (Diogenes Laért. vi, 15). 


184 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


grandson of Astyagés, goes even beyond the story of Romulus 
wad Remus in respect to tragical incident and contrast. Asty» 
ges, alarmed by a dream, condemns the new-born infant of his 
daughter Mandané to be exposed: Harpagus, to whom the order 
is given, delivers the child to one of the royal herdsmen, who 
exposes it in the mountains, where it is miraculously suckled by 
a bitch! Thus preserved, and afterwards brought up as the 
herdsman’s child, Cyrus manifests great superiority both physi- 
cal and mental, is chosen king in play by the boys of the village, 
and in this capacity severely chastises the son of one of the 
courtiers ; for which offence he is carried before Astyagés, who 
recognizes him for his grandson, but is assured by the Magi that 
his dream is out, and that he has no farther danger to apprehend 
from the boy, — and therefore permits him to live. With Har- 
pagus, however, Astyagés is extremely incensed, for not having 
executed his orders: he causes the son of Harpagus to be slain, 
and served up to be eaten by his unconscious father at a regal 
banquet. The father, apprized afterwards of the fact, dissembles 
his feelings, but conceives a deadly vengeance against Astyagés 
for this Thyestean meal. He persuades Cyrus, who has been 
sent back to his futher and mother in Persia, to head a revolt 


' That this was the real story —a close parallel of Romulus and Remus 
—we may see by Herodotus, i, 122. Some rationalizing Greeks or Per- 
sians transformed it into a more plausible tale, —that the herdsman’s wife 
who suckled the boy Cyrus was named Κυνώ (Κυὼν is a dog, male or 
female); contending that this latter was the real basis of fact, and that the 
intervention of the bitch was an exaggeration built upon the name of the 
woman, in order that the divine protection shown to Cyrus might be still 
more manifest,— οἱ δὲ τοκέες παραλαβόντες τὸ οὔνομα τοῦτο (iva ϑειοτέ- 
οως δοκέῃ τοῖσι Πέρσῃσι περιεῖναΐ σφι ὁ παῖς), κατέβαλον φάτιν 
ὡς ἐκκείμενον Κῦρον κύων ἐξέϑρεψε" ἐνθεῦτεν μὲν ἡ φάτις αὐτὴ κεχωρήκεε. 

In the first volume of this History, I have noticed various transforma- 
tions operated by Palasphatus and others upon the Greek mythes, — the 
ram which carried Phryxus and Hellé across the Hellespont is represented 
to us as having been in reality a man named Krius, who aided their flight, — 
the winged horse which carried Bellerophon was a ship named Pegasus, etc 

This same operation has here been performed upon the story of the suck- 
ling of Cyrus; for we shall run little risk in affirming that the miraculous 
story is the older of the two. The feelings which welcome a miraculous 
stery are early and primitive ; those which break down the miracle into ¢ 
sommonplace fact are of subsequent growth. 


ASTYAGES AND HARPAGUS. 185 


of the Persians against the Medes; whilst Astyagés —- to fill up 
the Grecian conception of madness as a precursor to ruin — 
sends an army against the revolters, commanded by Harpagus 
himself. Of course the army is defeated, — Astyagés, after a 
vain resistance, is dethroned, — Cyrus becomes king in his place, 
—and Harpagus repays the outrage which he has undergone 


by the bitterest insults. 

Such are the heads of a beautiful narrative which is given at 
some length in Herodotus. It will probably appear to the reader 
sufficiently romantic, though the historian intimates that he had 
heard three other narratives different from it, and that all were 
more full of marvels, as well as in wider circulation, than his 
own, which he had borrowed from some unusually sober-minded 
Persian informants.! In what points the other three stories 
departed from it, we do not hear. 

To the historian of Halikarnassus, we have to oppose the 
physician of the neighboring town Knidus, — Ktésias, who con- 
tradicted Herodotus, not without strong terms of censure, on 
many points, and especially upon that which is the very founda- 
tion of the early narrative respecting Cyrus; for he affirmed 
that Cyrus was noway related to Astyagés.2 However indig- 
nant we may be with Ktésias, for the disparaging epithets which 
he presumed to apply to an historian whose work is to us ines- 
timable, — we must nevertheless admit that as surgeon, in actual 
attendance on king Artaxerxés Mnémon, and healer of the 


1 Herodot. i, 95. “Ὡς dv Περσέων μετεξέτεροι λέγουσιν, ol μὴ Bov- 
λόμενοι σεμνοῦν τὰ περὶ Κῦρον, ἀλλὰ τὸν ἐόντα λέγειν λόγον, κατὰ ταῦτα 
γράψω" ἐπιστάμενος περὶ Κύρου καὶ τριφασίας ἄλλας λόγων ὁδοὺς 
φῆναι. His informants were thus select persons, who differed from the 
Persians generally. 

The long narrative respecting the infancy and growth of Cyrus is con- 
tained in Herodot. i, 107-129. 

£See the Extracts from the lost Persian History of Ktésias, in Photius 
Cod. xxii, also appended to Schweighaiiser’s edition of Herodotus, vol. iv, 
p 345. Φησὶ dé (Ktésias) αὐτὸν τῶν πλειόνων ἃ ἱστορεὶ αὐτοπτην γενόμενον, 
ἢ παρ᾽ αὐτῶν Περσῶν (ἔνϑα τὸ ὁρᾷν μὴ ἐνεχώρει) αὐτήκοον καταστάντα, 
οὕτως τὴν ἱστορίαν συγγράψαι. 

T’o the discrepancies between Xenophon, Herodotus, and Ktésias, on the 
subject ¢f Cyrus, is to be added the statement of Aischylus (Perse, 747), 
the oldest authority of them all, and that of the Armenian historians: see 


Bahr ad Ktesiam, p. 85: comp. Bahr’s comments on the discrepancies, p 87 


186 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


wound inflicted on that prince at Kunaxa by his brother Cyrus 
the younger,' he had better opportunities even than Herodotus 
of conversing with sober-minded Persians ; and that the discrep- 
ancies between the two statements are to be taken as a proof of 
the prevalence of discordant, yet equally accredited, stories. 
Herodotus himself was in fact compelled to choose one out of 
four. So rare and late a plant is historical authenticity. 

That Cyrus was the first Persian conqueror, and that the 
space which he overran covered no less than fifty degrees of 
longitude, from the coast of Asia Minor to the Oxus and the 
Indus, are facts quite mdisputable ; but of the steps by which 
this was achieved, we know very little. The native Persians 
whom he conducted to an empire so immense, were an aggregate 
of seven agricultural and four nomadic tribes, —all of them 
rude, hardy, and brave,?— dwelling in a mountainous region. 
clothed in skins, ignorant of wine or fruit, or any of the com- 
monest luxuries of life, and despising the very idea of purchase 
or sale. Their tribes were very unequal im point of dignity, 
probably also in respect to numbers and powers, among one 
another: first in estimation among them stood the Pasargade ; 
and the first phratry, or clan, among the Pasargade were the 
Achemenide, to whom Cyrus himself belonged. Whether his 
relationship to the Median king whom he dethroned was a mat- 
ter of fact, or a politic fiction, we cannot well determine. But 
Xenophon, in noticing the spacious deserted cities, Larissa and 
Mespila,? which he saw in his march with the Ten Thousand 


' Xenophon, Anabas, i. ὃ, 26. 

* Herodot. i, 71-153; Arrian, v, 4; Strabo, xv, p. 727; Plato, Legg. iii 
p. 695. 

* Xenophon, Anabas. iii, 3, 6; iii, 4, 7-12. Strabo had read accounts 
which represented the last battle between Astyagés and Cyrus to have been 
foaght near Pasargede (xv, p. 730). 

It has been rendered probable by Ritter, however, that the ruined city 
which Xenophon called Mespila was the ancient Assyrian Nineveh, sid 
the other deserted city which Xenophon calls Larissa. situated as it was on 
the Tigris, must have been origimally Assyrian, and not Median. See 
about Nineveh, above, —the Chapter on the Babylonians, vol. iii, ch. xix, 
p. 305, note. 

The land east of the Tigris, in which Nineveh and Arbéla were situated 
seems to have been called Aturia, —a dialectic variation of Assyria (Strabe 
svi, p. 737; Dio Cass. |xviii, 28). 


PERSIAN TRIBES. — PASARGAD, 187 


Greeks on the eastern side of the Tigris, gives us to understand 
that the conquest of Media by the Persians was reported to him 
as having been an obstinate and protracted struggle. However 
this may be, the preponderance of the Persians was at last com- 
plete: though the Medes always continued to be the second 
nation in the empire, after the Persians, properly so called ; and 
by early Greek writers the great enemy in the East is often 
ΠΡ “the Mede,!” as well as “the Persian.” Ekbatana 
always continued to be one of the capital cities, and the usual 
summer residence, of the kings of Persia; Susa on the Choaspés, 
on the Kissian plain farther southward, and east of the Tigrie, 
being their winter abode. 

The vast space of country comprised between the Indus on the 
east, the Oxus and Caspian sea to the north, the Persian gulf and 
Indian ocean to the south, and the line of Mount Zagros to the 
west, appears to have been occupied in these times by a great 
variety of different tribes and people, but all or most of them 
belonging to the religion of Zoroaster, and speaking dialects of 
the Zend language.2 It was known amongst its inhabitants by 
the common name of Iran, or Aria: it is, in its central parts at 
least, a high, cold plateau, totally destitute of wood and scantily 
supplied with water; much of it, indeed, is a salt and sandy 
desert, unsusceptible of culture. Parts of it are eminently fer- 
tile, where water can be procured and irrigation applied; and 
scattered masses of tolerably dense population thus grew up. 
But continuity of cultivation is not practicable, and in ancient 
times, as at present, a large proportion of the population of Iran 
seems to have consisted of wandering or nomadic tribes, with 
their tents and cattle. The rich pastures, and the freshness of 
the summer climate, in the region of mountain and valley near 
Ek}batana, are extolled by modern travellers, just as they attracted 
the Great King in ancient times, during the hot months. The 


' Xenophanés, Fragm. p. 39, ap. Schneidewin, Delectus Poett. Elegiac. 


Greece. — 


Πήλικος ἧσϑ᾽ ὅϑ᾽ ὁ Μῆδος ἀφίκετο ; 
sompare Theognis, v, 775, and Herodot. i, 163. 
2 Strabo. xv, p. 724. ὁμόγλωττοι παρὰ μικρόν. See Heeren, Ueber den 
Verkehr der Alten Welt, part i, book i, pp. 320-340, and Ritter, Erdkunda 
West Asien, b. iii, Abtheil. ii, sects. 1 and 2, pp. 17-84 


188 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


more southerly province called Persis proper (Farsistan) consists 
also in part of mountain land interspersed with valley and plain, 
abundantly watered, and ample in pasture, sloping gradually 
down to low grounds on the sea-coast which are hot and dry. 
The care bestowed, both by Medes and Persians, on the breed 
ing of their horses, was remarkable.! There were doubtless 
material differences between different parts of the population 
of this vast plateau of Iran. Yet it seems that, along with their 
common language and religion, they had also something of a 
common character, which contrasted with the Indian population 
east of the Indus, the Assyrians west of Mount Zagros, and the 
Massagetz and other Nomads of the Caspian and the sea of Aral, 
— less brutish, restless, and bloodthirsty, than the latter, — more 
fierce, contemptuous, and extortionate, and less capable of sus- 
tained industry, than the two former. There can be little doubt, 
at the time of which we are now speaking, when the wealth and 
cultivation of Assyria were at their maximum, that Iran also 
was far better peopled than ever it has been since European ob- 
servers have been able to survey it; especially the northeastern 
portion, Baktria and Sogdiana: so that the invasions of the πο. 
mads from Turkestan and Tartary, which have been so destruc. 
tive at various intervals since the Mohammedan conquest, were 
before that period successfully kept back. 

The general analogy among the population of Iran probably 
enabled the Persian conqueror with comparative ease to extend 
his empire to the east, after the conquest of Ekbatana, and to 
become the full heir of the Median kings. And if we may 
believe Ktésias, even the distant province of Baktria had been 
before subject to those kings: it at first resisted Cyrus, but find 
ing that he had become son-in-law of Astyagés as well as master 
of his person, it speedily acknowledged his authority.5 

According to the representation of Herodotus, the war between 
Cyrus and Creesus of Lydia began shortly after the capture 
of Astyagés, and before the conquest of Baktria.2 Crcesus was 


' About the province of Persis, see Strabo, xv, p. 727; Diodor. xix, 21; 
Quintus Curtius, v, 13, 14, pp. 432-434, with the valuable explanatory notes 
of Miitzell (Berlin, 1841). Compare, also, Morier’s Second Journey in 
Persia, pp. 49-120, and Ritter, Erdkunde, West Asien, pp. 712-738. 

3 Ktésias, Persica, c. 2. 3 Herodot i, 153. 


ΔΒ BETWEEN CRESUS AND CYRUS. 189 


the assailant, wishing to avenge his brother-in-law, to arrest the 
growth of the Persian conqueror, and to increase his own domin- 
ions: his more prudent councillors in vain represented to him 
that he had little to gain, and much to lose, by war with a nation 
alike hardy and poor. He is represented, as just at that time 
recovering from the affliction arising out of the death of his son. 
To ask advice of the oracle, before he took any final decision, 
was a step which no pious king would omit; but in the present 
perilous question, Croesus did more,— he took a precaution 80 
extreme, that, if his piety had not been placed beyond all doubt 
by his extraordinary munificence to the temples, he might μόνῃ 
drawn upon himself the suspicion of a guilty skepticism,’ ‘Be- 
fore he would send to ask advice respecting the project itself, he 
resolved to test the credit of some of the chiel surrounding 
oracles, — Delphi, Déd6na, Branchide near Miletus, Amphiaraus 
at Thebes, Trophdénius at Lebadeia, and Ammon in Libya. fe 
envoys started from Sardis on the same day, and were all penn 

on the hundredth day afterwards to ask at the respective oracles 
how Croesus was at that precise moment employed. This was 8 
severe trial: of the manner in which it was met by four out of 
the six oracles consulted, we have no informahon, and : ΜΝ 
appears that their answers were unsatistactory. apo teae 
maintained his credit undiminished, and Apollo at Delp Li, — 
omniscient than Apollo at Branchide, solved the question ™ 

such unerring precision, as to afford a strong additional —— 
against persons who might be disposed to scoff at REN 
sooner had the envoys put the question to the Delphian scp 
on the day named, “ What is Croesus now Δοίηρι than she ex- 
claimed, ‘n the accustomed hexameter verse," “T know Ὕ ea 
ber of grains of sand, and the measures of the sea; I μὰ nage τό 
the dumb, and I hear the man who speaks not. Li = 
reaches me of a hard-skinned tortoise boiled sie coppet νοι 

lamb’s flesh, — copper above and copper below.” Croesus was 


} That this point of view should not be noticed in gees iaareag δ 
when we read his story (vi, 86) about the Milesian G " 
kus, and the judgment that overtook him for having ΜΝ sigs sapdb 
it is put forward by Xenophon as constituting part of the guilt ὁ 
(Cyroped. vii, 2, 17). 

3 Herodot. i, 47 50. 


appear singular, 


190 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


westruck on receiving this reply. It described with the utmoat 
detail that which he bad been really doing, insomuch that he 
accounted the Delphian oracle and that of Amphiarans the onl 

trustworthy oracles on earth, — following up these feelin with 
a holocaust of the most munificent eat in init to win the 
favor of the Delphian god. Three thousand cattle were offered 
up, and upon a vast sacrificial pile were placed the most s slendid 
purple robes and tunics, together with couches and sh λνῆ of 
gold and silver: besides which he sent to Delphi itself the rick 
est presents in gold and silver, — ingots, statues, bowls, jugs ote 
the size and weight of which we read with aabcuislamest the 
more 80 as Herodotus himself saw them a century αδουνευμὰ at 
Delphi.'' Nor was Crcesus altogether unmindful of Amphiaraus 
whose answer had been creditable, though less triumphant hus 
that of the Pythian priestess. He sent to ἀρολδώ as nib 
and shield of pure gold, which were afterwards seen at Thebes 
by Herodotus : this large donative may help the reader io 
Genceive the immensity of those which he sent to Delphi. 

The envoys who conveyed these gifts were instructed to ask 
at the same time, whether Croesus should undertake an ane 
dition against the Persians,— and, if so, whether he should 
prevail on any allies to assist him. In regard to the μοὶ, ues- 
tion, the answer both of Apollo and Amphiaraus wes aces 
recommending him to invite the alliance of the monk comustel 
Greeks, In regard to the first and most momentous question 
their answer was as remarkable for circumspection as it had book 
before for detective sagacity: they told Creesus that, if he Pe 
vaded the Persians, he would subvert a mighty mcapely The 
blindness of Croesus interpreted this declaration into an πόμα. 
fied promise of success. He sent farther presents to she oracle 
= again inquired whether his kingdom would be μων. 

W aa a mule shall become king of the Medes (replied the 
priestess), then must thou run away, — be not ashamed.”2 

More assured than ever by such an answer, Croesus sent to 
Sparta, under the kings Anaxandridés and Aristo, to tender 
presents and solicit their alliance.3 His propositions were fe 


᾿ Hert dot j 5 <n vp ; ae 
ω Ψ . ’ « re ᾿ 3 ii if i 5 
. lierodot. i, 53 
3 Herodot. i, 67~ ii 


DEFEAT OF CRESUS BY CYKOS. 191 


vorably entertained, — the more so, as he had before gratuitously 
furnished some gold to the Lacedeemonians, for a statue to Apollo 
The alliance now formed was altogether general, — no express 
effort being as yet demanded from them, though it soon came to 
be. But the incident is to be noted, as marking the first plunge 
of the leading Grecian state into Asiatic politics; and that too 
without any of the generous Hellenic sympathy which afterwards 
induced Athens to send her citizens across the AXgean. Croesus 
was the master and tribute-exactor of the Asiatic Greeks, and 
their contingents seem to have formed part of his army for the 
expedition now contemplated ; which army consisted principally, 
not of native Lydians, but of foreigners. 

The river Halys formed the boundary at this time between 
the Median and Lydian empires : and Croesus, marching across 
that river into the territory of the Syrians or Assyrians of Kap- 
padokia, took the city of Pteria and many of its surrounding 
dependencies, inflicting damage and destruction upon these dis- 


tant subjects of Ekbatana. Cyrus lost no time in bringing an 


army to their defence considerably larger than that of Croesus, 


and at the same time tried, though unsuccessfully, to prevail on 
the Ionians to revolt from him. A bloody battle took place be- 
tween the two armies, but with indecisive result: and Croesus, 
seeing that he could not hope to accomplish more with his forces 
as they stood, thought it wise to return to his capital, in order to 
larger army for the next campaign. Immediately on 
Sardis, he despatched envoys to Labynetus king of 
Babylon; to Amasis king of Egypt; to the Lacedzmonmns, 
and to other allies; calling upon all of them to send auxiliaries 
to Sardis during the course of the fifth coming month. In the 
mean time, he dismissed all the foreign troops who had followed 


eollect a 
reaching 


him into Kappadokia.! 

Had these allies appeared, the war might perhaps have been 
prosecuted with success ; and on the part of the Lacedzmonians 
at least, there was no tardiness; for their ships were ready and 
their troops almost on board, when the unexpected news reached 
then that Croesus was already ruined.2. Cyrus had foreseen and 


forestalled the defensive plan of his enemy. He pushed on with 


1 Herodot. i, 77. 3 Herodot. i, 83. 


192 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


his army to Sardis without delay, compelling the Lydian prines 
to give battle with his own unassisted subjects. The open and 
spacious plain before that town was highly favorable to the 
Lydian cavalry, which at that time, Herodotus tells us, was supe- 
rior tothe Persian. But Cyrus devised a stratagem whereby this 
cavalry was rendered unavailable, — placing in front of his line 
the baggage camels, which the Lydian horses could not endure 
either to smell or to behold.! The horsemen of Crcesus were thus 
obliged to dismount ; nevertheless, they fought bravely on foot, 
and were not driven into the town till after a sanguinary combat. 

Though confined within the walls of his capital, Croesus had 
still good reason for hoping to hold out until the arrival of his 
allies, to whom he sent pressing envoys of acceleration: for Sar- 
dis was considered impregnable, — one assault had already been 
repulsed, and the Persians would have been reduced to the slow 
process of blockade. But on the fourteenth day of the siege, 
accident did for the besiegers that which they could not have ace 
complished either by skill or force. Sardis was situated on an 
outlying peak of the northern side of Tmdlus; it was well-forti- 
fied everywhere except towards the mountain; and on that side, 
the rock, was so precipitous and inaccessible, that fortifications 
were thought unnecessary, nor did the inhabitants believe assault 
to be possible. But Hyrceades, a Persian soldier, having acci- 
dentally seen one of the garrison descending this precipitous 
rock to pick up his helmet, which had rolled down, watched his 
opportunity, tried to climb up, and found it not impracticable. 
Others followed his example, the strong-hold was thus seized 
first, and the whole city was speedily taken by storm. 

Cyrus had given especial orders to spare the life of Creesus, 
who was accordingly made prisoner. But preparations were 
made for a solemn and terrible spectacle. The captive king was 
destined to be burnt im chains, together with fourteen Lydian 
youths, on a vast pile of wood: and we are even told that the 
pile was already kindled and the victim beyond the reach of 
human aid, when Apollo sent a miraculous rain to preserve him 


' The story about the successful emplerment δὲ the camels appears alse 
in Xenophon, Cyropzd. vii, 1, 47. 
3 Herodot. i, 84. 


REMONSTRANCE OF CRESUS. 198 


As to the general fact of supernatural interposition, in one way 
or another, Herodotus and Ktésias both agree, though they 
describe differently the particular miracles wrought.' It is cer- 
tain that Croesus, after some time, was released and well treated 
by his conqueror, and lived to become the confidential adviser of 
the latter as well as of his son Kambysés:? Ktésias also ac- 
quaints us that a considerable town and territory near Ekbatana, 
valled Baréné, was assigned to him, according toa practice which 
we shall find not unfrequent with the Persian kings. 

The prudent counsel and remarks as to the relations between 
Persians and Lydians, whereby Croesus is said by Herodotus to 
have first earned this favorable treatment, are hardly worth repeat- 
ing ; but the indignant remonstrance sent by Creesus to the Delphian 


god is too characteristic to be passed over. He obtained permis- 
sion from Cyrus to lay upon the holy pavement of the Delphian 
temple the chains with which he had at first been bound. The 
ructed, after exhibiting to the god these 


Lydian envoys were inst 


' Compare Herodot. i, 84-87, and Ktésias, Persica, ¢. 4; which latter 
seems to have been copied by Polyzenus, vii, 6, 10. 

It is remarkable that among the miracles enumerated by Ktésias, no men 
tion is made of fire or of the pile of wood kindled: we have the chains of 
Croesus miraculously struck off, in the nidst of thunder and lightning, but 
no fire mentioned. “This is deserving of notice, as illustrating the fact that 
Ktésias derived his information from Persian narrators, who would not be 
likely to impute to Cyrus the use of fire for such a purpose. The Persians 
worshipped fire as a god, and considered it impious to burn a dead body 
(Herodot. iii, 16). Now Herodotus seems to have heard the story, about the 
burning, from Lydian informants (λέγεται ὑπὸ Λυδῶν, Herodot. i, 87). 
whether the Lydians regarded fire in the same point of view as the Per 
sians, we do not know; but even if they did, they would not be indisposed to 
impute to Cyrus an act of gross impiety, just as the Egyptians imputed 
another act equally gross to Kambysés, which Herodotus himself treats as a 
alsehood (iii, 16). 

The long narrative given by Nikolaus Damaskénus of the treatment of 
Croesus by Cyrus, has been supposed by some to have been borrowed from 
the Lydian historian Xanthus, elder contemporary of Herodotus. But it 
seems to me a mere compilation, not well put together, from Xenophon’s 
Cyropzdia, and from the narrative of Herodotus, perhaps including some 


particular incidents out of Xanthus (see Nikol. Damas. Fragm. ed. Orell. pp. _ 


§7-70, and the Fragments of Xanthus in Didot’s Historic. Grecor. Fragm. 


p. 40). 
3 Justin (i, 7) seems to copy Ktésias, about the treatment of Croesus. 


VOL. Iv. 9 1$ec. 


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194 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


humiliating memorials, to ask whether it was his custom to de 
ceive his benefactors, and whether he was not ashamed to have 
encouraged the king of Lydia in an enterprise so disastrous? 
I'he god, condescending to justify himself by the lips of the 
priestess, replied: “Not even a god can escape his destiny 
Croesus has suffered for the sin of his fifth ancestor (Gygés), 
who, conspiring with a woman, slew his master and wrongfully 
seized the sceptre. Apollo employed all his influence with the 
Meer (Fates) to obtain that this sin might be expiated by the 
children of Croesus, and not by Croesus himself; but the Mera 
would grant nothing more than a postponement of the judgment 
for three years. Let Croesus know that Apollo has thus pro- 
cured for him a reign three years longer than his original des 
tiny,! after having tried in vain to rescue him altogether. Mors 
over, he sent that rain which at the critical moment extinguished 
the burning pile. Nor has Croesus any right to complain of the 
prophecy by which he was encouraged to enter on the war ; tor 
when the god told him, that he would subvert a great empire, it 
was his duty to have again inquired which empire the god meant, 
and if he neither understood the meaning, nor chose to ask fos 
information, he has himself to blame for the result. Besides 
Croesus neglected the warning given to him, about the acquisitior 
of the Median kingdom bya mule: Cyrus was that mule, — sor 
of a Median mother of royal breed, by a Persian father, at once 
of different race and of lower position.” 

This triumphant justification extoried even from Croesus him. 
self a full confession, that the sin lay with him, and not with the 
god.? It certainly illustrates, in a remarkable manner, the theo- 
logical ideas of the time; and it shows us how much, in the mijd 


' Herodot. 1,91. Προϑυμεομένου δὲ Λοξίεω ὅπως ἂν κατὰ τοὺς παῖδας τοὺς 
Κροΐσου γένοιτο τὸ Σαρδίων πάϑος, καὶ μὴ κατ᾽ αὐτὸν Κροῖσον, οὐκ οἷόν rs 
ἐγένετο παραγαγεῖν Μοίρας " ὅσον δὲ ἐνέδωκαν αὗται, ἠνύσατο, καὶ ἐχαρισστό 
οἱ " τρία γὰρ ἔτεα ἐπανεβάλετο τὴν Σαρδίων ἅλωσιν. Καὶ τοῦτο ἐπιστάεϑῳ 
Κροῖσος, ὡς ὕστερον τοῖσι ἔτεσι τούτοισι ἁλοὺς τῆς πεπρωμένης. 

* Herodot. i, 91. Ὁ δὲ ἀκούσας συνέγνω ἑωύτοῦ εἶναι τὴν ἁμαρτάδα, καὶ of 
τοῦ ϑεοῦ. 

Xenophon also, in the Cyropedia (vii. 2, 16-25), brings Croesus to the 
same result of confession and hrmiliation, though by steps somewhat dif 
ferent. 


FATE OF CRESUS. 195 


of Herodotus, the facts of the centuries preceding his own, um 
recorded as they were by any contemporary authority, tended to 
cast themselves into a sort of religious drama; the threads of the 
historical web being in part put together, in part originally spun, 
for the purpose of setting forth the religious sentiment and doctrine 
woven in as a pattern. The Pythian priestess predicts to Gygés 
that the crime which he had committed in assassinating his mas- 
ter would be expiated by his fifth descendant, though, as Herod- 
otus tells us, no one took any notice of this prophecy until it 
yas at last fulfilled:'! we see thus that the history of the first 
Mermnad king is made up after the catastrophe of the last. 
There was something in the main facts of the history of Croesus 
profoundly striking to the Greek mind: a king at the summit of 
wealth and power, — pious in the extreme, and munificent towards 
the gods, — the first destroyer of Hellenic liberty in Asia, — then 
precipitated, at once and on a sudden, into the abyss of ruin. 
The sin of the first parent helped much towards the solution of 
this perplexing problem, as well as to exalt the credit of the 
oracle, when made to assume the shape of an unnoticed prophecy. 
In the affecting story (discussed in a former chapter?) of Solon 
and Croesus, the Lydian king is punished with an acute domestic 
affliction, because he thought hnhaself the happiest of mankind, 
— the gods not suffering any one to be arrogant except them- 
selves ; 3 and the warning of Solon is made to recur to Creesus 
after he has become the prisoner of Cyrus, in the narrative οἱ 
Herodotus. To the same vein of thought belongs the story, just 
recounted, of the relations of Croesus with the Delphian oracle. 
An account is provided, satisfactory to the religious feelings of 
the Greeks, how and why he was ruined, — but nothing less than 
the overruling and omnipotent Moere could be invoked to ex- 
plain so stupendous a result. 

It is rarely that these supreme goddesses, or hyper-goddesses — 
since the gods themselves must submit to them—are brought 
into such distinct light and action. Usually, they are kept in the 
dark, or are left to be understood as the unseen stumbling-block 


1 Herodot. i, 13. 
* See above, chap. xi, vol. iii, pp. 149-153. i 
® Herodot. vii, 10. οὐ γὰρ ἐᾷ φρονέειν ἄλλον μέγα ὁ ϑεὸς ἢ ἑωῦτόν 


196 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


m cases of extreme incomprehensibility ; and it is difficult clearly 
to determine (as in the case of some complicated political consti: 
tutions) where the Greeks conceived sovereigt ‘er to reside 
in respect to the government of the world. But Cortes ἫΝ 
eignty of the Mcere, and the subordinate agency of the gods, are 
anequivocally set forth.' Yet the gods are still extremely pow- 


} Ἢ “,μριἱὴνΐω re “+c ὗ » ᾽ ἡ Ν κῶς 
In the oracle reported in Herodot. vii, 141, as delivered by the Pythian 
priestess to Athens on oceasion of the approach of Xerxés, Zeus is repre- 
sented in the same supreme position as the present oracle assigns to the 
Meera . παρα - Pall is me : nou 
Mcers, or Fates: Pallas in vain attempts to propitiate him in favor of 
Athens, just as, in this case, Apollo tries to mitigate the Moere in respect to 
Croesus — 
Οὐ δύναται Παλλὰς Av ᾿Ολύμπιον ἐξιλάσασϑα,, 
Λισσ μένῃ πο; } i F 7. i nT T " 
σσομένη πολλοῖσι λόγοις καὶ μῆτιδι πυκνῇ, ete. 
Compare also viii, 109, and ix, 16. 
Mh Miiller (Dissertation on the Eumenides of Aschylus, υ, ἢ 
Transl.) says: “On no occasion does Zeus Soter exert his influence di 
ae ν᾽ ae ἣν γεν « Views } 
rectly, like Apollo, Minerva, and the Erinnyes; but whereas Apollo is 
prophet and exegetes by virtue of wisdom derived from him, and Minerva 
is indebted to him for her sway over states and assemblies, — nay, the very 
Erinnyes exercise their functions in his name, — this Zeus stands always in 
he hack. ‘ Σ ἢ Ϊ , ip oy 
the background, and has in reality only to settle a conflict existing within 
nit Se ὶ ry ri Ὺ ν᾿ τ᾽ . ἧς " ; ὴ ᾿ ν = 
| n olf For with Aéschylus, as with all men of profound feeling among 
che Greeks from the earliest times. Jupiter is the only real god, in the higher 
sense of the word. Althoug ) is, 7 : spirit of anci fips 
vneidpacgrs ] " ugh he is, in the spirit of ancient theology, a gen- 
id cil μυΐου ai 5 sale 
| hs , arisen out of an impr rfect state of things, and not produced till 
the third stage of a development of nature,—still he is, at the time we 
are speaking of, the spirit that pervades and governs the universe.” 
ry Ι ὶ ᾿ i 
) sor " ΄- " ἢ ' Mm * ᾽ rT 
Ic the same purpose Klausen expresses himself (Theolocumena Eschyli 
pp. 6-69). Δὲ 
: is eg true that many passages may be produced from Greek 
authors which ascribe Zeus » supr ' 
pina eribe to Zeus the supreme power here noted. But it is 
our , - > ‘ sc ava Ὶ +) ᾿ bl 
ually _ that this conception is not uniformly adhered to, and that 
eometimes the Fates, or Meera, : ‘epr | 
é 5. ἢ Ϊ Ὁ. ! e . ΘᾺ ΓΟ ag ὦ "ON + inact 
ee ύσεαξωνο : are repr ented as supreme; occasionally 
° as the stronger and Zeus as the weaker (Prométheus, 515) 
‘The whole tenor of that tragedy. in fi i Nite , 
' hat tragedy. in fact, brings he conce 
etl : ped, in gs out the concepticn of a 
cage β , τ whose power is not supreme, even for the time; and is 
not destined to continue permanently, even at its existing height. The ex 
1. ' ᾿ ' . : a » ‘ " ᾿ Ι ἤϊ ity. q =a 
ἡμασασουν: given by Klausen of this drama appear to me incorrect ; nor do 
understand how it is to ve reconci ri 
conciled with the above passage ; 
e assage quoted fro 
QO. Miiller. ) ' i 
rhe two oracles here cited from Herodotus exhibit plainly the fluctua 
) ᾿ ae ‘ . oa . Py : 
tic n of Greek opinion on this subject: in the one, the supreme determina 
ton, and the inexorability whi ies i 
ton. -inexorability which accompanies it, are ascribe i 
’ ‘ panies it, are ascribed to Zeus, —in 


FATE OF CRESUS. 197 


erful, because the Mere comply with their requests up to a Cer 
tain point, not thinking it proper to be wholly inexorable ; but 
their compliance is carried no farther than they themselves 
choose. Nor would they, even in deference to Apollo, alter 
the original sentence of punishment for the sin of Gygés in the 
person of his fifth descendant,—a sentence, moreover, which 
Apollo himself had formally prophesied shortly after the sin was 
committed ; so that, if the Mcerz had listened to his intercession 
on behalf of Croesus, his own prophetic credit would have been 
endangered. Their unalterable resolution has predetermined the 
ruin of Croesus, and the grandeur of the event is manifested by 
the circumstance, that even Apollo himself cannot prevail upen 
them to alter it, or to grant more than a three years’ respite. 
The religious element must here be viewed as giving the form 
- ἀπὸ historical element as giving the matter only, and not the 
whole matter —of the story; and these two elements will be 
found conjoined more or less throughout most of the history of 
Herodotus, though, as we descend to later times, we shall find the 
historical element in constantly increasing proportion. His con- 
ception of history is extremely different from that of Thucydidés, 
who lays down to himself the true scheme and purpose of the 


the other, to the Mer. This double point of view adapted itself to dif- 
ferent occasions, and served as a help for the interpretation of different 
events. Zeus was supposed to have certain sympathies for human beings; 
misfortunes happened to various men which he not only did not wish to 
bring on, but would have been disposed to avert ; here the Μασ, who had 
no sympathies, were introduced as an explanatory cause, tacitly implied as 
overruling Zeus. “Cum Furiis 7ischylus Parcas tantum non ubique con- 
jungit,” says Klausen (Theol. Asch. p. 39); and this entire absence of hu- 
man sympathies -onstitutes the common point of both, — that in which the 
Ματα and the Erinnyes differ from all the other gods, — πέφρικα τὰν ὠλεσί- 
οικον ϑεὰν, οὐ ϑεοῖς ὁμοίαν (schyl. Sept. ad Theb. 720) : compare Eumenid. 
169, 172, and, indeed, the general strain of that fearful tragedy. 

In Aschylus, as in Herodotus, Apollo is represented as exercising per- 
suasive powers over the Mere (Eumenid 724), — Μοίρας ἔπεισας ἀφϑίτους 
ϑεῖναι βροτούς. 

1 The language of Herodotus deserves attention. Apollo tells Croesus: 
‘I applied to the Mere to get the execution of the judgment postponed 
from your time to that of your children, — but I could not prevail upon 
them ; but as much as they would yield of their own accord, I procured for 
you.” (ὅσον δὲ ἐνέδωκαν αὗται, ἐχτρίσατό ol —i, 91.) 


198 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


een. common to him with the philosopher, — to recount and 
ie the past, as a rational aid towards the prevision of the 
rp 
The destruction of the Lydian monarchy, and the establish 
ment of the Persians at Sardis — an event ‘pregnant with ecuie 
quences to Hellas generally — took place in 5 6 5.0.3 hae aid 
the Ionic Greeks now repent that they had rejected the a ; 
tions made to them by Cyrus for revolting from ἔχον ᾿ oan 
at the time when these propositions Mit , in pi 
; ons were made, it would have 
been highly imprudent to listen to them, since the Lydian rer 
might reasonably be looked upon as the neil he A eae 
Sardis had fallen, they sent envoys to the feraeialee ae Pit μὰ 
that they might be enrolled as his οὐδοιω : j ae 
sutaries, on the footing 
which they had occupied under Creesus. The reply was a ste ἐκ 
and angry refusal, with the exception of the Milacinna. nt wh in 
the terms which they asked were granted : 3 νῶν thats frehtenet 
exception was extended to them, we do not know The οἱ . 
continental Ionians and A€£olians (exclusive of Miletus a : i 
clusive also of the insular cities which the ἐόν had ys 
means of attacking), seized with alarm, began to put tee Mae 


: Thueyd. 1, 2. ‘ 
* This important date depends i 
εὐ ny Si ate depends upon the evidence of Solinus (Polyhistor 
. hs ti Sosikratés (ap. Diog. Laért. i, 95): see Mr. Clinton’s Fasti 
ellen. ad ann. 546, and his Appendix 7, ‘hae i 
ὃ. ὃ us Appendix, ch. 17, u » Lydian kings 
Mr. Clinton and most of the iii ri osteo 
i ost of the chronologists accept the date witl hesi 
tation, but Volney (Recher "Histoi πὲ μὲν 
-" ” “ee y (Recherches surl’Histoire Ancienne, vol. i pp. 306-308 ; 
1ror > we νι: ine " - . ' ἡ ἣν "ἢ ign 
onologie des Ruis Lydiens) rejects it altogether; considering the c: 
ture of Sardis to have occurred in 557 , rat 
be eae ave occurred in 557 B.c., and the reign of Croesus to have 
oyun in 57 0 s treats very ae ad Ἡ 
μεν : = l B.C. He treats very contemptuously the authority of Solinus 
ἃ Sosikratés, : as an elabor: ti aa 
=. : ΜᾺ and has an elaborate argumentation to prove that the date 
1.10 > t . . Ἶ » ᾿ a 
ch he adopts is borne out by Herodotus. This latter does not appear 
0 mea ἊΨ Ἄν ΒΘ, wie @ , ee 
ac at all satisfac tory: I adopt the date of Solinus and Sosikratés 
por tidy eing with Volney that such positive authority is not very eon 
i era 2 var “ta > » ie Ἵ i ; | | : 
— = pecause there is nothing to contradict them, and because the date 
| sheep sich ore Sc . ie 
" hn give seems im consonance with the stream of the history 
olney’s arguments suppose i Ὶ ἄμωμα ὦ 
ΟἸΠΕΥ͂ 5 arguments stppose in the mind of Herodotus a degree of ch 
rlogical precision altogethe i th an sie 
Ἂν altogether unreasonable, in reference to events anterior 
con 4 Ὕ ἐν = ; 
νεῖ si ονήρ records. He, like other chronologists, exhausts his inge- 
ui Vv - . ᾿ * . ν᾿ τ = 
uity to find a proper point of historical time for the supposed conversa 
tion between Solon and Croesus (p. 320) 
? Herodot i, 141. 


ASIATIC GREEKS ATIACKED BY CYRUS. 199 


m a condition of defence: it seems that the Lydian king had 
caused their fortifications to be wholly or partially dismantled, 
for we are told that they now began to erect walls ; and the 
Phokans especially devoted to that purpose a present which 
they had received from the Iberian Arganthénius, king of Tar- 
tassus. Besides thus strengthening their own cities, they 
thought it advisable to send a joint embassy entreating aid 
from Sparta; they doubtless were not unapprized that the Spar- 
tans had actually equipped an army for the support of Croesus. 
Their deputies went to Sparta, where the Phékean Pythermus, 
spokesman, clothing himself in a 


appointed by the rest to be 
-act the largest audience possible, 


purple robe,' in order to att 
se forth their pressing need of succor against the impending 
danger. The Lacedemonians refused the prayer; nevertheless, 
they despatched to Phékea some commissioners to investigate 
the state of affairs, — who perhaps, persuaded by the Phékzans, 
sent Lakrinés, one of their number, to the conqueror at Sardis, 
to warn him that he should not lay hands on any city of Hellas, 
—for the Lacedsemonians would not permit it. “ Who are these 
Lacedxmonians ? (inquired Cyrus from some Greeks who stood 
near him) — lfow many are there of them, that they venture ta 
send me such a notice?” Having received the answer, whereir 
it was stated that the Lacedzmonians had a city and a regular 
market at Sparta, he exclaimed: “I have never yet beer 
afraid of men like these, who have a set place in the middle of 
their city, where they meet to cheat one another and forsweat 
themselves. If I live, they shall have troubles of their own to 
talk about, apart from the Jonians.” To buy or sell, appeared 
to the Persians a contemptible practice; for they carried out 
consistently, one step farther, the principle upon which even 
many able Greeks condemned the lending of money on interest ; 
and the speech of Cyrus was intended as a covert reproach of 
Grecian habits generally.? 

This blank menace of Lakrinés, an insulting provocation ta 


1 Herodot. i, 152. The purple garment, so attractive a spectacle amid 
ing universal at Sparta, marks the contrast between Asiatic 


the plain cloth 
ana European Greece. 
ἄντας Ἕλληνας ἀπέῤῥιψε ὁ Κῦρος τὸ 


3 Herodot. i, 153. ταῦτα ἐς τοὺς πᾶ 
ἔπεα, etc. 


900 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the enemy rather than a real support to the distressed, was the 
only benefit which the Ionic Greeks derived from Sparta. 'They 
were left to defend themselves as best they could against the 
conqueror ; who presently, however, quitted Sardis to prosecute 
in person his conquests ir. the East, leaving the Persian Tabalus 
with a garrison in the citadel, but consigning both the large 
treasure captured, and the authority over the Lydian population, 
to the Lydian Paktyas. As he carried away Creesus along with 
him, he probably considered himself sure of the fidelity of those 
Lydians whom the deposed monarch recommended. gut he 
had not yet arrived at his own capital, when he received the 
intelligence that Paktyas had revolted, arming the Lydian popu- 
lation, and employing the treasure in his charge to hire fresh 
troops. On hearing this news, Cyrus addressed himself to 
Creesus, according to Herodotus, in terms of much wrath against 
the Lydians, and even intimated that he should be compelled to 
sell them all as slaves. Upon which Creesus, full of alarm for 
his people, contended strenuously that Paktyas alone was in 
fault, and deserving of punishment; but he a’ the same time 
alvised Cyrus to disarm the Lydian population, ar to enforce 
upon them effeminate attire, together with ba~‘ts if playing on 
the harp and shopkeeping. “ By this process jh¢ said) you will 
soon see them become women instead of men.”1 This sugges- 
tion is said to have been accepted by Cyrus, and executed ‘nigh 
general Mazarés. The conversation here reported, and the 
νρρροδβνμήν = με enervating the Lydian character supposed to 
6 pursued by Cyrus, is evidently an hypothesis imagined | 
some of the contemporaries or i acdsee of thse agli 
explain the contrast between the Lydians whom they saw before 
them, after two or three generations of slavery, and the old irre- 
sistible horsemen of whom they heard in fame, at the time when 
Creesus was lord from the Halys to the /Egean sea. 

| To return to Paktyas, — he had commenced his revolt, come 
down to the sea-coast, and employed the treasures of Sardis in 
levying a Grecian mercenary force, with which he invested the 
place and blocked up the governor Tabalus. But he manifested 
ho courage worthy of so dangerous an enterprise ; for no sooner 


' Herodot. i, 155. 


SUrvPRESSED BY A PERSIAN ARMY. 201 


had he heard that ihe Median general Mazarés was approaching 
at the head of an army dispatched by Cyrus against him, thar 
he disbanded his force and fled to Kymé for protection as a sup- 
Presently, arrived a menacing summons from Mazarés, 


pliant. 
demanding that he should be given up forthwith, which plunged 


the Kymezans into profound dismay ; for the idea of giving up 
a suppliant to destruction was shocking to Grecian sentiment. 
They sent to solicit advice from the holy temple of Apollo, at 
Branchidw near Milétus; and the reply directed, that Paktyas 
should be surrendered. Nevertheless, so ignominious did such 
a surrender appear, that Aristodikus and some other Kymzan 
citizens denounced the messengers as liars, and required that a 
more trustworthy deputation should be sent to consult the god. 
Aristodikus himself, forming one of the second body, stated the 
perplexity to the oracle, and received a repetition of the same 
answer ; whereupon he proceeded to rob the birds’-nests which 
existed in abundance in and about the temple. A voice from 
the inner oracular chamber speedily arrested him, exclaiming: 
“Most impious of men, how darest thou to do such things? Wilt 
thou snatch my suppliants from the temple itself?” Unabashed 
by the rebuke, Aristodikus replied: “Master, thus dost thou 
help suppliants thyself: and dost thou command the Kymans 
to give up a suppliant?” “ Yes, I do command it! (rejoined 
the god forthwith), in order that the crime may bring destruction 
upon you the sooner, and that you may not in future come to 
consult the oracle upon the surrender of suppliants.” 

The ingenuity of Aristodikus completely nullified the oracular 
response, and left the Kymaans in their original perplexity. 
Not choosing to surrender Paktyas, nor daring to protect him 
against a besieging army, they sent him away to Mityleéne, 
whither the envoys of Mazarés followed and demanded him ; 
offering a reward so considerable, that the Kymzans became 
fearful of trusting them, and again conveyed away the supplant 
to Chios, where he took refuge in the temple of Athéné Po- 
liuchus. But here again the pursuers followed, and the Chians 
were persuaded to drag him from the temple and surrender him, 
on consideration of receiving the territory of Atarneus (& dis 


“5.- 


1 Herodot. i, 159. 
.Ὲ 


202 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


trict on the continent over against the island of Lesbos) as pur. 
chase-money. Paktyas was thus seized and sent prisoner to 
Cyrus, who had given the most express orders for this capture : 
hence the unusual intensity of the pursuit. But it appears that 
the territory of Atarneus was considered as having been igno- 
miniously acquired by the Chians; none even of their own 
sitizens would employ any article of its produce for holy or 
sacrificial purposes.! 

Mazarés next proceeded to the attack and conquest of the 
Greeks on the coast ; an enterprise which, since he soon died of 
illness, was completed by his successor Harpagus. The towns 
assailed successively made a gpilant but ineffectual resistance: 
‘Le Persian general by his wumbers drove the defenders within 
their walls, against which Ix piled up mounds of earth, so as 
either to carry the place by storm or to compel surrender. All 
of them were reduced, one after the other: with all, the terms of 
subjection were doubtless harder than those which had been im- 
posed upon them by Croesus, because Cyrus had already refused 
to grant these terms to them, with the single exception of Milé- 
tus, and because they had since given additional offence by aid- 
ing the revolt of Paktyas. The inhabitants of Priéné were sold 
into slavery: they were the first assailed by Mazarés, and had 
perhaps been especially forward in the attack made by Paktyas 
on Sardis.? 

Among these unfortunate towns, thus changing their master 
and passing out into a harsher subjection, two deserve especial 


notice, — Teds and Phodkeza. The citizens of the former, so soon 


' Herodot. i, 160. The short fragment from Charon of Lampsakus, 
which Plutarch (De Malignitat. Herod. p. 859) cites here, in support of one 
among his many unjust censures on Herodotus, is noway inconsistent with 
the statement of the latter, but rather tends to confirm it. 

In writing this treatise on the alleged ill-temper of Herodotus, we see 
that Plutarch had before him the history of Charén of Lampsakus, more 
ancient by one generation than the historian whom he was assailing, and 
also belonging to Asiatic Greece. Of course, it suited the purpose of his 
work to produce all the contradictions to Herodotus which he could find in 
Char6én: the fact that he has produced none of any moment, tends to 
strengthen our faith in the historian of Halikarnassus, and to show that in 
the main his narrative was in accordance with that of Charon. 

4 Herodot. i, 161-169. 


CONQUEST OF PHOKZEA. 203 


as the mound around their walls had rendered farther resistances 
impossible, embarked and emigrated, some to Thrace, where they 
founded Abdéra, — others to the Cimmerian Bosphorus, where 
they planted Phanagoria; a portion of them, however, must have 
remained to take the chances of subjection, since the town 
appears in after-times still peopled and still Hellenic.! 

The fate of Phékea, similar in the main, is given to us with 
more striking circumstances of detail, and becomes the more in- 
teresting, since the enterprising mariners who inhabited it had 
been the torch-bearers of Grecian geographical discovery in the 
west. I have already described their adventurous exploring voy- 
ages of former days into the interior of the Adriatic, and along 
the whole northern and western coasts of the Mediterranean as 
far as Tartéssus (the region around and adjoining to Cadiz), — 
together with the favorable reception given to them by old 
Arganthénius, king of the country, who invited them to emigrate 
in a body to his kingdom, offering them the choice of any site 
which they might desire. His invitation was declined, though 
probably the Phdékwans may have subsequently regretted the 
refusal; and he then manifested his good-will towards them by a 
large present to defray the expense of constructing fortifications 
round their town.2 The walls, erected in part, by this aid, were 


' Herodot. i, 168; Skymnus Chius, Fragm. v, 153; Dionys. Perieg. v, 
553. 

3 Herodot. i, 163. Ὁ δὲ πυϑόμενος παρ᾽ αὐτῶν τὸν Μῆδον ὡς αὔξοιτο, ἐδίδου 
σφι χρήματα τεῖχος περιβαλέσϑαι τὴν πόλιν. 

I do not understand why the commentators debate what or who is meant 
by τὸν Μῆδον: it plainly means the Median or Persian power generally: 
but the chronological difficulty is a real one, if we are to suppose that 
there was time between the first alarm conceived of the Median power of 
the Ionians, and the siege of Phokxa by Harpagus, to inform Arganthd 
nius of the circumstances, and to procure from him this large aid as well as 
to build the fortifications. The Ionic Greeks neither actually did conceive, 
nor had reason to conceive, any alarm respecting Persian power, until the 
arrival of Cyrus before Sardis; and within a month from that time Sardis 
was in his possession. If we are to suppose communication with Argan- 
thénius, grounded upon this circumstance, at the distance of Tartéssus, and 
under the circumstances of ancient navigation, we must necessarily imagine, 
also, that the attack made by Harpagus upon Phékwxa— which city he 
assailed before any of the rest— was postponed for at least two or three 
years. Such postponement is not wholly impossible, yet it is not in the 


904 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


both extensive and well built ; yet they could not hinder Harp» 
gus from raising his mounds of earth up against them, while he 
was politic enough at the same time to tempt them with offers of 
a moderate capitulation ; requiring only that they should breach 
their walls in one place by pulling down one of the towers, and 
consecrate one building in the interior of the town as a token of 
subjection. Τὸ accept these terms, was to submit themselves to 
the discretion of the besieger, for there could be no security that 
they would be observed ; and the Phokwans, while they asked for 
one day to deliberate upon their reply, entreated that, during that 
day, Harpagus should withdraw his troops altogether from the 
walls. With this demand the latter complied, intimating, at the 
same time, that he saw clearly through the meaning of it. The 
Phokzans had determined that the inevitable servitude impend- 
ing over their town should not be shared by its inhabitants, and 
they employed their day of grace in preparation for collective 
exile, putting on shipboard their wives and children as well as 
their furniture and the movable decorations of their temples. 
They then set sail for Chios, leaving to the conqueror a deserted 
town for the occupation of a Persian garrison.! 


spirit of the Herodotean narrative, nor do I think it likely. It is much 
more probable that the informants of Herodotus made a slip in chronology, 
and aseribed the donations of Arganthénius to a motive which did not 


really dictate them. 

As to the fortifications (which Phékaa and the other lonic cities are 
reported to have erected after the conquest of Sardis by the Persians), the 
case may stand thus. While these cities were all independent, before they 
were first conquered by Croesus, they must undoubtedly have had fortitica- 
tions. When Croesus conquered them, he directed the demolition of the 
fortifications ; but demolition does not necessarily mean pulling down the 
entire walls: when one or a few breaches are made, the city is laid open, 
and the purpose of Creesus would thus be answered. Such may well have 
heen the state of the Tonian cities at the time when they first thought it 
neceasary to provide defences against the Persians at Sardis: they repaired 
and perfected the breached fortitications. 

The conjecture of Larcher (see the Notes both of Larcher and Wessel- 
ing), — τὸν Λυδὸν instead of τὸν Mjdov, — is not an unreasonable one, if it 
had any authority: the donation of Arganthonius would then be transferred 
to the period anterior to the Lydian conquest: it would get rid of the 
chronological difficulty above adverted to, but it would introduce some 
new awkwardness into the narrative. 

! Herodot. i, 164. 


EMIGRATION OF THE PHOKZANS. 205 


[t appears that the fugitives were not very kindly received δὲ 
Chios; at least, when they made a proposition for purchasing from 
the Chians the neighboring islands of CGinusse as a permanent 
abode, the latter were induced to refuse by apprehensions of com- 
mercial rivalry. It was necessary to look farther for a settlement: 
and Arganthdnius their protector, being now dead, ‘Tartéssus was 
no longer inviting. ‘Twenty years before, however, the colony 
ef Alalia in the island of Corsica had been founded from Phd- 
Καὶ by the direction of the oracle, and thither the general body 
of Phékwans now resolved to repair. Having prepared their 
ships for this distant voyage, they first sailed back to Phékea 
surprised the Persian garrison whom Harpagus had left in the 
town, and slew them: they then sunk in the harbor a great lump 
of iron, and bound themselves by a solemn and unanimous oath 
never again to see Phokza until that iron should come up to the 
surface. Nevertheless, in spite of the oath, the voyage of exile 
had been scarcely begun when more than half of them repented 
of having so bound themselves, — and became homesick.! They 
broke their vow and returned to Phokea. But as Herodotus 
does not mention any divine judgment as having been consequent 
on the perjury, we may, perhaps, suspect that some gray-headed 
citizen, to whom transportation to Corsica might be little less 
than a sentence of death, both persuaded himself, and certified to 
his companions, that he had seen the sunken lump of iron 
raised up and floating for a while buoyant upon the waves. Har- 
pagus must have been induced to pardon the previous slaughter 
of his Persian garrison, or at least to believe that it had been 
done by those Phékzans who still persisted in exile. He wanted 
tribute-paying subjects, not an empty military post, and the re- 
pentant home-seekers were allowed to number themselves among 
the slaves of the Great King. 

Meanwhile the smaller but more resolute half of the Phé- 
keans executed their voyage to Alalia in Corsica, with their 


— 


1 Herodot. i, 165. ὑπερημίσεας τῶν ἀστῶν ἔλαβε πόϑος τε καὶ οἶκτος τῆς 
πόλιος καὶ τὼν ἠϑέων τῆς χώρης " ψευδόρκιοξ τε γενόμενοι, etc. The collo- 
quial term which I have ventured to place in the text expresses exactly, as 
well as briefly, the meaning of the historian. A public oath, taken by most 
of the Greek cities with similar ceremony of lumps of iron thrown into the 
sea, is mentioned in Plutarch, Aristid. ο. 25. 


206 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


wives and children, in sixty pentekontérs, or armed ships, and 
established themselves along with the previous settlers. Thay 
remained there for five years,! during which time their indiscrim 
inate piracies had become so intolerable (even at that time, 
piracy committed against a foreign vessel seems to have been 
both frequent and practised without much disrepute), that both 
the Tyrrhenian seaports along the Mediterranean coast of Italy, 
and the Carthaginians, united to put them down. There sub- 
sisted particular treaties between these two, for the regulation of 
the commercial intercourse between Africa and Italy, of which 
the ancient treaty preserved by Polybius between Rome and 
Carthage (made in 509 B.c.) may be considered as a specimen.? 
Sixty Carthaginian and as many Tuscan ships attacked the sixty 
Phékzan ships near Alalia, and destroyed forty of them, yet not 
without such severe loss to themselves that the victory was said 
to be on the side of the latter; who, however, in spite of this 
Kadmeian victory (so a battle was denominated in which the vic- 
tors lost more than the vanquished), were compelled to carry 
back their remaining twenty vessels to Alalia, and to retire with 
their wives and families, in so far as room could be found for 
them, to Rhegium. At last, these unhappy exiles found a perma- 
nent home by establishing the new settlement of Elea, or Velia, 
in the gulf of Policastro, on the Italian coast (then called (Επὸ- 
trian) southward from Poseidénia, or Pxstum. It is probable 
that they were here joined by other exiles from Ionia, in partic- 
ular by the Kolophonian philosopher and poet Xenophanés, from 
whom what was afterwards called the Eleatic school of philosophy, 
distinguished both for bold consistency and dialectic acuteness, 
took its rise. The Phokean captives, taken prisoners in the 
naval combat by Tyrrhenians and Carthaginians, were stoned to 
death; but a divine judgment overtook the Tyrrhenian town of 
Agylla, in consequence of this cruelty ; and even in the time of 
Herodotus, a century afterwards, the Agylleans were still expi- 
ating the sin by a periodical solemnity and agon, pursuant to the 
penalty which the Delphian oracle had imposed upon them. 
Such was the fate of the Phokwxan exiles, while their brethren 


* Herodot. i, 166. ® Aristot. Polit. iii, 5, 11; Polyb. iii, 22. 
© Herodot. i, 167. 


ASIATIC GREEKS UNDER THE PERSIANS. 21 


at home remained as subjects of Harpagus, in common with all 
the other Ionic and Molic Greeks except Milétus. For even 
the insular inhabitants of Lesbos and Chios, though not assaila- 
ble by sea, since the Persians had no fleet, thought it better to 
renounce their independence and enrol themselves as Persian 
subjects, — both of them possessing strips of the mainland which 
they were unable to protect otherwise. Samos, on the other 
hand, maintained its independence, and even reached, shortly 
after this period, under the despotism of Polykratés, a higher 
degree of power than ever. Perhaps the humiliation of the 
other maritime Greeks around may have rather favored the 
ambition of this unscrupulous prince, to whom I shall revert 
presently. But we may readily conceive that the public solemni- 
ties in which the Ionic Greeks intermingled, in place of those gay 
and richly-decked crowds which the Homeric hymn describes in 
the preceding century as assembled at Delos, presented scenes of 
marked despondency: one of their wisest men, indeed, Bias of 
Priéné, went so far as to propose, at the Pan-Ionic festival, a 
collective emigration of the entire population of the Ionic towns 
to the island of Sardinia. Nothing like freedom, he urged, wat 
now open to them in Asia; but in Sardinia, one great Pan-lonic 
city might be formed, which would not only be free herself, but 
mistress of her neighbors. The proposition found no favor; the 
reason of which is sufficiently evident from the narrative just 
given respecting the unconquerable local attachment on the part 
of the Phokean majority. But Herodotus bestows upon it the 
most unqualified commendation, and regrets that it was not acted 
upon.! Had such been the case, the subsequent history of 
Carthage, Sicily, and even Rome, might have been sensibly 
nitered. 

Thus subdued by Harpagus, the Ionic and Aolic Greeks were 
employed as auxiliaries to him in the conquest of the south- 
western inhabitants of Asia Minor, — Karians, Kaunians, Ly- 
kians, and Doric Greeks of Knidus and Halikarnassus. Of the 
fate of the latter town, Herodotus tells us nothing, though it was 


1 Heredot. i, 170. Πυνϑάνομαι γνώμην Βίαντα ἄνδρα Πριηνέα ἀποδέξασ. 
ϑαι "ἴωσι χρησιμωτάτην, τῇ εἰ ἐπεέϑοντο, παρεῖχε ἂν σφι εὐδαιμονέειν ‘EA 


ver οὐλιστα. 


208 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


his native place. The inhabitants of Knidus, a place situated on 
a long outlying tongue of land, at first tried to cut through the 
narrow isthmus which joined them to the continent, but aban- 
doned the attempt with a facility which Herodotus explains by 
referring it to a prohibition of the oracle:! nor did either the 
Karians or the Kaunians offer any serious resistance. The 
Lykians only, in their chief town Xanthus, made a desperate 
defence. Having in vain tried to repel the assailants in the 
open field, and finding themselves blocked up in their city, they 
set fire to it with their own hands; consuming in the flames their 
women, children, and servants, while the armed citizens marched 


out and perished to a man in combat with the enemy.2. Such an 


act of brave and even ferocious despair is not in the Grecian 
character. In recounting, however, the languid defence and 
easy submission of the Greeks of Knidus, it may surprise us to 
call to mind that they were Dorians and colonists from Sparta. 
So that the want of steadfast courage, often imputed to Ionic 
Greeks as compared to Dorian, ought properly to be charged on 
Asiatic Greeks as compared with European ; or rather upon that 
mixture of indigenous with Hellenic population, which all the 
Asiatic colonies, in common with most of the other colonies, 
presented, and which in Halikarnassus was particularly remark 
able ; for it seems to have been half Karian, half Dorian, and 
was even governed by a line of Karian despots. 

Harpagus and the Persians thus mastered, without any con- 
siderable resistance, the western and southern portions of Asia 
Minor; probably, also, though we have no direct account of it, 
the entire territory within the Halys which had before been 
ruled by Croesus. ‘The tributes of the conquered Greeks were 
transmitted to Ekbatana instead of to Sardis. While Harpagus 
was thus employed, Cyrus himself had been making still more 
extensive conquests in Upper Asia and Assyria, of which I shall 
apeak in the coming chapter. 


" Herodot. i, 174. 

* Herodot. i, 176. The whole population of Xanttus perished, except 
eighty families accidentally absent: the subsequent occupants of the town 
were recruited from strangers. Nearly five centuries afterwards, their 
descendants in the same city slew themselves in the like desperate and 
tragical manner, to avoid surrendering to the Roman army; under Marcus 
Brutus (Plutarch, Brutus, c. 31). 


GROWTH wf THE PERSIAN EMPIRE 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 
GROWIH OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. 


In the preceding chapter an account has been given, the best 
which we can pick out from Herodotus, of the steps by which 
the Asiatic Greeks became subject to Persia. And if his narra- 
tive is meagre, on a matter which vitally concerned not only so 
many of his brother Greeks, but even his own native city, we 
can hardly expect that he should tell us much respecting the 
other conquests of Cyrus. He seems to withhold intentionally 
various details which had come to his knowledge, and merely 
intimates in general terms that while Harpagus was engaged on 
the coast of the Aigean, Cyrus himself assailed and subdued all 
the nations of Upper Asia, “not omitting any one of them.”! 
He alludes to the Baktrians and the Sake,2 who are also named 
by Ktésias as having become subject partly by force, partly by 
capitulation; but he deems only two of the exploits of Cyrus 
worthy of special notice, —the conquest of Babylon, and the 
final expedition against the Massagete. In the short abstract 
which we now possess of the lost work of Ktésias, no mention 
appears of the important conquest of Babylon; but his narra- 
tive, as far as the abstract enables us to follow it, diverges 
materially from that of Herodotus, and must have been founded 
on data altogether different. 

“J shall mention (says Herodotus)3 those conquests which 
gave Cyrus most trouble, and are most memorable: after he had 
subdued all the rest of the continent, he attacked the Assyrians.” 
Those who recollect the description of Babylon and its surround- 
ing territory, as given in a former chapter, will not be surprised 
to learn that the capture of it gave the Persian aggressor much 
troubl2: their only surprise will be, how it could ever have been 


1 Herodot. i, 177. * Herodot. i, 153. 
3 - ae “΄ ΄ , - Me » [. 
Herodot. i, 177. τὰ δέ οἱ πάρεσχε πόνον τε πλεῖστον, καὶ ἀξιαπηγη orata 
ἐστι, τούτων ἐπιωνῆσομαι. 


VOL. TV. 1 40c. 


210 HISTORY OF GREECHE. 


taken at all, — or, indeed, how a hostile army could have even 
reached it. Herodotus informs us that the Babylonian queen 
Nitékris — mother of that very Labynétus who was king when 
Cyrus attacked the place —had been apprehensive of invasion 
from the Medes after their capture of Nineveh, and had executed 
many itaborious works near the Euphratés for the purpose of 
cbstructing their approach. Moreover, there existed what was 
valled the wall of Media (probably built by her, but certainly 
built prior to the Persian conquest), one hundred feet high and 
twenty feet thick,’ across the entire space of seventy-five miles 
which joined the Tigris with one of the canals of the Euphratés. 
And the canals themselves, as we may see by the march of 
the Ten Thousand Greeks after the battle of Kunaxa, pre- 
sented means of defence altogether insuperable by a rude army 
such as that of the Persians. On the east, the territory of 
Babylonia was defended by the Tigris, which cannot be forded 


' See Xenophon, Anabas. i, 7,15; ii, 4,12. For the inextricable diffieul- 
ties in which the Ten Thousand Greeks were involved, after the battle of 
Kunaxa, and the insurmountable obstacles which impeded their march, 
assuming any resisting force whatever, see Xenoph. Anab. ii, 1, 11; ii, 2, 
3; ii, 3, 10; ii, 4, 12-13. These obstacles, doubtless, served as a protection 
to them against attack, not less than as an impediment to their advance; 
and the well-supplied villages enabled them to obtain plenty of provisions: 
hence the anxiety of the Great King to help them across the Tigris out of 
Babylonia. But it is not easy to see how, in the face of such difficulties, 
any invading army could reach Babylon. 

Ritter represents the wall of Media as having reached across from the 
Euphratés to the Tigris at the point where they come nearest together, 
about two hundred stadia or twenty-five miles across. But it is nowhere 
stated, so far as I can find, that this wall reached to the Euphratés, — still 
less that its length was two hundred stadia, for the passages of Strabo 
eited by Ritter lo not prove either point (ii, 80; xi, 529). And Xenophon 
(ii, 4, 12) gives the length of the wall as I have stated it in the text, = 20 
parasangs = 600 stadia = 75 miles. 

The passage of the Anabasis (i, 7, 15) seems to connect the Median wall 
with the canals, and not with the river Euphratés. The narrative of 
Herodotus, as I have remarked in a former chapter. leads us to suppose that 
he descended that river to Babylon; and if we suppose that the wall did 
not reach the Euphratés, this would afford some reason whr he makes no 
mention of it See Ritter, West Asien, b iii, Abtheilung iii, Abschn. i, 
sect 29, pp. 19-22. 


PERSIAN APPROACH TO BABYLON. 911 


lower than the ancient Nineveh or the modern Mosul.! In addi- 
tion to these ramparts, natural as well as artificial, to protect the 
territory, — populous, cultivated, productive, and offering every 
motive to its inhabitants to resist even the entrance of an enemy, 
— we are told that the Babylonians were so thoroughly prepared 
for the inroad of Cyrus that they had accumulated a store of 
provisions within the city walls for many years. 

Strange as it may seem, we must suppose that the king of 
Babylon, after all the cost and labor spent jn providing defences 
for the territory, voluntarily neglected to avail himself of them, 
suffered the invader to tread down the fertile Babylonia without 
resistance, and merely drew out the citizens to oppose him when 
he arrived under the walls of the city,—if the statement of 
Herodotus is correct.2, And we may illustrate this unaccountable 
omission by that which we know to have happened in the march 
of the younger Cyrus to Kunaxa against his brother Artaxerxés 
Mnémon. The latter had caused to be dug, expressly in prepar- 
ation for this invasion, a broad and deep ditch, thirty feet wide 
and eight feet deep, from the wall of Media to the river Euphra- 
tés, a distance of twelve parasangs, or forty-five English miles, 
leaving only a passage of twenty feet broad close alongside of 
the river. Yet when the invading army arrived at this impor- 
tant pass, they found not a man there to defend it, and all of them 
marched without resistance through the narrow inlet. Cyrus the 
younger, who had up to that moment felt assured that his brother 
would fight, now supposed that he had given up the idea of 
defending Babylon:* instead of which, two days afterwards, 


1'O Τίγρης μέγας τε καὶ οὐδαμοῦ διαβατὸς ἔς te ἐπὶ τὴν ἐκβολὴν (Αὐτίδῃ, 
vii, 7,7). By which he means, that it is not fordable below the ancient 
Nineveh, or Mosul; for a little above that spot, Alexander himself forded 
it with his army, a few days before the battle of Arbéla — not without very 
great difficulty (Arrian, iii, 7, 8; Diodor. xvii, 55). 

2 Herodot. i, 190. ἐπεὶ δὲ ἐγένετο ἐλαύνων ἀγχοῦ τῆς πόλιος, συνέβαλόν τε 
οἱ Βαβυλώνιοι, καὶ ἐσσωϑέντες τῇ μάχῃ, κατειλήϑησαν ἐς τὸ ἄστυ. 

Just as if Babylon was as easy to be approached as ϑδγάϊβ, --- οἷά τε 
ἐπιστάμενοι ἔτι πρότερον τὸν Κῦρον οὐκ ἀτρεμίζοντα, ἀλλ᾽ ὁρέοντες αὑτὸν 
παντὶ ὁμοίως ἔϑνεϊ ἐπιχειρέοντα, προεσάξαντο σίτια ἐτέων κάρτα πολλῶν. 

3 Xenophon, Anabas. i, 7, 14-20; Diodor. xiv, 22; Plutarch, Artaxerxés, 
e. 7. I follow Xenophon without hesitation, where he differs from these 


two latter 


919 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Artaxerxés attacked him on an open plain of ground, whore 
there was no advantage of position on either side ; though the 
invaders were taken rather unawares in consequence of their 
extreme confidence, arising from recent unopposed entrance 
within the artificial ditch. 

This anecdote is the more valuable as an illustration, because 
all its circumstances are transmitted to us by a discerning eye- 
witness. And both the two incidents here brought into compari- 
son demonstrate the, recklessness, changefulness, and incapacity 
of calculation, belonging to the Asiatic mind of that day, — as 
well as the great command of hands possessed by these kings, 
and their prodigal waste of human labor. We shall see, as we 
advance in this history, farther evidences of the same attributes, 
which it is essential to bear in mind, for the purpose of appre- 
ciating both Grecian dealing with Asiatics, and the comparative 
absence of such defects in the Grecian character. Vast walls 
and deep ditches are an inestimable aid to a brave and well com- 
manded garrison; but they cannot be made entirely to supply 
the want of bravery and intelligence. 

In whatever manner the difficulties of approaching Babylon 
may have been overcome, the fact that they were overcome by 
Cyrus is certain. On first setting out for this conquest, he was 
about to cross the river Gyndés (one of the affluents from the 
East which joins the Tigris near the modern Bagdad, and along 
which lay the high road crossing the pass of Mount Zagros from 
Babylon to Ekbatana), when one of the sacred white horses, 
which accompanied him, insulted the river® so far as to march in 


and try to cross it by himself. The Gyndés resented this insult, 
and the horse was drowned: upon which Cyrus swore in his 
wrath that he would so break the strength of the river as that 
women in future should pass it without wetting their knees. 
Accordingly, he employed his entire army, during the whole 
eummer season, in digging three hundred and sixty artificial 
crannels to disseminate the unity of the stream. Such, accord- 


' Xenophon, Cyroped. ili, 3, 26, about the πολυχεὶρ α of the barbariz 
kings. 

3 Herodot. 189-202. ἐνθαῦτά οἱ τῶν τις ἱρῶν ἵππων τῶν λευκῶν ὑπὸ HSpro¢ 
ἰσβὰς ἐς τὸν πόταμον, διαβαίνειν ἐπειρᾶτο Κάρτα τε ἐχαλέπαινε τῷ 
rsrauy ὁ Κῦρος τοῦτο ὑβρίσαντι, etc. 

Vou. 4 G 


CYRUS ATTACKS BABYLON. 213 


ing to Herodotus, was the incident which postponed for one year 
the fall of the great Babylon; but in the next spring Cyrus and 
his army were before the walls, after having defeated and driven 
in the population who came out to fight. But the walls were 
artificial mountains (three hundred feet high, seventy-five feet 
thick, and forming a square of fifteen miles to each side), within 
which the besieged defied attack, and even blockade, having 
previously stored up several years’ provision. Through the 
midst of these walls, however, flowed the Luphratés; and this 
river, which had been so laboriously “trained to serve for pro- 
tection, trade, and sustenance to the Babylonians, was now made 
the avenue of their ruin. Having left a detachment of his army 
at the two points where the Euphratés enters and quits the city, 
Cyrus retired with the remainder to the higher part of its course, 
where an ancient Babylonian queen had prepared one of the 
great lateral reservoirs for carrying off in case of need the 
superfluity of its water. Near this point Cyrus caused another 
reservoir and another canal of communication to be dug, by 
means of which he drew off the water of the Euphratés to such 
a degree that it became not above the height of a man’s thigh. 
The period chosen was that of a great Babylonian festival, when 
the whole population were engaged in amusement and revelry; 
and the Persian troops left near the town, watching their oppor- 
tunity, entered from both sides along the bed of the river, and 
took it by surprise with scarcely any resistance. At no other 
time, except during a festival, could they have done this, says 
Herodotus, had the river been ever so low; for both banks 
throughout the whole length of the town were provided with 
quays, with continuous walls, and with gates at the end of every 
street which led down to the river at right angles: so that if the 
population had not been disqualified by the influences of the 
moment, they would have caught the assailants in the bed of the 
river “as a trap,” and overwhelmed them from the walls along- 
side. Within a square of fifteen miles to each side, we are not 
surprised to hear that both the extremities weve already in the 
power of the besiegers before the central population heard of it, 
and while they were yet absorbed in unconscious festivity. 


’ Herodot. i, 191 This latter portion of the story, if we may judge from 


g14 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Such is the account given by Herodotus of the circumstances 
which placed Babylon —the greatest city of western Asia — in 


the power of the Persians. To what extent the information 
communicated to him was incorrect, or exaggerated, we cannot 
now decide; but the way in which the city was treated would 
lead us to suppose that its acquisition cannot have cost the con- 
queror either much time or much loss. Cyrus comes into the 
list as king of Babylon, and the inhabitants with their whole ter- 
ritory become tributary to the Persians, forming the richest 
satrapy in the empire; but we do not hear that the people were 
ctherwise ill-used, and it is certain that the vast walls and gates 
were left untouched. This was very different from the way in 
which the Medes had treated Nineveh, which seems to have 
been ruined and for a long time absolutely uninhabited, though 
reoccupied on a reduced scale under the Parthian empire; and 
very different also from the way in which Babylon itself was 
treated twenty years afterwards by Darius, when reconquered 
after a revolt. 


the expression of Herodotus, seems to excite more doubt in his mind than 
all the rest, for he thinks it necessary to add, “as the residents at Babylon 
say,” ὡς λέγεται ὑπὸ τῶν ταύτῃ οἰκημένων. Yet if we assume the size of 
the place to be what he has affirmed, there seems nothing remarkable in the 
fact that the people in the centre did not at once hear of the capture; for 
the first business of the assailants would be to possess themselves of the 
walls and gates. It is a lively illustration of prodigious magnitude, and as 
such it is given by Aristotle (Polit. iii, 1, 12); who, however, exaggerates it 
by giving as a report that the inhabitants in the centre did not hear of the 
capture until the third day. No such exaggeration as this appears in 
Herodotus. 

Xenophon, in the Cyropadia (vii, 5, 7-18), following the story that Cyrus 
drained off the Euphratés, represents it as effected in a manner differing 
from Herodotus. According to him, Cyrus dug two vast and deep ditches, 
one on each side round the town, from the river above the town to the river 
below it: watching the opportunity of a festival day in Babylon, he let the 
water into both of these side ditches, which fell into the main stream again 
below the town: hence the main stream in its passage through the ‘own 
became nearly dry. The narrative of Xenophon, however, betrays itself, 
as not having been written from information received on the spot, like that 
of Herodotus ; for he talks of ai ἄκραι of Babylon, just as he speaks of the 
ἄκραι of the hill-towns of Karia (compare Cyropedia, vii, 4, 1, 7, with vii, 
δ, 34). There were no ἄκραι on the dead flat »f Babylon. 


DEATH OF CYRUS 215 


The importance of Babylon, marking as ic dves one of the 
peculiar forms of civilization belonging to the ancient world in a 
state of full development, gives an interest even to the half- 
authenticated stories respecting its capture; but the other exploits 
ascribed to Cyrus, — his invasion of India, across the desert of 
Arachosia,!— and his attack upon the Massagete, nomads ruled 
by queen Tomyris, and greatly resembling the Scythians, across 
the mysterious river which Herodotus calls Araxés,—are too 
little known to be at all dwelt upon. In the latter he is said to 
have perished, his army being defeated in a bloody battle.2 He 
was buried at Pasargadz, in his native province of Persis proper, 
where his tomb was honored and watched until the breaking up 
of the empire,® while his memory was held in profound venera- 
tion among the Persians. 

Of his real exploits, we know little except their results; but 
in what we read respecting him there seems, though amidst con- 
stant fighting, very little cruelty. Xenophon has selected his 
life as the subject of a moral romance, which for a long time was 
cited as authentic history, and which even now serves as an 
authority, expressed or implied, for disputable and even incorrect 
conclusions. His extraordinary activity and conquests admit of 
nodoubt. He left the Persian empire’ extending from Sogdiana 
and the rivers Jaxartés and Indus eastward, to the Hellespont 
and the Syrian coast westward, and his successors made no per- 
manent addition to it except that of Egypt. Phenicia and Judea 
were dependencies of Babylon, at the time when he conquered 
it, with their princes and grandees in Babylonian captivity 
They seem to have yielded to him, and become his tributaries, 
without difficulty ; and the restoration of their captives was con- 

' Arrian, vi, 24, 4. 

* Herodot. i, 205-214; Arrian, v, 4, 14; Justin, i, 8; Strabo, xi, p. 512. 

According to Ktésias, Cyrus was slain in an expedition against the Der- 
bikes, a people in the Caucasian regions,— though his army afterwards 
prove victorious and conquer the country (Ktesiz Persica, c. 8-9), —see the 
vomment of Bahr on the passage, in his edition of Ktésias. 

? Strabo, xv, pp. 730, 731; Arrian, vi, 29. 

* The town Kyra, or Kyropolis, on the river Sihon, or Jaxartés, was said 
to have been founded by Cyrus, —it was destroyed by Alexander (Strabo, 
gi, pp. 517, 518; Arrian, iv, 2,2; Cartius, vii, 6, 16). 

* Herodot iii 19. 


916 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ceded to them. It was from Cyrus that the habits of the Per. 
sian kings took commencement, to dwell at Susa in the winter, 
and Ekbatana during the summer he primitive territory of 
Persis, with its two towns of Persepolis and Pasargada, being 
reserved for the burial-place of the kings and the religious sane- 
tuary of the empire. How or when the conquest of Susiana was 
made, we are not informed; it lay eastward of the Tigris, be- 
tween Babylonia and Persis proper, and its people, the Kissians, 
as far as we can discern, were of Assyrian and not of Arian 
race. The river Choaspés, near Susa, was supposed to furnish 
the only water fit for the palate of the Great King, and is said to 
have been carried about with him wherever he went.! 

While the conquests of Cyrus contributed to assimilate the dis- 
tinct types of civilization in western Asia,—not by elevating 
the worse, but by degrading the better, — upon the native Per- 
sians themselves they operated as an extraordinary stimulus, 
provoking alike their pride, ambition, cupidity, and warlike pro- 
pensities. Not only did the territory of Persis proper pay no 
tribute to Susa or Ekbatana,— being the only district so ex: 
empted between the Jaxartés and the Mediterranean, — but the 
vast tributes received from the remaining empire were distributed 
to a great degree among its inhabitants. Empire to them meant, 
—for the great men, lucrative satrapies, or pachalics, with 


powers altogether unlimited, pomp inferior only to that of the 
Great King, and standing armies which they employed at their 
= a ὶ ) 


own discretion, sometimes against each other,? — for the common 
soldiers, drawn from their fields or flocks, constant plunder, abun- 
dant maintenance, and an unrestrained license, either in the suite 
of one of the satraps, or in the large permanent troop which 
moved from Susa to Ekbatana with the Great King. And if the 
entire population of Persis proper did not migrate from their 
abodes to occupy some of those more inviting spots which the 
immensity of the imperial dominion furnished, — a dominion ex- 
tending (to use the language of Cyrus the younger, before the 
battle of Kunaxa)3 from the region of insupportable heat to 


a ----- ---- --ὄ.ο.------- -- -- ----.-- ee ey 


' Herodot. i, 188; Plutarch, Artaxerxés, c. £ ; Diodor. xvii, 71. 
* Xenophon, Anabas. i, 1, 8. 


- 


* Xenophon, Anabas. i, 7. 6; Cyropeed. viii, ‘ , 19. 


CHARACTER OF THE PERSIANS. 217 


that of insupportable cold, —this was only because the early 
kings discouraged such a movement, in order that the nation 
might maintain its military hardihood,!' and be in a situaticn to 
furnish undiminished supplies of soldiers. 

The self-esteem and arrogance of the Persians was no less re- 
markable than their avidity for sensual enjoyment. They werr 
fond of wine to excess; their wives and their concubines wer 
both numerous; and they adopted eagerly from foreign natior 
new fashions of luxury as well as of ornament. Even to no 
elties in religion, they were not strongly averse ; for though they 
were disciples of Zoroaster, with magi as their priests, and as 
indispensable companions of their sacrifices, worshipping Sun, 
Moon, Earth, Fire, ete., and recognizing neither image, temple, 
aor altar, — yet they had adopted the voluptuous worship of the 
goddess Mylitta from the Assyrians and Arabians. A numerous 
male offspring was the Persian’s boast, and his warlike character 
and consciousness of force were displayed in the education of 
these youths, who were taught, from five years old to twenty, 
only three things, — to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to speak 
the truth.2 To owe money, or even to buy and sell, was ac- 
counted among the Persians disgraceful,—a sentiment which 
they defended by saying, that both the one and the other im- 
posed the necessity of telling falsehood. To exact tribute from 
subjects, to receive pay or presents from the king, and to give 
away without forethought whatever was not immediately wanted, 
was their mode of dealing with money. Industrious pursuits 
were left to the conquered, who were fortunate if by paying a fixed 
contribution, and sending a military contingent when required, 
they could purchase undisturbed immunity for their remaining 
concerns.2 They could not thus purchase safety for the family 


! Herodot. ix, 122. 

? The modern Persians at this day exhibit almost matchless skil in 
shooting with the firelock, as well as with the bow, on horseback. See Sir 
John Malcolm, Sketches of Persia, ch. xvii, p. 201; see also Kinneir, Geo 
graphical Memoir of the Persian Empire, p. 32. 

% About the attributes of the Persian character, see Herodot. i, 131-140: 
compare i, 153. 

He expresses himself very strongly as to the facility with which the 
Persians ‘mbibed foreign customs, and especially foreign luxuries (i, 135), 

VOL. 1V. 10 


218 HISTURY OF GREECE. 


hearth, since we find instances of noble Grevian ma:dens torn 
from their parents for the harem of the satrap.' 
To a people of this character, whose conceptions of political 


society went no farther than personal obedience to a chief, a con- 
queror like Cyrus would communicate the strongest excitement 
and enthusiasm of which they were capable. He had found 
them slaves, and made them masters; he was the first and 
greatest of national benefactors? as well as the most forward 


of leaders in the field; they followed him from one conquest 
to another, during the thirty years of his reign, their love of 
empire growing with the empire itself. And this impulse of ag- 
grandizement continued unabated during the reigns of his three 
next successors, — Kambysés, Darius, and Nerxés, — until it was 
at length violently stifled by the humiliating defeats of Platza and 
Salamis; after which the Persians became content with defend- 
ing themselves at home, and playing a secondary game. but at 
the time when Kambysés son of Cyrus succeeded to his father’s 
sceptre, Persian spirit was at its highest point, and he was not 
long in fixing upon a prey both richer and less hazardous than 
the Massagetez, at the opposite extremity of the empire. Phe- 
nicia and Judea being already subject to him, he resolved to 


perous reign of Amasis. Not much pretence was needed to color 
the aggression, and the various stories which Herodotus men- 
tions as causes of the war, are only interesting inasmuch as they 
imply a vein of Egyptian party feeling, — affirming that the in- 
vasion was brought upon Amasis by a daughter of Apriés, and 
was thus a judgment upon him for having deposed the latter. 
As to the manner in which she had produced this etfect, indeed, 
the most contradictory stories were circulated.% 

Kambysés summoned the forces of his empire for this new 
enterprise, and among them both the Phenicians and the Asiatic 


= ξεινικὰ δὲ νόμαια Πέρσα: προσίενται ἀνδρῶν μάλιστα, --- καὶ εὐπαϑείας τε 
παντοδαπὰς πυνϑανόμενοι ἐπιτηδεύουσι. 

That rigid tenacity of customs and exclusiveness of tastes, which mark 
the modern Orientals, appear to be of the growth of Mohammedanism, and 
to distinguish them greatly from the old Zoroastr n Persians. 

' Herodot. ix, 76; Plutarch, Artarxerx. c. 26. 

3 Herodot. i 210; iii, 159. 3 Herodot iii, 1-4. 


KAMBYSES INVADES EGYPT. 219 


Greeks, /Zolic as well as Ionic,! insular as well 4s continental, —- 
nearly all the maritime force and skill of the AZgean sea. He 

yas apprized by a Greek deserter from the mercenaries in 
Egypt, named Phanés, of the difficulties of the march, and the 
best method of surmounting them ; especially the three days of 
sandy desert, altogether without water, which lay between Egypt 
an. Judea. By the aid of the neighboring Arabians, — with 
whom he concluded a treaty, and who were requited for this ser- 
vice with the title of equal allies, free from all tribute, — he was 
enabled to surmount this serious difficulty, and to reach Pelusium 
at the eastern mouth of the Nile, where the Ionian and Karian 
troops in the Egyptian service, as well as the Egyptian military, 
were assembled to oppose him.? 

Fortunately for himself, the Egyptian king Amasis had died 
during the interval of the Persian preparations, a few months 
before the expedition took place, — after forty-four years of un- 
abated prosperity. is death, at this critical moment, was prob- 
ably the main cause of the easy conquest which followed; his 
son Psammenitus succeeding to his crown, Lut neither to his 
abilities nor his influence. The result of the invasion was fore- 
shadowed, as usual, by a menacing prodigy, — rain falling at 
Thebes in Upper Egypt; and was brought about by a single 
victory, though bravely disputed, at Pelusium, — followed by the 
capture of Memphis, with the person of king Psammenitus, after 
a siege of some duration. Kambysés had sent forward a 
Mitylenzan ship to Memphis, with heralds to summon the city ; 
but the Egyptians, in a paroxysm of fury, rushed out of the 
walls, destroyed the vessel, and tore the crew into pieces, —a 
savage proceeding, which drew upon them severe retribution after 
the capture. Psammenitus, alter being at first treated with 
harshness and insult, was at length released, and even allowed to 


1 Herodot. iii, 1, 19, 44. 

* The narrative of Ktésias is, in respect both to the Egyptian expedition 
and to the other incidents of Persian history, quite different in its details 
from that of Herodotus, agreeing only in the main events (Ktésias, Persica, 
ce. 7). To blend the two together is impossible. 

Tacitus (Histor. i, 11) notes the difficulty of approach for an invading 
army to Egypt: “Egyptum, provinciam aditu difficilem, annone fecundam, 
superstitione ac lascivia discordem et mobilem,” etc. 


220 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


retain his regal dignity as a dependent of Persia. But being 
soon detected, or at least believed to be concerned, in raising re 
volt against the conquerors, he was put to death, and Egypt was 
placed under a satrap.' 

There yet lay beyond Egypt territories for Kambysés to 
conquer, — though Kyréné and Barka, the Greek colonies near 
the coast of Libya, placed themselves at once out of the reach 
of danger by sending to him tribute and submission at Memphis. 
He projected three new enterprises: one against Carthage, 
by sea; the other two, by land, against the Ethiopians, far 
to the southward up the course of the Nile, and against the 
oracle and oasis of Zeus Ammon, amidst the deserts of Libya. 
Towards Ethiopia he himself conducted his troops, but was com- 
pelled to bring them back without reaching it, since they were 
on the point of perishing with famine; while the division which 
he sent against the temple of Ammon is said to have been over- 
whelmed by a sand-storm in the desert. The expedition against 
Carthage was given up, for a reason which well deserves to be 
commemorated. The Phenicians, who formed the most efficient 
part of his navy, refused to serve against their kinsmen and col- 
onists, pleading the sanctity of mutual oaths as well as the ties 
both of relationship and tratfic.2, Even the frantic Kambysés was 
compelled to accept, and perhaps to respect, this honorable re- 
fusal, which was not imitated by the Ionic Greeks when Darius 
and Xerxés demanded the aid of their ships against Athens, — 
we must add, however, that they were then in a situation much 
more exposed and helpless than that in which the Phenicians 
stood before Kambysés. 

Among the sacred animals so numerous and so different 
throughout the various nomes of Egypt, the most venerated of 
all was the bull Apis. Yet such peculiar conditions were re- 
quired by the Egyptian religion as to the birth, the age, and the 
marks of this animal, that, when he died, it was difficult to find 
anew calf properly qualified to succeed him. Much time was 
semetimes spent in the search, and when an unexceptionable suc- 


ἀπιυυπιιαθα τ ποναυσαιππα ανακόνσα κα». “τ --- 
ΝΣ ΝΌΟΝ ici penne 


᾿ am one m . 
Herodot. iii, 10-16. About the Arabians, between Judxa and Egypt 
et a ἃ. 
gee li, ὁ. 5, 88-91. 
3 Herodot. iii, 19 


CONSPIRACY AGAINST F AMBYSES. Yiu 


cessor was at last found, the demonstrations of joy in Memphis 
were extravagant and universal. At the moment when Kam- 
bysés returned to Memphis from his Ethiopian expedition, full of 
humiliation for the result, it so happened that a new Apis was 
just discovered; and as the population of the city gave vent to 
their usual festival pomp and delight, he construed it into an 
intentional insult towards his own recent misfortunes. In vain 
did the priests and magistrates explain to him the real cause of 
these popular manifestations ; he persisted in his belief, punished 
some of them with death and others with stripes, and com 
manded every man seen in holiday attire to be slain. Further- 
more,—to carry his outrage against Egyptian feeling to the 
uttermost pitch,—he sent for the newly-discovered Apis, and 
plunged his dagger into the side of the animal, who shortly after 
wards died of the wound.! 

After this brutal deed, — calculated to efface in the minds of the 


Egyptian priests the enormities of Cheops and Chephrén, and 


doubtless unparalleled in all the twenty-four thousand years of 
their anterior history, — Kambysés lost every spark of reason 
which yet remained to him, and the Egyptians found in this visi- 


tation a new proof of the avenging interference of their gods. Not 
only did he commit every variety of studied outrage against the 
conquered people among whom he was tarrying, as well as their 
temples and their sepulchres, — but he also dealt his blows against 
his Persian friends and even his nearest blood-relations. Among 
these revolting atrocities, one of the greatest deserves peculiar 
notice. because the fate of the empire was afterwards materially 
affected by it. His younger brother Smerdis had accompanied 
him into Egypt, but had been sent back to Susa, because the 
king became jealous of the admiration which his personal 
strength and qualities called forth.2 That jealousy was aggra- 
vated into alarm and hatred by a dream, portending dominion 


and conquest to Smerdis; so that the frantic Kambysés sent to 


. Herodot. iii, 29. 
2 Ktésias calls the brother Tanyoxarkés, and says that Cvrus had left hum 


satrap, without tribute, of Baktria and the neighboring regions (Persica, δ. 
8). Xenophon, in the Cyropedia, also calls hirt Tanyoxarkés, but gives 
nim a different satrapy (Cyropzd. viii, 7, 11). 


222 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Susa secretly a cot fidential Persian, Prexaspés, with express or 
ders to get rid of his brother. Prexaspés fulfilled his commis 
sion effectively, burying the slain prince with his own hands,! 
and keeping the deed concealed from all- except a few of the 
chiefs at the regal residence. 

Among these few chiefs, however, there was one, the Median 
Patizeithés, belonging to the order of the Magi, who saw in it a 
ronvenient stepping-stone for his own personal ambition, and 
made use of it as a means of covertly supplanting the dynasty 
of the great Cyrus. Enjoying the full confidence of Kambysés, 
he had been left by that prince, on departing for Egypt, in the 
entire management of the palace and treasures, with extensive 
authority.2, Moreover, he happened to have a brother extremely 
resembling in person the deceased Smerdis ; and as the open 
and dangerous madness of Kambysés contributed to alienate 
from him the minds of the Persians, he resolved to proclaim this 
brother king in his room, as if it were the younger son of Cyrus 
succeeding to the disqualified elder. On one important point, 
the false Smerdis differed from the true. He had lost his ears, 
which Cyrus himself had caused to be cut off for an offence ; 
but the personal resemblance, after all, was of little importance, 
since he was seldom or never allowed to show himself to the 
people. Kambysés, having heard of this revolt in Syria on his 
return from Egypt, was mounting his horse in haste for the pur- 
pose of going to suppress it, when an accident from his sword 
put an end to his life. Herodotus tells us that, before his death, 
+e summoned the Persians around him, confessed that he had 
been guilty of putting his brother to death, and apprized them 
that the reig 
juring them at the same time not to submit to the disgrace of be- 


ning Smerdis was only a Median pretender, — con- 


ing ruled by any other than a Persian and an Achemenid. But 
if it be true that he ever made known the facts, no one believed 
him. For Prexaspés, on his part, was compelled by regard to his 
own ἐν θῖν, to deny that he had imbrued his hands in the blood 


9 Herodot. iii, 61-63 


' Herodot. iii, 30-62. 

3 Herodot. iii, 68-69.—‘“ Auribus decisis vivere jubet,” says Tacitus, 
ebout a case under the Parthian government (Annal. xii, 14),— nor have 
the Turkish authorities given up the infliction of it at the present mement 
er ut least down to a very recent period. 


DEATH OF KAMBYSES.—SMERDIS. 223 


ot a son of Cyrus ;! and thus the opportune death of Kambysés 
placed the false Smerdis without opposition at the head of the 
Persians, who all, or for the most part, believed themselves to be 
ruled by a genuine son of Cyrus. Kambysés had reigned for 
seven years and five months. 

For seven months did Smerdis reign without opposition, second. 
ed by his brother Patizeithés; and if he manifested his distrust 
of the haughty Persians around him, by neither inviting them 
into his palace nor showing himself out of it, he at the same time 
studiously conciliated the favor of the subject provinces, by re- 
mission of tribute and of military service for three years.2 Such 
a departure from the Persian principle of government was in 
itself sufficient to disgust the warlike and rapacious Achamenids 
at Susa. But it seems that their suspicions as to his genuine 
character had never been entirely set at rest, and in the eighth 
month those suspicions were converted into certainty. Accord- 
ing to what seems to have been the Persian usage, he had taken 
to himself the entire harem of his predecessor, among whose 
wives was numbered Phadymé, daughter of a distinguished Per- 
sian. named Otanés. At the instance of her father, Phadymé 
undertook the dangerous task of feeling the head of Smerdis 
while he slept, and thus detected the absence of ears. Otanés, 
possessed of the decisive information, lost no time in concerting, 
with five other noble Achzmenids, means for ridding themselves 
of a king who was at once a Mede, a Magian, and aman without 
ears;4 Darius, son of Hystaspés, the satrap of Persis proper, 
arriving just in time to join the conspiracy as the seventh. How 
these seven noblemen slew Smerdis in his palace at Susa, — how 
they subsequently debated among themselves whether they should 
establish in Persia a monarchy, an oligarchy, or a democracy, — 
how, after the first of the three had been resolved upon, it was de- 
termined that the future king, whichever he might be, should be 
bound to take his wives only from the families of the seven con- 


1 Herodot. iii, 64-66. 3 Herodot. iii, 67. 8 Herodot. iii, 68-69. 

4 Herodot. iii, 69-73. ἀρχόμεϑα μὲν ἐόντες Πέρσαι, ὑπὸ Μήδου ἀνδρὸς μάγου, 
καὶ τούτου ὦτα οὐκ ἔχοντος. 

Compare the description of th« insupportable repugnance of the Grecke 
of Kyréné to be governed by the /ame Battus (Herodot. iv, 161) 


924 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


spirators, — how Darius became king, from the circumstance of his 
horse being the first to neigh among those of the conspirators at a 
given spot, by the stratagem of the groom CEbarés, — how Otanés, 
standing aside beforehand from this lottery for the throne, re- 
served for himself “15. well as for his descendants perfect freedom 
and exemption from the rule of the future king, whichsoever 
might draw the prize,—all these incidents may be found re- 
counted by Herodotus with his usual vivacity, but with no small 
addition of Hellenic ideas as well as of dramatic ornament. 

It was thus that the upright tiara, the privileged head-dress of 
the Persian kings,' passed away from the lineage of Cyrus, yet 
without departing from the great phratry of the Achemenidx, — 
to which Darius and his father Hystaspés, as well as Cyrus, be: 


longed. That important fact is unquestionable, and probably the 


acts ascribed to the seven conspirators are in the main true, apart 
from their discussions and intentions. But on this as well as on 
other occasions, we must guard ourselves against an illusion which 
the historical manner of Herodotus is apt to create. He pre- 
sents to us with so much descriptive force the personal narra- 
tive, — individual action and speech, with all its accompanying 
hopes, fears, doubts, and passions,— that our attention is dis- 
tracted from the political bearing of what is going on; which we 
are compelled often to gather up from hints in the speeches of 
performers, or from consequences afterwards indirectly noticed. 
When we put together all the incidental notices which he lets 
drop, it will be found that the change of sceptre from Smerdis to 
Darius was a far larger political event than his direct narrative 
would seem to announce. Smerdis represents preponderance to 
the Medes over the Persians, and comparative degradation to 
the latter; who, by the installation of Darius, are again placed in 
the ascendent. The Medes and the Magians are in this case 
identical ; for the Magians, though indispensable in the capacit7 
of priests to the Persians, were essentially one of the seven Median 


Compare Aristophan. Aves, 487, with the Scholia, and Herodot. vii, 61 ; 
Arrian, iv, 6, 29. The cap of the Persians generally was loose, low, cling- 
ing about the head in folds; that of the king was high and erect above the 
head. See the notes of Wesseling and Schweighaiiser, upon 7i7,0c dra yéeg 
im Herodot. Lc. 


CONSPIRACY.— DARIUS SUCCEEDS SMERDIS. 225 
tribes.! It thus appears that though Smerdis ruled as a son of 
the great Cyrus, yet he ruled by means of Medes and Magiana 
depriving the Persians of that supreme privilege and predom- 
inance to which they had become accustomed.2 We see this 
by what followed immediately after the assassination of Smerdis 
and his brother in the palace. The seven conspirators, ex- 
hibiting the bloody heads of both these victims as an evidence 
of their deed, instigated the Persians in Susa to a general mas 
sacre of the Magians, many of whom were actually slain, and 
the rest only escaped by flight, concealment, or the hour of night. 
And the anniversary of this day was celebrated afterwards 
among the Persians by a solemnity and festival, called the Ma- 
gophonia; no Magian being ever allowed on that day to appear 
in public.’ The descendants of the Seven maintained a privi- 
leged name and rank, even down to the artinction of the mon- 
archy by Alexander the Great. 


' Herodot. i, 101-120. 

2 In the speech which Herodotus puts into the ποῦ of Kambysés op 
his deathbed, addressed to the Persians around him in ἃ stra‘n of prophetie 
adjuration (iii, 65), he says: Kai δὴ ὑμῖν rade ἐπισκήπτω, ϑεοὺς rede βασιληΐ 
ouc ἐπικαλέων, καὶ πᾶσιν ὑμῖν καὶ μάλιστα ᾿Αχαιμενιδέων τοῖσι παρεοῦσι, 
περιϊδεῖν τὴν ἡγεμονίην αὗτις ἐς Μήδους περιελϑοῦσαν " ἀλλ᾽ εἴτε ὀδλςε" ἔχουο 
αὐτὴν κτησάμενοι (the personification of the deceased son of Cyrus), δλλε 
ἀπαιρεϑῆναι ὑπὸ ὑμέων - εἴτε καὶ σϑένεϊ τεῳ κατεργασάμενοι, σϑένεϊ κατὸ 
τὸ κάρτερον ἀνασώσασϑαι (the forcible opposition of the Medes to Darius, 
which he put down by superior foree on the Persian side): compare the 
speech of Gobryas, one of the seven Persian conspirators (iii, 73), and that 
of Prexaspés (iii, 75); also Plato, Legg. iii, 12, p. 695. 

Heeren has taken a correct view of the reign of Smerdis the Magian, 
and its political character (Ideen iiber den Verkehr, etc., der Alten Welt, 
part i, abth. 1, p. 431). 

3 Herodot. iii, 79. Σπασάώμενοι δὲ τὰ ἐγχειρίδια, ἔκτεινον ὅκου τινα μάγον 
εὕρισκον" εἰ δὲ μὴ νὺξ ἐπελϑοῦσα ἔσχε, ἔλιπον ἂν οὐδένα μάγον " Ταύτην τὴν 
ἡμέρην ϑεράπευουσι Πέρσα! κοινῇ μάλιστα τῶν ἡμερέων " καὶ ἐν αὐτῇ ὁρτὴν 
μεγάλην ἀνάγουσι, ἣ κέκληται ὑπὸ Περσέων Μαγοφόνια. 

The periodical celebration of the Magophonia is attested by Ktésias,— 
one of the few points of complete agreement with Herodotus. He farthe 
agrees in saying that a Magian usurped the throne, through likeness of 
person to the deceased son of Cyrus, whom Kambysés had slain, — but alll 
his other statements differ from Herodotus (Ktésias, 10-14). 

4 Even at the battle of Arbela, —‘“‘ Summez Orsines preerat, a septem 


VOL. I¥. 10* lioc. 


226 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Furthermore, 1t appears that the authority of Darius was not 


acknowledged throughout the empire, and that an liter 


readily | 
The Medes actu- 


val of confusion ensued before it became so.! 
ally revolted, and tried to maintain themselves by force avainst 
Darius, who however found means to subdue them: though, when 
he convoked his troops from the various provinces, he did not 
receive from the satraps universal obedience. The powerful 
Orcetés, especially, who had been appointed by Cyrus satrap of 
Lydia and Ionia, not only sent no troops to the aid of Darius 
against the Medes,2 but even took advantage of the disturbed 
state of the government to put to death his private enemy Mitro- 
batés satrap of Phrygia, and appropriate that satrapy in addition 
to his own. Aryandés also, the satrap nominated by Kambyses 
in Egypt, comported himself as the equal of Darius rather than 
as his subject.? The subject provinces generally, to whom Smer- 
dis had granted remission of tribute and military service for the 


space of three years, were grateful and attached to his memory, 


and noway pleased with the new dynasty; moreover, the revolt 
of the Babylonians, conceived a year or two before it was exe- 
cuted, took ts rise from the feelings of this time.t But the 
renewal of the old conflict between the two principal sections of 
the empire, Medes and Persians, is doubtless the most important 
feature in this political revolution. The false Smerdis with his 
both of them Medes and Magians, had revived the Me- 
ality to a state of supremacy over the Persian, re- 


brother, 
dian nation 
alling the 1 
Darius, —a pure Persian, and not (like the mule Cyrus) half 
Mede and half Persian, — replaced the Persian nationality in ils 


nemory of what it had been under Astyagés; while 


ad Cyrum quoque, nobilissimum regem, originem sui refer- 


Persis oriundus 
compare Strabo, 


ens.” (Quintus Curtius, iv, 12, 7, or iv, 45, 7, Zumpt :) 
xi, p. 531; Florus, iil, 9, 1. 

! Herodot. iii, 127. Δαρεῖος — ἅτε οἰδεόντωιν οἱ ἔτι τῶν πρηγμάτων, etc.— 
mention of the ταραχή (iii, 126, 150). 

2 Herodot. iii, 126. Μετὰ yup τὸν Καμβύσεω ϑώνατον, καὶ τῶν Μάγων τὴν 
duct ᾿Οροίτης, ὠφέλει μὲν οὐδὲν Πέρσας, ὑπὸ 


θασιληΐην, μένων ἐν τῇσι Uf 
τὴν apxnv: ὁ δὲ ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ ταραχῇ κατὰ 


Μήδων ἀπαγαιρημένους 
μεν ἔκτεινε Μιτοοβάτεα.... - - «ἄλλα τε ἐξύβρισε παντοία, ete. 
‘ ͵ - ἵν»; v ᾿ 
ot. i 36. Ὁ δὲ ‘Apvar ἣν οὗτος ύπτου ὕπαρχος ὑπὲ 
8 Herodot. iv, 166. O δὲ Ἀρυάνδης ἣν οὗτος τῆς Αἰγὺπ 1px ( 
Καμβύσεω κατεστεῶς. ὃς VOTEPY XEWY παρισεύμενος Δαρείῳ διεφύάοη. 
4 Herodot. iii, 57-- δ0. 


ORETES, SATRAP OF LYDIA. 221 


ascendent condition, though not without the necessity of sup 
pressing by forcé a rebellion of the Medes.! 


1 Herodot. i, 130. "Actvayne μέν νυν βασιλεύσας ἐπ᾽ ἔτεα πέντε καὶ τριῆ- 
κοντα, οὕτω τῆς ἀρχῆς κατεπαύϑη. Μῆδοι δὲ ὑπέκυψαν Πέρσῃσι διὰ τὴν TOR. 
του πικρότητα..... «. ὙὝστέρῳ μέντοι χρόνῳ μετεμέλησέ τέ σφι ταῦτα ποιήσασι, 
καὶ ἀπέστησαν ἀπὸ Δαρείου" ἀποστάντες δὲ, ὀπίσω κατεστράφϑησαν, μάχῷ 
νικηϑέντες" τότε δὲ, ἐπὶ ᾿Αστυάγεος, οἱ Πέρσαι τε καὶ ὁ Κῦρος ἐπαναστάντες 
τοῖσι Μήδοισι, ἧρχον τὸ ἀπὸ τούτου τῆς ’Acine. 

This passage — asserting that the Medes, some time after the deposition 
of Astyagés and the acquisition of Persian supremacy by Cyrus, repented 
of having suffered their discontent against Astyagés to place this suprem- 
acy in the hands of the Persians, revolted from Darius, and were recon- 
quered after a contest —appears to me to have been misunderstood by 
chronologists. Dodwell, Larcher, and Mr. Fynes Clinton (indeed, most, if 
not all, of the chronologists) explain it as alluding to a revolt of the Medes 
against the Persian king Darius Nothus, mentioned in the Hellenica of 
Xenophon i, 2, 12), and belonging to the year 408 B.c. See Larcher ad 
Herodot. i, 130, and his Vie d’Hérodote, prefixed to his translation (p. 
Ixxxix); also Mr. Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, ad ann. 408 and 455, and his 
Appendix, c, 18, p. 316. 

The revolt of the Medes alluded to by Herodotus is, in my judgment, 
completely distinct from the revolt mentioned by Xenophon: to identify 
the two, as these eminent chronologists do, is an hypothesis not only having 
nothing to recommend it, but open to*zrave objection. The revolt men- 
tioned by Herodotus was against Darius son of Hystaspés, not against 
Darius Nothus; and I have set forth with peculiar care the circumstances 
connected with the conspiracy and accession of the former, for the purpose 
of showing that they all decidedly imply that conflict between Median and 
Persian supremacy, which Herodotus directly announces in the passage now 
before us. 

1. When Herodotus speaks of Darius, without any adjective designation, 
why should we imagine that he means any other than Darius the son of 
Hystaspés, on whom he dwells so copiously in his narrative ? Once only 
in the course of his history (ix, 108) another Darius (the young prince, son 
of Xerxés the First) is mentioned ; but with this exception, Darius son of 
Hystaspés is uniformly, throughout the work, spoken of under his simple 
name: Darius Nothus is never alluded to at all. 

2. The deposition of Astyagés took place in 559 B.c.; the Leginning of 
the reign of Darius occurred in 520 B.c.; now repentance on the part of 
the Medes, for what they had done at the former of those two epochs, might 
naturally prompt them to try to repair it in the latter. But between the 
deposition of Astyagés in 559 B.c., and the revolt mentioned by Xenophon 
against Darius Nothus in 408 B.c., the interval is more than one hundred 
and fifty years. To ascribe a revolt which took place in 408 B.c., to repent 


998 HISTURY OF GREECE. 


It has already been observed that the subjugation of the recue 
sant Medes was not the only embarrassment of the first years of 


ance for something which had occurred one hundred and fifty years before, 
is unnatural and far-fetched, if not positively inadmissible. 

The preceding arguments go to show that the natural construction of 
the passage in Herodotus points to Darius son of Hystaspés, and not to Da- 
rius Nothus; but this is not all. There are yet stronger reasons why the 
reference to Darius Nothus should be discarded. 

The supposed mention, in Herodotus, of a fact so late as 408 B.c., per- 
plexes the whole chronology of his life and authorship. According to the 
usual statement of his biography, which every onc admits, and which there 
is no reason to call in question, he was born in 484 B.c. Here, then, is an 
event alluded to in his history, which occurred when the historian was sev- 
enty-six years old, and the allusion to which he must be presumed to have 
written when about eighty years old, if not more; for‘ his mention of the 
fact by no means implies that it was particularly recent. Those who adopt 
this view, do not imagine that he wrote his whole history at that age; but 
they maintain that he made later additions, of which they contend that this is 
one. I do not say that this is impossible : we know that Isokrates composed 
his Panathenaic oration at the age of ninety-four; but it must be admitted 
to be highly improbable, —a supposition which ought not to be advanced 
without some cogent proof to support it. But here no proof whatever is 
produced. Herodotus mentions a revolt of the Medes against Darius, — 
Xenophon also mentions a revolt of the Medes against Darius; hence, 
chronologists have taken it as a matter of course, that both authors must 
allude to the same event; though the supposition is unnatural as regards 
the text, and still more unnatural as regards the biography, of Herodotus. 

In respect to that biography, Mr. Clinton appears to me to have adopted 
another erroneous opinion; in which, however, both Larcher and Wesseling 
are against him, though Dahlmann and Heyse agree with him. He maintains 
that the passage in Herodotus (iii, 15), wherein it is stated that Pausiris 
succeeded his father Amyrtzeus by consent of the Persians in the govern- 
ment of Egypt, is to be referred to a fact which happened subsequent to the 
year 414 B.c., or the tenth year of Darius Nothus; since it was in that year 
that Amyrtus acquired the government of Egypt. But this opinion rests 
altogether upon the assumption that a certain Amyrtzus, whose name and 
date occur in Manetho (see Eusebius, Chronicon), is the same person as the 
Amyrtzus mentioned in Herodotus ; which identity is not only not proved, 
but is extremely improbable, since Mr. Clinton himself admits (F. H. Ap- 
pendix, p. 317), while maintaining the identity: “He (Amyrtzus) had 
conducted a war against the Persian government more than Jifty years before.” 
This, though not impossible, is surely very improbable; it is at least 
equally probable that the Au.yrteus of Manetho was a different person 
from (perhaps even the grandson of ) that Amyrtzeus in Herodotus, who had 


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ORETES, SATRAP OF LYDIA. 929 


Darius. “reetés, satrap of Phrygia, Lydia, and Ionia, ruling 
seemingly the entire western coast of Asia Minor, — possessing 
a large military force and revenue, and surrounded by a body- 
guard of one thousand native Persians, — maintained a haughty 
independence. He secretly made away with couriers sent to 
summon him to Susa, and even wreaked his vengeance upon 
some of the principal Persians who had privately offended him, 


rarried on war against the Persians more than fifty years before; it appears 
to me, indeed, that this is the more reasonable hypothesis of the two. 

I have permitted myself to prolong this note to an unusual length, be- 
cause the supposed mention of such recent events in the history of Herod- 
otus, as those in the reign of Darius Nothus, has introduced very gratuitous 
assumptions as to the time and manner in which that history was com 
posed. It cannot be shown that there is a single event of precise and as- 
certained date, alluded to in his history, later than the capture of the Lac- 
edxmonian heralds in the year 430 B.c. (Herodot. vii, 137: see Larcher, 
Vie d’Hérodote, p. 1xxxix ); and this renders the composition of his history 
as an entire work much more smooth and intelligible. 

It may be worth while to add, that whoever reads attentively Herod- 
otus, vi, 98,— and reflects at the same time that the destruction of the 
Athenian armament at Syracuse (the greatest of all Hellenic disasters, 
hardly inferior, for its time, to the Russian campaign of Napoleon, and 
especially impressive to one living at Thurii, as may be seen by the life of 
Lysias, Plutarch. Vit. x, Oratt. p.835) happened during the reign of Da 
rius Nothus in 413 B.c..— will not readily admit the hypothesis of additiona 
made to the history during the reign of the latter, or so late as 408 B.a 
Herodotus would hardly have dwelt so expressly and emphatically upon 
mischief done by Greeks to each other in the reigns of Darius son of Hys- 
taspés, Xerxés, and Artaxerxés, if he had lived to witness the greater mis- 
chiefs so inflicted during the reign of Darius Nothus, and had kept his his- 
tory before him for the purpose of inserting new events. The destruction 
of the Athenians before Syracuse would have been a thousand times more 
striking to his imagination than the revolt of the Medes against Darius 
Nothus, and would have impelled him with much greater force to alter or 
enlarge the chapter vi, 98. 

The sentiment too which Herodotus places in the mouth of Demaratus 
respecting the Spartans (vii, 104) appears to have been written before the 
capture of the Spartans in Sphakteria, in 425 B.c., rather than after it: 
compare Thucyd. iv, 40. 

DahImann (Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte, vol. ii, pp. 41 
47) and Heyse (Quwxstiones Herodotes, pp. 74-77, Berlin, 1697) both pro- 
fess to point out six passages in Herodotus which mark events of later data 
than 430 B.c. But none of the chronological indications which dhey ad 
duce appear to me trustworthy. 


-ἪὝὟλλιΗι 


i —— 


τ᾿ 


= 


—— 


EE — wre ἔρος 


430 HiSTORZ OF GREECE. 


Darius, not thinking it prudent to attack him by open firce, pro 
posed to the chief Persians at Susa, the dangerous problem Οἱ 
destroying him by stratagem. Thirty among them volunteereG 
to undertake it, and Bagzeus, son of Artontés, to whom on drawing 
lots the task devolved, accomplished it by a mancuvre which 
might serve as a lesson to the Ottoman eovernment, in its em- 
barrassments with contumacious Pashas. Having proceeded to 
Sardis, furnished with many different royal ordinances, formally 
set forth and bearing the seal of Darius, — he was presented to 
Ureetés in audience, with the public secretary of the satrapy close 
at hand, and the Persian guards standing around. He presented 
his ordinances to be read aloud by the secretary, choosing first 
those which related to matters of no great importance ; but when 
he saw that the guards listened with profound reverence, and 
that the king’s name and seal imposed upon them irresistibly, he 
ventured upon the real purport of his perilous mission. An or- 
dinance was handed to the secretary, and read by him aloud, 
as follows: “ Persians, king Darius forbids you to serve any 
longer as guards to Orectés.” The obedient guards at once deliv- 
ered up their spears, when Bagmwus caused the final warrant to 
be read to them: “ King Darius commands the Persians in Sar- 
dis to kill Oreetés.” The guards drew their swords and killed 
him on the spot: his large treasure was conveyed to Susa: 
Darius became undisputed master, and probably Bageus satrap.! 

Another devoted adherent, and another yet more memorable 
piece of cunning, laid prostrate before Darius the mighty walls 
and gates of the revolted Babylon. The inhabitants of that 
city had employed themselves assiduously, — both during the lax 
provincial superintendence of the false Smerdis, and during the 


period of confusion and conflict which elapsed before Darius 
became firmly established and obeyed, — in making every prep- 
aration both for declaring and sustaining their independence. 
Having accumulated a large store of provisions and other requis- 
ites for a long siege, without previous detection, they at length 


proclaimed their independence openly. And such was the inten- 
Bity of their resolution to maintain it, that they had recourse to 
ἃ proceeding, which, if correctly reported by Herodotus, forms 


cneaity, «»-------------. .. .... -.-..-.--ὄ 


_— nein CCC 


| Herodot. iil, 27, 128. 


REVOLT OF BABYLON. —ZOPYRUS. 931 


one of’ ihe most frightful enormities recorded in his history. Te 
make ther provisions last out longer, they strangled all the 
women in the city, reserving only their mothers, and one woman 
to each family for the purpose of baking.! We cannot but sup- 
pose that this has been magnified from a partial into an universal 
destruction. Yet taking it even with such allowance, it illustrates 
that ferocious force of will,—and that predominance of strong 
nationality, combined with antipathy to foreigners, over all the 
gentler sympathies, — which seems to mark the Semitic nations, 
and which may be traced so much in the Jewish history of 
Josephus. 

Darius, assembling all the forces in his power, laid siege to the 
revolted city, but could make no impression upon it, either by force 
or by stratagem. He tried to repeat the proceeding by which 
Cyrus had taken it at first ; but the besieged were found this time 
on their guard. The siege had lasted twenty months without the 
smallest progress, and the Babylonians derided the besiegers 
from the height of their impregnable walls, when a distinguished 
Persian nobleman Zopyrus, — son of Megabyzus, who had been 
one of the seven conspirators against Smerdis, — presented him- 
self one day before Darius in a state of frightful mutilation: his 
nose and ears were cut off, and his body misused in every way. 
He had designedly so maimed himself, “ thinking it intolerable 
that Assyrians should thus laugh the Persians to scorn,’ ? in the 
intention which he presently intimated to Darius, of passing into 
the town as a deserter, with a view of betraying it, — for which 
purpose measures were concerted. The Babylonians, seeing a 
Persian of the highest rank in so calamitous a condition, readily 
believed his assurance, that he had been thus punished by the 
king’s order, and that he came over to them as the only means 
of procuring for himself single vengeance. They intrusted him 
with the command of a detachment, with which he gained several 
advantages in different sallies, according to previous concert with 
Darius, until at length, the confidence of the Babylonians beccm- 


! Herodot. iu, 150. 

9 Herodot. ii, 155. δεινόν τι ποιεύμενος, ᾿Ασσυρίους Πέρσῃσι καταγελᾷν 
Compare the speech of Mardonius, vii, 9. 

The horror of Darius, at the first sight of Zopyrus in this condition, 9 
wrongly dramatized by Herodotus. 


282 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ing unbounded, they placed in his hands the care of the principal 
gates. At the critical moment these gates were thrown open, 
and the Persians became masters of the city.! 

Thus was the impregnable Babylon a second time reduced, 
and Darius took precautions on this occasion to put it out of con- 
dition for resisting a third time. He caused the walls and gates 
to be demolished, and three thousand of the principal citizens to 
be crucified: the remaining inhabitants were left in the dis- 
mantled city, fifty thousand women being levied by assessment 


upon the neighboring provinces, to supply the place of the 


women strangled when it first revolted.» Zopyrus was ap 

' Herodot. iii, 154-158. 

2 Ktésias represents the revolt and recapture of Babylon to have taken 
place, not under Darius, but under his son and successor Xerxés. He says 
that the Babylonians, revolting, slew their satrap Zopyrus ; that they were 
besieced by Xerxés, and that Megabyzus son of Zopyrus caused the city to 

ὃν a 7 « va 
be taken by practising that very stratagem which Herodotus ascribes to 
Zopyrus himself (Persica, c. 20-22). 
This seems inconsistent with the fact, that Megabyzus was general of the 


Persian army in Egypt in the war with the Athenians, about 460 B.c. 
(Diodor. Sic. xi, 75-77): he would hardly have been sent on active service 
had he been so fearfully mutilated ; moreover, the whole story of Ktésias 
appears to me far less probable than that of Herodotus; for on this, as on 
other occasions, to blend the two together is impossible. 

ὃ Herodot. iii, 159, 160. “From the women thus introduced (says Herod- 
otus) the present Babylonians are sprung.” 

To crucify subdued revolters by thousands is, fortunately, so little in 
harmony with modern European manners, that it may not be amiss to 
strengthen the confidence of the reader in the accuracy of Herodotus, by 
producing an analogous narrative of incidents far more recent. Voltaire 
gives, from the MS. of General Lefort, one of the principal and confiden- 
tial officers of Peter the Great, the following account of the suppression of 
the revolted Strelitzes at Moscow, in 1698: these Strelitzes were the old 
native militia, or Janissaries, of the Russian Czars, opposed to all the re- 
forms of Peter. 

“Pour étouffer ces troubles, le czar part secrétement de Vienne, arrive 
enfin A Moscon, et surprend tout le monde par sa présence : il récompense 
les troupes qui ont vaincu les Strélitz: les prisons étaient pleines de ces 
malheureux. Si leur crime était grand, le chAtiment le fut aussi. Leurs 
chefs, plusieurs officiers, et quelques prétres, furent condamnés ἃ ka mort 
quelques-uns furent roués, deux femmes enterrées vives. On pendit autour 
des murailles de la ville et on fit périr dans d’autres supylices deux mille 
Strelits : leurs corps restérent deux jours exposés sur les grands chemins 


ORGANIZATION OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. 988 


pointed satrap of the territory for life, with enjoyment of its 
entire revenues, receiving besides every additional reward which 
it was in the power of Darius to bestow, and generous assurances 
from the latter that he would rather have Zopyrus without 
wounds than the possession of Babylon. I have already inti- 
mated in a former chapter that the demolition of the walls here 
mentioned is not to be regarded as complete and continuous, nor 
was there any necessity that it should be so. Partial demolition 
would be quite sufficient to leave the city without defence ; and 
the description given by Herodotus of the state of things as they 
stood at the time of his visit, proves that portions of the walls 
yet subsisted. One circumstance is yet to be added in reference 
to the subsequent condition of Babylon under the Persian em- 
pire. The city with the territory belonging to it constituted a 
satrapy, which not only paid a larger tribute (one thousand 
Euboie talents of silver) and contributed a much larger amount 
οἵ provisions in kind for the maintenance of the Persian court, 
than any other among the twenty satrapies of the empire, but 
furnished besides an annual supply of five hundred eunuch 
youths.!. We may presume that this was intended in part as ὃ 
punishment for the past revolt, since the like obligation was not 
imposed upon any other satrapy. 

Thus firmly established on the throne, Darius occupied it for 
thirty-six years, and his reign was one of organization, different 
from that of his two predecessors ; a difference which the Per- 
sians well understood and noted, calling Cyrus the father, Kam- 
bysés the master, and Darius the retail-trader, or huckster.? In 
et surtout autour du monastére ou résidaient les princesses Sophie et Eu 
doxe. On érigea des colonnes de pierre ot le crime et le chatiment furent 
gravés. Un trés-grand nombre qui avaient leurs femmes et leurs enfans 
furent dispersés avec leurs familles dans la Sibérie, dans le royaume d’As- 
trakhan, dans le pays d’Azof: par la du moins leur punition fut utile a 
létat: ils servirent a défricher des terres qui manquaient @habitans et de 
eulture.” (Voltaire, Histoire de Russie, part i, ch. x, tom. 31, of the CEuvres 
Complétes de Voltaire, p. 148, ed. Paris, 1825.) 

' Herodot. iii, 92. 

3 Herodot. iii, 89. What the Persian denomination was, which Herodo- 
tus or his informants translated κάπηλος, we do not kncw; but this latter 
word was used often by Greeks to signify a cheat, or dece’ ver generally: see 
Rtymologic. Magn p. 490, 11, and Suidas, y Κάπηλοςς Ὁ d’Aloxvioe τὴ 


954 HISTORY OF GREECE 


the mouth of he Persians this latter epithet must be const11ed 
as no insignificant compliment, since it intimates that he was the 


first to introduce some methodical order into the imperial admin- 
‘tration and finances. Under the two former kings there was 
no definite amount of tribute levied upon the subject provinces : 
which furnished what were called presents, subject to no fixed 
limit except such as might be satisfactory to the satrap in each 
district. But Darius — succeeding as he did to Smerdis, who 
had rendered himself popular with the provinces by large finan- 
cial exemptions, and having farther to encounter jealousy and 
dissatisfaction from Persians, his former equals m rank — prob- 
ably felt it expedient to relieve the provinces from the burden 
of undefined exactions. He distributed the whole empire into 
twenty departments, imposing upon each a fixed annual tax, and 
a fixed contribution for the maintenance of the court. Chis 
must doubtless have been a great improvement, though the limi- 
tation of the sum which the Great King at Susa would require, 
did not at all prevent the satrap in his own province from in- 
definite requisitions beyond it. The latter was a little king, 
who acted nearly as he pleased in the internal administration 
of his province, ἊΣ subject only to the necessity of sending up the 
imperial tribute, of keeping off foreign enemies, and of furnishing 
an adequate military contingent for the foreign enterprises of 
the Great King. ‘To every satrap was attached a royal secre- 
tary, or comptroller, of the revenue,' who probably managed the 
imperial finances in the province, and to whom the court of _— 
might perhaps look as a watch upon the satrap himself. It is 
not to be supposed that the Persian authorities in any province 
meddled with the details of taxation, or contribution, as they 
The court having fixed the entire sum 


bore upon individuals. 
regate, the satrap or the secre- 


payable by the satrapy in the agg 


δόλια πάντα καλεῖ κάπηλα --- " Κάπηλα προσφέρων τεχνήματα." (ZEschylus, 
Fragment. 328, ed. Dindorf: compare Enripid. Hippolyt. 953.) ᾿ 
1 Ἠοτοὶ ot. iii, 128. This division of power, and double appointment by 
the Great King, appears to have been retained until ἮΝ ἐδ of the “in 
sian empire: see Quintus Curtius, v, 1, 17-20 (v, 3, 19-21, ae Ri 6 
present Turkish government nominates a Defterdar as finance a og ra 
tor in each province, with authority derived directly from itself, and pro 


fessedly mdependent of the Pacha. 


SATRAPIES AND REVENUE. 235 


tary apportioned it among the various component districts, towns, 
or provinces, leaving to the local authorities in each of these 
latter the task of assessing it upon individual inhabitants. From 
necessity, therefore, as well as from indolence of temper and 
political incompetence, the Persians were compelled to respect 
authorities which they found standing both in town and country, 
and to leave in their hands a large measure of genuine influence ; 
frequently overruled, indeed, by oppressive interference σῇ the 
part of the satrap, whenever any of his passions prompted, — 
but never entirely superseded. In the important towns and sta- 
tions, Persian garrisons were usually kept, and against the 
excesses of the military there was probably little or no protec- 
tion to the subject people. Yet still, the provincial governments 
were allowed to continue, and often even the petty kings who 
had governed separate districts during their state of indepen- 
dence prior to the Persian conquest, retained their title and dig- 
nity as tributaries to the court of Susa.1 The empire of the 
Great King was thus an aggregate of heterogeneous elements, 
connected together by no tie except that of common fear and 
subjection, — noway coherent nor self-supporting, nor pervaded 
by any common system or spirit of nationality. It resembled, in 
its main political features, the Turkish and Persian empires of 
the present day,? though distinguished materially by the many 
differences arising out of Mohammedanism and Christianity, and 
apparently not reaching the same extreme of rapacity, corruption, 
and cruelty in detail. 

Darius distributed the Persian empire into twenty satrapies, 
each including a certain continuous territory, and one or more 
nations inhabiting it, the names of which Herodotus sets forth. 
The amount of tribute payable by each satrapy was determined : 
payable in gold, according to the Euboic talent, by the Indians 
in the easternmost satrapy, — in silver, according to the Baby- 
lonian, or larger talent, by the remaining nineteen. Herodotus 
computes the ratio of gold to silver as 13:1. From the nine- 
teen satrapies which paid in silver, there was levied annually 


1 Herodot. iii, 15. 
5 Respecting the administration of the modern Persian empire, see Kip 
eeir, Geegraph. Memoir of Persia, pp. 29, 43 47 


236 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


n thousand seven hundred and forty Babylonian 
talents, equal to something about two million nine hundred ond 
sixty-four thousand pounds sterling: from the Indians, who alone 
i . there was received a sum equal (at the rate of 


the sum of seve 


aid in gold | | the 
᾿- 13) to four thousand six hundred and eighty Euboic talents 


or to about one million two hundred and ninety thousand 


of silver, 
pounds sterling.' : 3 
To explain how it happened that this one satrapy was charge 


‘o-fifths of the aggregate charge the 
with a sum equal to two-fifths of the aggregate charge on 


' Herodot. ili, 95. 
ming up of items, W 
Nor is it possible to trust 
levied from the Indians, though a 
aving divisions, seem within the probable 
d Robertson think the total too small: the charges on 


The text of Herodotus contains an erroneous sum 
hich critics have no means of correcting with certainty. 
the large sum which he alleges to have been 
| the other items, included in the nine 
teen silver-] truth; and indeed 
een § Γ- 
both Rennell an | 
satrapies are decidedly smaller than the reality. ᾿ 
sum of fifty thousand talents is said to have been found 
hv successive kings at Susa alone, besides 


some of the 

The vast 
by Alexander the Great, laid up : iting 
the treasures at Persepolis, Pasargadx, and elsewhere (Artan, iii, 16, ia: 
Plutarch, Alexand. 37). Presuming these talents to be Babylonian or 
ZEginzan talents (in the proportion 5:3 to Attic talents), fifty thousand 
᾿ ye equal to nineteen million pounds sterling ; if they were Attic 


talents would | mn : : 
yual to eleven million six hundred thousand pounds 


talents. it would be e | ae 
‘terling. The statements of Diodorus give even much larger sums (XV, 
ste Le Sle τ τ Ἢ 

9 8: y, 6,9; Strabo, xv, p. 730). It is plain 


Ὁ he κω ἰνείπαν 
66-71: compare Curtius, V, bo, x" ) 7 
different in different authors, and one 


that the numerical affirmations were “a a 
cannot pretend to pronounce on the trustworthiness of such large figures 
without knowing more of the original returns on which they were founded 
a ae * oo and silver, is quite unquestion 
That there were prodigious sums ΟἹ rold and silver, is quite unques 


cting the statement of the Persian revenue given Dy Herodotu 


able. Respe 
ΞΟ Boeckh, Metrologie, ch. vy 1-2. Hi! 

Amedée Jaubert, in 1806, estimated the population of the modern Per- 
at about seven million souls: of which about six million were 
4 « > ‘ 


sian empire , , 
he also estimated the Schah’s revenue 


settled population, the rest nomadic : 
at about two million nine hundred tl 
five hundred thousand pounds sterling. 
higher, at nearer twelve million souls. 


ousand tomans, or one million 
Others calculated the population 
Kinneir gives the revenue at some- 
thine more than three million pounds sterling : he thinks that the whole 
" and the Indus does not contam above 


territory between the Euphratés 1 
[emoir of Persia, pp. 44-47: ccx pare 


eighteen millions of souls (Geogr. ὃ ( ΜΕΝ, 

Ritter, West Asien, Abtheil. ii, Abschn. tv. pp. 879-889). i ms 
The modern Persian empire contains not so much as the eastern 

of the ancient. which covered all As‘atic Turkey and Egypt besides. 


PERSIAN INDIA. 237 


other nineteen, Herodotus dwells upon the vast population, the 
extensive territory, and the abundant produce in gold, amcng 
those whom he calls Indians, — the easternmost inhabitants of 
the earth, since beyond them there was nothing but uninhabit- 
able sand, — reaching, as far as we can make it out, from Baktria 
southward along the Indus to its mouth, but how far eastward 
we cannot determine. Darius is said to have undertaken an 
expedition against them and subdued them: moreover, he is 
affirmed to have constructed and despatched vessels down the 
Indus, from the city of Kaspatyri and the territory of the Pak- 
tyes, in its upper regions, all the way down to its mouth: then 
into the Indian ocean, round the peninsula of Arabia, and up 
the Red Sea to Egypt. The ships were commanded by Skylax, 
—a Greek of Karyanda on the southwestern coast of Asia 
Minor ;! who, if this statement be correct, executed a scheme 
of nautical enterprise not only one hundred and seventy years 
earlier, but also far more extensive, than the famous voyage of 
Nearchus, admiral of Alexander the Great,— since the latter 
only went from the Indus to the Persian gulf. The eastern 
portions of the Persian empire remained so unknown and un- 
visited until the Macedonian invasion, that we are unable to 
criticize these isolated statements of Herodotus. None of the 
Persian kings subsequent to Darius appear to have visited them, 
and whether the prodigious sum demandable from them accord- 
ing to the Persian rent-roll was ever regularly levied, may rea- 
sonably be doubted. At the same time, we may reasonably 
believe that the mountains in the northern parts of Persian 
India — Cabul and Little Thibet — were at that time extremely 
productive in gold, and that quantities of that metal, such as 
now appear almost fabulous, may have been often obtained. It 
appears that the produce of gold in all parts of the earth, as far 


' Herodot. iii, 102, iv, 44. See the two Excursus of Bahr on these two 
shapters, vol. ii, pp. 648-671 of his edit. of Herodotus. 

It certainly is singular that neither Nearchus, nor Ptolemy, nor Aristo- 
bulus, nor Arrian, take any notice of this remarkable voyage distinctly 
asserted by Herodotus to have been accomplished. Such silence, however, 
affords no sufficient reason for calling the narrative in question. The 
attention of the Persian kings, successors to Darius, came to be far more 
eccupied with the western than with the eastern portions of their empire 


238 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


as hitherto known, is obtained exclusively near the surface; se 
that a country once rich in that metal may well have been 
exhausted of its whole supply, and left at a later period without 
any gold at all. | 
Of the nineteen silver-paying satrapies, the most heavily im- 
posed was Babylonia, which paid one thcusand talents: the next 
in amount of charge was Egypt, paying seven hundred talents, 
besides the produce of tke fish from the lake of Meeris. The re 
maining satrapies varied in amount, down as low as one hundred 
and seventy talents, which was the sum charged on the seventh 
satrapy (in the enumeration of Herodotus), comprising the Sat- 
taryde, the Gandarii, the Dodikw, and the Aparyte. The 
Jonians, ZEolians, Magnesians on the Mzander, and on Mount 
Sipylus, Karians, Lykians, Milyans, and Pamphylians, — includ- 
ing the coast of Asia Minor, southward of Kane, and from 
thence round the southern promontory to Phasélis, — were rated 
as one division, paying four hundred talents. But we may be 
sure that much more than this was really taken from the people, 
when we read that Magnesia alone afterwards paid to Themis- 
toklés a revenue of fifty talents annually.!. The Mysians and 
Lvdians were included, with some others, in another division, 
and the Hellespontine Greeks in a third, with Phrygians, Bithy- 
nians, Paphlagonians, Mariandynians, and Syrians, paying three 
hundred and sixty talents, — nearly the same as was paid by 
Syria proper, Phenicia, and Juda, with the island of Cyprus. 
Independent of this regular tribute, and the undefined sums ex- 
torted over and above it,2 there were some dependent nations, 
which, though exempt from tribute, furnished occasional sums 
called presents ; and farther contributions were exacted for the 
maintenance of the vast suite who always personally attended 
the king. One entire third of this last burden was borne by Baby- 
lonia alone in consequence of its exuberant fertility? It was 
paid in produce, as indeed the peculiar productions of every part 
of the empire seem to have been sent up for the regal consumption. 


! Thucyd. i, 138. 3 Herodot. iii, 117. 

® Herodot. i, 192. Compare the description of the dinner and supper of 
the Great King, in Polyznus, iv, 3, 32: also Ktésias and Deinén ap Athe 
nveum, 11, p- 67. 


COINAGE OF DARIUS. 239 


However imperfectly we are now able to follow the geograph- 
ical distribution of the subject nations as given by Herodotus, 
it is extremely valuable as the only professed statistics remain- 
ing, of the entire Persian empire. The arrangement of satrapies, 
which he describes, underwent modification in subsequent times ; 
at least it does not harmonize with various statements in the An- 
abasis of Xenophon, and in other authors who recount Persian 
affairs belonging to the fourth century B.c. But we find in 
no other author except Herodotus any entire survey and distri 
bution of the empire. It is, indeed, a new tendency which now 
manifests itself in the Persian Darius, compared with his prede- 
cessors: not simply to conquer, to extort, and to give away, — 
but to do all this with something like method and system,! and 
to define the obligations of the satraps towards Susa. Another 
remarkable example of the same tendency is to be found in the 
fact, that Darius was the first Persian king who coined money : his 
eoin, both in gold and silver, the Daric, was the earliest produce 
of a Persian mint.2 The revenue, as brought to Susa in metallic 
money of various descriptions, was melted down separately, and 
poured in a fluid state into jars or earthenware vessels; when 
the metal had cooled and hardened, the jar was broken, leaving 
a standing solid mass, from which portions were cut off as the oe 

! Plato, Legg. iii, 12, p. 695. 

3 Herodot. iv, 166; Plutarch, Kimon, 10. 

The gold Daric, of the weight of two Attic drachme (Stater Daricus), 
equivalent to twenty Attie silver drachma (Xenoph. Anab. i, 7, 18), would 
be about 16s. 3d. English. But it seems doubtful whether that ratio between 
gold and silver (10:1) can be reckoned upon as the ordinary ratio in the 
fifth and fourth centuries B.c. Mr. Hussey calculates the golden Daric as 
equal to £1, 18. 3d. English (Hussey, Essay on the Ancient Weights and 
Money, Oxford, 1836, ch. iv, s. 8, p. 68; ch. vii, s. 3, p. 103). 

I cannot think, with Mr. Hussey, that there is any reason for believing 
either the name or the coin Daric to be older than Darius son of Hystaspés 
Compare Boeckh, Metrologie, ix, 5, p. 129. 

Particular statements respecting the value of gold and silver, as ex 
caanged one against the other, are to be received with some reserve as the 
basis of any general estimate, since we have not the means of comparing 8 
great many such statements together. For the process of coinage was 
imperfectly performed, and the different pieces, both of gold and silver, in 
circulation, differed materially in weight one with the other. Herodotus 
gives the ratio of gold to silver as 13: 1. 


240 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


casion required.! And in addition to these administrative, finan 
cial, and monetary arrangements, of which Darius was the first 
originator, we may probably ascribe to him the first introduction 


of that system of roads, resting-places, and permanent relays of 


couriers, which connected both Susa and Ekbatana with the dis- 
tant portions of the empire. Herodotus describes in considerable 
detail the imperial road from Sardis to Susa. a journey of ninety 
days, crossing the Halys, the Euphratés, the Tigris, the Greater 
and Lesser Zab, the Gyndés, and the Choaspés. And we may 
see by this account that in his time it was kept in excellent order, 
with convenience for travellers.® 

it was Darius also who first completed the conquest of the 
sonic Greeks by the acquisition of the important island of Samos. 
That island had maintained its independence, at the time when 
the Persian general Harpagus effected the conquest of Ionia. It 
did not yield voluntarily when Chios and Lesbos submitted, and 
the Persians had no fleet to attack it; nor had the Phenicians 
yet been taught to round the Triopian cape. Indeed, the depres- 
sion which overtook the other cities of Ionia, tended rather to 
the aggrandizement of Samos, under the energetic and unscru- 


« 


nulous despotism of Polykratés. That ambitious Samian, about 
ten years after the conquest of Sardis by Cyrus (seemingly be- 
tween 536-532 B.c.), contrived to seize by force or fraud the 
government of his native island, with the aid of his brothers 
PantagnOétus and Sylos6n, and a small band of conspirators.’ Αἱ 
“rst, the three brothers shared the supreme power ; but presently 
Polykrates put to death Pantagnétus, banished Sylosén, and 
made himself despot alone. In this station, his ambition, his 
perfidy, and his good fortune, were alike remarkable. He con- 


' Herodot. iii, 96. 

2 Herodot. v, 52-53; viii, 98. “It appears to be a favorite idea with all 
barbarous princes, that the badness of the roads adds considerably to the 
natural strength of their dominions. The Turks and Persians are un- 
doubtedly of this opinion: the public highways are, therefore, neglected, 
and particularly so towards the frontiers.” (Kinneir, Geog. Mem. cf Pers 
p- 43.) 

ΤῊ» description of Herodotus contrasts favorably with the picture here 
giren vy Mr. Kinneir. 

3 Herodot. iii. 120. 


SAMOS.—THE DESPUT POLYKRATES. 941 


quered several of the neighboring islands, and even some towns 
on the mainland ; he carried on successful war against Milétus ; 
and signally defeated the Lesbian ships which came to assist 
Miletus; he got together a force of one hundred armed ships 
called pentekonters, and one thousand mercenary bowmen, — 
aspiring to nothing less than the dominion of Ionia, with the 
islands in the A®gean. Alike terrible to friend and foe by his 
indiscriminate spirit of aggression, he acquired a naval power 
which seems at that time to have been the greatest in the Grecian 
world.!| He had been in intimate alliance with Amasis, king of 
Egypt, who, however, ultimately broke with him. Considering 
his behavior towards allies, such rupture is not at all surprising: 
but Herodotus ascribes it to the alarm which Amasis’ conceived 
at the uninterrupted and superhuman good fortune of Poly- 
kratés, — a degree of good fortune sure to draw down ultimately 
corresponding intensity of suffering from the hands of the en- 
vious gods. Indeed, Herodotus, — deeply penetrated with this 
belief in an ever-present nemesis, which allows no man to be 
very happy, or long happy, with impunity, — throws it into the 
form of an epistolary warning from Amasis to Polykratés, ad- 
vising him to inflict upon himself some seasonable mischief or 
suffering ; in order, if possible, to avert the ultimate judgment, — 
to let blood in time, so that the plethora of happiness might not 
end in apoplexy.2 Pursuant to such counsel, Polykratés threw 
into the sea a favorite ring, of matchless price and beauty; but 
unfortunately, in a few days, the ring reappeared in the belly of 
a fine fish, which a fisherman had sent to him as a present. 
Amasis now foresaw that the final apoplexy was inevitable, and 
broke off the alliance with Polykratés without delay, —a well- 
known story, interesting as evidence of ancient belief, and not 
less to be noted as showing the power of that belief to beget 
fictitious details out of real characters, such as I have already 
touched upon in the history of Solon and Croesus, and else 
where. 

' Herodot. iii, 39; Thucyd. i, 13 

3 Herodot. iii, 40-42... (ἢν dé μὴ ἐναλλὰξ ἤδη τὠπὸ τούτου al εὐτύχιαί τοι 
τυιαύταισι πάϑαισι προσπίπτωσι, τρόπῳ τῷ ἐξ ἐμεῦ ὑποκειμένῳ ἀκέο: COIN. 
pare vii, 203, and i, 32. 


VOL. Iv. 1} 160c 


949 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


The facts mentioned by Herodotus rather lead us to believe 
that it was Polykratés, who, with characteristic faizklessness, broke 
off his friendship with Amasis ;! finding it suitable to his policy 
to cultivate the alliance of Kambysés, when that prince was pre- 
paring for his invasion of Egypt. In that invasion, the Tonic 
subjects of Persia were called upon to serve, and Polykratés, 


decming it a good opportunity to rid himself of some Samian 
malcontents, sent to the Persian king to tender auxiliaries from 
himself. Kambysés, having eagerly caught at the prospect of 
aid from the first naval potentate in the A¢gean, forty Samian 
triremes were sent to the Nile, having on board the suspected 
persons, as well as conveying a secret request to the Persian 
king that they might never be suffered to return. Either they 
never went to Egypt, however, or they found means to escape ; 
very contradictory stories had reached Herodotus. But they 
certainly returned to Samos, attacked Polykratés at home, and 
were driven off by his superior force without making any impres- 
sion. Whereupon they repaired to Sparta to entreat assist- 
ance.” 

We may here notice the gradually increasing tendency in the 
Grecian world to recognize Sparta as something like a head, pro- 
tector, or referee, in cases either of foreign danger or internal 
dispute. The earliest authentic instance known to us, of appli- 
ation to Sparta in this character, is that of Creesus against 
Cyrus: next, that of the Ionic Greeks against the latter: the 
instance of the Samians now before us, is the third. The impor- 
tant events connected with, and consequent upon, the expulsion 
of the Peisistratide from Athens, manifesting yet more formally 
the headship of Sparta, occur fifteen years after the present 
event; they have been already recounted in a previous chapter, 
and serve as a farthe: proof of progress in the same direction. 
To watch the growth of these new political habits, is essential to 
a right understanding of Grecian history. 

On reaching Sparta, the Samian exiles, borne down with de- 
apondency and suffering, entered at large into the particulars of 
their case. Their long speaking annc yed instead of moving the 


ἃ Herodot. iii, 44. 3 Herodot. iii. δά 


SPARTAN EXPEDITION AGAINST POLYKRATES. 243 


Spartans, who said, or are made to say: “We have forzotten 
the first part of the speech, and the last part is unintelligible to 
us.” Upon which the Samians appeared the next day, simply 
with an empty wallet, saying: “Our wallet has no meal in it.” 
“ Your wallet is superfluous, ” (said the Spartans ;) 7. e. the words 
would have been sufficient without 1.1 The aid which they im- 
plored was granted. 

We are told that both the Lacedemonians and the Corin- 
thians, — who joined them in the expedition now contemplated, 
—had separate grounds of quarrel with the Samians,2. which 
operated as a more powerful motive than the simple desire to 
aid the suffering exiles. But it rather seems that the subse- 
quent Greeks generally construed the Lacedzemonian interference 
against Polykrates as an example of standing Spartan hatred 
against despots. Indeed, the only facts which we know, to suse 
lain this anti-despotic sentiment for which the Lacedxemonians 
had credit, are, their proceedings against Polykratés and Hip 
pias; there may have been other analogous cases, but we cannot 
specify them with certainty. However this may be, a joint 
Lacedezmonian and Corinthian force accompanied the exiles 
back to Samos, and assailed Polykratés in the city. They did 
their best to capture it, for forty days, and were at one time on 
the point of succeeding, but were finally obliged to retire with- 
out any success. “The city would have been taken,” says Her- 
odotus, “if all the Lacedzmonians had acted like Archias and 
Lyképas,” — who, pressing closely upon the retreating Samians, 
were shut within the town-gates, and perished. The historian 
had heard this exploit in personal conversation with Archias, 
grandson of the person above mentioned, in the deme Pitana at 
Sparta, — whose father had been named Samius, and whe 
respected the Samians above any other Greeks, because they 
had bestowed upon the two brave warriors, slain within their 
town, an honorable and public funeral.3 It is rarely that Herod- 
otus thus specifies his informants: had he done so more frequently 
the value as well as the interest of his history would have bees 
inaterially increased. 


' Herodot. iii, 46. τῷ ϑυλώκῳ περιείργασϑαι. 
3 Herodot. iii, 47, 48, 52, ὁ Herodot. ili, 54-56 


244 HISTORY OF GREECF. 


On the retirement of the Lacedemonian force, the Samian 
exiles were left destitute ; and looking out for some community 
to plunder, weak as well as rich, they pitched upon the island of 
Siphnos. The Siphnians of that day were the wealthiest island- 
ers in the Agean, from the productiveness of their gold and 
produce of which was annually distributed 


silver mines, — the ) 
reserving a tithe for the Delphian temple.! 


among the citizens, | an | 
Their treasure-chamber was among the most richly furnished of 
which that holy place could boast, and they themselves, probably, 
in these times of early p-osperity, were numbered among the 
most brilliant of the Ionie visitors at the Delian festival. The 
Samians landing at Siphnos, demanded a contribution, under the 
name of a loan, of ten talents: which being refused, they pro 
ceeded to ravage the island, inflicting upon the inhabitants a 
severe defeat, and ultimately extorting from them one hundred 
talents. They next purchased from the inhabitants of Hermione, 
in the Argolic peninsula, the neighboring island of Hydrea, fa- 
mous in modern Greek warfare. But it appears that their plans 
must have been subsequently changed, for, instead of occupying 
it, they placed it under the care of the Treezenians, and repaired 
themselves to Krete, for the purpose of expelling the Zakynthian 
settlers at Kydonia. In this they succeeded, and were induced to 
establish themselves in that place. But after they had remained 
there five years, the Kretans obtained naval aid from /Egina, 
whereby the place was recovered, and the Samian intruders 
finally sold into slavery.* 

Such was the melancholy end of the enemies of Polykratés: 
meanwhile, that despot himself was more powerful and prosperous 
than ever. Samos, under him, was “the first of all cities, Hel- 
lenic or barbaric:3” and the great works admired by Herod- 
otus in the island,t — an aqueduct for the city, tunnelled through 
ἃ mountain for the length of seven furlongs, —a mole to protect 
the harbor, two furlong: long and twenty fathoms deep, and the 
vast temple of Héré, may probably have been enlarged and com: 


3 Herodot. iii, 57. νησιωτέων μάλιστα ἐπλούῦτεον. 


2 Herodot. iii, 58, 59. | ra 
® Herodot. iii, 139. πολίων πασέων πρώτην 'EAAnvidur καὶ ϑαρβώρων. 


* Herodot, iii, 60. 
Vo.. 4 H 


DESTRUCTION OF POLYKRATES BY ORGTES. 245 


pleted, if not begun, by him. Aristotle quotes the public works 
of Polykratés as instances of the profound policy of despots, to 
occupy as well as to impoverish their subjects.!. The earliest of 
all Grecian thalassokrats, or sea-kings, — master of the greatest 
naval force in the A&gean, as well as of many among its is.ands, 
—he displayed his love of letters by friendship to Anakreon, 
and his piety by consecrating to the Delian Apollo? the neighbor- 
ing island of Rhéneia. But while thus outshining all his contem- 
poraries, victorious over Sparta and Corinth, and projecting 
farther aggrandizement, he was precipitated on a sudden into the 
abyss of ruin; and that too, as if to demonstrate unequivocally 
the agency of the envious gods, not from the revenge of any 
of his numerous victims, but from the gratuitous malice of a 
stranger whom he had never wronged and neverevenseen. The 
Persian satrap Orcetés, on the neighboring mainland, conceived 
an implacable hatred against him: no one could tell why, — for 
he had no design of attacking the island; and the trifling reasons 
conjecturally assigned, only prove that the real reason, whatever 
it might be, was unknown. Availing himself of the notorious 
ambition and cupidity of Polykratés, Orcetés sent to Samos a 
messenger, pretending that his life was menaced by Kambysés, 
and that he was anxious to make his escape with his abundant 
treasures. He proposed to Polykratés a share in this treasure, 
sufficient to make him master of all Greece, as far as that object 
could be achieved by money, provided the Samian prince would 
come over to convey him away. Mzandrius, secretary of Poly 

kratés, was sent over to Magnésia on the Meander, to make 
inquiries; he there saw the satrap with eight large coffers full of 
gold,— or rather apparently so, being in reality full of stones, 
with a layer of gold at the top,!—tied up ready for departure. 
The cupidity of Polykratés was not proof against so rich a bait: 
he crossed over to Magnésia with a considerable suite, and thus 
came into the power of Orcetés, in spite of the warnings of his 


' Aristot. Polit. v, 9,4. τῶν περὶ Σάμον ἔργα Ἰιολυκράτε a+ πάντα yap 
γαῦτα δύναται ταὐτὺν, ἀσχολίαν καὶ πενίαν τῶν ἀρχομένων. 

* Thucyd. i, 14, 1ii, 104. > Herodot. iii, 120. 

* Compare the trick of Hanribal at Gortyn in Kret. — Cornelius Nepos 
‘Hannibal, c. 9}. 


440 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


prophets and the agony of his terrified damgnter, gr sagprtios 
approachiag fate had been revealed in a dream. . ν : ir 
slew him and crucified his body ; releasing all the engage’ ἡ 
accompanied him, with an intimation that they ought to than 


him for procuring them a free dallas -" but gee ators 
the foreigners and the slaves as prisoners.| The death - — 
nimself, which ensued shortly afterwards, has alread) been . 
scribed. It is considered by Herodotus as a judgment tor his 
flagitious deed in the case of Poly krates.° VME ᾿ 
At the departure of the latter from Samos, in anticipation of ᾿ 
speedy return, Mzandrius had been left as his lieutenant at pee 
and the unexpected catastrophe of Polykrateés filled him with sur- 
prise and consternation. ‘Though possessed of the fortresses, the 
soldiers, and the treasures, which had constituted the machinery 
of his powerful master, he knew the risk of trying to iaiist 
them on his own account. Partly from this apprehension, partly 
from the genuine political morality which prevailed with more οι 
less force in every Grecian bosom, he resolved to lay down his 
authority and enfranchise the island. “ He wished (says the 
historian, in a remarkable phrase)* to act like the Justest of men ; 
but he was not allowed to do so.” Lis first proceeding was to 
erect in the suburbs an altar in honor of Zeus Eleutherius, and 
to close a piece of ground as a precinct, which still existed 
in the time of Herodotus: he next convened an ποθ οἱ the 
Samians. “ You know (says he) that the whole power of Poly- 
kratés is now in my hands, nor is there anything to hinder me 
trom continuing to rule over you. Nevertheless, what 1 condemn 
in another I will not do myself, — and I have always disapproved 
of Polykratés, and others like him, for seeking to rule over men 
as good as themselves. Now that Polykratés has comme te ” 
end of his destiny, I at once lay down the command, and hagas 
among you equal law; reserving to myself as privileges, first, van 
talents out of the treasures of Polykratés, — next, the hereditary 


 Hlerodot. iii, 124, 125. = 

2 Herodot. iii, 126. "Opoirea Πολυκράτεος τίσιες μετῆλϑον. : 

ὃ Herodot. iii, 142. τῷ dS ταιοτάτῳ ἀνδρῶν βουλομένῳ γενέσϑαι, ota 
pepe | is remark ‘admus, who voluntarily resigned the 
feyévero. Compare his remark on Kadmus, who vo } g 


despotism at Kos (:ii 164) 


MEANDRIUS DESPOT OF SAMOS. 241 


priesthvod of Zeus Eleutherius for myself and my descendants 
forever. ΤῸ him I have just set apart a sacred precinct, as the 
God of that freedom which I now hand over to you.” 

This reasonable and generous proposition fully justifies the epi 
thet of Herodotus. But very differently was it received by the 
Samian hearers. One of the chief men among them, Telesar- 
chus, exclaimed, with the applause of the rest, “You rule ns, 
low-born and scoundrel as you are! you are not worthy to rule: 
don’t think of that, but give us some account of the money which 
you have been handling.”! 

Such an unexpected reply caused a total revolution in the mind 
of Meandrius. It left him no choice but to maintain dominion 
at all hazards, — which he accordingly resolved to do. Retiring 
into the acropolis, under pretence of preparing his money-accounta 
for examination, he sent for Telesarchus and his chief political 
enemies, one by one, — intimating that they were open to inspec- 
tion. ΑΒ fast as they arrived they were put in chains, while 
Mveandrius remained in the acropolis, with his soldiers and his 
treasures, as the avowed successor of Polykratés. And thus the 
Samians, after a short hour of insane boastfulness, found them 
selves again enslaved. “It seemed (says Herodotus) that they 
were not willing to be free.” 2 

We cannot but contrast their conduct on this occasion with 
that of the Athenians about twelve years afterwards, on the ex- 
pulsion of Hippias, which has been recounted in a previous 
chapter. The position of the Samians was far the more favorable 
of the two, for the quiet and successful working of a free govern- 
ment; for they had the advantage of a voluntary as well as a 
sincere resignation from the actual despot. Yet the thirst for 
reactionary investigation prevented them even from taking a 
reasonable estimate of their own power of enforcing it: they 
passed at once from extreme subjection to overbearing and ruin: 
ous rashness. Whereas the Athenians, under circumstances far 

less promising, avoided the fatal mistake of sacrificing the pres. 
 Herodot. iii, 142. ᾿Αλλ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ἄξιος εἶ σύ γ᾽ ἡμέων ἄρχειν, γεγονώς τι 
κακὸς, καὶ ἐὼν ὄλεϑρος" ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ὅκως λόγον δώσεις τῶν ἐνεχείρεσιι: 
γρημάατων. 
® Herodot. iii, 143. οὐ yap δῆ, ὡς οἴκασι, ἐβουλέατο εἶναι ἐλευϑεοοΐ 


948 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


pects of the future to recollections of the past; showed them 
selves both anxious to acquire the rights, and willing to perform 
the obligations, of a free community ; listened to wise counsels, 
maintained unanimous action, and overcame, by heroic efforts, 
forces very greatly superior. If we compare the reflections 
of Herodotus on the one case and on the other,! we shall be 
struck with the difference which those reflections imply between 
the Athenians and the Samians, —a difference partly referable, 
doubtless, to the pure Hellenism of the former, contrasted with 
the half-Asiatized Hellenism of the latter, — but also traceable 
in a great degree to the preliminary lessons of the Solonian con- 
stitution, overlaid, but not extinguished, during the despotism of 
the Peisistratids which followed. 

The events which succeeded in Samos are little better than a 
series of crimes and calamities. The prisoners, whom Mean- 
drius had detained in the acropolis, were slain during his danger- 
ous illness, by his brother Lykarétus, under the idea that this 
would enable him more easily to seize the sceptre. But Mzan- 
drius recovered, and must have continued as despot for a year or 
two: it was, however, a weak despotism, contested more or less 
in the island, and very different from the iron hand of Polykratés 
In this untoward condition, the Samians were surprised by the 
arrival of a new claimant for their sceptre and acropolis, — and, 
what was much more formidable, a Persian army to back him. 

Sylosén, the brother of Polykratés, having taken part origi 
nally in his brother’s conspiracy and usurpation, had been at first 
allowed to share the fruits of it, but quickly found himself ban- 
ished. In this exile he remained during the whole life of Poly- 
kratés, and until the accession of Darius to the Persian throne, 
which followed about a year after the death of Polykratés. He 
happened to be at Memphis, in Egypt, during the time when 
Kambysés was there with his conquering army, and when Da- 
rius, then a Persian of little note, was serving among his guards. 
Sylosén was walking in the agora of Memphis, wearing a scarlet 
cloak, to which Darius took a great fancy, and proposed to buy 

it. A divine inspiration prompted Sylosén to reply,? “1 cannot 


' Herodet. v, 78, and iii, 142, 143. 
3 Herodot. iii, 139. Ὁ δὲ Συλοσῶν, ὁρέων τὸν Δαρεῖον μεγάλως ἐπιϑυκέο. "6 


Mr χλάνιδος, ϑείῃ τύχῃ χρεώμενος, λέγει, etc 


SAMOS CONQUERED BY THE PERSIANS. 249 


for any price sell it; but I give it you for nothing, if it must be 
yours.” Darius thanked him, and accepted the cloak ; and ἢ 
some years the donor accused himself of a silly sian of fers 
nature.] But as events came round, Sylosén at length τῇ d 
with surprise that the unknown Persian, whom he had | een 
wala the cloak at Memphis, was installed as king in is on ; é 
Susa. He went thither, proclaimed himself as a Conic fe well Ἴ 
benetactor of the new king, and was admitted to the aah ¢ τ 
ence. Darius had forgotten his person, but perfectly sat ρθη 
the adventure of the cloak, when it was brought to his “i ie 
and showed himself forward to requite, on the ΑΝ ΒΝ A te 
he Great King, former favors, though small, rendered to an 
simple soldier at Memphis. Gold and silver were tendered 
Syloson in protusion, but he rejected them, — requesting that he 
island of Samos might be conquered and handed over ag f 
without slaughter or enslavement of inhabitants. His ἂν = 
was complied with. Otanés, the originator of the cons oes 
against Smerdis, was sent down to the coast of lenin ἀράν 
army -arrie r υ Δ rear ὃ 
= aera over to Samos, and landed him unex pect-~ 
Meandrius was in no condition to resist the invasion, nor were 
the Samians generally disposed to sustain him. He accordit gl 
concluded a convention with Otanés, whereby he agreed t cae 
way for Sylosén, to evacuate the island, and to admit ἂν P ᾿ 
slans at once into the city; retaining possession ἐπ; 
such time as might be necessary to embark his propert "d 
treasures — of the acropolis, which had a separate ils 22a a 
and even a subterranean passage and secret portal for tg 
— probably one of the precautionary provisions of Poly. 
etree: vege sd git these conditions, and himself 
“ipal officers entered the town, the army bein 
quartered around ; while Sylosén seemed on the point of sc τ 
ing the seat of his deceased brother without sn ολνηδο oo liek: 
shed. But the Samians were destined to a fate more οὐ ἢ 
ἜΜΜΕΝ had a brother named Charilaus, violent in his seco 
and half a madman, whom he was obliged to keep in confine, 


' Herodot. iii, 140. ἠπί af es 
+ UL, + ἥπιίστατο οἱ ττῦτο ἀπολωλέναι δι᾽ εὐηϑ: 
* Herodot. iii, 141-144. t δι᾿ εὐηϑέην. 


115 


250 HISTURY OF GREECE. 


ment. This m:n looking out of his chamber-window, saw ths 
Persian officers seated peaceably throughout the town and even 
under the gates of the acropolis, unguarded, and relying upon 
the convention: it seems that these were the chief officers, whose 


rank gave them the privilege of being carried about on their 


seats.' The sight infamed both his wrath and his imsane ambi- 


tion; he clamored for liberty and admission to his brother, whom 
he reviled as a coward no less than atyrant. “ Here are you, 
worthless man, keeping me, your own brother, in a dungeon, 
though I have done no wrong worthy of bonds ; while you do 
not dare to take your revenge on the Persians, who are casting 
you out as a houseless exile, and whom it would be so easy to put 
down. If you are afraid of them, give me your guards; I will 
make the Persians repent of their coming here, and I will send 
you safely out of the island forthwith.” 5 

Meeandrius, on the point of quittmg Samos forever, had little 
personal motive to care what became of the population. He had 
probably never forgiven them for disappointing his honorable in- 
tentions after the death of Polykratés, nor was he displeased to 
hand over to Sylos6n an odious and blood-stained sceptre, which 
he foresaw would be the only consequence of his brother’s mad 
project. He therefore sailed away with his treasures, leaving 
the acropolis to his brother Charilaus; who immediately armed 
the guards, sallied forth from his fortress, and attacked the un- 
suspecting Persians. Many of the great officers were slain 
without resistance before the army could be got together; but at 
length Otanés collected his troops and drove the assailants back 
into the acropolis. While he immediately began the siege of 
that fortress, he also resolved, as Mzandrius had foreseen, to take 
a signal revenge for the treacherous slaughter of so many of his 
friends and companions. His army, no less incensed than him- 


' Herodot. iii, 146. τῶν Περσέων τοὺς διφροφορευμένους καὶ λόγου πλείστου 
ἀξίους. 

3 Herodot. iii, 145. Ἐμὲ μὲν, ὦ κάκιστε ἀνδρῶν, ἐόντα σεωῦτοῦ ἀδελφεὸν, 
καὶ ἀδικήσαντα οὐδὲν ἄξιον δεσμοῦ, δῆσας γοργύρης ἠξίωσας" ὁρέων δὲ τοῦς 
Πέρσας ἐκβάλλοντάς τέ δε καὶ ἄνοικον ποιεῦντας, οὐ τολμᾷς τίσασϑαι, οὕτω 
δή τι ἐόντας εὐπετέας χειρωϑῆναι. 

The highly dramatic manner of Herodotus cannot be melted down inte 
racoth historical » -cital 


SYLOSON DESPOT OF SAMOS. 95] 


self, weie directed to fall upon the Samian people and massacre 
Ὰ ᾽ . . ᾿ 
them witheut discrimination, — man and boy, on ground sacred 

ι τῶ 7 as . γ » i = ‘ f ᾿ 
as well as profane. ‘The bloody order was too faithfully executed, 
ΠῚ ῳ; S τας han > rar τ . ; £3 
and ? imos was handed over to Sylosén, stripped of its male 

Hy ὲ ] *Ohaml. ' ; 
inhabitants.! Of Charilaus and the acropolis we hear no farther 

»}»" ‘ ῷ Ss ὦ } ic eh ἢ ‘ r 7 ; 
perhaps he and his guards may have escaped by sea. Lykarétus,? 
the other brother of Mandrius, must have remained either in 
‘he service of Sylos6n or in that of the Persians ; for we find 
him some vears afterwards intrusted by the latter with an im 
portant command. 

Syloson was thus finally installed as despot of an island peo- 
pled chiefly, if not wholly, with women and children: we may 
Ὶ ‘ayer ῶ a € , : 
however, presume, that the deed of blood has been described 
by the historian as more sweeping than it really was. It seems 
nevertheless, to have sat heavily i ) 

288, to have sat heavily on the conscience of Otanés 

-" —— . as a . ν ᾿ ih 
who was induced sometime afterwards, by a dream and by a 
ainful disease, to take sasures for r i 
pe | o take measures for repeopling the island.3 
rom whence the new population came, we are not told: but 
wholesale translations of inhabitants from one place to another 
were familiar to the mind of a Persian kine or satrap 
> Oc c . 

Meandrius, following the example of the previous Samian exiles 
under Polykratés, went to Spar id ἢ 

ykratés, we > Sparta and sought ¢ , 3 
pie Se vember. | g aid for the purpose 
' ; : shing umself at Samos. But the Lacedsmonians 
1ad no dispositi ‘epeat an atte hi ‘ 

Sposition to repeat an attempt which had before turned 
out so unsuccessfully, nor could he seduce king Kleomenés by 
the display of his treasures 1 

splay s treasures anc ly-wr ξ 
ds eed oe 1 finely-wrought gold plate. The 

g, ever, not without fear that such seductions micht win 
fer c * ᾿ " Ὕ ὐὐλὰ . » . sa 
over some of the Spartan leading men, prevailed with the ephors 

fo send Mzandrius away.‘ 

Sylosén seems to have remained undisturbed at Samos, as a 
Md F oA . > mI AS “1. . .. ai Ἵ ᾿ 

tributary of Persia, like the Ionic cities on the continent: some 

years afterwards we find his Eaké ini isl: 

) ard; is son /ALakés reignine j isk a 

Strabo states that j _ oo eM sitll pane 
“ἢ ates that it was the harsh rule of Sylosén which caused 

the depopulation of the island. But the cause just recounted out 

of Herodotus is both very different and sufficiently plausible ig 


; Herodot. iii, 149. ἔρημον ἐοῦσαν ἀνδρῶν 
Herodot. v, 27 
lerodot v, 27. * Herodot. iii, 149. 
lierodot. iii, 148. * Herodot. vi, 13 
. ᾿] . 


952 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


itself; and as Strabo seems in the main to have derived his ac 
ΓΒ 8 ξ is point he has 
count from Herodotus, we may suppose that on this point 


incorrectly remembered his authority.! 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 
DEMOKEDES. —DAMIUS INVADES SCYTHIA. 


Darius had now acquired full authority throughout the Persian 
empire, having put down the refractory satrap Oreetes, δ“, ΝΣ as 
the revolted Medes and Babylonians. He had, er? com- 
pleted the conquest of Ionia, by the important addition οἱ nNOS 
and his dominion thus comprised all Asia Minor, with its ace 
boring islands. But this was not sufficient for the pray “ ᾿ 
Persian king, next but one in succession to the great 7. 
The conquering impulse was yet unabated among the I armen, 
incumbent upon their king, and whose King 
pon himself, to extend the limits of the 


thought it incumbent u De | ! 
empire. Though not of the lineage of Cyrus, Darius had taken 
ce: he had married 


pains to connect himself with it by marriage : ᾿ a 
Atossa and Artystoné, daughters οἱ Cy rus, and Parmys, 
daughter of Smerdis, the younger son of Cyrus. Atossa had 
been first the wife of her brother Kambysés ; next, of the Ma- 
gian Smerdis, his successor ; and thirdly of Darius, to whom she 
bore four children2 Of those children the eldest was Xerxés, 
respecting whom more will be said hereafter. τ μι 
Atossa, mother of the only Persian king who ever set foot in 
Greece, the Sultana Validi of Persia during the reign ot Xerxes, 
influence in the reign of her 


who thought it 


was a person of commanding 


enters 


Strabo, xiv, p.638. He gives a proverbial phrase about the depopula 
tion of the island — 


"Exyti Συλοσῶντος εὐρυχωρίη, 
hich is perfectly consistent with the narrative of Herodotus. 
3 Herodot. iii, 88, vii, 2. 


DEMOKEDES OF KROTON. 253 


last husband,! as well as in that of her son, and filled no incon- 
siderable space even in Grecian imagination, as we may see both 
by Auschylus and Herodotus. Had her influence prevailed, the 
first conquering appetites of Darius would have been directed, 
not against the steppes of Scythia, but against Attica and Pelo- 
ponnesus ; at least, so Herodotus assures us. The grand object 
of the latter in his history is to set forth the contentions of Hellas 
with the barbarians or non-Hellenic world; and with an art 
truly epical, which manifests itself everywhere to the careful 
reader of his nine books, he preludes to the real dangers which 
were averted at Marathon and Plataa, by recounting the first 
conception of an invasion of Greece by the Persians, — how 
it originated, and how it was abandoned. For this purposa 
—— according to his historical style, wherein general facts are set 
forth as subordinate and explanatory accompaniments to the ad- 
ventures of particular persons, — he give us the interesting, but 
romantic, history of the Krotoniate surgeon Démokédés. 
Démokédés, son of a citizen of Krotén named Kalliphén, had 
turned his attention in early youth to the study and practice of 
medicine and surgery (for that age, we can make no difference 
between the two), and had made considerable progress in it. His 
youth coincides nearly with the arrival of Pythagoras at Krotén, 
(900 —520,) where the science of the surgeon, as well as the art 
of the gymnastic trainer, seem to have been then prosecuted more 
actively than in any part of Greece. His father Kalliphén, 
however, was a man of such severe temper, that the son ran 
away from him, and resolved to maintain himself by his talents 
elsewhere. He went to Aigina, and began to practice in his pro- 
fession; and so rapid was his success, even in his first year, — 
though very imperfectly equipped with instruments and appara- 
tus,? — that the citizens of the island made a contract with him 
to remain there for one year, at a salary of one talent (about 


* Herodot. vii, 3. ἡ γὰρ "Aroooa εἶχε τὸ πᾶν κράτος. Compare the de- 
scription given of the ascendency of the savage Sultana Parysatis over her 
ΡΟΣ Artaxerxés Mnémon (Plutarch, Artaxerxés, c. 16, 19, 23). 

* Herodot. iii, 131. ἀσκευής περ ἐὼν, καὶ ἔχων οὐδὲν τῶν ὅσα περὶ τὴν 
τέχνην ἔστιν ἐργαλῆϊα, ---ἰῃς description refers to surgical rather than te 
medical practice. 


That curious assemblage of the cases of particular patients with :emarke 


254 HISTURY OF GREECE. 


three hundred and eighty-three pounds sterling, an .2ginzan tal. 
ent). The year afterwards he was invited to come to Athens, then 
under the Peisistratids, at a salary of one hundred minz, or one 
and two-thirds of a talent; and in the following year, Polykratés 
of Samos tempted him by the offer of two talents. With that 


known in the works of Hippokratés, under the title "Exidyyea (Notes of 
visits to different cities), is very illustrative of what Herodotus here men- 
tions about Démokédés. Consult, also, the valuable Prolegomena cf M 
Littré, in his edition of Hippokratés now in course of publication, as to the 
tharacter, means of action, and itinerant habits of the Grecian /arpot: see 
particularly the preface to vol. v, p. 12, where he enumerates the various 
places visited and noted by Hippokratés. The greater number of the Hippo 
kratic observations refer to various parts of ‘Thrace, Macedonia, and ‘Thes- 
saly; but there are some, also, which refer to patients in the islands of 
Syros and Delos, at Athens, Salamis, Elis, Corinth, and CEniadw in Akar- 
nania. “On voit par la combien étoit juste le nom de Periodeutes ou 
vovageurs donnés ἃ ces anciens médecins.” 

Again, M. Littré, in the same preface, p. 25, illustrates the proceedings 
and residence of the ancient ἰατρός : “ On se trompecroit si on se représen- 
toit la demeure d’un médevin d’alors comme celle d’un médecin d’aujourd’- 
hui. La maison du médecin de l’antiquité, du moins au temps (’ Hippocrate 
et aux époques voisines, renfermoit un local destine a la pratique d'un 
grand nombre d’opérations, contenant les machines et les instrumens néces- 
saires, et de plus étant aussi une boutique de pharmacie. Ce local se nom 
mait ἰατρεῖον." See Plato, Legg. i, p. 646, iv, p. 720. Timzus accused 
Aristotle of having begun as a surgeon, practising to great profit in surgery, 
or ἰατρεῖον, and having quitted this occupation late in life, to devote him- 
self to the study of science, — σοφιστὴν ὀψιμαϑὴ καὶ μισητὸν ὑπάρχοντα, 
καὶ τὸ πολυτίμητον ἰατρεῖον ἀρτίως ἀποκεκλεικότα (Ἰ olyb. xii, 9). 

See, also, the Remarques Retrospectives attached by M. Littré to volume 
iv, of the same work (pp. 654-658), where he dwells upon the intimate 
anion of surgic Ὡ and medical practice in antiquity. At the same time, it 
must be remarked that a passage in the remarkable medical oath, published 
in the collection of Hippokratic treatises, recognizes in the plainest manner 
the distinction between the physician and the operator, — the former binds 
himself by this cath not to perform the operation “even of lithotomy, but 
to leave it to the operators, or workmen :” Οὐ τεμέω δὲ οὐδὲ μὴν λιϑιῶντας, 
bn χωρήσω δὲ ἐργώτησιν ἀνδοάσι πρῆξιος THOOE (CEuvres d’Hippocrate, vol. iv 
p. 630, ed. Littré). M. Littré (p. 617) contests this explanation, remarking 
that the various Hippokratic treatises represent the ἰατρὸς as performing all 


sorts of operations, even such as require violent and mechanica! dealing. 


Sut the words of the oath are so explicit, that it seems more reasonable te 
assivn to the oath itself a later date than the treatises, when the habits of 


ΒΤ ΟΣ" may have changed. 


DEMOKEDES SENT UP TO SUSA. 955 


despot he remained, and accompanied him in his last calamitous 
visit to the satrap Oreetés: on the murder of Polykratés, being 
peized among the slaves and foreign attendants, he was left to 
languish with the rest in imprisonment and neglect. When 
again, soon after, Oretés himself was slain, Démokédés was 
numbered among his slaves and chattels and sent up to Susa. 

Hie had not been long at that capital, when Darius, leaping 
from his horse in the chase, sprained his foot badly, and was car- 
ried home in violent pain. The Egyptian surgeons, supposed to 
be the first men in their profession! whom he habitually em- 
ployed, did him no good, but only aggravated his torture; for 
seven days and nights he had no sleep, and he as well as those 
xround him began to despair. At length, some one who had been 
at Sardis, aceidentally recollected that he had heard of a Greek 
surgeon among the slaves of Orctés: search was immediately 
made, and the miserable slave was brought, in chains as well as 
in rags,° into the presence of the royal sufferer. Being asked 
whether he understood surgery, he affected ignorance; but Da- 
rius, suspecting this to be a mere artifice, ordered out the scourge 
and the pricking instrument, to overcome it. Démokékés now 
saw that there was no resource, admitted that he had acquired 
some little skill, and was called upon to do his utmost in the case 
before him. He was fortunate enough to succeed perfectly, in 
alleviating the pain, in procuring sleep for the exhausted patient, 
and ultimately in restoring the foot to a sound state. Darius, 
who had abandoned all hopes of such a cure, knew no bounds to 
his gratitude. As a first reward, he presented him with two sets 
of chains in solid gold, — a commemoration of the state in which 
Demokédeés had first come before him,— he next sent him into 
the harem to visit his wives. The conducting eunuchs intro- 
duced him as the man who had restored the king to life, and 
the grateful sultanas each gave to him a saucer full of golden 
coins called staters;3 in all 80 numerous, that the slave Skiton, 


About the Persian habit of sending to Egypt for surgeons, compare 
Herodot. iii, 1. 
* Herodot iii, 129. τὸν dé ὡς ἐξεῦρον ἐν τοῖσι 'Opoitew ἀνδραπύδοισι Sow 
δὴ ἀπημελημένον, παρῆγον ἐς μέσον, πέδας Te ἕλκοντα καὶ ῥάκεσιν ἐσθημένον 
* Herodot. iii, 130. The golden stater was equal to about 11. 16. ad 
English money (Hussey, Ancient Weights, vii, 3, p. 103). 


HISTORY OF GREF“E. 


256 


who followed him, was enriched by merely picking up the pieces 


which dropped on the floor. Nor was this all. Darius gave him 


a splendid house and furniture, made him the my τρώει a 
table, and showed him every description of favor. He es 
to crucify the Egyptian surgeons who had been SO unsuccess . 
in their attempts to cure him ; but Démokedés had the ΩΝ 
lives, as well as of rescuing an unfortunate 


of preserving their res , , , 
: ‘sonment, —an Eleian prophet, who had 


companion of his impr : 
followed the fortunes of Polykratés. 

But there was one favor which Darius would on no — 
grant ; yet upon this one Démokédés had set his ὙΠ 
liberty of returning to Greece. At length accident, ΠΝ 
with his own surgical skill, enabled him to escape from the + 
dor of his second detention, as it had before extricated 00 si 
the misery of the first. A tumor formed upon the sn Oo 
Atossa; at first, she said nothing to any one, but as it became _ 
bad for concealment, she was forced to consult Démokédés. 6 
promised to cure her, but required from her a solemn oath _ 
she would afterwards do for him anything which he should ask, 


. " . "ὦ l 
i imself < > same : to ask nothing indecent. 
— pledging himself at the same time t g 


The cure was successful, and Atossa was required to repay it by 
procuring his liberty. He knew that the favor would be re- 

9 “ὦ ἃς. ὑλῶν λιν >» taucht hera strat- 
fused, even to her, if directly solicited, but he ta ha “ὕω, 
τσ under false pretences the consent of Darius. 
2 


avem for obtainit a . 
ἥ Herodotus tells us,2 in bed, of 


She took an early opportunity, | heii 
reminding Darius that the Persians expected from him some 
positive addition to the power and splendor of the empire ; and 
when Darius, in answer, acquainted her that he contemplated a 
against the Scythians, she entreated him te 


dy expedition 
ee “T have 


y Ὶ δ ns ¢ a] ῷ reece: 
postpone it, and to turn his forces first against Greece 


a Persian harem. appear to have been less unapproachable 


The ladies in 
ve ladies 
pie in spite of the observation of 


and invisible than those in modern Turkey ; 
Ἢ, Artaxerxés, ο. 27. , 

Oe ae nae δεήσεσθαι δὲ οὐδενὸς τῶν ὅσα αἰσχύνην ἔστι — 

Another Greek physician at the court of Susa, ahont seventy a 

wards, — Apollonidés of Kos, — in attendance on at ue ns 

impose upon himself the same restraint : his anizigne was divalged, 

was put to death miserably (Krésias Persica, c. 42). 


9 Herodot. iii, 134. 


DEMOKEDES IS SENT TO GREECE. 257 


heard (she said) about the maidens of Sparta, Athens, Argos, 
and Corinth, and I want to have some of them as slaves to serve 
me— (we may conceive the smile of triumph with which the 
sons of those wh» had conquered at Platza and Salamis would 
hear this part of the history read by Heridotus) ;— you have 
near you the best person possible to give information about 

Greeze, — that Greek who cured your foot.” Darius was in- 
duced by this request to send some confidential Persians into 
Greece to procure information, along with Démokédés. Selecte 
ing fifteen of them, he ordered them to survey the coasts and 
cities of Greece, under guidance of Démokédés, but with per- 
vimptory orders upon no account to let him escape or to return 
without him. He next sent for Démokédés himself, explained 
to him what he wanted, and enjoined him imperatively to return 
as soon as the business had been completed ; he farther desired him 
to carry away with him all the ample donations which he had 
already received, as presents to his father and brothers, promis: 
ing that on his return fresh donations of equal value shoula 
make up the loss: lastly, he directed that a storeship, “ filled 
with all manner of good things,” should accompany the voyage. 
Démokédés undertook the mission with every appearance of sin- 
cerity. The better to play his part, he declined to take away 
what he already possessed at Susa, — saying, that he should like 
to find his property and furniture again on coming back, and 
that the storeship alone, with its contents, would be sufficient 
both for the voyage and for all necessary presents. 

Accordingly, he and the fifteen Persian envoys went down to 
Sidon in Phenicia, where two armed triremes were equipped, 
with a large storeship in company; and the voyage of survey 
into Greece was commenced. They visited and examined all 
the principal places in Greece, — probably beginning with the 
Asiatic and insular Greeks, crossing to Eubcea, circumnavigating 
Attica and Peloponnesus, then passing to Korkyra and Italy. 
They surveyed the coasts and cities, taking memoranda! of 
everything worthy of note which they saw: this Periplis, if it 
had been preserved, would have been inestimable, as an account 


1 Herodot. iii, 136. προσίσχοντες δὲ αἰτῆς τὰ rapadaddcaa ἐϑ WCayTe 
καὶ ἀπεγράφοντο 


VOL. Iv. 1706. 


258 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


of the actual s ate of the Grecian world about 518 s.c. As soor 
arrived at Tarentum, Démokédés — now within a hort 
distance of his own home, Krotén — found an opportunity of 
executing what he had meditated from the beginning. At bis 
request Aristophilidés, the king of Tarentum, seized the fifteen 
Persians, and detained them as spies, at the same time taking 
the rudders from off their ships, — while Demok: des himselt 
made his escape to Krotén. As soon as he had arrived there, 
Aristophilidés released the Persians, and suffered them to pu - 
their voyage: they went on to Kroton, found Déemokédes in the 
market-place, and laid hands upon him. But his fellow-citizens 
released him, not without opposition from some 
of provoking the Great King, and in spite of remonstrances, efl- 
ergetic and menacing, from the Persians tl ι 

Krotdniates not only protected the restored exile, but even robbed 
the Persians of their storeship. The latter, disabled from pro- 


ceeding farther, as well by this loss as by the secession of Deém- 
ἡ but nfortunately 


as they 


who were afraid 


:emselves : indeed, the 


okédés, commenced their voyage homeward, , 
suffered shipwreck near the Japygian cape, and became slaves in 
that neighborhood. A Tarentine exile, named cathe, ransomed 
them and carried them up to Susa, — a service for w hich Darius 
promised him any recompense that he chose. : 

native city was all that Gillus asked ; and that too, not by force, 
but by the mediation of the Asiatic Greeks of Knidus, who were 
Wiliance with the Tarentines. ‘This gener- 
rho had not 
his 


Restoration to his 


on terms of intimate ἢ 
ous citizen, — an honorable contrast to Démokédeés, w | 
d to impel the stream of Persian conquest against 
e, — was unfortunately 
For though the 
all their influence 


sentence of exile, 


scruple 
country, in order to procure his own releas 
disappointed of his anticipated recompense. 

Knidians, at the injunction of Darius, employed 
at Tarentum to procure a revocation of the : 
unable to sueceed, and force was out of the question.! 
The last words addressed by Démokédés at parting to his _ 
sian companions, exhorted them to acquaint Darius that he (Dém- 
okédés) was about t marry the daughter of the Krotomiate Milo, 
—one of the first men in Kroton, as well as the greatest wrest 
ler of his time. The reputation of Milo was very great with 


they were 


? Herodot. iii, 137, 138. 


DEMOKEDES 259 


Darius, — probably from the talk of Démokedés himself: more 
over, gigantic muscular force could be appreciated by men who 
had no relish either for Homer or Solon. And thus did this 
clever and vainglorious Greek, sending back his fifteen Persian 
companions to disgrace, and perhaps to death, deposit in their 
parting ears a braggart message, calculated to create for himself 
a factitious name at Susa. He paid a large s Milo as the 
price of his daughter, for this as purpose. a ee 
Thus finishes the history of Démokédés, and of the « first 
Persians (to use the phrase of Herodotus) who ever came over 
from Asia into Greece.”2 It is a history well deserving of atten- 
tion, even looking only to the liveliness of the incidents, intro- 
ducing us as they do into the full movement of the ancient world, 
— incidents which I see no reason for doubting, with a reason- 
able allowance for the dramatic amplification of the historian. 
Even at that early date, Greek medical intelligence stands out 
in a surpassing manner, and Démokédés is the first of those 
many able Greek surgeons who were seized, carried up to Susa,3 
and there detained for the Great King, his court, and harem. . 
But his history suggests, in another point of view, far more 
serious reflections. Like the Milesian Histixus, of whom T shall 
speak hereafter.) he cared not what amount of risk he brought 
upon his country in order to procure his own escape from a 
splendid detention at Susa. And the influence which he origi- 
nated and brought to bear was on the point of precipitating upon 
Greece the whole force of the Persian empire, at a thine: when 
Mae ‘ . *,* . . ? 
Greece was in no condition to resist it. Had the first aggressive 


ἐπ. sii ice Sale αν ated 
area iii, 137. κατὰ δὴ τοῦτό μοι σπεῦσαι δοκέει τὸν γάμον τοῦτον 
τελέσας χρήματα μέγαλα Δημοκήδης, iva oar ἢ πρὸς Δαρείου ἐὼν καὶ ἐν τῇ 
ἑωὐτοῦ δόκιμος. : 

2 Herodot. iii, 138. 

:ὖ. ς "ΑΘ Ἂν 

Xenophon, Memorak iv, 2. 33. Αλλους δὲ πόσους οἴει (says Sokratés) 

διὰ σοφίαν ἀναρπάστους π ὃς βασιλέα γεγονέναι. καὶ ἐκεῖ δουλεύειν 

We shall run little risk in conjecturing that, among the intelligent and 
able men thus carried off, surgeons and physicians would be selected as the 
first and most essential. 

Apollonidés of Kés — whose calamitous end has been alluded to in a 
ἐδ μδῶ as ὲ ΣΝ ᾿ 
." ous note — was resident as surgeon, or physician, with Artaxerxés 

ngimanus (Ktésias, Persica, c. 30), and Polykritus of Mendé, as well as 


Ktésias himself, with Artaxerxés Mnémon (Plutarch, Artaxerxés, ¢. 31) 


260) HISTORY OF GREECE. 


expedition of Darius, with his own personal command and fresh 
appetite for conquest, been directed against Greece instead of 
against Scythia (between 516-514 B.c.), Grecian independence 
would have perished almost infallibly. For Athens was then 
still governed by the Peisistratids ; what she was, under them, 
we have had occasion to notice ina former chapter. She had 
then no courage for energetic self-defence, and prol ably Hippias 
himself, far from offering resistance, would have found it advan- 
tageous to accept Persian dominion as a means of strengthening 
his own rule, like the Ionian despots : moreover, Grecian habit 
of cooperation was then only just commencing. But furtunately, 
the Persian invader did not touch the shore of Greece until 
more than twenty years afterwards, in 490 B.C. ; and during that 


precious interval. the Athenian character had undergone the 


memorable revolution which has been before described. ‘Their 
energy and their organization had been alike improved, and 
their force of resistance had become decupled ; moreover, their 
conduct had so provoked the Persian that resistance was then a 
matter of necessity with them, and submission on tolerable terms 
an impossibility. When we come to the grand Persian invasion 
of Greece, we shall see that Athens was the life and soul of all 
the opposition offered. We shall see farther, that with all the 
efforts of Athens, the success of the defence was more than once 
doubtful ; and would have been converted into a very different 
result, if Xerxés had listened to the best of his own counsellors. 
But had Darius, at the head of the very same force which he 
conducted into Scythia, or even an inferior force, landed at Mar- 
athon in 514 B.c., instead of sending Datis in 490 B.o.,— he 
would have found no men like the victors of Marathon to meet 
him. As far as we can appreciate the probabilities, he would 
have met with little resistance except from the Spartans singly, 
who would have maintained their own very defensible territory 
against all his efforts, —like the Mysians and Pisidiams in Asia 
Minor, or like the Mainots of Laconia in later days ; but Hellaa 
yenerally would have become a Persian satrapy. Fortunately, 
Darius, while bent on invading some country, had set his mind 
vn the attack of Scythia, alike perilous and unprofitable. His 
personal ardor was wasted on those unconquerable regions, 
where he narrowly escaped the disastrous fate of Cyrus, — nor 


PERSIAN INVASION OF GREECE POSTPONEB 261 


dd he ever pay a second visit to the coasts of the Augean. Yet 
the amorous influences 2f Atossa, set at work by Démokédés 
migat well have been sufficiently powerful to induce Darius te 
assai, Greece instead of Scythia, —a choice in favor of which 
all other recommendations concurred; and the history of free 
Greece would then probably have stopped at this point, without 
unrolling any of the glories which followed. So incalculably 
great has been the influence of Grecian development, during the 
two centuries between 500-300 B.c., on the destinies of man- 
kind, that we cannot pass without notice a contingency which 
threatened to arrest that development in the bud. Indeed, it may 
be remarked that the history of any nation, considered as a se- 
quence of causes and effects, affording applicable knowledge, 
requires us to study not merely real events, but also imminent 
contingencies, — events which were on the point of occurring, 
but yet did not occur. When we read the wailings of Atossa in 
the Perse of Aischylus, for the humiliation which her son Xerxés 
had just undergone in his flight from Greece,! we do not easily 
persuade ourselves to reverse the picture, and to conceive the 
same Atossa twenty years earlier, numbering as her slaves at Susa 
the noblest Hérakleid and Alkmaénid maidens from Greece. 
Yet the picture would really have been thus reversed, — the 
wish of Atossa would have been fulfilled, and the wailings would 
have been heard from enslaved Greek maidens in Persia, — if 
the mind of Darius had not happened to be preoccupied with a 
project not less insane even than those of Kambysés against 
Ethiopia and the Libyan desert. Such at least is the moral of 
the story of Démokédés. 

That insane expedition across the Danube into Scythia comes 
now to be recounted. It was undertaken by Darius for the pur- 
pose of a¥enging the inroad and devastation of the Scythians in 
Media and Upper Asia, about a century before. The lust of 
conquest imparted unusual force to this sentiment of wounded 
dignity, which in the case of the Scythians could hardly be con- 
nected with any expectation of plunder or profit. In spite of 
the dissuading admonition of his brother Artabanus,? Darius 


1 Aschyl. Pers. 435-845, ete. 
® Herodot. iv. 1, 83. There is nothing to mark the precise year of the 


262 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


summoned the whole force of his empire, army and nav th 
Thracian Bosphorus, —a force not less than seven sci 4 
a horse and foot, and six hundred hie, et ‘a 
erodotus. On these prodigious numbers we can lay no stress 
But it appears that the names of all the various nations com be 
ing the host were inscribed on two pillars, erected bs | bos of 
Darius on the European side of the Bosphorus ned stheerw "a 
seen by Herodotus himself in the city of Dipset — tl} na 
scriptions were bilingual, in Assyrian ineainckeie a ll ee 
Greek. The Samian architect Mandroklés he | ieeniil ie 
ii s had been directed to 
throw a bridge of boats across the Bosphorus. about half-wa 
between Byzantium and the mouth of the Euxine. So saan. 
tory were the Persian kings that their orders for alisha i 
should be punctually obeyed, and so impatient were they af the 
idea of exemptions, that when a Persian father named (Boba: 
entreated that one of his three sons, all included in the ae. 
tion, might be left at home, Darius replied that all Ont ον 


ῷ ἜΝ Ψ —_ " ᾿ * " . aw 
ν — expedition ; but as the accession of Darius is fixed to 521 4 d 
eh eS mt 8 tixe 21 B.c., an 
“ng he is connected with the early part of his reign, we may 
ceive salad " ἥν," . ΟΣ As relgn, ay con- 
to have entered upon it as soon as his hands were free; that i 
oon as he ἢ: OW . nega 
ae ety ud put down the revolted Satraps and provinces, Orcetés, t} 
eC es, ady is “J th ‘Sve wv ἡ er τὴ 
eat ylonians, etc. Five years seems a reasonable time to allow fon 
se necessities of ire, whi ) | “sm 
big sities of the empire, which would bring the Scythian expedition 
o 516-515 B.c. There is reas ete tn lieu Sun beta. as 
2 a 7 ate There is reason for supposing it to have been before 514 
-C., for in that ye: ipparchus w nd Hi nee 
. 1 that year Hipparchus was slain at Athens and Hippias the sur 
: i δ ν rd nes ‘ia 
᾿ = rother, looking out for securities and alliances abroad 
niin : Se es , ws me ehiihs y BOTOad, 
on te rin marriage to Mantidés son of Hippoklus, despot of ὦ, : 
perceiving that Hippoklnc , despot of Lampsakus, 
g the ppoklus and his son had great influence with Darins.” 
(Thucyd. vi, 59.) Now Hippokl | aeciie 
hn Ἂς ν I ippoklus could not well have acquired this influ 
Ὁ vesore 2» Newthis % iti Ἷ , : 
i nefore the Scythian expedition ; for Darius came down then for the 
rst time to the wester i ' 
ern sea; Hippoklus serve iti 
(Herodot. iv, 138), and it was "ἰς pnp a ena — 
H » 138), it was probably then that his favor was acanire 
and farther confirmed during the time that Dariu lat S aeche ue 
δ the @ the arius stayed at Sardis i 
a ae stayed at Sardis after his 
Professor 8 z ( Beitri 
Ss oc “yr we ἡ > ‘ " ν᾽ ; ἢ 
"Sa πῃμὰ ἊΝ ea rage zu genaueren Zeit-bestimmungen der Hellen 
_ " - von der 639 bis zur 722 Olympiade Ρ. 168, in the Kiel Phi 
olog. Studie aces the exneditian in. ace gti 
tudien ) places the expedition in 513 a.c.: but I thj k 
earlier is more probable. I i “a pay en pen 
. probable. Larcher, Wesseling, and Bal i 
445) place it in 508 μοὶ, which i ῳ ΩΝ 
ΜΔ σαν εΝ : τῇ .C., Which is later than the truth indeed, Larcher 
himself places the reduction of I 
zemnos and Imbros by ( ὃς j 
: 7 .. ες 28 
though that event decidedly came after the Scythian ex aaa re ᾿ ih py 
¢,, 47 Me » » ryy . Ὺ ὶ Ἱ . i! ~ ᾿ ἢ i om . 
7; Larcher, Table ( hronologique, Trad. d’Hérod t li 
ot. t. Vil, pp. 6338-635). 


DARIUS INVADES SCYTHIA. 263 


should. be left at home, —an answer which the unsuspecting fa- 
They were indeed all left at home, — 


ther heard with delight. 
A proceeding similar to this is 


for they were all put to death.! 
ascribed. afterwards to Xerxés ;?> whether true or not as matters 
of fact, both tales illustrate the wrathful displeasure with which 
the Persian kings were known to receive such petitions for ex- 
emption. 

The naval force of Darius seems to have con. isted entirely of 
subject Greeks, Asiatic and insular; for the Phenician fleet was 
not brought into the Aigean until the subsequent Ionic revolt. 
At this. time all or most of the Asiatic Greek cities were under 
despots, who leaned on the Persian government for support, and 
who appeared with their respective contingents to take part in 
the Scythian expedition.s Of Ionic Greeks were seen, — Strattis, 
despot. of Chios; A&akés son of Syloson, despot of Samos ; 
Laodamas, of Phokewa; and Histiwus, of Milétus. From the 
ΖΈΟΝ. towns, Aristagoras of Kymé; from the Hellespontine 
Greeks, Daphnis of Abydus,. Hippoklus of Lampsakus, Hero- 
phantus of Parium, Metrodérus of Prokonnésus, Aristagoras of 
Kyzikus, and Miltiadés of the Thracian Chersonese. All these 
are mentioned, and there were probably more. ‘This large fleet, 
assembled at the Bosphorus, was sent forward into the Euxine to 
the mouth of the Danube, — with orders to sail up the river two 
days’ journey, above the point where its channel begins to divide, 
and to throw a bridge of boats over it; while Darius, having lib- 
erally recompensed the architect Mandroklés, crossed the bridge 
over the Bosphorus, and began his march through Thrace, re- 
ceiving the submission of various Thracian tribes in his way, 

and subduing others, — especially the Gete north of Mount 

Hmus, who were compelled to increase still farther the num 

bers of his vast army.4 On arriving at the Danube, he found 
the bridge finished and prepared for his passage by the Ionians: 
we may remark here, as on so many other occasions, that all 
operations requiring intelligence are performed for the Persians 
either by Greeks or by Phenicians,— more usually by the fer- 


— es 


' Herodot. iv, 84. 2 Herodot. vii, 39. 
8 Herodot. iv, 97, 137, 138. 4 Herodot. iv 89-93. 


264 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


mer. He crossed this greatest of all earthly rivers,! — for so the 
Danube was imagined ἣν be in the fifth century B.c.,.— and di- 
rected his march into Scythia. 


As far as the point now attained, our narrative runs smoothly 
and intelligibly: we know that Darius marched his army into 
Scythia, and that he came back with ignominy and severe loss. 
But as to all which happened between his crossing and recrossing 


the Danube, we find nothing approaching to authentic Statement, 
— nothing even which we can set forth as the probable basis of 
truth on which exaggerating fancy has been at work. ΑἹ] is in- 
explicable mystery. Ktésias indeed says that Darius marched for 
fifteen days into the Scythian territory, — that he then exchanged 
bows with the king of Scythia, and discovered the Seythian bow 
to be the largest, — and that, being intimidated by such discovery, 
he fled back to the bridge by which he had crossed the Danube, 
and recrossed the river with the loss of one-tenth part of his 
arm}. being compelled to break down the bridge before all had 
passed. The length of march is here the only thing distinctly 
βία θα ; about the direction nothing is said. But the narrative of 
Ktésias, defective as it is, is much less perplexing than that of 
Herodotus, who conducts the immense host of Darius as it were 
through fairy-land,—- heedless of distance, large intervening 
rivers, want of all cultivation or supplies, destruction of the coun- 
try — in so far as it could be destroyed — by the retreating Scyth- 
ians, etc. He tells us that the Persian army consisted chiefly 
of foot, — that there were no roads nor agriculture; yet his nar- 
rative carries it over about twelve degrees of longitude from the 
Danube to the country east of the Tanais, across the rivers Tyras 


’ Herod. iv, 48-50. Ἴστρος --- μέγιστος ποτάμων πάντων τῶν ἡμεὶς iduer, ete. 

5 Ktésias, Persica, ο, 17. Justin (ii, 5 — compare also xxxviii, 7) seems 
to follow the narrative of Ktésias. 

4¥schylus (Persz, 864). who presents the deceased Darius as a glorious 
contrast with the living Nerxés, talks of the splendid conquests which he 
made by means of others, —“ without crossing the Halys himself, nor leav- 
ing his home.” We are led to suppose, by the language which schylus 
pats into the mouth of the Eidélon of Darius (v, 720-745), that he had for- 
gotten, or had never heard of the bridge thrown across the Bosphorus by 
order of Darius; for the latter is made to condemn severely the impious 
insolence of Xerxés in bridging over the Hellespont. 


UNINTELLIGIBLE MARCH OF DARIUS. 965 


(Dniester), Hypanis (Bog), Borysthenés (Dnieper), Hypakyris. 
Gerrhos, and Tanais.!. How these rivers could have been passed 
in the face of enemies by so vast a host, we are left to conjecture, 
since it was not winter time, to convert them into ice: nor does 
the historian even allude to them as having been crossed either 
in the advance or in the retreat. What is not less remarkable is, 
that in respect to the Greek settlement of Olbia, or Borysthenés, 
and the agricultural Seythians and Mix-hellenes between the 
Hypanis and the Borysthenés, across whose country it would 
seem that this march of Darius must have carried him, — Herod- 
otus does not say anything; though we should have expected 
that he would have had better means of informing himselt about 
this part of the march than about any other, and though the Per- 
sians could hardly have failed to plunder or put in requisition 
this, the only productive portion of Scythia. 

The narrative of Herodotus in regard to the Persian march 
north of the Ister seems indeed destitute of all the conditions of 
reality. It is rather an imaginative description, illustrating the 
desperate and impracticable character of Scythian warfare, and 
grouping in the same picture, according to that large sweep of 
the imagination which is admissible in epical treatment, the 
Scythians, with all their barbarous neighbors from the Carpathian 
mountains to the river Wolga. The Agathyrsi, the Neuri, the 
Androphagi, the Melanchleni, the Budini, the Geloni, the Sar- 
matians, and the Tauri, — all of them bordering on that vast quad- 
rangular area of four thousand stadia for each side, called Scythia, 
as Herodotus conceives it,2 — are brought into deliberation and 
action in consequence of the Persian approach. And Herodotus 


' Herodot. iv, 136. ἅτε δὲ τοῦ Περσικοῦ πολλοῦ ἐόντος πεζοῦ στρατοῦ, καὶ 
τὰς ὁδοὺς οὐκ ἐπισταμένου, ὥστε οὐ τετμημένων τῶν ὁδῶν, τοῦ δὲ Σκυϑικοῦ, 
ἱππότεω, καὶ τὰ σύντομα τῆς ὁδοῦ ἐπισταμένου, etc. Compare c. 128. 

The number and size of the rivers are mentioned by Herodotus as the 
principal wonder of Scythia, c. 82 — Θωύμάσια δὲ ἣ χώρη αὐτὴ οὐκ ἔχει, 
χωρὶς ἢ ὅτι ποτώμους Te πολλῷ μεγίστους καὶ ἀριϑμὸν πλείστους, etc. He 
ranks the Borysthenés as the largest of all rivers except the Nile and the 
Danube (c. 53). The Hypanis also (Bog) is πόταμος ἐν ὀλίγοισι μέγας (c. 52) 

But he appears to forget the existence of these rivers when he is describ 
ing the Persian march. 

3 Herodot. iv, 101. 

VOL. Iv. 12 


266 liISTORY OF GRE™CK. 


takes that opportunity of communicating valuable particulars re 
specting the habits and manners of each. The kings of these 
nations discuss whether Darius is justified in his invasion, and 
whether it be prudent in them to aid the Scythians. The latter 
question is decided in the affirmative by the Sarmatians, the 
Budini, and the Geléni, all eastward of the Tanais,! — in the 
negative by the rest. The Scythians, removing their wagons 


with their wives and children out of the way northward, retreat 
and draw Darius after them from the Danube all across Scythia 
and Sarmatia to the northeastern extremity of the territory of 
the Budini,? several days’ journey eastward of the Tanais. 
Moreover, they destroy the wells and ruin the herbage as much 
as they can, so that during all this long march, says Herodotus, 
the Persians “ found nothing to damage, inasmuch as the country 


was barren ;” it is therefore not easy to see what they could tind 
to live upon. It is in the territory of the Budini, at this eastern- 
most terminus on the borders of the desert, that the Persians 
perform the only positive acts which are ascribed to them 
throughout the whole expedition. They burn the wooden wal] 
before occupied, but now deserted, by the Geléni, and they build, 
or begin to build, eight large fortresses near the river Oarus. 
For what purpose these fortresses could have been intended, 
Herodotus gives no intimation; but he says that the unfinished 
work was yet to be seen even in his day.3 

Having thus been carried all across Scythia and the other ter- 
ritories above mentioned ina northeasterly direction, Darius and 
his army are next marched back a prodigious distance in a north- 
westerly direction, through the territories of the Melanchlzni, 
the Androphagi, and the Neuri, all of whom flee affrichted into 


Herodot. iv, 118, 119. * Herodot. iv, 120-122. 

* Herodot. iv, 123. “Ὅσον μὲν δὴ χρόνον οἱ Πέρσαι ἤϊσαν διὰ Tir 
καὶ τῆς Σαυρομώτιδος χώρης, οἱ δὲ εἶχον οὐδὲν σίνεσϑαι, ἅτε τῆς χώρης ἐούσης 
χέρσου" ἐπεὶ ὡς Te ἐς τὴν τῶν Βουδίνων χώρην ἐσέβαλον ete. See Rennell 
Geograph. System of Herodotus, Ρ. 114, about the Oarus. 

The erections, whatever they were, which were supposed to mark the ex- 
treme point of the march of Darius, may be compared to those evidenees 
of the extreme advance of Dionysus, which the Macedonian army saw on 
the north of the Jaxartés — “ Liberi patris terminos.” Quintus Curtiza 
Vil. 9, 15, (vii, 37, 16, Zumpt.) 


UNINTELLIGIBLE MARCH UF DARIUS. 967 


the northern desert, having been thus compelled against their will 
to share in the consequences of the war. The Agathyrsi peremp- 
torily require the Scythians to abstain from drawing the Persians 
into their territory, on pain of being themselves treated as ene- 
mies :! the Seythians in consequence respect the boundaries of 
the Agathyrsi, and direct their retreat in such a manner as to 
draw the Persians again southward into Scythia. During all 
this long march backwards and forwards, there are partial skir- 
mishes and combats of horse, but the Scythians steadily refuse 
any general engagement. And though Darius challenges them 
formally, by means of a herald, with taunts of cowardice, the 
Scythian king Idanthyrsus not only refuses battle, but explains 
and defends his policy, and defies the Persian to come and 
destroy the tombs of their fathers, — it will then, he adds, be 
seen whether the Scythians are cowards or not.2. The difficulties 
of Darius have by this time become serious, when Idanthyrsus 
sends to him the menacing presents of a bird, a mouse, a frog, 
and five arrows: the Persians are obliged to commence a rapid 
retreat towards the Danube, leaving, in order to check and slacken 
the Scythian pursuit, the least effective and the sick part of their 
army encamped, together with the asses which had been brought 
with them,— animals unknown to the Scythians, and causing great 
alarm by their braying. However, notwithstanding some delay 
thus caused, as well as the anxious haste of Darius to reach the 
Danube, the Scythians, far more rapid in their movements, arrive 
at the river before him, and open a negotiation with the Ionians 
left in guard of the bridge, urging them to break it down and 
leave the Persian king to his tate, — inevitable destruction with 
his whole army.4 


1 Herodot. iv, 125. Hekatzus ranks the Melanchleni asa Scythian ἔϑνος 
(Hekat. Fragment. 154, ed. Klausen) : he also mentions several other sub- 
Givisions of Scythians, who cannot be farther authenticated (Fragm. 155- 
160). 

3 Herodot. iv, 126, 127. 

* Herodot. iv, 128-132. The bird, the mouse, the frog, and the arrows, 
are explained to mean: Unless you take to the air like a bird,to the earth 
like a mouse, or to the water like a frog, you will become the victim >f the 
Beythian arrows. 

* Herodot. iv, 133. 


268 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Here we reénter the world of reality, at the north bank of the 
Danube, the place where we before quitted it. All that is re 
ported to have passed in the interval, if tried by the tests of his- 
‘arical matter of fact, can be received as nothing better than a 
perplexing dream. It only acquires value when we consider it 
as ar. illustrative fiction, including, doubtless, some unknown 
matter of fact, but framed chiefly to exhibit in action those un- 
attackable Nomads, who formed the northeastern barbarous 
world of a Greek, and with whose manners Herodotus was pro- 
foundly struck. “ The Scythians! (says he) in regard to one of 
the greatest of human matters, have struck out a plan cleverer 
than any that I know. In other respects I do not admire them; 
but they have contrived this great object, that no invader of 
their country shall ever escape out of it, or shall ever be able to 
find out and overtake them, unless they themselves choose. For 
when men have neither walls nor established cities, but are all 
house-carriers and horse-bowmen, — living, not from the plough, 
but from cattle, and having their dwellings on wagons, — how 
ean they be otherwise than unattackable and impracticable to 
meddle with?” The protracted and unavailing chase ascribed 
to Darius, — who can neither overtake his game nor use his arms, 
and who hardly even escapes in safety, — embodies in detail this 
formidable attribute of the Seythian Nomads. That Darius ac- 
tually marched into the country, there can be no doubt. Nothing 
else is certain, except his ignominious retreat out of it to the 


Danube; for of the many different guesses,2 by which critics 


Herodot. iv, 46. Τῷ δὲ Σκυϑικῷ yevel ἔν μὲν TO μέγιστον τῶν ἀνϑρωπηΐων 

πρηγμάτων σοφώτατα πάντων ἐξεύρηται, τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν. τὰ μέντοι ἄλλα οὐκ 

allt A } py 7 Ων ἡμεῖς μεν" τὰ MEVTOL GAAG οὐκ 

yauat, Τὸ δὲ μέγιστον οὕτω σφι auvevpyTal, ὥστε ἀποφυγέξιν τε μηδένα 
Ἃ Δ * P ΡΥ ὡ»» - " ν᾿» 

ἐπελθόντα ἐπὶ σφέας, μὴ βουλομένους τε ἐξευρεϑῆναι, καταλαβεῖν μὴ οἷόν τε 
r on « * ν᾽ , -.» “δὶ δὶ « , oe 

εἰναι. Τοῖσι γὰρ MUTE ἀστξὰα μῆτε τείχεα Ὁ ἐκτισμενα, ἀλλὰ φερέοικοι ξόντες 


5 = " 4 = 4 sii »- Ϊ᾽ ’ , Lie Tee ἡ ᾽ ͵᾿ ΄ , ΄ 
πάντες, ἕωσι ἑπποτόξοται, ζῶντες μὴ απ UPOTOV, “AA ἀπὸ κτήνξων, οἰκήματα 


a , δὲ." a δι a Md ΄ ‘ ν ΄ 
δέ σφι i) ἐπὶ SEV er, Κις οὐκ ὧν εἰηῆσαν ουτοι ἅμαχοί Té καὶ UTOPOL T POO MLO - 


γεν; 


'"EEevonra: ἃ 


ἧς Te γῆς ἐούσης ἐπιτηδέης, καὶ τῶν ποτάμως 
ἐόντων od: συμμάχων, ete. 

ῪὋ . . ᾿ lad Ὺ bul 

Compare this with the oration of the Scythian envoys to Alexander the 
Great, as it stands in Quintus Curtius, vii, 8, 22 (vii, 35, 22, Zumpt). 


"“ “ὦ 


* The statement of Strabo (vii, p. 305), which restricts the march of Da- 
five to the country between the Danube and the Tyras (Dniester) is justly 


“HE IONIANS Al THE DANUBE. 269 


have attempted to cut down the gigantic sketch of Herodotus 
into a march with definite limits and direction, not one rests upon 
ary positive grounds, or carries the least conviction. We can 
mace the pervading idea in the mind of the historian, but cannot 
find out what were his substantive data. 

The adventures which took place at the passage of that river, 
both on the out-march and the home-march, wherein the Ionians 
are concerned, are far more within the limits of history. Here 
Herodotus possessed better means of information, and had less 
of a dominant idea to illustrate. That which passed between 
Darius and the Ionians on his first crossing is very curious: I 
have reserved it until the present moment, because it is par- 
ticularly connected with the incidents which happened on his 
return. 

On reaching the Danube from Thrace, he found the bridge of 
boats ready, and when the whole army had passed over, he or- 
dered the Ionians to break it down, as well as to follow him in 
his land-march into Scythia;! the ships being left with nothing 
but the rowers and seamen essential to navigate them homeward. 


pronounced by Niebuhr (Kleine Schriften, p. 372) to be a mere supposition 
suggested by the probabilities of the case, because it could not be understood 
how his large army should cross even the Dniester: it is not to be treated 
as an affirmation resting upon any authority. “As Herodotus tells us what 
is impossible (adds Niebuhr), we know nothing at all historically respecting 
the expedition.” 

So again the conjecture of Palmerius (Exercitationes ad Auctores Grecos, 
p- 21) carries on the march somewhat farther than the Dniester, —to the 
Hypanis, or perhaps to the Borysthenés. Rennell, Klaproth, and Reichard, 
are not afraid to extend the march on to the Wolga. Dr. Thirlwall stops 
within the Tanais, admitting, however, that no correct historical account 
can be given of it. Eichwald supposes a long march up the Dniester into 
Volhynia and Lithuania. 

Compare Ukert, Skythien, p. 26; Dahlmann, Historische Forschungen, 
ii, pp. 159-164; Schaffarik, Slavische Alterthiimer, i, 10, 3, i, 13,4-5; and 
Mr. Kenrick, Remarks on the Life and Writings of Herodotus, prefixed to 
his Notes on the Second Book of Herodotus, p. xxi. The latter is among 
those who cannot swim the Dniester: he says: “ Probably the Uniester 
(Tyras) was the real limit of the expedition, and Bessarabia, Moldavia, and 
the Bukovina, the scene of it.” 

* Herodot. iv, 97. Δαρεῖος ἐκέλευσε τοὺς "lwvag τὴν σχεδίην λύσαντας me 
ϑαι κατ᾽ ἤπειρον ἑωῦτῷ, καὶ τὸν ἐκ “ῶὥν νέων στρατόν. 


970 HISTORY UF GREECE. 


His order was ou the pvint of being executed, when. fortunately 
for him, the Mitylenwan general Koés ventured to cal] in ques 
tion the prudence of it, having first asked whether jt was the 
pleasure of the Persian king to listen to advice. He urced that 
the march on which they were proceeding might prove perilous, 
and retreat possibly unavoidable; because the Seythians. though 
vertain to be defeated if brought to action, might perhaps not 
éufler themselves to be approached or even discovered. As a 
precaution against all contingencies, it was prudent to leave the 
bridge standing and watched by those who had constructed it. 
l’ar from being offended at the advice, Darius felt grateful for it, 
and desired that K6és would ask him after his return for a suit- 
able reward, — which we shall hereafter find granted. He then 
altered his resolution, took a cord, and tied sixty knots in it. 
“Take this cord (said he to the Ionians), untie one of the knots 
in it each day after my advance from the Danube into Scythia. 
Kemain here and guard the bridge until you shall have untied 
all the knots ; but if by that time I shall not have returned, then 
depart and sail home.”! After such orders he began his march 
into the interior. 

This anecdote is interesting, not only as it discloses the simple 
expedients for numeration and counting of time then practised, 
but also as it illustrates the geographical ideas prevalent. Darius 
did not intend to come back over the Danube, but to march round 
the Mzotis, and to return into Persia on the eastern side of the 
Euxine. No other explanation can be given of his orders. At 
first, confident of success, he orders the bridve to be destroyed 
forthwith: he will beat the Scythians, march through their coun- 
try, and reenter Media from the eastern side of the Euxine. 
When he is reminded that possibly he may not be able to find 
the Scythians, and may be obliged to retreat, he still continues 
persuaded that this must happen within sixty days, if it happens 
at all; and that, should he remain absent more than sixty days, 
such delay will be a convincing proot that he will take the other 
road of return instead of repassing the Danube. Tne reader 


' Herodot. iv, 98. ἢν δὲ ἐν τούτῳ τῷ χρύνῳ μὴ παρέω, ἀλλὰ διέλϑωσι ὑμῖν 
εἰ ἡμέραι τῶν ἁἀμμάτων ἀκυπλέετε ἐς τὴν ὑμετέρην αὐτέων " μέχρι δὲ τοῦτον, 
ἐπεί re οὕτω μετέδοξε, φυλᾶφσετε τὴν σχεδίην. 


PLAN OF MARCH AS PROFOSED BY DARIUS. 271 


wno looks at a map of the Euxine and its surrounding terri- 
torie: may be startled at so extravagant a conception. But he 
should recollect that there was no map of the same or nearly the 
same accuracy before Herodotus, much less before the contem- 
poraries of Darius. The idea of entering Media by the north 
from Scythia and Sarmatia over the Caucasus, is familiar to He- 
rodotus in his sketch of the early marches of the Scythians and 
Cimmerians : moreover, he tells us that after the expedition of 
Darius, there came some Scythian envoys to Spar.a, proposing 
an offensive alliance against Persia, and offering on their part to 
march across the Phasis into Media from the north,! while the 
Spartans were invited to land on the shores of Asia Minor, and 
advance across the country to meet them from the west. When 
we recollect that the Macedonians and their leader, Alea wder 
the Great, having arrived at the river Jaxartés, on the north 
of Sogdiana, and on the east of the sea of Aral, supposed that 
they had reached the Tanais, and called the river by that 
name,? — we shall not be astonished at the erroneous estimation 
οἵ distance tmphed in the plan conceived by Darius. 

The Ionians had already remained in guard of the bridge be 
yond the sixty days commanded, without hearing anything of the 
Persian army, when they were surprised by the appearance, not 
of that army, but of a body of Scythians, who acquainted them 
that Darius was in full retreat and in the greatest distress, ana 
that his safety with the whole army depended upon that bridge 
They endeavored to prevail upon the Ionians, since the sixty 
days included in their order to remain had now elapsed, to break 
the bridge and retire; assuring them that, if this were done, the 
destruction of the Persians was inevitable,— of course, the 
Ionians themselves would then be free. At first, the latter were 
favorably disposed towards the proposition, which was warmly 
espoused by the Athenian Miltiadés, despot, or governor, of the 
Thracian Ch +rsonese.2 Had he prevailed, the victor of Marathon 


‘ Herodot.y, 84. Compare his account of the marches of the Cimme- 
nans and of the Scythians into Asia Minor and Media respectively (Herodot 
i, 103, 104, iv, 12). 

* Arrian, Exp. Al. iii, 6,15; Plutarch, Alexard. c.45; Quint. Curt. vil 
T, 4, vii, 8, 39 (vii, 29, 5, vii, 36, 7, Zumpt). 

3 Herodot iv 133, 136, 137. 


272 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


—for such we shall hereafter find him — would have thus inflicted 
a much more vital blow on Persia than even that celebrated 
action, and would have brought upon Darius the disastrous fate 
of his predecessor Cyrus. But the Ionian princes, though lean- 
ing at first towards his suggestion, were speedily converted by the 
representations of Histizus of Milétus, who reminded them that 
the maintenance of his own ascendency over the Milesians, and 
that of each despot in his respective city, was assured by means 
of Persian support alone, — the feeling of the population being 
everywhere against them: consequently, the ruin of Darius 
would be their ruin also. This argument proved conclusive. It 
was resolved to stay and maintain the bridge, but to pretend 
compliance with the Scythians, and prevail upon them to depart, 
by affecting to destroy it. The northern portion of the bridge 
was accordingly destroyed, for the length of a bow-shot, and the 
Scythians departed under the persuasion that they had succeeded 
in depriving their enemies of the means of crossing the river.! 
‘t appears that they missed the track of the retreating host, which 
was thus enabled, after the severest privation and suffering, to 
reach the Danube in safety. Arriving during the darkness of 
the night, Darius was at first terrified to find the bridge no longer 
joining the northern bank: an Egyptian herald, of stentorian 
powers of voice, was ordered to call as loudly as possible the 
name of Histizus the Milesian. Answer being speedily made, 
the bridge was reéstablished, and the Persian army passed over 
before the Scythians returned to the spot.2 

There can be no doubt that the Ionians here lost an opportu- 
nity eminently favorable, such as never again returned, for eman- 
cipating themselves from the Persian dominion. Their despots, 
by whom the determination was made, especially the Milesian 
Histiveus, were not induced to preserve the bridge by any honor- 
able reluctance to betray the trust reposed in them, but simply by 
sellish regard to the maintenance of their own unpopular domin- 
ion. And we may remark that the real character of this im- 
pelling motive, as well as the deliberation accompanying it, may be 
assumed as resting upon very good evidence, since we are now 
arrived within the persoral knowledge of the Milesian historian 


' Herodot. iv, 137-139 3 Herodot. iv, 140, 143 


THRACE INVADED BY THE SCYTHIANS. 9738 


Hekatseus, who took an active part in the Tonic revolt a few 
years afterwards, and who may, perhaps, have been personally 
engaged in this expedition. He will be found reviewing with 
prudence and sobriety the chances of that unfortunate revolt, and 
distrusting its success from the beginning ; while Histizeus of M* 
Jétus will app sar on the same occasion as the fomenter of it, in 
order to procure his release from an honorable detention at Susa, 


sear the person of Darius. The selfishness of this despot hav- 


ing deprived his countrymen of that real and tavorable chance of 
emancipation which the destructicn of the bridge would have 


opened to them, threw them into perilous revolt a few years after- 
wards against the entire and unembarrassed force of the Persian 
king and empire. 

Extrieated from the perils of Scythian warfare, Darius marched 
southward from the Danube through Thrace to the Hellespont, 
where he crossed from Sestus into Asia. He left, however, a 
considerable army in Europe, under the command of Megabazus, 
to accomplish the conquest of Thrace. Perinthus on the Pro- 
pontis made a brave resistance,! but was at length subdued, and 
it appears that all the Thracian tribes, and all the Grecian colo- 
nies between the Hellespont and the Strymon, were forced to 
submit, giving earth and water, and becoming subject to tribute. 
Near the lower Strymon, was the Edonian town of Myrkinus, 
which Darius ordered to be made over to Histiwus of Milétus ; 
for both this Milesian, and Kéés of Mityléné, had been desired 
by the Persian king to name their own reward for their fidelity 
to him on the passage over the Danube.3 K6és requested that 
he might be constituted despot of Mityléné, which was accom- 
plished by Persian authority; but Histizeus solicited that the 
territory near Myrkinus might be given to him for the foundation 
of a colony. As soon as the Persian conquests extended thus 
far, the site in question was presented to Histius, who entered 
actively upon his new scheme. We shall find the territory 
near Myrkinus eminent hereafter as the site of Amphipolis. It 
offersd great temptation to settlers, as fertile, well wooded, con. 
venient for maritime commerce, and near to auriferous and 


thetic 


! Herodot. iv, 143, 144, v, 1, 2. Herodot. v, 2. 


* Herodot. v, 11. 
YOu. Iv. 180c. 


274 H'STU 41 OF GREECE. 


argentiferous mountains.! It seems, howev:r, that the Persian 
dominion in ‘Thrace was disturbed by an invasion of the Scythi- 
ans, who, in revenge for the aggression of Darius, overran the 
country as far as the Thracian Chersonese, and are even said te 
have sent envoys to Sparta proposing a simy.{taneous invasion of 
Persia from different sides, by Spartans and Scythians. The 
Athenian Miltiadés, who was despot, or governor, of the Cherso- 
nese, was forced to quit it for some time, and Herodotus ascribes 
his retirement to the incursion of these Nomads. But we may 
he permitted to suspect that the historian has misconceived the 
real cause of such retirement. “Miltiadés could not remain in the 
Chersonese after he had incurred the deadly enmity of Darius 
by exhorting the Ionians to destroy the bridge over the 
Danube. 2 


" Herodot. v, 23. 

? Herodot. vi, 40-84. That Miltiadés could have remained in the Chet 
sonese undisturbed, during the interval between the Scythian expedition 
of Darius and the Ionic revolt, — when the Persians were complete masters 
of those regions, and when Otanés was punishing other towns in the neich- 
borhood for evasion of service under Darius, after he had declared so 
pointedly against the Persians on a matter of life and death to the king and 
army,— appears to me, as it does to Dr. Thirlwall (History of Gr. vol. ii, 
App. ii, p. 486, ch. xiv, pp. 226-249), eminently improbable. So forcibly 
does Dr. Thirlwall feel the difficulty, that he suspects the reported conduct 
and exhortations of Miltiadés at the bridge over the Danube to have been 
a falsehood, fabricated by Miltiadés himself, twenty years afterwards, for the 
purpose of acquiring popularity at Athens during the time immediately 
preceding the battle of Marathon. 

[ cannot think this hypothesis admissible. It directly contradicts He- 
rodotus on a matter of fact very conspicuous, and upon which good means 
of information seem to have heen within his reach. I have already 
observed that the historian Hekatzeus must have possessed personal knowl- 
ede of all the relations between the Ionians and Darins, and that he very 
probably may have been even present at the bridge : all the information given 
by Hekatzeus upon these points would be open to the inquiries of Herodo- 
tus. The unbounded gratitude of Darius towards Histiseus shows tha: 
some one or more of the Ionie despots present at the bridge must have 
powerfully enforced the expediency of breaking it down. That the name 
of the despot who stood forward as prime mover of this resolution should 
have been forgotten and not mentioned at the time, is highly improbable ; 
yet such must have been the case if a fabrication by Miltiadés twenty 
rears afterwards could successfully fill up the blank with his own name 


᾿ 


whe two most prominent matters talhed of. after the retreat of Darius. ia 


MACEDONIA CONQUERED BY THE PERSIANS. 975 


Nor did the conquests of Megabazus stop at the western bank 
οἵ the Strymon. He carried his arms across that river, conquer. 


reference to the bridge, would probably be the name of the leader who 
urged its destruct’on, and the name of Histizeus, who preserved it. Indeed, 
the mere fact of the mischievous influence exercised by the latter after 
wards would be p etty sure to keep these points of the case in full view. 

There are meax.s of escaping from the difficulty of the case, I think, with 
out contradicting Herodotus on any matter of fact important and conspic 
uous, or indeed or any matter of fact whatever. We see by vi, 40, that 
Miltiadés did quit the Chersonese between the close of the Scythian expedi- 
tion of Darius and the Ionie revolt; Herodotus, indeed, tells us that he 
quitted it in consequence of an incursion of the Scythians: but without 
denying the fact of such an incursion, we may reasonably suppose the his- 
torian to have been mistaken in assigning it as the cause of the flight of 
Miltiadés. ‘The latter was prevented from living in the Chersonese con- 
tinuously, during the interval between the Persian invasion of Scythia and 
the Ionic revolt, by fear of Persian enmity. It is not necessary for us ta 
believe that he was never there at all, but his residence there must have 
been interrupted and insecure. ‘The chronological data in Herodot. vi, 40, 
are exceedingly obscure and perplexing; but it seems to me that the sup- 
position which I suggest introduces a plausible coherence into the series of 
historical facts, with the slightest possible contradiction to our capital 
witness. 

The only achievement of Miltiadés, between the affair on the Danube 
and his return to Athens shortly before the battle of Marathon, is the con- 
quest of Lemnos; and that must have taken place evidently while the Per- 
sians were occupied by the Ionic revolt, (between 502-494 B.c.) There is 
nothing in his recorded deeds inconsistent with the belief, therefore, that 
hetween 515-502 Β.6. he may not have resided in the Chersonese at all, or 
at least not for very long together: and the statement of Cornelius Nepos, 
that he quitted it immediately after the return from Scythia, from fear of 
the Persians, may be substantially true. Dr. Thirlwall observes (p. 487) 
— As little would it appear that when the Scythians invaded the Cher- 
sonese, Miltiadés was conscious of having endeavored to render them an 
important service. He flies before them, though he had been so secure 
while the Persian arms were in his neighborhood.” He has here put his 
finger on what I believe to be the error of Herodotus, —the supposition 
that Miltiadés fled from the Chersonese to avoid the Scythians, whereas 
he really left it to avoid the Persians. 

The story of Strabo (xiii, p. 591), that Darius caased the Greek cities 
on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont to be burnt down, in order to hinder 
‘hem from affording means of transport to the Scythians into Asia, seems 
me highly improbable These towns appear in their ordinary condition, 
&bydus ameng them, at 16 time of the Ionic revolt a few years afterwards. 
fierodot. vy 117° 


276 HISTORY OF GREECYX. 


ing the Pzonians, and reducing the Macedonians under Amyn 
tas to tribute. A considerable number of the Ponians were 
transported across into Asia, by express order of Darius; whose 
fancy had been struck by seeing at Sardis a beautiful Pzonian 
woman carrying a vessel on her head, leading a horse to water, 
and spinning flax, all at the same time. This woman had been 
brought over, we are told, by her two brothers, Pigrés und Man 
tyés, for the express purpose of arresting the attention of the 
Great King. They hoped by this means to be constituted des- 
pots of their countrymen, and we may presume that their scheme 
succeeded, for such part of the Pzeonians as Megabazus could 
subdue were conveyed across to Asia and planted in some τἱ]- 
lages in Phrygia. Such violent transportations of inhabitants 
were in the genius of the Persian government.! 

From the Ponian lake Prasias, seven eminent Persians were 
sent as envoys into Macedonia, to whom Amyntas readily gave 
the required token of submission, inviting them to a splendid 
banquet. When exhilarated with wine, they demanded to sec 
the women of the regal family, who, being accordingly introduced, 
were rudely dealt with by the strangers. At length, the son of 
Amyntas, Alexander, resented the insult, and exacted for it ¢ 
signal vengeance. Dismissing the women, under pretence that 
they should return after a bath, he brought back in their place 
youths in female attire, armed with daggers: the Persians, pro- 
ceeding to repeat their caresses, were all put to death. Their 
retinue and splendid carriages and equipment which they had 
brought with them disappeared at the same time, without any 
tidings reachting the Persian army. And when Bubarés, another 
eminent Persian, was sent into Macedonia to institute researches, 
Alexander contrived to hush up the proceeding by large bribes, 
and by giving him his sister Gygwa in marriage.2 

Meanwhile Megabazus crossed over into Asia. carrying with 


him the Peonians from the river Strymon. Having’ been in 


© 


' Herodot. ν, 13-16. Nikolaus Damaskénus (Fragm. p. 36, ed. Orell.) 
tells a similar story about the means by which a Mysian woman attracted 
the notice of the Lydian king Alyatt4s. Such repetition of a striking 
story, in reference to different people and times, has many parallels is 
ancient history. 

* Tlerodot. v, 20, 21 
Vol. 4 


DARIUS CARRIES HISTLEUS TO SUSA. 277 


those regions, he had become alarmed at the progress of Histizeus 
with his new city of Myrkinus, and communi:ated his apprehen 
sions to Darius; who was prevailed upon to send for Histizus, 
retaining him about his person, and carrying him to Susa as 
counsellor and friend, with every mark of honor, but with the 
secret intention of never letting him revisit Asia Minor. The 
fears of the Persian general were probably not unreasonable 
but this detention of Histizus at Susa, became in the sequel an 


important event.! 
On departing for his capital, Darius nominated his brother 
Artaphernés satrap of Sardis, and Otanés, general of the forces 


on the coast, in place of Megabazus. The new general dealt 
very severely with various towns near the Propontis, on the 
ground that they had evaded their duty in the late Scythian ex- 
pedition, and had even harassed the army of Darius in its retreat. 
He took Byzantium and Chalkédon, as well as Antandrus in the 
Troad, and Lamponium ; and with the aid of a fleet from Lesbos, 
he achieved a new conquest, —the islands of Lemnos and Im- 
bros, at that time occupied by a Pelasgic population, seemingly 
without any Greek inhabitants at all. 

These Pelasgi were of cruel and piratical character, if we 
may judge by the tener of the legends respecting them; Lem- 
nian misdeeds being cited as a proverbial expression for atroci- 
ties.2 ‘They were distinguished also for ancient worship of Hé- 
phestus, together with mystic rites in honor of the Kabeiri, and 
even human sacrifices to their Great Goddess. In their two 
cities, — Hephzstias on the east of the island, and Myrina on 
the west, —they held out bravely against Otanés, nor did the7 


1 Herodot. v, 23, 24. 

* Herodot. v1, 138. Eschyl. Choéphor. 632; Stephan. Byz. v, Λῆμνος. 

The mystic rites in honor of the Kabeiri at Lemnos and Imbros are par 
dicalarly noticed by Pherekydés (ap. Strabo, x, p. 472): compare Photius, 
¥, Κάρειμοι, and the remarkable description of the periodical Lemnian 
solemnity in Philostratus (Heroi. p. 740). 

The volcanic mountain Mosychlus, in the nartheastern portion of the 
island, was still burning in the fourth century Β.0. (Antimach. Fragment. 


“xviii, p. 103, Diintzer Epicc. Gree. Fragm.) 


Weicker’s Dissertation (Die Aischylische Trilogie, p- 248, segg.) enlarges 
wach upon the Lemnian and Samothracian worship. 


278 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


submit until they had un lergone long and severe hardship. Ly- 
karétus, brother of that Mzandrius whom we have already no 
ticed as despot of Samos, was named governor of Lemnos; but 
he soon after died.! It is probable that the Pelasgic population 
of the islands was greatly enfeebled during this struggle, and we 
even hear that their king Hermon voluntarily emigrated, from 
ear of Darius.? 

Lemnos and Imbros thus became Persian possessions, held by 
Β subordinate prince as tributary. A few years afterwards their 
lot was again changed, — they passed into the hands of Athens, 
the Pelasgic inhabitants were expelled, and fresh Athenian set- 
tlers introduced. They were conquered by Miltiadés from the 
Thracian Chersonese ; from Elzeus at the south of that penin- 
sula to Lemnos being within less than one day’s sail with a 
north wind. ‘The Hephwzstieans abandoned their city and evacu- 
ated the island with little resistance ; but the inhabitants of My- 
rina stood a siege,’ and were not expelled without difficulty : 
both of them found abodes in Thrace, on and near the peninsula 
of Mount Athos. Both these islands, together with that of 
Skyros (which was not taken until after the invasion of Xerxés), 
remained connected with Athens in a manner peculiarly intimate 
At the peace of Antalkidas (387 B.c.),— which guaranteed 
universal autonomy to every Grecian city, great and small, — 
they were specially reserved, and considered as united with 
Athens.4 The property in their soil was held by men who, with- 
out losing their Athenian citizenship, became Lemnian kleruchs, 
and as such were classified apart among the military force of the 
state; while absence in Lemnos or Imbros seems to have been 


' Herodot. v, 26, 27. The twenty-seventh chapter is extremely perplex- 
ing. As the text reads at present, we ought to make Lykarétus the sub- 
ject of certain predicatious which yet seem properly referable to Otanés. 
We mus: :onsider the words from Oi μὲν δὴ Anuvioc — down to τελευτᾷ -- 
as parenthetical, which is awkward ; but it seems the least diffic uty in the 
6855, and the commentators are driven to adopt it. 

* Zenob. Proverb. iii, 85. 

* Herodot. vi, 140. Charax ap. Stephan. Byz. v, ᾿Ηφαιστία. 

* Xenophon, Hellen. v, |, 31. Compare Plato, Menexenus, c. 17, p. 245, 
where the words ἡμέτεραι ἀποίκιαι doubtless mean Lemnos, Imbros, and 
Bik yrs. 


CAPTURE OF LEMNOS AND IMBROS 279 


accepted as an excuse for delay before the courts of justice, 89 
ms to es:ape the penalties of contumacy, or departure from the 
country.' It is probable that a considerable number of poor 
Athenian citizens were provided with lots of land in these islands, 
though we have no direct information of the fact, and are even 
obliged to guess the precise time at which Miltiadés made the 
conquest. Herodotus, according to his usual manner, connects 
the conquest with an ancient oracle, and represents it as the re- 
tribution for ancient legendary crime committed by certain Pe- 
lasgi, who, many centuries before, had been expelled by the 
Athenians from Attica, and had retired to Lemnos. Full of this 
legend, he tells us nothing about the proximate causes or circume 
stances of the conquest, which must probably have been accom- 
plished by the efforts of Athens, jointly with Miltiadés from the 
Chersonese, during the period that the Persians were occupied 
in quelling the Ionic revolt, between 502-494 B.c., — since it is 
hardly to be supposed that Miltiadés would have ventured thus 
to attack a Persian possession during the time that the satraps 
had their hands free. ‘The acquisition was probably facilitated 
by the fact, that the Pelasgic population of the islands had been 
reakened, as well by their former resistance to the Persian 
Otanés, as by some years passed under the deputy of a Persian 
satrap. 
In mentioning the conquest of Lemnos by the Athenians and 


' Thucyd. iv, 28, v, 8, vil, 57; Phylarchus ap. Athenzum, vi, p. 255; 
Deémosthen. Philippic. 1, c. 12, p.17, R.: compare the Inscription, No. 1686, 
in the collection of Boeckh, with his remarks, p. 297. 

About the stratagems resorted to before the Athenian dikastery, to pro- 
eure delay by pretended absence in Lemnos or Skyros, see Isa@us, Or. vi, 
p- 58 (p. 80, Bek.); Pollux, viii, 7, 81; Hesych. v, Ἴμβρεος ; Suidas, v, 
Λημνία δίκη: compare also Carl Rhode, Res Lemnice, p. 50 (Wratislaw 
1829). 

It seems as if εἰς Λῆμνον πλεῖν had come to be a proverbial expression at 
Athens for getting out of the way, — evading the performance of duty : this 
seems to be the sense of Démosthenés, Philipp. i, c. 9, p. 14. ἀλλ᾽ εἰς μὲν 
ΔΏμνον τὸ! ~ap’ ὑμῶν ἵππαρχον δεῖ πλεῖν, τῶν δ᾽ ὑπὲρ τῶν τῆς πόλεως KTH 
μώτων ἀγωνιζομένων Μενέλαον ἱππαρχεῖν. 

From the passage of Iszeus above alluded to, which Rhode seems to me 
to construe incorrectly, it appears that there was a legal connubium betweea 
Aaeuian citizens and Lemnian women. 


280 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Miltiadés, I have anticipated a little on the course of events, be 
cause that conquest, — though coinciding in point of time with 
the Ionic revolt (which will be recounted in the following c bap. 
ter), and indirectly caused by it, in so far as it occupied the atten- 
tion of the Persians, — lies entirely apart from the operations of 
the revolted Ionians. When Miltiadés was driven out of the Cher- 
éonese by the Persians, on the suppression of the Ionic revolt, 
his fame, derived from having subdued Lemnos,! contributed 
both to neutraliz: the enmity which he had incurred as governor 
of the Chersonese, and to procure his election as one of the ten 
generals for the year of the Marathonian combat. 


CMAPTER XXXYV. 
IONIC REVOLT. 


HITHERTO, the history of the Asiatic Greeks has flowed in a 
stream distinct from that of the European Greeks. The present 
ehapter will mark the period of confluence between the two. 

At the time when Darius quitted Sardis on his return to Susa, 
carrying with him the Milesian Histiwus, he left Artaphernés, 
his brother, as satrap of Sardis, invested with the supreme coms 
mand of Western Asia Minor. The Grecian cities on the coast, 
comprehended under his satrapy, appear to have been chiefly 
governed by native despots in each; and Milétus especially, in 
the absence of Histixeus, was ruled by his son-in-law Aristagoras. 
That city was now in the height of power and prosperity, — in 
every respect the leading city of Ionia. The return of Darius 
to Susa may be placed seemingly about 512 B.c., from which 
time forward the state of things above described continued, with- 
out disturbance, for eight or ten years, — “a respite from suffer. 
ing.” to use the significant phrase of the historian.2 


- 


1 Herodot. vi, 136. 
® Heredot. v, 27. Mera δὲ οὐ 3034 χρόνον. Gd. τως κακῶν ἣν — or ἀνεσι- 


EXPEDITION AGAINST NAXOS. 281 


It was about the year 506 B.c., that the exiled Athenian des 
pot Hippias, after having been repelled from Sparta by the 
unanimous refusal of the Lacedemonian allies to take part: in 
his cause, presented himself from Sigeium as a petitioner to 
Artaphernés at Sardis. He now, doubtless, found the benefit of 
the alliance which he had formed for his daughter with the des- 
pot /Eantidés of Lampsakus, whose favir with Darius would 
stand him in good stead. He made pressing representations to 
the satrap, with a view of procuring restoration to Athens, on 
condition of holding it under Persian dominion ; and Artaphernés 
was prepared, if an opportunity offered, to aid him in his design. 
So thoroughly had he resolved on espousing actively the cause 
of Hippias, that when the Athenians despatched envoys to Sar- 
dis, to set forth the case of the city against its exiled pretender, 
he returned to them an answer not merely of denial, but of me- 
nace, — bidding them receive Hippias back again, if they looked 
for safety.! Such a reply was equivalent to a declaration of war, 


κακῶν --- if the conjecture of some critics be adopted. Mr. Clinton, with 
Larcher and others (see Fasti Hellen. App. 18, p. 314), construe this passage 
as if the comma were to be placed after μετὰ δὲ, Βο that the historian 
would be made to affirm that the period of repose lasted only a short time, 
It appears to me that the comma ought rather to be placed after χρόνον. 
and that the “short time” refers to those evils which the historian had been 
describing before. There must have been an interval of eight years at least, 
if not of ten years, between the events which the historian had been de- 
scribing — the evils inflicted by the attacks of Otanés—and the breaking 
out of the Ionic revolt; which latter event no one places earlier than 504 
B.c., though some prefer 502 B.c., others even 500 B.c. 

If, indeed, we admitted with Wesseling (ad Herodot. vi, 40; and Mr. 
Clinton seems inclined towards the same opinion, see p. 314, ut sup.) that 
the Scythian expedition is to be placed in 508-507 B.c., then indeed the in- 
terval between the campaign of Otanés and the Ionic revolt would be con- 
tracted into one or two years. But I have already observed that I cannot 
think 508 B.c. a correct date for the Scythian expedition: it seems to me 
to belong to about 515 B.c. Nor do I know what reason there is for deter- 
mining the date as Wesseling does, except this very phrase ob πολλὸν 
yoovey, which is on every supposition exceedingly vague, and which he 
appears to me not to have construed in the best way. 

- Herodot. v, 96. Ὁ dé ᾿Αρταφέρνης ἐκέλευέ opeat εἰ βουλοίατ ' obe8 eivas, 


wmradéxeovat ὑπίσω τὸν Ἱππίην. 


282 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


aud s¢ .t was construed at Athens. It leads us to infer that he 
was even then revolving in his mind an expedition against At- 
tica, in conjunction with Hippias; but, fortunately for the Athe- 
niaus, other projects and necessities intervened to postpone for 
several years the execution of the scheme. 

Of these new projects, the first was that of conquering the 
island of Naxos. Here, too, as in the case of Hippias, the insti- 
gation arose from Naxian exiles, —a rich oligarchy which had 
been expelled by a rising of the people. This island, like all the 
rest of the Cyclades, was as yet independent of the Persians.’ It 
was wealthy, prosperous, possessing a large population both of 
freemen and slaves, and defended as well by armed ships as by a 
force of eight thousand heavy-armed infantry. The exiles ap- 
plied for aid to Aristagoras, who saw that he could turn them 
into instruments of dominion for himself in the island, provided 
he could induce Artaphernés to embark in the project along 
with him, — his own force not being adequate by itself. Accord- 
ingly, he went to Sardis, and laid his project before the satrap, 
intimating that as soon as the exiles should land with a powertul 
support, Naxos would be reduced with little trouble: that the 
neighboring islands of Paros, Andros, Ténos, and the other Cy- 
clades, could not long hold out after the conquest of Naxos, nor 
even the large and valuable island of Eubcea. He himself en- 
gaged, if a fleet of one hundred ships were granted to him, to 
accomplish all these conquests for the Great King, and to bear 
the expenses of the armament besides. Artaphernés warmly en- 
tered into the scheme, loaded him with praise, and promised him 


in the ensuing spring two hundred ships instead of one hundred. 


A messenger despatched to Susa, having brought back the ready 
consent of Darius, a large armament was forthwith equipped, 
under the command of the Persian Megabatés, to be placed at 


' Herodot. v, 31. Plutirch says that Lygdamis, established as despot at 
Naxos by Peisistratus (Herodot. i, 64), was expelled from this post by 
the Lacedezmonians (])e Herodot. Malignitat. c. 21, p. 859). I confess that 
I do not place much confidence in the statements of that treatise, as to the 
many despots expelled by Sparta: we neither know the source from whence 
Plutarch borrowed them, nor any of the circumstances connected with 
them. 


EXPEDITION AGAINST NAXOS. 283 


the disposal of Aristagoras, -- - composed both of Persiaas and of 
all the .ributaries near the coast.! 

With this force Aristagoras and the Naxian exiles set sail frows 
Milétus, giving out that they were going to the Hellespont. On 
reaching Chios, they waited in its western harbor of Kaukasa 
for a fair wind to carry them straight across to Naxos. No sus 
picion was entertained in that island of its real purpose, nor was 
any preparation made for resistance, and the success of Aristag- 
oras would have been complete, had it not been defeated by an 
untoward incident ending in dispute. Megabatés, with a solici- 
tude which we are surprised to discern in a Persian general, per- 
sonally made the tour of his fleet, to see that every ship was 
under proper watch, and discovered a ship from Myndus (an 
Asiatic Dorian city near Halikarnassus), left without a single 
man on board. Incensed at this neglect, he called before him 
Skylax, the commander of the ship, and ordered him to be put 
in chains, with his head projecting outwards through one of the 
apertures for oars in the ship’s side. Skylax was a guest and 
friend of Aristagoras, who, on hearing of this punishment, inter- 
ceded with Megabatés for his release ; but finding the request 
refused, took upon him to release the prisoner himself. He even 
went so far as to treat the remonstrance of Megabatés with dis- 
dain, reminding him that, according to the instructions of Arta- 
phernés, he was only second and himself ( Aristagoras) first. The 
pride of Megabatés could not endure such treatment: as soon as 
night arrived, he sent a private intimation to Naxos of the com- 
ing of the fleet, warning the islanders to be on their guard. The 
warning thus fortunately received was turned by the Naxians to 
the best account. ‘They carried in their property, laid up stores, 
and made every preparation for a siege, so that when the fleet, 
probably delayed by the dispute between its leaders, at length 
arrived, it was met by a stout resistance, remained on the shora 
of the island for four months in prosecution of an unavailing 
Biege, and was obliged to retire without accomplishing anything 
beyond the erection of a fort, as lodgment for the Naxian exiles, 
After a large cost incurred, not only by the Persians, but also by 


' Herodot. v, 30, 81. 


ine 


1@ => 


————— 


er 


= 


--ὦ 


204 HISTORY OF GRECCE. 


Aristagoras himself, the unsuccessful armament was brought back 
to the coast of Ionia.! 

The failure of this expedition threatened Aristagoras with 
entire ruin. He had incensed Megabatés, deceived Artaphernés, 
and incurred an obligation, which he knew not how to dischargq, 
of indemnifying the latter for the costs of the fleet. He began 
to revolve in his mind the scheme of revolting from Persia 
when it so happened that there arrived nearly at the same mo- 
ment a messenger from his father-in-law, Histizus, who was 
detained at the court of Susa, secretly instigating him to this very 
resolution. Not knowing whom to trust with this dangerous 
message, Histizeus had caused the head of a faithful slave to 
be shaved,— branded upon it the words necessary, — and 
then despatched him, so soon as his hair had grown, to Mi- 
létus, with a verbal intimation to Aristagoras that his head 
was to be again shaved and examined.2 Histizeus sought to 
provoke this perilous rising, simply as a means of procuring 
his own release from Susa, and in the calculation that Darius 
would send him down to the coast to reéstablish order. His 
message, arriving at so critical a moment, determined the falter- 
ing resolution of Aristagoras, who convened his principal parti- 
sans at Milétus, and laid before them the formidable project of 
revolt. All of them approved it, with one remarkable exception, 
— the historian Hekatzeus of Milétus; who opposed it as alto- 
gether ruinous, and contended that the power of Darius was too 
vast to leave them any prospect of success. When he found di- 
rect opposition fruitless, he next insisted upon the necessity of at 
once seizing the large treasures in the neighboring temple of 
Apollo, at Branchide, for the purpose of carrying on the revolt. 
By this means alone, he said, could the Milesians, too feeble to 
carry on the contest with their own force alone, hope to become 
masters at sea, — while, if they did not take these treasures, the 
victorious enemy surely would. Neither of these recommenda- 
tions, both of them indicating sagacity ana foresight in the pro- 
poser, were listened to. Probably the seizure of the treasures, 
— though highly useful for the impending struggle, and though 


1 Herodot. v, 34, 35. 
3 ᾿ Υ̓ m4 4 μ . * 
3 [erodot. v, 35: compare Pc'yeen. i, 24, and Aulus Gellius, N A. xvu.9 


IONIC REVOLT. 285 


in the end they fell into the hands of the enemy, as Hekatzus 
anticipated, — would have been insupportable to the pious feel- 
ings of the people, and would thus have proved more injurious 
than beneficial :! perhaps, indeed, Hekatzus himself may have 
urged it with the indirect view of stifling the whole project. We 
may remark that he seems to have urged the question as if Mi- 
jétus were to stand alone in the revolt ; not anticipating, as indeed 
no prudent man could then anticipate, that the Ionic cities gener- 
ally would follow the example. 

Aristagoras and his friends resolved forthwith to revolt, and 
their first step was to conciliate popular favor throughout Asiatic 
Greece by putting down the despots in all the various cities, — 
the instruments not less than the supports of Persian ascen- 
dency, as Histizus had well urged at the bridge of the Danube. 
The opportunity was favorable for striking this blow at once oa 
a considerable scale. The fleet, recently employed at Naxos, 
had not yet dispersed, but was still assembled at Myus, with 
many of the despots present at the head of their ships. Iatrag- 
oras was despatched from Milétus, at once to seize as many of 
them as he could, and to stir up the soldiers to revolt. ‘This de- 
yroceeding was the first manifesto against Darius. Iatrag- 
oras was successful: the fleet went along with him, and many 
of the despots fell into his hands, — among them Histisus (a 
second person so named) of ‘Termera, Oliatus of Mylasa (both 
Karians),2 Kéés of Mitylene, and <Aristagoras (also a second 
person so named) of Kymé. At the same time the Milesian 
Aristagoras himself, while he formally proclaimed revolt against 
Darius, and invited the Milesians to follow him, laid down his 
own authority, and affected to place the government in the hands 
Throughout most of the towns of Asiatic Greece, 


eisive ] 


of the people. 
insular and continental, a similar revolution was brought about; 
the despots were expelled, and the feelings of the citizens were 
thus warmly interested in the revolt. Such of these despots as 
fell into the hands of Aristagoras were surrendered into the hands 
of their former subjects, by whom they were for the most part 
quietly dismissed, and we shall find them hereafter active auxil- 


1 Herodot. v, 36. . 
3 Compare Herodotus, v, 121, and vii, 98. Oliatus was son of Ibanolis 


as was also the Mylasian Herakleidés mentioned ip v, 121. 


286 HISTORY OF GREECE 


iaries to the Persians. To this treatment the enly ex-e »tion 
mentioned is K6és, who was stoned to death by the Mit ] 
limwans.! ii 

By these first successful steps the Ionic revolt was made to 
assume an extensive and formidable character; much more 
probably, than the prudent Hekateweus had anticipated as pesky 
cable. The naval force of the Persians in the /Egean ea + ei 
ΡΥ Me ccs ἘΠ ἀρ to their opponents, who were 

| pletely masters of the sea; and would in fact have re- 
mained so, if a second naval force had not been brought u 
against them from Phenicia, — a proceeding never or Sr 
to, and perhaps at that time not looked hur. | 


Ὶ 


Having exhorted all the revolted towns to name their eenerals 
and to put themselves in a state of defence. ἀμνόν samded 
the Ac¢ean to obtain assistance from Sparta, then sailor the ie 
ernment of king Kleomenés; to whom he addressed himaelf 
“ holding in his hand a brazen tablet, wherein was encraved the 
circuit of the entire earth, with the whole sea and all the sivees ‘i 
Probably this was the first map or plan which had ever hace 
seen at Sparta, and so profound was the impression which it 
made, that it was remembered there even in the time of Herod 
otus.2 Having emphatically entreated the Spartans to piel 
forth in aid of their Ionic brethren, now eneaced in odes ois 
struggle for freedom, — he proceeded to describe the cuits ad 


' Herodot. v, 36, 37; vi, 9. | 
* Herodot. v, 49. Τῷ δὴ (KAcoue 


Λέγουσι, ἔχων χαλκξον πίνακα, ἐν τῷ γῆς Grucne πε Nodoe &ver ὶ 
γης Γὠσὴς TEPLOVOC ᾿ἘΤΕΤΜΏΤΟ, κα 


ἵδιως Λακεδαιμόνιοι 
] 


ϑάλασσά re πᾶσα καὶ ποταμοὶ πάντες 
Ξ ; 
The earliest map of which mention is made was prepared by Anaximan 
ἢ 1 . νυ γυῦ r . ™ ” i 7 ἢ , ‘ ἡ 
Cer in Ionia, apparently not long before this period: see Strabo, i, p. 7 
Agathemerus, 1, ¢. 1; Diogen. Laértt. ii, 1 ihn 
Grosskurd, in his note on the above passage of Strabo, as well as Larche 
and other critics, appear to think, that thouch thi map ἀρνθιια 


' his tablet or chart of An: 
a at ᾿ re , λ Τ᾿ ye ; 7s 1 } ἡ rio 
nander was the earliest which embraced the whole known earth, there 


were among the Greeks others still earlier, which described particular co 
tries. There is no proof of this, nor can I think it probable: the 5 esa 
of Apollonius Rhodius (iv, 279) with the Scholia to it which is ‘ acs 
evidence, appears to me unworthy of attention. | aca 
Among the Roman Agrimensores, it was the ancient practice 


hor . 
their plans, of land surveyed. upon tablets of brass. w γρῦκα, ὐλδδ 


hich were deposited 


SPARTANS REFUSE THEIR ASSISTANCE. 287 


abundance (gold, silver, brass, vestments, cattle, and slaves), 
together with the ineffective weapons and warfare of the Asiaties. 
The latter, he said, could be at once put down, and the former 
appropriated, by military training such as that of the Spartans, 
— whose long spear, brazen helmet and breastplate, and ample 
shield, enabled them to despise the bow, the short javelin, the 
light wicker target, the turban and trowsers, of a Persian.! He 
then traced out on his brazen plan the road from Ephesus to 
Susa, indicating the intervening nations, all of them affording a 
booty more or less rich; but he magnified especially the vast 
treasures at Susa: “Instead of fighting your neighbors, he con- 
cluded, Argeians, Arcadians, and Messenians, from whom you 
vet hard blows and small reward, why do you not make yourself 
ruler of all Asia,2 a prize not less easy than lucrative?” Kleom- 
enés replied to these seductive instigations by desiring him to 
come for an answer on the third day. When that day arrived, 
he put to him the simple question, how far it was from Susa to 
the sea? To which Aristagoras answered, with more frankness 
ihan dexterity, that it was a three months’ journey ; and he was 
proceeding to enlarge upon the facilities of the road when Kleom- 
enés interrupted him: “Quit Sparta before sunset, Milesian 
stranger; you are no friend to the Lacedemonians, if you want 
to carry them a three months’ journey from the sea.” In spite 
of this peremptory mandate, Aristagoras tried a last resource. 
he took in his hand the bough of supplication, and again went 
to the house of Kleomenés, who was sitting with his daughter 
Gorgé, a girl of eight years old. He requested Kleomenés to 
send away the child, but this was refused, and he was desired to 
proceed ; upon which he began to offer to the Spartan king a 
bribe for compliance, bidding continually higher and higher from 
ten talents up to fifty. At length, the little girl suddenly ex- 


in the public archives, and of which copies were made for private use, 
though the original was referred to in case of legal dispute (Siculus Flaccus 
ap. Rei Agrarie Scriptores, p. 16, ed. Goes: compare Giraud, Recherches 
sur le Droit de Propriété, p. 116, Aix, 1838). 

' Herodot. v, 49. δεικνὺς δὲ ταῦτα ἔλεγε ἐς τὴν τῆς γῆς περίοδον, τὴν bee 
pero ἐν τῷ πίνακι ἐντετμημένην. 

3 Herodot. v. 49. πάρεχον δὲ τῆς ᾿Ασίης πάση ἄρχειν εὐπετέως, ἄλλο τ 
εἰρήσεσϑε.; 


288 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


claimed, “ Father, the stranger will corrupt you, if you do not at 
once go away.” The exclamation so struck Kleomenés, that he 
broke up the interview, and Aristagoras forthwith quitted Sparta! 

Doubtless Herodotus heard the account of this interview from 
Lacedemonian informants. But we may be permitted to doubt, 
whether any such suggestions were really made, or any such 
hopes held out, as those which he places in the mouth of Aristag- 
gras, — suggestions and hopes which might well be conceived in 
450-440 B.c., after a generation of victories over the Persians, 
but which have no pertinence in the year 502 B.c. Down even to 
the battle of Marathon, the name of the Medes was a terror to 
the Greeks, and the Athenians are highly and justly extolled as 
the first who dared to look them in the face To talk about an 
easy march up to the treasures of Susa and the empire of all 
Asia, at the time of the Ionic revolt, would have been considered 
as a proof of insanity. Aristagoras may very probably have 
represented, that the Spartans were more than a match for 
Persians in the field; but even thus much would have been con- 
sidered, in 502 B.c., rather as the sanguine hope of a petitioner 
than as the estimate of a sober looker-on. 

The Milesian chief had made application to Sparta, as the 
presiding power of Hellas,—a character which we thus find 
more and more recognized and passing into the habitual feeling 
of the Greeks. Fifty years previously to this, the Spartans had 
been flattered by the circumstance, that Croesus singled them 
out from all other Greeks to invite as allies: now they accepted 
such priority as a matter of course.2 


' Herodot. v, 49, 50, 51. Compare Plutarch, Apophthegm. Laconic. p. 240. 

We may remark, both in this instance and throughout all the life and 
time of Kleomenés, that the Spartan’king has the active management and 
direction of foreign affairs, — subject, however, to trial and punishment by 
the ephors in case of misbehavior (Herodot. yi, 82). We shall hereafter 
find the ephors gradually taking into their own hanis, more and more, the 
actual management. 

* Herodot. vi, 112. πρῶτοί τε ἀνέσχοντο ἐσϑῆτ᾽ι τε Μηδικὴν ὁρέοντες, 
καὶ dvdpac ταύτην ἐσθημένους " τέως δὲ ἣν τοῖσι "Ἔλλησι καὶ τὸ οὔνομα τὰ 
Μήδων φόβος ἀκοῦσαι. 

? Aristagoras says to the Spartans (ν, 49) -- τὰ κατήκοντα yup ἐστι ταῦτα" 
lever παῖδας δούλους εἶναι ἀντ᾽ ἐλευϑέρων, ὄνειδος καὶ ἄλγος μέγιστον μὲν 


THE ATHENIANS ASSIST IONIA. 289 


Rejected ut Sparta, Aristagoras proceeded to Athens, now de- 


ridedly the second power in Greece. And here he found aa 
easier task, not only as it was the metropolis, or mother-city, of 
Asiatic Ionia, but also as it had already incurred the pro 
nounced hostility of the Persian satrap, and might look to be 
attacked as soon as the project came to suit his convenience 
under the instigation of Hippias: whereas the Spartans had not 
only no kindred with Ionia, beyond that of common Hellenism, 
hut were in no hostile relations with Persia, and would have 
been provoking a new enemy by meddling in the Asiatic war. 
The promises and representations of Aristagoras were accordingly 
received with great favor by the Athenians: who, over and 
above the claims of sympathy, had a powerful interest in sus 
taining the Ionic revolt as an indirect protection to themselves, 
—and to whom the abstraction of the Ionic fleet from the Per- 
sians afforded a conspicuous and important relief. The Athe- 
nians at once resolved to send a fleet of twenty ships, under 
Melanthius, as an aid to the revolted Ionians, — ships which are 
styled by Herodotus, “the beginning of the mischiefs betweea 
Greeks and barbarians,” —as the ships in which Paris crossed 
the Afcean had before been called in the Iliad of Homer. He- 
rodotus farther remarks that it seems easier to deceive many men 
torether than one,— since Aristagoras, after having failed with 
Kleomenés, thus imposed upon the thirty thousand citizens of 
Athens.! But on this remark two comments suggest themselves. 
First, the circumstances of Athens and Sparta were not the 
same in regard to the Ionic quarrel,—an observation which 
Herodotus himself had made a little while before: the Athe- 
nians had a material interest in the quarrel, political as well as 


αὐτοῖσι ἡμῖν, ἔτι δὲ τῶν λοιπῶν ὑμῖν, bow προεστέατε τῆς Ἑλλάδος (Herod 
otus, v, 49). In reference to the earlier incident (Herodot. i, 70) — Tov- 
τέων Te ὧν εἵνεκεν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι τὴν συμμαχίην ἐδέξαντο, καὶ ὅτι ἐκ Tay 
των σφέας προκρίνας Ἑλλήνων, αἱρέετο φίλους (Croesus). 

An interval of rather more than forty years separates the two events, 
daring which both the feelings of the Spartans, and the feelings of others 
towanis them, had undergone a material change. 

' Herodot. v, 99. πολλοὺς γὰρ οἶκε εἶναι εὐπετέστερον διαβάλλειν ἢ ἕνα, 
εἰ Κλεομένεα μὲν τὸν Λακεδαιμόνιον μοῦνον οὐκ οἷός τε ἐγένετο διαβαλέειν 
φρεῖς δὲ μυριάοας ᾿Αϑηναίων ἐποίη τε τοῦτο. 


VOL. "ν. 13 190. 


990 HISTURY OF GREECE. 


sympathetic, while the Spartans had none. Secondly, the ulti- 
mate result of their interference, as it stood in the time of Herod: 
otus, though purchased by severe intermediate hardship, was 
one eminently gainful and glorifying, not less to Athens than te 
Greece. ! 

When Aristagoras returned, he seems to have found the Per- 
sians engaged in the siege of Milétus. The twenty Athenian 
ships soon crossed the /2gean, and found there five Eretrian 
ships which had also come to the succor of the Jonians ; the 
Eretrians generously taking this opportunity to repay assistance 
formerly rendered to them by the Milesians in their ancient war 
with Chalkis. On the arrival of these allies, Aristagoras organ- 
ized an expedition from Ephesus up to Sardis, under the com- 
mand of his brother Charopinus, with others. The ships were 
left at Koréssus,2 a mountain and seaport five miles from Ephesus, 
while the troops marched up under Ephesian guides, first, along 
the river Kayster, next, across the mountain range of Tmodlus to 
Sardis. Artaphernés had not troops enough to do more than hold 
the strong citadel, so that the assailants possessed themselves of 
the town without opposition. But he immediately recalled his 
force near Milétus,3 and summoned Persians and Lydians from 
all the neighboring districts, thus becoming more than a match 
for Charopinus ; who found himself, moreover, obliged to evacu- 
ate Sardis, owing to an accidental conflagration. Most of the 
houses in that city were built in great part with reeds or straw, 
and all of them had thatched roofs; hence it happened that a 
spark touching one of them set the whole city in flame. Obliged 
to abandon their dwellings by this accident, the population of the 
town congregated in the market-place,— and as reinforcements 
were hourly crowding in, the position of the Ionians and Athe- 


Herodot. v, 98; Homer, Iliad, v, 62. The criticism of Plutarch (De 
Malignitat. Herodot. p. 861) on this passage, is rather more pertinent than 
the criticisms in that ill-tempered composition generally are. 

2 About Koréssus, see Diodor. xiv, 99, and Xenophon, Hellen. i, 2, 7. 

3 Charon of Lampsakus, and Lysanias in his history of Eretria, seem to 
have mentioned this first siege of Milétus, and the fact of its being raised 
in consequence of the expedition to Sardis; see Plutarch, de Herodot. 
Malignit. p. 861,— though the citation is given there confu edly, so that 
we cannot make much out of it. 


BURNING OF SARDIS. Ζ91 


nians became precarious: they evacuated the town, took up ἃ 
position on Mount Tmodlus, and, when night came, made the best 
of their way to the sea-coast. The troops of Artaphern$s pursued, 
overtook them near Ephesus, and defeated them completely. 
Eualkidés, the Eretrian general, a man of eminence and a cele- 
brated victor at the solemn games, perished in the action, together 
with a considerable number of troops. After this unsuccessful 
commencement, the Athenians betook themselves to their vessels 
and sailed home, in spite of pressing instances on the part of 
Aristagoras to induce them to stay. They took no farther part 
n the struggle ;! a retirement at once so sudden and so complete, 
that they must probably have experienced some glaring desertion 
on the part of their Asiatic allies, similiar to that which brought 
so much danger upon the Spartan general Derkyllidas, in 396 B.2. 
Unless such was the case, they seem open to censure rather for 
having too soon withdrawn their aid, than for having originally 
lent it.2 

The burning of a place so important as Sardis, however, in- 
cluding the temples of the local goddess Kybébé, which perished 
with the remaining buildings, produced a powerful effect on both 
sides, — encouraging the revolters, as well as incensing the Per- 
sians. Aristagoras despatched ships along the coast, northward 
as far as Byzantium, and southward as far as Cyprus. The 
Greek cities near the Hellespont and the Propontis were induced, 
either by force or by inclination, to take part with him: the 
Karians embraced his cause warmly ; even the Kaunians, who 
had not declared themselves before, joined him as soon as they 
heard of the capture of Sardis; while the Greeks in Cyprus, with 
the single exception of the town of Amathus, at once renounced 
the authority of Darius, and prepared for a strenuous contest. 
Onesilus of Salamis, the most considerable city in the island, — 
finding the population willing, but his brother, the despot Gorgus, 
reluctant, — shut the latter out of the gates, took the command 
of the united forces of Salamis and other revolting cities, and 


1 Herodot. v, 102,103. It is a curicas fact that Charén of Lampsakus 
made no mention of this defeat of the united Athenian and Ionian force 
see Plutarch. de Herodot. Malign. ut sup. 

? About Derkyllidas, see Xenophem, Hellen. iii, 2, 17-19. 


292 HISTORY UF GREECE. 


laid siege to Amathiis. These towns of Cyprus were then, and 
seem always afterwards to have continued, under the government 
of despots ; who, however, unlike the despots in Ionia gener- 
ally, tvok part along with their subjects in the revolt against 
Persia. i 

The rebellion had now assumed a character more serious than 
ever, and the Persians were compelled to put forth their strong- 
est efforts to subdue it. From the number of different nations 
comprised in their erapire, they were enabled to make use of the 
antipathies of one against the other; and the old adverse feeling 
of Phenicians against Greeks was now found extremely service- 
able. After a year spent in getting together forces,? the Pheni- 
cian fleet was employed to transport into Cyprus the Persian 
general Artybius with a Kilikian and Egyptian army,’ — while 
the force under Artaphernés at Sardis was so strengthened as to 
enable him to act at once against all the coast of Asia Minor, 


from the Propontis to the Triopian promontory. Un the other 


side, the common danger had for the moment brought the Ioni- 
ans into a state of union foreign to their usual habit, and we 
hear now, for the first and the last time, of a tolerably efficient 
Pan-Ioniec authority.* 

Apprized of the coming of Artybius with the Phenician fleet, 
Onesilus and his Cyprian supporters solicited the aid of the Ionic 
fleet, which arrived shortly after the disembarkation of the Persian 
force in the island. Onesilus offered to the Ionians their choice, 
whether they would fight the Phenicians at sea or the Persians 
on land. Their natural determination was in favor of the sea- 
fight, and they engaged with a degree of courage and unanimity 


! Herodot. νυ, 103, 104,108. Compare the proceedings in Cyprus against 
Artaxerxés Mnémon, under the energetic Evagoras of Salamis (Diodor. 
xiv, 98, xv, 2), about 386 B.c.: most of the petty princes of the island 
became for the time his subjects, but in 351 B.c. there were nine of them 
independent (Diodor. xvi, 42), and seemingly quite as many at the time 
when Alexander besieged Tyre (Arrian, ii, 20, 8). 

3 Fierodot. v, 116. Κύπριοι χὲν δὴ, ἐνιαυτὸν ἐλεύϑεροι γενόμενοι, avteg ἐκ 
νέης κατεδεδούλωντο. 

3 Herodot. vi, 6. Κίλικες καὶ Αἰγύπτιοι. 

4 Herodot. ν. 109. ‘Huéac ἀπέπεμψε τὸ κοινὸν τῶν ‘lover φυλάξον 
ἀἰς τὸν θώλασσαν, εἴς. : compare vi, 7. 


RECONQUEST OF VYPRDS. 293 


which procured for them a brilliant victory ; the Samians being 
especially distinguished.’ But the combat on land, carried on at 
the same time, took a different turn. Onesilus and the Salamin- 
suns brought into the field, after the fashion of Orientals rather 
than of Greeks, anumber of scythed chariots, destined to break 
the enemy’s ranks ; while on the other hand the Persian general 
Artybius was mounted on a horse, trained to rise on his hind 
legs and strike out with his fore legs against an opponent on 
foot. In the thick of the fight, Onesilus and his Karian shield- 
bearer came into personal conflict with this general and his horse ; 
and by previous concert, when the horse so reared as to get his 
fore legs over the shield of Onesilus, the Karian with a scythe 
severed the legs from his body, while Onesilus with his own hand 
slew Artybius. But the personal bravery of the Cypriots was 
rendered useless by treachery in their own ranks. Stésénor, 
despot of Kurium, deserted in the midst of the battle, and even 
the scythed chariots of Salamis followed his example. The 
brave Onesilus, thus weakened, perished in the total rout of his 
army, along with Aristokyprus despot of Soli, on the north coast 
of the island: this latter being son of that Philokyprus who had 
been immortalized more than sixty years before, in the poems of 
Solon. No farther hopes now remained for the revolters, and 
the victorious Ionian fleet returned home. Salamis relapsed 
under the sway of its former despot Gorgus, while the remaining 
cities in Cyprus were successively besieged and taken: not with- 
out a resolute defence, however, since Soli alone held out five 
months.? 


1 Herodot. v, 112. 

2 Herodot. v, 112-015. It is not uninteresting to compare, with this re- 
conquest of Cyprus by the Persians, the conquest of the same island by the 
Turks in 1570, when they expelled from it the Venetians. See the narrative 
of that conquest (effected in the reign of Selim the Second by the Seraskier 
Mustapha-Pasha), in Von Hammer, Geschichte des Osmannischen Reichs, 
book xxxvi, vol. iii, pp. 578-589. Of the two principal towns, Nikosia in 
the centre of the island, and Famagusta on the northeastern coast, the first, 
after a long siege, was taken by storm, and the inhabitants of every sex 
and age either put to death or carried into slavery ; while the second, after 
a most gallant defence, was allowed to capitulate. But the terms of the 
rapitulation were violated in the most flagitious manner by the Seraskier, 
who treated he brave Venetian governor, Bragadino, with frightful cruelty 


294 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Meanwhile the principal force of Darius having been assem- 
bled at Sardis, — Daurisés. Hymeas, and other siivesnale os had 
married daughters of the Great King, distributed their efforta 
against different parts of the western coast. Daurisés anion 
the towns near the Hellespont,! — Abydus, Perkété, Lampsakus 
and Pasus, — which made little resistance. He was then endind 
southward into Karia, while Hvmeas, who, with another division 
had taken Kios on the Propontis, marched down to the Fides 
pont and completed the conquest of the Troad as well as of th 
fEolic Greeks in the region of Ida. Artaphernés πὰ ἀνὰ 
attacked the Ionic and Molic towns on the coast ah his 
taking Klazomenz,? the latter Kymé. There wesesuscieviil Navin 
which, with Milétus in its neighborhood. offered a dehveviiaesd re- 
sistance to Daurisés. Forewarned of his approach, the ΡΒ 
assembled at a spot called the White Pillars, near the salient 
of the rivers Mewander and Marsyas. Pixodarus, ene of their 
chiefs, recommended the desperate expedient of fighting with the 
river at their back, so that all chance of flight might be cut off 


cutting off his nose and ears, exposing him to all sorts of insults. and ulti 
mately causing him to be flayed alive. The skin of this aliases ; a 
was conveyed to Constantinople as a trophy, but in sherthans dian i it 
way to Venice. ‘eli 
We read of nothing like this treatment of Bragadino in the Persian recor 
quest of Cyprus, though it was a subjugation after revolt : le 7 1 I ats 
like it in all Persian warfare. ie iia ati it 
Von Hammer gives a short sketch (not always very accurate as to ancie 
times) of the condition of ( ‘'yprus under its successive abil fa thease. 
Grexco-Egyptians, Romans, Arabians, the dynastv of ἜΜΕΝ ¥ iat 
and Turks, — the last seems decidedly the worst of all. ΤΠ 
In reference to the above-mentioned piece of cruelty, I may mention th: 
the Persian king Kambysés caused one of the royal inden dencnedinn ie 
Hero lotus v, 25), who had taken a bribe to render an iniquitous sedans. 
to be flayed alive, and his skin to be stretched upon the seat ons which bis 
son was placed to succeed him; as a lesson of justice to the latter. A sim- 
ilar story is told respecting the Persian king Artaxerxés Mnémon: and 
what is still more remarkable, the same story is also recounted in the Turk. 
ish history, as an act of Mohammed the Second (Von Hammer, Geschiehto 
ri Osmannisch. Reichs, book xvii, vol. ii, p. 209; Diodorus, =. 10}. 
Pm — crwth ai 6) had good reason to treat the reality of 
i - 
Herodos v 1 7. * Herodot. y 122-124. 


SUCCESSES OF THE PERSIANS. 295 


but most of ‘he chiefs decided in favor of a contrary policy,’ — 
to let the Persians pass the river, in hopes of driving them back 
‘nto it and thus rendering their defeat total. Victory, however, 
after a sharp contest, declared in favor of Daurisés, chiefly in 
consequence of his superior numbers: two thousand Persians, 
and not less than ten thousand Karians, are said to have perished 
in the battle. The Karian fugitives, reunited after the flight, in 
the grove of noble plane-trees consecrated to Zeus Stratius, near 
Labranda,2 were deliberating whether they should now submit 
to the Persians or emigrate forever, when the appearance of a 
Milesian reinforcement restored their courage. A second battle 
was fought, and a second time they were def sated, the loss on this 
occasion falling chiefly on the Milesians.3 The victorious Per- 
sians now proceeded to assault Karian cities, but Herakleidés of 
Mylasa laid an ambuscade for them with so much skill and good 
fortune, that their army was nearly destroyed, and Daurisés with 
other Persian generals perished. This successful effort, follow. 
ing upon two severe defeats, does honor to the constancy of the 
Karians, upon whom Greek proverbs generally fasten a mear 
reputation. It saved for the time the Karian towns, which the 
Persians did not succeed in reducing until after the capture of 
Milétus.4 

On land, the revolters were thus everywhere worsted, though 


1 Herodot.v,118. On the topography of this spot, as described in Herod- 
otus, sce a good note in Weissenborn, Beytrage zur genaueren Erforschung 
der alt. Griechischen Geschichte, p. 116, Jena, 1844. 

He thinks, with much reason, that the river Marsyas here mentioned 
cannot be that which flows through Kelene, but another of the same name 
which flows into the Mander from the southwest. 

2 About the village of Labranda and the temple of Zeus Stratius, see 
Strabo, xiv, p. 659. Labranda was a village in the territory of, and seven 
miles distant from, the inland town of Mylasa; it was Karian at the time 
of the Ionic revolt, but partially Hellenized before the year 350 B.c. About 
this latter epoch, three rural tribes of Mylasa —constituting along with the 
citizens of the town, the Mylasene community — were, Ταρκόνδαρα, Ὀτώρ 
κονδα, AGGpavda, —see the Inscription in Boeckh’s Collection, No. 2695, 
and in Franz, Epigraphicé Greca, No. 73, p.191. In the Lydian language 
λάθρυς is said to have signified a hatchet (Plutarch, Quest. Gr. c. 46 


p 314). 
8 Hersdot. v,118, 119. 4 Herodot. v, 120, 121; vi, 20. 


296 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


at sea the Ionians still remained masters. But the unwarlike 
Aristagoras began to despair of success, and to meditate a meas 
desertion of the companions and countrymen whom he had him. 
self betrayed into danger. Assembling his chief advisers, he 


represented to them the unpromising state of affairs, and the 


necessity of securing some place of refuge, in case they were 
expelled from Milétus. He then put the question to them, 
whether the island of Sardinia, or Myrkinus in Thrace, near the 
Strymon (which Histieus had begun some time before to fortify, 
as I have mentioned in the preceding chapter), appeared to them 
best adapted to the purpose. Among the persons consulted was 
Hekatzus the historian, who approved neither the one nor the 
other scheme, but suggested the erection of a fortified post in the 
neighboring island of Leros; a Milesian colony, wherein a tem- 
porary retirement might be sought, should it prove impossible to 
hold Milétus, but which permitted an easy return to that city, so 
soon as opportunity offered.! Such an opinion must doubtless 
have been founded on the assumption, that they would be able to 
maintain superiority at sea. And it is important to note such 
confident reliance wpon this superiority in the mind of a saga- 
cious man, not given to sanguine hopes, like Hekatzus, — even 
under circumstances very unprosperous on land. Emigration te 
Myrkinus, as proposed by Aristagoras, presented no hope of 
refuge at all; since the Persians, if they regained their authority 
in Asia Minor, would not fail again to extend it to the Strymon. 
Nevertheless, the consultation ended by adopting this scheme, 
since, probably, no Ionians could endure the immeasurable dis- 
tance of Sardinia as a new home. Aristagoras set sail for Myr- 
kinus, taking with him all who chose to bear him company ; but he 
perished not long after landing, together with nearly all his com- 
pany, in the siege of a neighboring Thracian town.2 Though 
making profession to lay down his supreme authority at the com- 
mencement of the revolt, he had still contrived to retain it in 
great measure ; and on departing for Myrkinus, he devolved it on 
Pythagoras, a citizen in high esteem. It appears however that 
the Milesians, glad to get rid of a leader who ‘sad brought them 


.....ὕ.0.00..ὕ..0...  ο-. --- τον —_ - — om 


* Herodot. v, 125; Strabo, xiv, p. 635. 
* Herodot. 


DESERTION OF ARISTAGORAS. 997 


nothing but mischief,! paid little obedience to his successor, and 
made their government from this period popular in reality as 
well as in profession. The desertion of Aristagoras, with the 
citizens whom he carried away, must have seriously damped the 
spirits of those who remained: nevertheless, it seems that the cause 
of th2 Ionic revolters was quite as well conducted without him, 

Not long after his departure, another despot — Histixus of 
Milétus, his father-in-law, and jointly with him the fomenter of 
the revolt — presented himself at the gates of Milétus for ad- 
mission. The outbreak of the revolt had enabled him, as he had 
calculated, to procure leave of departure from Darius. That 
prince had been thrown into violent indignation by the attack 
and burning of Sardis, and by the general revolt of Ionia, headed 
(so the news reached him) by the Milesian Aristagoras, but car- 
ried into effect by the active cooperation of the Athenians. 
«The Athenians (exclaimed Darius), who are they?” On re- 
ceiving the answer, he asked for his bow, placed an arrow on 
the string, and shot as high as he could towards the heavens 
saying: “Grant me, Zeus, to revenge myself on the Athe 
nians.” He at the same time desired an attendant to remind him 
thrice every day at dinner: “ Master, remember the Athe- 
nians :” for as to the Ionians, he felt assured that their hour of 
retribution would come speedily and easily enough.? 

This Homeric incident deserves notice as illustrating the epical 
handling of Herodotus. His theme is, the invasions of Greece 
by Persia: he has now arrived at the first eruption, in the bosom 
of Darius, of that passion which impelled the Persian forces 
towards Marathon and Salamis,—and he marks the beginning 
of the new phase by act and word both alike significant. It may 
be compared to the libation and prayer addressed by Achilles in 
the Iliad to Zeus, at the moment when he is sending forth Patro- 
klus and the Myrmidons to the rescue of the despairing Greeks, 


Herodot. vi, 5. Οἱ δὲ Μιλήσιοι, ἄσμενοι ἀπαλλαχϑέντες καὶ 'Apiora- 
yovew, οὐδαμῶς ἕτοιμοι ἔσαν ἄλλον τύραννον δέκεσϑαι ἐς τὴν χώρην, οἷά TP 
ἐλευϑερίης γευσάμενοι. 

3 Herodot. γ. 105. Ζεῦ, ἐκ ενέσϑαί μοι ᾿Αϑηναίους τίσασϑαι. Compare 
’ » ἘΚ) μ 7] Ρ 
the Thracian practice of communicating with the gods by shooting arrows 
high up into the air (Herodct. iv, 94). 
13 


298 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


At first, Darius had been inclined to ascribe the movement in 
[onia to the secret instigation of Histizus, whom he called inte 
his presence and questioned. But the latter found means to sat- 
isfy him, and even to make out that no such mischief would have 


yeeurred, if he, Histizeus, had been at Milétus instead of being 
detained at Susa. “Send me down to the spot, he asseverated, 
and I engage not merely to quell the revolt, and put into your 
hands the traitor who heads it, but also, not to take off this 
tunic from my body, before 1 shall have added to your empire 
the great island of Sardinia.” An expedition to Sardinia, 
though never realized, appears to have been among the fa- 
vorite fancies of the Ionic Greeks of that day.’ By such boasts 
and assurances he obtained his liberty, and went down to 
Sardis, promising to return as soon as he should have accom- 
plished them.* 

But on reaching Sardis he found the satrap Artaphernés bet 
ter informed than the Great King at Susa. ‘Though Histiwus, 
when questioned as to the causes which had brought on the out. 
break, affected nothing but ignorance and astonishment, Arta. 
phernés detected his evasions, and said: “I will tell you how 
the facts stand, Histizeus: it is you that have stitched this shoe, 
and Aristagoras has put it on.”* Such a declaration promised 
little security to the suspected Milesian who heard it; and ac- 
cordingly, as soon as night arrived, he took to flight, went down 
to the coast, and from thence passed over to Chios. Here he 
found himself seized on the opposite count, as the confidant of 
Darius and the enemy of Ionia: he was released, however, on 
proclaiming himself not merely a fugitive escaping from Persian 
eustody, but also as the prime author of the Ionic revolt. And 


‘ Herodot. v, 107, vi, 2. Compare the advice of Bias of Priéné to the 
Jonians, when the Persian conqueror Cyrus was approaching, to found a 
Par-lonic colony in Sardinia (Herodot. i, 170): the idea started by Aris 
tagora: has been alluded to just above (Herodot. v, 124). 

Pausanias (iv, 23,2) puts into the mouth of Mantiklus, son of Aristo- 
menés, a recommendation to the Messenians, when conquered a second tim « 
by the Spartans, to migrate to Sardinia. 

* Herodot. v, 106, 107. 

3 Herodot. vi, 1. Οὕτω τοι, ‘Ioriace, ἔχει κατὰ ταῦτα τὰ πρήγματα Tew ς 
vd ἐπόδημα ἔῤῥαψας μὲν od, ὑπεδήσατο δὲ ᾿Αρισταγόρης. 


HISTLEUS FLEES TO CHIOS. 299 


he farther added, in order to increase his popularity, that Darius 
had contemplated the translation of the Ionian pupulation te 
Phenicia, as well as that of the Phenician population to Ionia, — 
to prevent which translation he, Histizus, had instigated the 
revolt. This allegation, though nothing better than a pure 
fabrication, obtained for him the good-will of the Chians, who 
carried him back to Milétus. But before he departed, he 
avenged himself on Artaphernés by despatching to Sardis some 
false letters, implicating many distinguished Persians in a con- 
spiracy jointly with himself: these letters were so managed as 
to fall into the hands of the satrap himself, who became full of 
suspicion, and put to death several of the parties, to the great 
uneasiness of all around him.! 

On arriving at Milétus, Histieus found Aristagoras no longer 
present, and the citizens altogether adverse to the return of their 
old despot. Nevertheless, he tried to force his way by night 
into the town, but was repulsed and even wounded in the thigh. 
He returned to Chios, but the Chians refused him the aid of any 
of their ships: he next passed to Lesbos, from the inhabitants of 
which island he obtained eight triremes, and employed them to 
occupy Byzantium, pillaging and detaining the Ionian merchant- 
ships as they passed into or out of the Euxine.2 The few re- 
maining piracies of this worthless traitor, mischievous to his 
countrymen down to the day of his death, hardly deserve our 
notice, amidst the last struggles and sufferings of the subjugated 
Ionians, to which we are now hastening. 

A vast Persian force, both military and naval, was gradually 
concentrating itself near Milétus, against which city Artapher- 
nés had determined to direct his principal efforts. Not only the 
whole army of Asia Minor, but also the Kilikian and Keyptian 
troops fresh from the conquest of Cyprus, and even the con- 
quered Cypriots themselves, were brought up as reinforcements; 
while the entire Phenician fleet, no less than six hundred ships 
strong, cooperated on the coast.3 To meet such a land-force in 
the field, being far beyond the strength of the Ionians, the joint 
Psn-Ionic council resolved that the Milesians should be left te 


' Herodot. vi, 2-5. 3 Herodot. vi, 5-26 
3 Herodot. vi, 6-9 


800 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


defend their own fortifications, while the entire force of the com 
federate cities should be mustered on board the ships. At sea 
they had as yet no reason to despair, having been victorious 
over the Phenicians near Cyprus, and having sustained no 
defeat. The combined Ionic fleet, including the /olic Les- 
bians, amounting in all to the number of three hundred and 
fifty-three ships, was accordingly mustered at Ladé,—then ἃ 
little island near Milétus, but now joined on to the coast, by the 
sradual accumulation of land in the bay at the mouth of the 
Meander. Eighty Milesian ships formed the right wing, one 
hundred Chian ships the centre, and sixty Samian ships the left 
wing; while the space between the Milesians and the Chians 
was occupied by twelve ships from Priéné, three from Myus, 
and seventeen from Teds, — the space between the Chians and 
Samians was filled by eight ships from Erythrx, three from 
Phokwa, and seventy from Lesbos.! 

The total armament thus made up was hardly inferior in 
number to that which, fifteen years afterwards, gained the battle 
of Salamis against a far larger Persian fleet than the present. 
Moreover, the courage of the Ionians, on ship-board, was equal 
to that of their contemporaries on the other side of the /Egean ; 
while in respect of disagreement among the allies, we shall 
hereafter find the circumstances preceding the battle of Salamis 
still more menacing than those before the coming battle of Ladé. 
The chances of success, therefore, were at least equal between 
the two; and indeed the anticipations of the Persians and Phe- 
nicians on the present occasion were full of doubt, so that they 
thought it necessary to set on foot express means for disuniting 
the Ionians. —it was fortunate for the Greeks that Xerxés at 
Salamis could not be made to conceive the prudence of aiming 
at the same object. There were now in the Persian camp all 
those various despots whom Aristagoras, at the beginning of the 
revolt, had driven out of their respective cities. At the instiga- 
each of these men despatched secret com- 


tion of Artapherneés 
citizens in the allied fleet, endeavoring te 


munications to their 
detach them severally from the general body, by promises of 


gentle treatment in the event of compliance, and by threats of 


1 Flerodot. vi. 8. 


IONIC FLEET AT LADE. 301 


extreme infliction from the Persians if they persisted in armed 
efforts. Though these communications were sent to each with- 
gut the knowledge of the rest, yet the answer from all was one 
unanimous negative.! And the confederates at Ladé seemed 
more one, in heart and spirit, than the Athenians, Spartans, and 
(‘orinthians will hereafter prove to be at Salamis. 

But there was one grand difference which turned the scale, — 
the superior energy and ability of the Athenian leaders at Sala- 
mis, coupled with the fact that they were Athenians, — that is, in 
command of the largest and most important contingent through- 
out the fleet. 

At Ladé, unfortunately, this was quite otherwise: each sep& 
rate contingent had its own commander, but we hear of no joint 
commander at all. Nor were the chiefs who came from the 
larger cities — Milesian, Chian, Samian, or Lesbian — men like 
Themistoklés, competent and willing to stand forward as self- 
created leaders, and to usurp for the moment, with the general 
consent and for the general benefit, a privilege uot intended for 
them. The only man of sufficient energy and forwardness to do 
this, was the Phékzean Dionysius, — unfortunately, the captain of 
the smallest contingent of the fleet, and therefore enjoying the 
least respect. For Phdksa, once the daring explorer of the 
western waters, had so dwindled down since the Persian con- 
quest of Ionia, that she could now furnish no more than three 
ships; and her ancient maritime spirit survived only in the 
bosom of her captain. When Dionysius saw the Ionians assembled 
at Lade, willing, eager, full of talk and mutual encouragement, 
but untrained and taking no thought of discipline, or nautical 
practice, or cooperation in the hour of battle, —he saw the risk 
which they ran for want of these precautions, and strenuously re 
monstrated with them: “Our fate hangs on the razor’s edge, men 
of Ionia: either to be freemen or slaves, — and slaves too, caught 
after running away. Set yourself at once to work and duty, — 
you will then have trouble indeed at first, with certain victory 
and freedom afterwards. But if you persist in this carelessness 
and disorder, there is no hope for you to escape the king’s re- 
vengs for your revolt. Be persuaded and commit yourself ta 


1 Herodot. vi, 9, 10 


302 MPISTORY OF GREECE. 


me; and I pledge myself, if the gods only hold an equal bal 
ance, that your eremies either will not fight, or will be severely 


beaten.”! 

The wisdom of this advice was so apparent, that the Ionians, 
quitting their comfortable tents on the shore of Ladeé and going 
on board their ships, submitted themselves to the continuous nau- 
tical labors and manoeuvres imposed upon them by Dionysius. 
The rowers, and the hoplites on the deck, were exercised in their 
separate functions, and even when they were not 80 employed, 
the ships were kept at anchor, and the crews on board, instead of 
on shore; so that the work lasted all day long, under a hot sum- 
mer’s sun. Such labor, new to the Jonian crews, was endured 
for seven successive days, after which they broke out with one 
accord into resolute mutiny and refusal: “ Which of the gods 
have we offended, to bring upon ourselves such a retribution as 
this ? madmen as we are, to put ourselves into the hands of this 


7 


Phékwan braggart, who has furnished only three ships!? He 


has now got us, and is ruining us without remedy: many of us 
are already sick, many others are sickening ; we had better make 
up cur minds to Persian slavery, or any other mischiefs, rather 
than go on with these present sufferings. Come, we will not 
obey this man any longer.” And they forthwith refused to ex- 
ecute his orders, resuming their tents on shore, with the enjoy- 
ments of shade, rest, and inactive talk, as before. 

I have not chosen to divest this instructive scene of the dra- 
matic liveliness with which it is given in Herodotus, — the more 
so as it has all the air of reality, and as Hekateus, the historian, 
was probably present in the island of Lade, and may have de- 
scribed what he actually saw and heard. When we see the in- 


' Herodot. vi, 11. "Ei? ξυροῦ γὰρ ἀκμῆς ἔχεται ἡμῖν τὰ πρήγματα, ἄνδρες 
Ἴωνες, ἢ εἶναι ἐλευϑέροισι. ἢ δούλοισι, καὶ τούτοισι ὡς δρηπέτῃσι" νῦν ὧν 
ὑμέες, ἢν μὲν βούλησϑε ταλαιπωρίας ἐνδέκεσϑαι, τὸ παραχρῆμα μὲν πόνος 
ὑμῖν ἔσται, οἷοί τε δὲ ἔσεσϑε, ὑπερβαλλόμενοι τοὺς ἐναντίους, εἶναι ἐλεύϑε- 
24, etc. 

3 Herodot. vi, 2. Οἱ Ἴωνες, οἷα ἀπαϑέες ἐόντες πόνων τοιούτων τετρυ- 
μένοι τε ταλαιπωρίῃσί τε καὶ ἡελίῳ, ἔλεξαν πρὸς ἑωῦτοὺς τάδε ---- Τίνα daiuo 
νων παραβάντες, Tade ἀναπίμπλαμεν, οἵτινες παραφρονήσαντες, καὶ ἐκπλῶ. 
ψαντες ἐκ τοῦ νόου, ἀνδρὶ Φωκαέει ἀλαζόνι, παρεχομένῳ νέας tpei-, ἐπετρέ 
ψαντες ἡμέας αὐτοὺς ἔχα!τεν, etc. 


INDOLENCE IN THE IONIC FLEET. 803 


tolerable hardship which these nautical manceuvres and labors 
imposed upon the Ionians, though men not unaccustomed to ordi- 
nary ship-work, — and when we witness their perfect incapacity 
to submit themselves to such a discipline, even with extreme 
danger staring them in the face, — we shall be able to appreciate 
the severe and unremitting toil whereby the Athenian seaman 
afterwards purchased that perfection of nautical discipline which 
characterized him at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. It 
will appear, as we proceed with this history, that the full devel- 
opment of the Athenian democracy worked a revolution in 
Grecian military marme, chiefly by enforcing upon the citizen 
seaman a strict continuous training, such as was only surpassed 
by the Lacedemonian drill on land,—and by thus rendering 
practicable a species of nautical manceuvring which was un- 
known even at the time of the battle of Salamis. I shall show 
this more fully hereafter: at present, I contrast it briefly with 
the incapacity of the Ionians at Ladé, in order that it may be 
understood how painful such training really was. The reader of 
Grecian history is usually taught to associate only ideas of tur- 
bulence and anarchy with the Athenian democracy; but the 
Athenian navy, the child and champion of that democracy, will 
be found to display an indefatigable labor and obedience nowhere 
else witnessed in Greece, and of which even the first lessons, as 
in the case now before us, prove to others so irksome as to out- 
weigh the prospect of extreme and imminent peril. The same 
impatience of steady toil and discipline, which the lonians dis- 
played to their own ruin before the battle of Ladé, will be found 
to characterize them fifty years afterwards as allies of Athens, as 
I shall have occasion to show when I come to describe the Athe- 
nian empire. 

Ending in this abrupt and mutinous manner, the judicious sug- 
gestions of the Phékzan leader did more harm than good. Per- 
haps his manner of dealing may have been unadvisedly rude, 
but we are surprised to see that no one among the leaders of the 
larger contingents had the good sense to avail himself of the first 
readiness of the Ionians, and to employ his superior influence in 
securing the continuance of a good practice once begun. Not 
one such superior man did this Ionic revolt throw up. From the 
day on which the lonians discarded Dionysius, their camp he 


B04 HISTORY OF GREE 


came a scene of disunion and mistrust. Some of them grew 84 
reckless and unmanageable, that the better portion despaired of 
maintaining any orderly battle and the Samians in particular 
now repented that they had declined the secret offers made to 
them by their expelled despot,! — JEakés, son of Syloson. They 
sent privately to renew the negotiation, received a fresh promise 
of the same indulgence, and agreed to desert when the occasion 
arrived. On the day of battle, when the two fleets were on the 
point of coming to action, the sixty Samian ships all sailed off, 
except eleven, whose captains disdained such treachery. Other 
Ionians followed their example; yet amidst the reciprocal crimi- 
nation which Herodotus had heard, he finds it difficult to deter- 
mine who was most to blame, though he names the Lesbians as 
among the earliest deserters.2 The hundred ships from Chios, 
constituting the centre of the fleet — each ship carrying forty 
ἢ soldiers fully armed — formed a brilliant exception to the 
atest fidelity and resolution, inflict- 


chose 
rest; they fought with the gre | 
ing upon the enemy, and themselves sustaining, heavy loss. 41)}- 


onysius, the Phdkzan, also behaved in a manner worthy of his 
previous language, — capturing with his three ships the like 
number of Phenicians. But these examples of bravery did not 
compensate the treachery or cowardice of the rest, and the de- 
feat of the Jonians at Ladé was complete as well as irrecover- 
To the faithful Chians, the loss was terrible, both in the 


οἷο. 
For though some οἱ their vessels escaped 


battle and after 11. 
from the defeat safely to Chios, others were so damaged as to be 
obliged to run ashore close at hand on the promontory of Mykale, 
where the crews quitted them, with the intention of marching 
northward, through the Ephesian territory, to the continent oppo- 


site their own island. We hear with astonishment that, at that 


critical moment, the Ephesian women were engaged in solemniz- 
ine the Thesmophoria,—a_ festival celebrated at night, in the 
= . ν᾿ us 
ἃ portior. of the territory, and with- 


open air, in some uninhabite 
As the Chian fugitives 


out the presence of any male person. 
entered the Ephesian territory by night, their coming being 
anticipated, — it was believed that they were 


neither known nor 
corning to seize the women, and under this 


thieves or pirates 


—_— 


3 Herodot. vi, 14, 18 


᾿ Heredot. vi, 13. 


MILETUS TAKEN BY THE PERSIANS. 805 


error they were attacked by the Ephesians and slain.! It would 
seem from this incident that the Ephesians had taken no part in 
the Ionic revolt, nor are they mentioned amidst the various con- 
tingents. Nor is anything said either of Kolopl.on, or Lebedus, 
or Kr? 

The Phoksan Dionysius, perceiving that the defeat of Ladé 
was the ruin of the Ionic cause, and that his native’ city was 
again doomed to Persian subjection, did not think it prudent even 
to return home. Immediately after the battle he set sail, not for 
Phokwxa, but for the Phenician coast, at this moment stripped of 
its protecting cruisers. He seized several Phenician merchant- 
men, out of which considerable profit was obtained: then setting 
sail for Sicily, he undertook the occupation of a privateer against 
the Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians, abstaining from injury to- 
wards Greeks. Such an employment seems then to have been 
perfectly admissible. A considerable body of Samians also mi- 
grated to Sicily, indignant at the treachery of their admirals in 
the battle, and yet more indignant at the approaching restoration 
of their despot AXakés. How these Samian emigrants became 
established in the Sicilian town of Zanklé,4 I shall mention as a 
part of the course of Sicilian events, which will come here- 
after. 

The victory of Ladé enabled the Persians to attack Milétus by 
sea as well as by land; they prosecuted the siege with the 
utmost vigor, by undermining the walls, and by various engines 
of attack: in which department their resources seem to have been 
enlarged since the days of Harpagus. In no long time the city 
was taken by storm, and miserable: was the fate reserved to it. 
The adult male population was chiefly slain; while such of them 
as were preserved, together with the women and children, were 
sent in a body to Susa, to await the orders of Darius, — who 
assigned to them a residence at Ampé, not far from the mouth of 
the Tigris. The temple at Branchide was burned and pillaged, 
as Hekateus had predicted at the beginning of the revolt: the 


' Herodot. vi, 16. 3 Thucyd. viii. 14. 

* Herodot. vi 17. ληϊστὴς κατεστῆκεε Ελλήνων μὲν οὐδενὸς, Καρχηδονίων 
ἰὲ καὶ Τυρσηνῶν. 

4 Herodot. vi, 22-25. 


tana Δα 20oc. 


8906 HISTORY OF GREE JE. 


large treasures therein contained must have gone far to defray 
the costs of the Persian army. ‘The Milesian territory is said te 
have been altogether denuded of its former inhabitants, — the 
Persians retaining for themselves the city with the plain adjoin- 


ing to it, and making over the mountainous portions to the Kari- 


aus of Pedasa. Some few of the Milesians found a plac’ among 


the Samian emigrants to Sicily.! It is certain, however, that 


new Grecian inhabitants must have been subsequently admitted 
into Milétus ; for it appears ever afterwards as a Grecian town, 


> J 
though with diminished power and importance. 
The capture of Milétus, in the sixth year from the com- 
mencement of the revolt,? carried with it the rapid submission of 


we -.-.ὄ .-. 


1 Herodot. vi, 18, 19, 20, 22. 
Μέλητος μέν νυν Μιλησίων ἠρήμωτο. 

18. αἱρέουσι κατ᾽ ἄκρης, ἐν τῷ “κτῷ Eret amd τῆς ἀποστάσιος 
This is almost the only distinct chronological state- 
ment which we find in Herodotus respecting the Ionic revolt. The other 
in his chapters are more or less equivocal: nor is there 
sufficient testimony before us to enable us to arrange the events, between 
the commencement of the Ionic revolt. and the battle of Marathon, into 
The battle of Marathon stands 
the siege of Milétus may prob- 
and the Ionic revolt may have 


= Fic rodot. vi, 


THE ApicTayoped. 


evidences of time 


the precise years to which they belong. 
fixed for August or September, 490 B.c.: 
finished in 496-495 B.C., 


ably have been ἢ 
begun in 502-501 g.c. Such are the dates which, on the whole, appear to 


me most probable, though I 
Chronological critics differ considerably in 


am far from considering them as certain. 
their arrangement of the 
See Appendix, No. 3, p- 


events here alluded to among particular years. + 
Schultz, Beytrage zu gen- 


944. in Mr. Clinton’s Fasti Hellenic; Professor 
aueren Zeitbestimmungen von der 638 zur 722 Olympiade, pp. 177-183, in 
the Kieler Philologische Studien ; and Weissenborn, Beytrage zur genaue- 
ren Erforschung der alten Griechischen Geschichte, Jena, 1844, p. 87, seqq-: 
Mr. Clinton reckons only ten years 


not to mention Reiz and Larcher. 
le of Marathon ; which 


from the beginning of the Ionic revolt to the batt 
appears to me too short; though, on the other hand, the fourteen years 
reckored by Larcher-— much more the sixteen years reckoned by Reiz — 
are too long. Mr. Clinton compresses inconveniently the latter portion of 
she interval,—that portion which elapsed between the siege of Milétus 
and the battle of Marathon. And the very improbable supposition to 
which he is obliged to resort, —of a confusion in the language of Herodo 
tus between Attic and Olympic years, — indicates that he is pressing the 
text of the historian too closely, when he states, “ that Herodotus specifies 
ars between the capture of Milétus, and the expedition of 


a term of three ye 
He places the capture of Milétus in 494 


Dat.s:” see F H. ad ann. 499 


RESTORATION OF PERSIAN DOMINI N. 307 


the neighboring towns in Karia.! ‘j 
“ ta ae | ἧς Karia. During the next summer, — 
; . cian fleet having wintered at Milétus,—the Persian 
orces by sea and land reconquered all the Asiati 
; li 16 Asiatic Greeks, insuls 
as well as continental. Chios T a ΝΣ 
a as ental. 1i0s, Lesbos, and Tenedos, — the tewna 
in the Chersonese,—Selymbria and Perinthus in Thrace 
Prokonnésus and Artaké i : Pr i ana 
πῆραν : , take in the Propontis,— all these towns 
were taken or sacked by the Persian and Phenician fleet.2 The 
* ᾿ " * \ " » } > ΔΩ . ¥ ,. A i 
inhabitants of Byzantium and Chalkéd6n fled for the most part, 
without even awaiting its arrival, to Mesembria, and the Athe 
nian Miltiadés only escaped Persian captivity by a rapid flight 
νι 6 ~ © 2 ; t ᾿ ‘a 
from his abode in the Chersonese to Athens. His pursuers were 


B.c.; which I am inclined to believe a year later —if not two years later ἷ 
than the Teality. Indeed, as Mr. Clinton places the expedition of rari 
oras agwnEs Naxos (which was immediate ly before the breaking τὴν of tl 
revolt, since Aristagoras seized the Ionic despots while that fleet yet a 
mained congregated immediately at the close of the expedition) in 501 
B.c., and as Herodotus expressly says that Milétus was taken in the sixth 
year after the revolt, it would follow that this capture ought to bel a 
495, and not to 494 s.c. I incline to place it either in 496, or in 495: , ἃ 
the Naxian expedition in 502 or 501, leaning towards the earlier of the ct 
dates: Schultz agrees with Larcher in placing the Naxian expedition ia 
504 B.c., yet he assigns the capture of Milétus to 496 B.c., — whereas spade 
otus states that the last of these two events was in the sixth y var after the 
revolt, which revolt immediately succeeded on the first of the two, within the 
same summer. Weissenborn places the capture of Milétus in 496 B.c., and 
the expedition to Naxos in 499,— suspecting that the text tn Merodotes 
— ἐκτῷ éret —is incorrect, and that it ought to be τετάρτῳ ἔτεϊ, the fourth 
year (p. 125: compare the chronological table in his work, p. 222). He 
attempts to show that the particular incidents composing the ionic el 
as Herodotus recounts it, cannot be made to occupy more than four yea τ 
but his reasoning is, in my judgment, unsatisfactory and the snloriite 
inadmissible. The distinct affirmation of the historian as to oe walla 
interval between the two events, is of much more hidiaibince value on 
our conjectural summing up of the details. ᾿ ἦι 
It is vain, I think, to try to arrange these details according to preci 
years: this can only be done very loosely. i ee 
' Herodot. vi, 25. ὶ i 
2 Herodot. vi, 31-33. It may perhaps be to this burning and sacking ot 
the cities in the Propontis, and on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont, that 
Strabo (xiii, p. 591) makes allusion ; though he ascribes the proceedin te 
4 different cause, —to the fear of Darius that the Scythians would τ᾿ 
into Asia to avenge themselves upon him for attacking them, and thet the 
towns on the coast would furnish them with vessels for the onaenns 


808 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


indeed so close upon him, that one cf his ships, with his soa 
Metiochus on board, fell into their hands. As Miltiadés had 
been strenuous in urging the destruction of the bridge over the 
Danube, on the occasion of the Scythian expedition, the Pheni- 
cians were particularly anxious to get possession of his person, as 
the most acceptable of all Greek prisoners to the Persian king; 
who, however, when Metiochus the son of Miltiadés was brought 
to Susa, not only did him no harm, but treated him with great 
kindness, and gave him a Persian wife with a comfortable main- 
tenance.! 

Far otherwise did the Persian generals deal with the recon- 
quered cities on and near the coast. The threats which had been 
neld out before the battle of Ladé were realized to the full. ‘The 
most beautiful Greek youths and virgins were picked out, to be 
distributed among the Persian grandees as eunuchs, or inmates 
of the harems; the cities with their edifices, sacred as well as pro- 
fane, were made a prey to the flames; and in the case of the 
islands, Herodotus even tells us, that a line of Persians was 
formed from shore to shore, which swept each territory from 
north to south, and drove the inhabitants out of it.? That much 
of this hard treatraent is well founded, there can be no doubt. 
But it must be exaggerated as to extent of depopulation and de- 
struction, for these islands and cities. appear ever afterwards as 
occupied by a Grecian population, and even as in a tolerable, 
though reduced, condition. Samos was made an exception to 
the rest, and completely spared by the Persians, as a reward to 


its captains for setting the example of desertion at the battle of 
Ladé ; at the same time, akés the despot of that island was 
reinstated in his government.’ It appears that several other des- 
pots were also replaced in their respective cities, though we are 


not told which. 

Amidst the sufferings endured by so many innocent persons, 
of every age and of both sexes, the fate of Histizus excites but 
little sympathy. Having learned, while carrying on his piracies 
at Byzantium, the surrender of Milétus, he thought it expedient 
to sail with his Lesbian vessels to Chios, where admittance was 


—- - 


.----.-.-᾽  .-.- 


1 Herodot. vi, 41. 8 Herodot. vi, 31, 32, 38 
* Herodot. vi, 25 9] 


Vol. 4 


MOVEMENTS OF HISTLEUS. 309 


refused to him. But the Chians, weakened as they had been by 
the late battle, were in little condition to resist, so that he defeated 
their troops and despoiled the island. During the present break- 
up of the Asiatic Greeks, there were doubtless many who, like 
the Phékan Dionysius, did not choose to return home to an ene 
slaved city, yet had no fixed plan for a new abode: of these exiles, 
a considerable number put themselves under the temporary com- 
mand of Histizeus, and accompanied him to the plunder of Thasos.! 
While besieging that town, he learned the news that the Pheni 
cian fleet had quitted Milétus to attack the remaining Ionic towns; 
and he left his designs on Thasos unfinished, in order to go and 
defend Lesbos. But in this latter island the dearth of provisions 
was such, that he was forced to cross over to the continent to 
reap the standing corn around Atarneus and in the fertile plain 
of Mysia near the river Kaikus. Here he fell in with a consid- 
erable Persian force under Harpagus, — was beaten, compelled to 
flee, and taken prisoner. On his being carried to Sardis, Arta- 
phernés the satrap caused him to be at once crucified: partly, no 
doubt, from genuine hatred, but partly also under the persuasion 
that, if he were sent up as a prisoner to Susa, he might again 
become dangerous,— since Darius would even now spare his life, 
under an indelible sentiment of gratitude for the maintenance of 
the bridge over the Danube. The head of Histizeus was embalmed 
and sent up to Susa, where Darius caused it to be honorably 
buried, condemning this precipitate execution of a man who had 
once been his preserver.? 

We need not wonder that the capture of Milétus excited the 
strongest feeling, of mixed sympathy and consternation, among 
the Athenians. In the succeeding year (so at least we are led 
to think, though the date cannot be positively determined) it 
was selected as the subject of a tragedy, — The Capture of Mi- 
létus, — by the dramatic poet Phrynichus; which, when per- 
formed, so painfully wrung the feelings of the Athenian audi- 
ence, that they burst into tears in the theatre, and the poet was 
condemned to pay a fine of one thousand drachme, as “ having 


1 Herodot. vi, 26-28. ἄγων "lover καὶ Αἰολέων συχνοῦς 
3 ]¥2rodot. vi, 28, 29, 30. 


310 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


recalled to them their own misfortunes.”! The piece was forbid. 
den to be afterwards acted, and has not come down to us. Some 
critics have supposed that Herodotus has not correctly assigned 
the real motive which determined the Athenians to ον thie 
fine.2 For it is certain that the subjects usually selected for trag- 
cdy were portions of heroic legend, and not matters of recent 
history ; so that the Athenians might complain of Phrynichus 
en the double ground, — for having violated an established canon 
οἵ propriety, as well as for touching their sensibilities too deeply. 
Still, 1 see no reason for doubting that the cause assigned by He- 
rodotus is substantially the true one; but it is very possible that 
Phrynichus, at an age when tragic poetry had not yet reached its 
full development, might touch this very tender subject with a 
I uel and offensive hand, before a people who had fair reason to 
dread the like cruel fate for themselves. Eschylus, in his Perse, 
would naturally carry with him the full tide of Athenian sympa- 
thy, while dwelling on the victories of Salamis and Platia. But 
to interest the audience in Persian success and Grecian suffer- 
ing, Was a task in which much greater poets than Phrynichus 
would have failed,— and which no judicious poet would have 
undertaken. The sack of Magdeburg, by Count Tilly, in the 
Thirty Years’ war, was not likely to be endured as the subject of 
dramatic representation in any Protestant town of Germany. 


Herodot. V, 21, ὡς ἀνημνήσαντα olxnia kaké: compare vii, 152; also, 
Kallisthenés ap. Strabo, xiv, p. 635, and Plutarch. Prece;t. Reipubl. Ge 
rend. p. 814. | 
ten Weds νὼ νὼ, 
See Velcker, Griechische Tragédien, vel. i, p. 85. 


FUTURE GOVEVNMENT OF IoOnTA. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 
FROM THE IONIC REVOLT TO THE BATTLE OF MARATHON. 


In the preceding chapter, I indicated the point of confluencs 
between the European and Asiatic streams of Grecian history, — 
the commencement of a decided Persian intention to conquer 
Attica; manifested first in the form of a threat by Artaphernés 
the satrap, when he enjoined the Athenians to take back Hippias 
as the only condition of safety, and afterwards converted into a 
passion in the bosom of Darius in consequence of the burning of 
Sardis. From this time forward, therefore, the affairs of Greece 
and Persia came to be in direct relation one with the other, and 
capable of being embodied, much more than before, into one con- 
tinuous narrative. 

The reconquest of Ionia being thoroughly completed, Arta- 
phernés proceeded to organize the future government of it, with 
a degree of prudence and forethought not often visible in Persian 
proceedings. Convoking deputies from all the different cities, 
he compelled them to enter into a permanent convention, for the 
amicable settlement of disputes, so as to prevent all employment 
of force by any one against the others. Moreover, he caused 
the territory of each city to be measured by parasangs (each pare 
asang was equal to thirty stadia, or about three miles and a half), 
and arranged the assessments of tribute according to this meas- 
urement, without any material departure, however, from the 
sums which had been paid before the revolt.! 

Unfortunately, Herodotus is unusually brief in his allusion to 
this proceeding, which it would have been highly interesting to 
ve able to comprehend perfectly. We may, however, assumc it 
as certain, that both the population and the territcry of many 
among the Ionic cities, if not of all, were materially altered in 
conrejuence of the preceding revolt, and still more in conse- 


' Herodot. vi, 42. 


512 HISTURY ΟΣ GREECE. 


quence of the cruelties with which the suppression of the revolt 
had been accompanied. In regard to Milétus, Herodotus tells 
us that the Persians retained for themselves the city with its cir- 


cumjacent plain, but gave the mountain portion of the Milesian 


territory to the Karians of Pédasa.! Such a proceeding would 
naturally call for a fresh measurement and assessment of tribute ; 
and there may have been similar transfers of land elsewhere. 1 
have already observed that the statements which we find in He- 
rodoius, of utter depopulation and destruction falling upon the 
cities, cannot be credited in their full extent ; for these cities are 
all peopled, and all Hellenic, afterwards. But there can be no 
doubt that they are partially true, and that the miseries of those 
days, as stated in the work of Hekatzus, as well as by contem 
porary informants with whom Herodotus had probably conversed, 
must have been extreme. New inhabitants would probably be 
admitted in many of them, to supply the loss sustained ; and 
such infusion of fresh blood would strengthen the necessity for 
the organization introduced by Artaphernés, in order to deter- 
mine clearly the obligations due from the cities both to the Per- 
sian government and towards each other. Herodotus considers 
that the arrangement was extremely beneficial to the Ionians, 
and so it must unquestionably have appeared, coming as it did 
immediately after so much previous suffering. He farther adds, 
that the tribute then fixed remained unaltered until his own day, 
—a statement requiring some comment, which I reserve until 
the time arrives for describing the condition of the Asiatic Greeks 
alter the repulse of Merxés from Greece proper. 

Meanwhile, the intentions of Darius for the conquest of Greece 
were now effectively manifested: Mardonius, invested with the 
supreme command, and at the head of a large force, was sent 
down in the ensuing spring for the purpose. Having reached 
Kilikia in the course of the march, he himself got on ship-board 
and went by sea to Jonia, while his army marched across Asia 
Minor to the Hellespont. His proceeding in Jonia surprises us, 
and seems to have appeared surprising as well to Herodotus 
himself as to his readers. Mardonius deposed the despota 
throughout the various Greek cities,? and left the people of each 


! Tlerodot. vi, 20. 
* Herodot. vi, 43. In recounting this depesition of the despots by Mar 


MARDONIUS COMES TO IONIA. $13 


to govern themselves, subject to the Persian dominion and trib 
ute. This was a complete reversal of the former policy of Per- 
sia. and must be ascribed to a new conviction, doubtless wise ard 
well founded, which had recently grown up among the Persian 
leaders, that on the whole their unpopularity was aggravated, 
more than their strength was increased, by employing these des- 
pots as instruments. ‘The phenomena of the late Ionic revolt 
were well calculated to teach such a lesson; but we shall not 
often find the Persians profiting by experience, throughout the 
course of this history. 

Mardonius did not remain long in Ionia, but passed on with 
his fleet to the Hellespont, where the land-force had already ar- 
rived. He transported it across into Europe, and began his 
march through Thrace; all of which had already been reduced 
by Megabazus, and does not seem to have participated in the 
Ionic revolt. The island of Thasus surrendered to the fleet 
without any resistance, and the land-force was conveyed across 
tlhe Strymon to the Greek city of Akanthus, on the western coast 
of the Strymonie gulf. From hence his land-force marched into 
Macedonia, and subdued a considerable portion of its inhabitants, 
perhaps some of those not comprised in the dominion of Amyn- 
tas, since that prince had before submitted to Megabazus. Mean- 
while, he sent his fleet to double the promontory of Mount 
Athos, and to join the land-force again at the gulf of Therma, 
with a view of conquering as much of Greece as he could, and 
even of prosecuting the march as far as Athens and Eretria ;! 
so that the expedition afterwards accomplished by Xerxés would 


donius, Herodotus reasons from it as an analogy for the purpose of vindi- 
cating the correctness of another of his statements, which, he acquaints us, 
many persons disputed; namely, the discussion which he reports to have 
taken place among the seven conspirators, after the death of the Magian 
Smerdis, whether they should establish a monarchy, an oligarchy, or a 
democracy, —évbaira μέγιστον ϑώῦμα ἐρέω τοῖσι μὴ ἀποδεκομένοισι τῶν 
Ἑλλήνων, Περσέων τοῖσι ἕπτα ᾿᾽Οτάνεα γνώμην ἀποδέξασϑαι, ὡς χρέων εἴη 
ῥημοκρατέεσϑαι Πέρσας" τοὺς γὰρ τυράννους τῶν ᾿Ιώνων καταπαύσας πάντας 
ἐ Μαρδόνιος, δημοκρατίας κατίστα ἐς τὰς πόλιας. Such passages as this let 
us into the controversies of the time, and prove that Herodotus found 
many objectors to his story about the discussion on theories of governmen# 
among the seven Persian conspirators (iii, 80-82). 

' Herodot. vi, 43, 44, ἐπορεύοντο δὲ ἐπί τε ’Epetpiav καὶ ᾿Αϑήνας. 

VOL. IV. 14 


Bi4 HISTORY OF GREECE 


have been tried at least by Murdonius, twelve or thirteen years 
earlier, had not a terrible storm completely disabled the ‘fleet. 
The sea near Athos was then, and is now, full of peril to navi- 
gators. One of the hurricanes, so frequent in its neighborhood, 
overtook the Persian fleet, destroyed three hundred ships, and 
drowned or cast ashore not less than twenty thousand men: of 
those who reached the shore, many died of cold, or were de- 
voured by the wild beasts on that inhospitable tongue of land. 
This disaster checked altogether the farther progress of Mardo- 
nius, who also sustained considerable loss with his land-army, 
and was himself wounded, in a night attack made upon him by 
the tribe of Thracians called Brygi. Though strong enough to 
repel and avenge this attack, and to subdue the Brygi, he was 
yet in no condition to advance farther. Both the land-force and 
the fleet were conveyed back to the Hellespont, and from thence 
across te Asia, with all the shame of failure. Nor was Mardo- 
nius again employed by Darius, though we cannot make out that 
the fault was imputable to him.! We shall hear of him again 
under XNerxés. 

The ill-success of Mardonius seems to have inspired the Tha- 
sians, so recently subdued, with the idea of revolting. At least, 
they provoked the suspicion of Darius by making active prepa- 
rations for defence, building war-ships, and strengthening their 
fortifications. ‘The Thasians were at this time in great opulence, 
chiefly from their gold and silver mines, both in their island and 
in their mainland territory opposite. ‘Their mines at Skapté 
Hylé, in Thrace, yielded to them an annual income of eighty 
talents; and altogether their surplus revenue — after defraying 
all the expenses of government, so that the inhabitants were ig 
tirely untaxed — was two hundred talents (forty-six thousand 
pounds, if Attic talents; more, if either Euboic or A‘ginzan). 
With these large means, they were enabled soon to make prepa- 
rations which excited notice among their neighbors, many of 
whom were doubtless jealous of their prosperity, and perhaps 
inclined to dispute with them possession of the profitable mines 


' Herodot. vi, 44-94, Charon of Lampsakus had noticed the storm neal 
Mount Athos, and the destruction of the fleet of Mardonius (Charc tis Frag 
ment. 3, ed. Didot; Athene. ix, p. 394), 


THEBES AND ZGINA SUBMIT TO DARIUS. $16 


of Skapté Hylé. As in other cases, so in this: the jealousies 
among subject neighbors often procured revelations to the supe- 
nor power: the proceedings of the Thasians were made known, 
and they were forced to raze their fortifications as well as to sure 
render all their ships to the Persians at Abdeéra.! 

Thouyh dissatisfied with Mardonius, Jarius was only the more 
eagerly bent on his project of conquering Greece, and Hippias 
was at his side to keep alive his wrath against the Athenians.? 
Orders were despatched to the maritime cities of his empire to 
equip both ships of war and horse-transports for a renewed attempt. 
His intentions were probably known in Greece itself by this time, 
from the recent march of his army to Macedonia; but he thought 
it advisable to send heralds round to most of the Grecian cities, in 
uire from each the formal token of submission, — 


order to req 
earth and water; and thus to ascertain what extent of resistance 
his intended expedition was likely to experience. ‘The answers 


received were to a high degree favorable. Many of the conti- 
nental Greeks sent their submission, as well as all those islanders 


to whom application was made. Among the former, we are 
probably to reckon the Thebans and Thessalians, though Herod- 
otus does not particularize them. Among the latter, Naxos, 
Eubcea. and some of the smaller islands, are not included ; but 
JEgina, at that time the first maritime power of Greece, is ex- 
pressly included.§ 

Nothing marks so clearly the imminent peril in which the liber- 
ties of Greece, were now placed, and the terror inspired by the 
Persians after their reconquest of Ionia, as this abasement on the 
part of the AXginetans, whose commerce with the Asiatic islands 
and continent, doubtless impressed them strongly with the melan- 
choly consequences of unsuccessful resistance to the Great King 
But on the present occasion, their conduct was dictated as much 
by antipathy to Athens as by fear, so that Greece was thus 
threatened with the intrusion of the Persian arm as ally and 
arbiter in her internal contests: a contingency which, if it had 


ι Herodot. vi, 46-48. See a similar case of disclosure arising from jes 
susy between Tenedos and Lesbos (Thucyd. iii, 2). 


ὃ Herodot. vi, 94. 
3 Herodot. vi, 48-49; vill, 46, 


816 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


occurred now in the dispute between AXgina and Athers, would 
have led to the certain enslavement of Greece, — though when it 
did occur nearly a century afterwards, towards the close of the 
Peloponnesian war, and in consequence of the prolonged struggle 
between Lacedemon and Athens, Greece had become strong 
enough in her own force to endure it without the loss of substan- 
tial independence. The war between Thebes and /Mgina on one 
side. and Athens on the other, — begun several years before, and 
growing out of the connection between Athens and Platwa, — 
had never yet been terminated. The A®ginetans had taken part 
in that war from gratuitous feeling, either of friendship for 
Thebes, or of enmity to Athens, without any direet ground of 
quarrel,! and they had begun the war even without the formality 
of notice. Though a period apparently not less than fourteen 
years (from about 506-492 B.c.) had elapsed since it began, the 
state of hostility still continued ; and we may well dosinetre that 
Hippias, the great instigator of Persian attack upon Greece 
would not fail to enforce upon all the enemies of Athens the | τὰ: 


dence οἱ seconding, or at least of not opposing the efforts of the 


) 
νον ω “+ ' ὲ Γ . . ᾿ 

Persian to reinstate him in that city. It was partly under this 
feeling, combined with genuine alarm, that both Thebes and 
/Egina manifested s issive dispositions | ᾿ 

“eg . anifested submissive dispositions towards the heralds 
of Darius. 

Among these heralds, some had gone both to Athens and to 
Sparta, for the same purpose of demanding earth and water. 
Fhe reception given to them at both places was angry in the ex- 
treme. The Athenians cast the herald into the pit called the 
barathrum,? into which they sometimes precipitated public crimi- 


Ι Herodot. vy, 81-89. See above, chapter xxxi. The legendary story 
there given as the provocation of /Egina to the war is evidently not to be 
treated as a real and historical cause of war: a state of quarrel causes all 
euch stories to be raked up, and some probably to be invented. It is like 
the old alleged quarrel between the Athenians and the Pelasgi of Le 
(vi, 137-140). ΤΠ 
ὰ " "- δ this treatment of the herald that the story in Plutarch’s Life of 
themistoklés must allude, if that story indeed be true; fcr the Persian 
king was not likely to send a second herald, after such treatment of the 
first. An interpreter accompanied the herald, speaking Greek as well as 
his own native language. Themistoklés proposed and carried a vote thas 


HERALDS FROM DARIUS PUT TO PEAIH $17 


nals: the Spartans threw the herald who came to them into a 
well, desiring the unfortunate messenger to take earth and water 
from thence to the king. The inviolability of heralds was so 


ancient and undisputed in Greece, from the Homeric times down- 
ward, that nothing short of the fiercest excitement could have 
instigated any Grecian community to such an outrage. But to 
the Lacedamonians, now accustomed to regard themselves as the 
frst of all Grecian states, and to be addressed always in the 
character of superiors, the demand appeared so gross an insult 
< to banish from their minds for the time all recollection of 
They came subsequently, however, to 


ὃ 
established obligations. 
repent of the act as highly criminal, and to look upon it as the 
cause of misfortunes which overtook them thirty or forty years 


afterwards : how they tried at that time to expiate it, I shall 


hereafter recount.! 

But if, on the one hand, the wounded dignity of the Spartans 
hurried them into the commission of this wrong, it was on the 
other hand of signal use to the general liberties of Greece, by 
them out of their apathy as to the coming invader, and 


rousing 
them with regard to him in the same state of inexpiable 


placing 


he should be put to death, for having employed the Greek language as 


medium for barbaric dictation (Plutarch, Themist. c. 6). We should be 


glad to know from whom Plutarch copied this story. 

Pausanias states that it was Miltiadés who proposed the putting to death 
of the heralds at Athens (iii, 12, 6); and that the divine judgment fell 
upon his family in consequence of it. From whom Pausanias copied this 
statement I do not know: certainly not from Herodotus, who does not 
mention Miltiadés in the case, and expressly says that he does not know in 
what manner the divine judgment overtook the Athenians for the crime. 
“except (says he) that their city and country was afterwards laid waste 
by Xerxés; but I do not think that this happened on account of the out- 
rage on the heralds.” (Herodot. vii, 133.) 

The belief that there must have been a divine judgment of some sort oF 


other, presented a strong stimulus to invent or twist some historical fact to 


correspond with it. Herodotus has sufficient regard for truth to resist this 
stimulus and to confess his ignorance; 8 circumstance which goes, along 
with others, to strengthen our contidence in his general authority. His 
silence weakens the credibility, but does not refute the allegation of Pau- 
sanias with regard to Miltiadés — which is certainly not intrinsically 


improbable. 
' Herodot. vii, 133. 


818 HISTORY UF GREECE. 


hostility as Atl2ns and Eretria. We see at once the bonds 
drawn closer between Athens and Sparta. The Athenians, for 
the first time, prefer a complaint at Sparta against the A®gine- 
‘ans for having given earth and water to Darius, — accusing 
them of having done this with views of enmity to Athens, and 
in order to invade Attica conjointly with the Persian. This they 
vepresented “as treason to Hellas,” calling upon Sparta as head 
of Greece to interfere. And in consequence of their appeal, 
Kleomenés king of Sparta went over to AEgina, to take measures 
against the authors of the late proceeding, “for the general ben- 
efit of Hellas.”! | 
The proceeding now before us is of very great importance in 

the progress of Grecian history. It is the first direct and_posi- 
tive historical manifestation of Hellas as an aggregate body, with 
Sparta as its chief, and obligations of a certain sort on the part 
of its members, the neglect or violation of which constitutes a 
species of treason. I have already pointed out several earlier 
incidents, showing how the Greek political mind, beginning from 
entire severance of states, became gradually prepared for this 
idea of a permanent league with mutual obligations and power 
of enforcement vested in a permanent chief,—an idea never 
fully carried into practice, but now distinctly manifest and parti- 
ally operative. First, the great acquired power and territory of 
Sparta, her military training, her undisturbed political traditions, 
create an unconscious deference towards her, such as was not felt 
towards any other state: next, she is seen in the proceedings 
against Athens, after the expulsion of Hippias, as summoning 
and conducting to war a cluster οὐ self-obliged Peloponnesian 
allies, with certain formalities which gave to the alliance an im- 
posing permanence and solemnity : thirdly, her position becomes 

' Herodot. vi, 49. Ποιήσασι δέ aoe (Αἐγενήῆταις) ταῦτα ἰϑέως ᾿Αϑηναῖοι 
ἐπεκέατο, δοκέοντες ἐπὶ σφίσι ἔχοι τας τοὺς Αἰγινήτας δεδωκέναι (γὴν καὶ 
ὕδωρ), ὡς ἅμα τῷ Πέρσῃ ἐπὶ σφέας στρατεύωνται. Καὶ ἄσμενοι προφάσιος 
ἐπελάβοντο' φοιτέοντές τε ἐς τὴν Σπάρτην, κατηγόρεον τῶν 
Αἰγινητέων τὰ πεποιήκοιεν, τροδόντες τὴν Ἑλλάδα. Com 
pare viii, 144, ix, 7. τὴν Ἑλλάδα δεινὸν ποιούμενοι προδοῦναι -- 
Β new and very important phrase. 

Vii, 61. Tore δὲ τὸν Κλεομένεα, ἐόντα ἐν τῇ Αἰγένῃ, καὶ «o' νὰ τῇ 
BAAads ἀγαϑὰ προσεργαζόμενον, ete, 


ὦ eto came — ————— 


EXTREME WEAKNESS OF ARGOS. $19 


recognized as first power or president of Greece, both by foreigners 

who invite alliance (Croesus), or by Greeks who seek help, such 

as the Platezans against Thebes, or the Ionians against Persia 

Jsut Sparta has not been hitherto found willing to take on herself 

te performance of this duty of protector-general. She refused 

the lonians and the Samian Mzandrius, as well as the Platwans, 

in spite of their entreaties founded on common Hellenic lineage: 

tLe expedition which she undertook against Polykratés of Sa- 

mos, was founded upon private motives of displeasure, even in 

the estimation of the Lacedwzmonians themselves: moreover, 

even if all these requests had been granted, she might have 
svemed to be rather obeying a generous sympathy than perform. 
ing a duty incumbent upon her as superior. But in the case now 
before us, of Athens against /Xgina, the latter consideration 
siands distinetly prominent. Athens is not a member of the clus- 
ter of Spartan allies, nor does she claim the compassion of Sparta, 
as defenceless against an overpowering Grecian neighbor. She 
complains of a Pan-Hellenic obligation as having been contra- 
vened by the Aginetans to her detriment and danger, and calls 
npon Sparta to enforce upon the delinquents respect to these obli- 
zations. For the first time in Grecian history, such a call is 
made; for the first time in Grecian history, it is effectively 
answered. We may reasonably doubt, whether it would have 
been thus answered, — considering the tardy, unimpressible, and 
home-keeping character of the Spartans, with their general in- 
sensibility to distant dangers,'! — if the adventure of the Persian 
herald had not occurred to gall their pride beyond endurance; to 
drive them into unpardonable hostility with the Great King; and 
te cast them into the same boat with Athens for keeping off an 
enemy who threatened the common liberties of Hellas. 

From this time, then, we may consider that there exists a re 
cognized political union of Greece against the Persians,? — or at 
least something as near to a political union as Grecian temper 
will permit, — with Sparta as its head for the present. To such 
a preéminence of Sparta, Grecian history had been gradually 


‘ Thucyd. i, 70-118. ἄοκνοι πρὸς ὑμᾶς (i. 6. the Spartans) μελλητὰς καὶ 


aso Snunrtal πρὸς ἐνδημοτάτους. 
5» Herodot. vii, 145-148. Οἱ συνωμότας Ελλήνων ἐπὲ τῷ Πέρσῳ. 


----- Ν 


Sh ΘΝ 


we 


820 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


tending ; but the final event which placed it beyond dispt te, aad 
which humbled for the time her ancient and only rival—- Argos 
— is now to be noticed. 

It was about three or four years before the arrival of these 
Persian heralds in Greece, and nearly at the time when Milétus 
was besieged by the Persian generals, that a war broke out bes 
tween Sparta and Argos,!—on what grounds Herodotus does 
not inform us. Kleomenés, encouraged by a promise of the 
oracle that he should take Argos, led the Lacedemonian troops to 
the banks of the Erasinus, the border river of the Argeian ters 
ritory. But the sacrifices, without which no river could be 
crossed, were so unfavorable, that he altered his course, extorted 
some vessels from A2gina and Sikyon,? and carried his troops by 
sea to Nauplia, the seaport belonging to Argos, and to the terri- 
tory of Tiryns. The Argeians having marched their forces 
down to resist him, the two armies joined battle at Sépeia, near 
Tiryns: Kleomenés, by a piece of simplicity on the part of his 
enemies, which we find it difficult to credit in Herodotus, was 
enabled to attack them unprepared, and obtained a decisive vic- 
tory. For the Argeians, it is stated, were so afraid of being 
overreached by stratagem, in the post which their army occupied 
over against the enemy, that they listened for the commands pro- 
claimed aloud by the Lacedemonian herald, and performed with 
their own army the same order which they thus heard given. 


' That which marks the siege of Milétus, and the defeat of the Argeians 
by Kleomenés, as contemporaneous, or nearly so, is, the common oracu- 
lar dictum delivered in reference to both: in the same prophecy of the 
Pythia, one half alludes to the sufferings of Milétus, the other half to those 
of Argos (Herodot. vi, 19-7"), | , 

Χρεωμένοισι yap ᾿Αργείοισι ἐν Δελφοῖσι περὶ σωτηρίης τῆς πόλιος τῆς 
σφετέρης, τὸ μὲν ἐς αὐτοὺς τοὺς ᾿Αργείους φέρον, τὴν δὲ παρενϑήκην ἔχρησε 
ἐς Μιλησίους. 

I consider this evidence of date to be better than the statement of Pan- 
sanias. That author places the enterprise against Argos immediately 
(αὕτικα ---- Paus. iii, 4, 1) after the accession of Kleomenés, who, as he was 
king when Mezandrius came from Samos (Herodot. iii, 148), must have 
come to the throne not later than 518 or 517 B.c. This would be thirtv- 
seven years prior to 480 B.c.; a date much too early for the war between 
Kleomenés and the Argeians, as we may see by F-erodotus (vii, 149) 

* Herodot. vi, 92. 


VICTORY OF THE SPARTANS OVER ARGOS. 321 


This cami to the knowledge of Kleomenés, who communicated 
private notice to his soldiers, that when the herald proclaimed 
orders to go to dinner, they should not obey, but immediately 
stand to their arms. We are to presume that the Argeian camp 
was sufficiently near to that of the Lacedzmonians to enable 
them to hear the voice of the herald, yet not within sight, from 
the nature of the ground. Accordingly, so soon as the Argeians 
heard the herald in the enemy’s camp proclaim the word to go to 
dinner,! they went to dinner themselves; ard in this disorderly 
condition they were easily overthrown by the Spartans. Many 
of them perished in the field, while the fugitives took refuge in 8 
thick grove consecrated to their eponymous hero Argus. Kle- 
omenés pursued and inclosed them therein ; but thinking it safer 
to employ deceit rather than force, he ascertained from deserters 
the names of the chief Argeians thus shut up, and then invited 
them out successively by means of a herald, — pretending that 
he had received their ransom, and that they were released. As 
fast as each man came out, he was put to death; the fate of these 
unhappy sufferers being concealed from their comrades within 
the grove by the thickness of the foliage, until some one climb- 
ing to the top of a tree detected and proclaimed the destruction 
going on, — after about fifty of the victims had perished. Un- 
able to entice any more of the Argeians from their consecrated 
refuge, which they still vainly hoped would protect them, Kle- 
omenés set fire to the grove, and burnt it to the ground, insomuch 
that the persons within it appear to have been destroyed, either 
by fire or by sword.2 After the conflagration had begun, he in- 
quired for the first time to whom the grove belonged, and learnt 
that it belonged to the hero Argus. 

Not less than six thousand citizens, the flower and strength of 
Argos, perished in this disastrous battle and retreat. And so 
completely was the city prostrated, that Kleomenés might easily 
have taken it, had he chosen to march thither forthwith and at- 
tack it with vigor. If we are to believe later historians whom 


' Herodot. vi, 78; compare Xenophon, Rep. Laced. xii, 6. Orders for 
evolutions in the field, in the Lacedemonian military service, were not 
proclaimed by the herald. but transmitted through. the various gradations 
of officers (Thucyd. v, 66. 3 Herodot. vi, 79, 80. 

VOL. IV 14* 2loe 


322 HISTORY OF 


Pausanias, Polyenus, and Plutarch have copied, ne did marek 
thither and attack it, but was repulsed by the valor of the Ar- 
geian women ; who, in the dearth of warriors occasioned by the 


; ἱ ἢν 


recent defeat, took arms along with the slaves, headed by tha 
poetess Telesilla, and gallantly defended the walls. This 11 


probably a mythe, generated by a desire to enibody in detail tha 
dictum of the oracle a little before, about “the female conquer: 
ing the male.” Without meaning to deny that the Argeian woe 
men might have been capable of achieving so patriotic a deed, if 
Kleomenés had actually marched to the attack of their city, we 
are compelled, by the distinct statement of Herodotus, to atlima 
that he never did attack it. Immediately after the burning cf 
the sacred grove of Argos, he dismissed the bulk of his army to 
Sparta, retaining only one thousand choice troops, — with whoim 
he marched up to the Hérieum, or great temple of Hére, bet ween 
Argos and Mykéne, to offer sacrifice. The priest in attendance 
forbade him to enter, saying that no stranger was allowed to 
offer sacrifice in the temple. But Kleomenés had once already 
forced his way into the sanctuary of Athéné, on the Athenian 
acropolis, in spite of the priestess and her interdict, — and he 
now acted still more brutally towards the Argeian priest, for he 
directed his helots to drag him from the altar and scourge him. 


' Pausan. ii, 20,7; Polysen. viii, 33; Plutarch, De Virtat. Mulier, p. 245 , 
Suidas, v, Τελέσιλλα. 

Plutarch cites the historian Sokratés of Argos for this story about 
Telesilla ; an historian, or perhaps composer of a περιήγησις “Apyoug, of 
unknown date: compare Diogen. Laért. ii, 5, 47, and Plutarch, Quzstion 
Romaic. pp. 270-277. According to his representation, Kleomenés and 
Demaratus jointly assaulted the town of Argos, and Demaratus, after hav- 
ing penetrated into the town and become master of the Pamphyliakon, was 
driven out again by the women. Now Herodotus informs us that Kleom- 
enés and Demaratus were never employed upon the same expedition, after 
the disagreement in their march to Attica (v, 75; vi, 64). 

* Herodot. vi, 77 

"A22 ὅταν ἡ ϑηλεῖα τὸν ἄρσενα νικήσασα 
᾿Ἐξελάσῃ, καὶ κῦδος ἐν ᾿Αργείοισιν ἄρηται, etc. 

If this ῬΤΟΡΏΘΟΥ can be said to have any distinct meaning, it probably 
tefors to Héré, as protectress of Argos, repulsing the Spartans. 

Pausanias (ii, 20, 7) might well doubt whether Herodotus understood 
this oracle in the same sense as he did: it i: plain that Hercdotur cond 
pot have so understood it. 


SACRILEGE COMMITTED sx KLEOMENES. 32) 


Having offered sacrifice, Kleomenés returned with his remaining 
force to Sparta.! 

But the army whom he had sent home returned with a ful 
persuasion that Argos might easily have been taken, — that the 
king alone was to blame for having missed the opportunity. As 
soon as he himself returned, his enemies — perhaps his colleague 
Demaratus — brought him to trial before the ephors, on a charge 
of having been bribed, against which he defended himself as fol- 
lows: He had invaded the hostile territory on the faith of an 
assurance from the oracle that he should take Argos ; but so soon 
as he had burnt down the sacred grove of the hero Argus, — 
without knowing to whom it belonged, — he became at once sen- 
sible that this was all that the god meant by taking Argos, and 
therefore that the divine promise had been fully realized. Ac- 
cordingly, he did not think himself at liberty to commence any 
fresh attack, until he had ascertained whether the gods would ap- 
prove it and would grant him success. It was with this view 
that he sacrificed in the Héreum. But though his sacrifice was 
favorable, he observed that the flame kindled on the altar flashed 
back from the bosom of the statue of Héré, and not from her 
head. If the flame had flashed from her head, he would have 
known at once that the gods intended him to take the city by 
storm ;? but the flash from her bosom plainly indicated that the 


’ Herodot. vi, 80, 81: compare ν, 72. 

* Herodot. vi, 82. εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἐκ τῆς κεφαλῆς τοῦ ἀγάλματος ἐξέλαμψε, 
αἱρέειν ἂν κατ᾽ ἀκρῆς τὴν πόλιν" ἐκ τῶν στηϑέων δὲ λάμψαντος, πᾶν οἱ 
πεποιῆσϑαι ὅσον ὁ ϑεὸς ἤϑελε. 

For the expression αἱρέειν κατ᾽ ἀκρῆς, compare Herodot vi, 21, and 
Damm. Lex. Homer. v, ἀκρός. In this expression, as generally used, the 
last words κατ᾽ ἀκρῆς have lost their primitive and special sense, and do 
little more than intensify the simple aipéecy, — equivalent to something 
like “de fond en comble:” for Kleomenés is accused by his enemies, — 
φάμενοί μιν dwpodoxnoavta, οὐκ ἑλέειν τὸ “Apyoc, παρέον εὐπετέως μιν ἕλειν. 
But in the story recounted by Kleomenés, the words κατ᾽ ἀκρῆς come back 
to their primitive meaning, and serve as the foundation for his religious 
inference, from type to thing typified: if the light had shone from the 
head or top of the statue, this would have intimated that the gods meant 
him to take the city “ from top to bottom.” 

In regard to this very illustrative story, — which there seems no reason 
for mistrusting, — the contrast between the point of view of Herodotus and 
that of the Spartan ephors deserves notice. The former, while he affirms 


B24 LISTORY OF GREECE. 


topmost success was out of his reach, and that he had already 
reaped all the glories which they intended for him. We may see 
that Herodotus, though he refrains from criticizing this story, 
suspects it to be a fabrication. Not so the Spartan ephors: to 
them it appeared not less true as a story than triumphant as @ 
defence, insuring to Kleomenés an honorable acquittal.! 

Though this Spartan king lost the opportunity of taking 
Argos, his victories already gained had inflicted upon her a blow 
such as she did not recover for a generation, a1 d put her fora 
time out of all condition to dispute the primacy of Greece with 
Lacedwmun. I have already mentioned that both in legend and 
in earliest history, Argos stands forth as the first power in 
Greece, with legendary claims to headship, and decidedly above 
Lacedemon; who gradually usurps from her, first the reality of 
superior power, next the recognition of preéminence, — and is 
now, at the period which we have reached, taking upon herself 
both the rights and the duties of a presiding state over a body 
of allies who are bound both to her and to each other. Her title 
to this honor, however, was never admitted at Argos, and it 13 
very probable that the war just described grew in some way or 
other out of the increasing presidential power which eircum- 
stances were tending to throw into her hands. And the complete 
temporary prostration of Argos was an essential condition to the 
quiet acquisition of this power by Sparta. Occurring as it did 
two or three years before the above-recounted adventure of the 
heralds, it removed the only rival at that time both willing and 
able to compete with Sparta, — a rival who might well have pre- 
vented any effective union under another chief, though she could 
no longer have secured any Pan-Hellenic ascendency for herself, 
—a rival who would have seconded gina in her submission te 
the Persians, and would thus have lamed incurably the defen- 


distinctly that it was the real story told by Kleomenés, suspects its truth, 
and utters as much of skepticism as his pious fear will permit him; the 
latter find it in complete harmony, both with their canon of belief and 
with their religious feeling, — Κλεομένης δέ σφι ἔλεξε, οὔτε εἰ ψευδόμενος 
οὔτε εἰ ἀληϑέα 2éyur, ἔχω σαφηνεως εἶπαι" ἔλεξε δ᾽ ὧν. ... . . Ταῦτα δὲ λέγων, 
mora τε καὶ οἴκοτα ἐδόκεε Σπαντ ἥτῃσι λέγειν, καὶ ἀπέφυ; ε πολλὸν Tots 
διώκοντας. 
' Compare Pausanias, ii, 20, 8 


SH TH LOLSIAY 


SIH GNY 


“TWdOd 


MHAONVXH1TV 


6} 


Ἧ Wifi it 
hi a IY MY) 
YY ye i | 
Myf Mf he) | 
γ Hi Vi] | 
7 


> ἊΝ 
YY Si 
“ Wine ὶ 
si δὴ 

Md, ! 
Vy) Wi WAR, 


Wily Wie 


Vif 


Ὁ ἤ 


1) 


LI aaa 


i 
i, 


MD Dis 3 


| Hh 


i] 
WAI 


ANTI 
{Nh Hi} 


ἌΝ 


ἡ 


/ ἡ 


MUN 


ULI 


| 


ry on a eg, Te 


-- 


DISCORD OF ΚΙΕΟΜΕΝΕῈΒ AND I EMARATUS. 825 


sive force of Greece. The ships which Kleomenés had obtained 
from the JEginetans as well as from the Sikyonians, against their 
own will, for landing his troops at Nauplia, brought upon bath 
these cities the enmity of Argos, which the Sikyonians compro- 
mised by paying a sum of money, while the /Eginetans refused to 
do so.! And thus the circumstances of the Kleomenic war had 
the effect not only of enfeebling Argos, but of alienating her 
from natural allies and supporters, and clearing the ground for 
undisputed Spartan primacy. 

Returning now to the complaint preferred by Athens to the 
Spartans against the traitorous submission of A®gina to Darius, 
we find that king Kleomenés passed immediately over to that 
island for the purpose of inquiry and punishment. He was pro- 
ceeding to seize and carry away as prisoners several of the lead- 
ing Aeginetans, when Krius and some others among them opposed 
to him a menacing resistance, telling him that he came without 


any regular warrant from Sparta and under the influence of 


Athenian bribes, — that, in order to carry authority, both the 
Spartan kings ought to come together. It was not of their own 
accord that the /Eginetans ventured to adopt so dangerous a 
course. Demaratus, the colleague of Kleomenés in the junior 
or Prokleid line of kings, had suggested to them the step and 
promised to carry them through it safely.2 Dissension between 
the two coordinate kings was no new phenomenon at Sparta ; 
but in the case of Demaratus and Kleomenés, it had broken out 
some years previously on the occasion of the march against 
Attica: and Demaratus, hating his colleague more than ever, 
entered into the present intrigue with the /A%ginetans with the 
deliberate purpose of frustrating his intervention. He succeed- 
ed. and Kleomenés was compelled to return to Sparta; not with- 
out unequivocal menace against Krius and the other A¢ginetans 
who had repelled him,° and not without a thorough determination 
’o depose Demaratus 

It appears that suspicions had always attached to the legiti 


Herodot. vi, 92. 
‘ Herodot vi, 50. Κρῖος ---ἔλεγε δὲ ταῦτι ἐξ ἐπιστολῆς τῆς Anuapnres 
Compare Pausan. iii, 4, 3. 
3 Heroidot. vi, 50-61, 64. Anudovroc — ove καὶ ἄγῃ χρεώμενος. 


826 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


macy of Demaratus’s birth. His reputed father Aristo had had 
no offspring by two successive wives: at last, he became enamored 
of the wife of his friend Agétus, — a woman of surpassing beauty 
—and entrapped him into an agreement, whereby each prin 
bound himself to surrender anything belonging to him which the 
ather might ask for. That which Agétus asked from Aristo wag 
at once given: in return, the latter demanded to have the wife 
of Agetus, who was thunderstruck at the request, and indignantly 
complained of having been cheated into a sacrifice of all others 
the most painful: nevertheless, the oath was peremptory, and he 
was forced to comply. The birth of Demaratus took place so 
soon after this change of husbands, that when it was first made 
known to Aristo, as he sat upon a bench alone with the ephors, 
he counted on his fingers the number of months since his mar- 
riage, and exclaimed with an oath,“ The child cannot be mine.” 
He soon, however, retracted his opinion, and acknowledged the 
child, who grew up without any question being publicly raised as 
to his birth, and succeeded his father on the throne. but the 
original words of Aristo had never been forgotten, and private 
suspicions were still cherished that Demaratus was really the son 
of his mother’s first husband.! 

Of these suspicions, Kleomenés now resolved to avail him- 
selt, exciting Leotychidés, the next heir in the Prokleid line οἱ 
kings, to impugn publicly the legitimacy of Demaratus; engag. 
ing to second him with all his influence as next in order for the 
crown, and exacting in return a promise that he would support 
the intervention against AZgina. Leotychidés was senticaitees μὰ 
merely by ambition, but also by private enmity against Duce: 
ratus, who had disappointed him of his intended bride: he 
warmly entered into the scheme, arraigned Demaratus as no true 
Herakleid, and produced evidence to prove the original ἀνά 


expressed by Aristo. Α serious dispute was thus raised ‘i 
Sparta, and Kleomenés, espousing the pretensions of Leotychi- 
dés, recommended that the question as to the legitimacy of Daa: 
ratus should be decided by reference to the Delphian oracle. 


εὐ. ιν δι; ἱ 
Through the influence of Kobén, a powertul native of Delphi 


— mur 


Es procured from the Pythian priestess an answer pronouxcing 


‘ Herodot. vi, 61, 62, 63 


ny 


OTYCHIDES CHOSEN KING. 
that Dcmara.us was not the son of Aristo.! Leotychidés thus 
hecnme king of the Prokieid line, while Demaratus descended 
into a private station. and was elected at the ensuing solemnity 
of the Gymnopeedia to an official function. The new king, un- 
able to repress a burst of triumphant spite, sent an attendant tc 
ask him, in the publie theatre, how he felt as an officer after 
havine once been a king. Stung with this insult, Demaratua 
replied that he himself had tried them both, and that Leotychi- 
dés might in time come to try them both also: the question, he 
added. shall bear its fruit, — great evil, or great good, to Sparta. 
So saying, he covered his face and retired home from the theatre, 
__ offered a solemn farewell sacrifice at the altar of Zeus Her- 
keios, and solemnly adjured his mother to declare to him who his 


real father was,—then at once quitted Sparta for Elis, under 


pretence of going to consult the Delphian oracle. ? 

Demaratus was well known to be a high-spirited and ambitious 
man, —noted, among other things, as the only Lacedwmonian 
kine down to the time of Herodotus who had ever gained a 
chariot victory at Olympia; and Kleomenes and Leotychides 
became alarmed at the mischief which he might do them in exile. 
By the law of Sparta, no Herakleid was allowed to establish his 
residence out of the country, on pain of death: this marks the 
sentiment of the Lacedsemonians, and Demaratus was not the 


! Herodot. vi, 65, 66. In an analogous case ὃ 
sion was disputed between Agesilaus the brother, and Leotychidés the 
reputed son of the deceased king Agis, the Lacedgemonians appear to 
have taken upon themselves to pronounce Leotychidés illegitimate ; ΟΣ 
rather to assume tacitly such illegitimacy by choosing Agesilaus in prefer. 
ence. without the aid of the oracle (Xenophon, Hellen. iii. 3, 1-4; Plutarch, 
Avesilaus, c. 3). The previous oracle from Delphi, however, φυλάξασϑαι 
τὴν χωλὴν βασιλείαν, was cited on the occasion, and the question was, 17 
what manner it should be interpreted. 

? Herodot. vi, 68, 69. ‘Ihe answer made by the mother to this appeal -= 
informing Demaratus that he is the son either of king Aristo, or of the 
hero Astrabakus—is extremely interesting as an evidence of Grecian man- 
hers and feeling. 

* Plutarch, Agis, c. 1% κατὰ δή τινα νόμον παλαιὸν, ὃς οὐκ ἐᾷ τὸν ‘Hpa- 
λείδην ἐκ γυναικὸς ἀλλοδαπῆς τεκνοῦσϑαι, τὸν δ' ἀπελϑόντα τῆς Σπάρτηι 


tri ὠετφικισμῷ πρὸς ἑτέρους ἀποϑνήσκειν κελεύει. 


828 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


him in the island of Zakynthus. But the Zakynthians would 
not consent to surrender him, so that he passed unobstructed into 
Asia, where he presented himself to Darius, and was received 
with abundant favors and presents.! We shall hereafter find 
him the companion of Xerxés, giving to that monarch advice 
such as, if it had been acted upon, would have proved the ruin 
of Grecian independence; to which, however, he would have 
been even more dangerous, if he had remained at home as king 
of Sparta. 

Meanwhile Kleomenés, having obtained a consentient colleague 
in Leotychidés, went with him over to /Egina, eager to revenge 
himself for the affront which had been put upon him. To the 
requisition and presence of the two kings jointly, the A¢ginetans 
did not dare to oppose any resistance. Kleomenés made choice 
of ten citizens, eminent for wealth, station, and influence, among 
whom were Krius and another person named Kasambus, the two 
most powerful men in the island. Conveying them away to 
Athens, he deposited them as hostages in the hands of the 
Athenians.? 

It was in this state that the affairs of Athens and of Greece 
generally were found by the Persian armament which landed at 
Marathon, the progress of which we are now about to follow. 
And the events just recounted were of material importance, con- 
sidered in their indirect bearing upon the success of that arma- 
ment. Sparta had now, on the invitation of Athens, assumed to 
herself for the first time a formal Pan-Hellenic primacy, her an- 
cient rival Argos being too much broken to contest it, — her two 
kings, at this juncture unanimous, employ their presiding inter- 
ference in coercing A®gina, and placing A2ginetan hostages in the 
hands of Athens. The A2ginetans would not have been unwill- 


ing to purchase victory over a neighbor and rival at the cost of 
submission to Persia, and it was the Spartan interference only 
which restrained them from assailing Athens conjointly with the 
Persian invaders; thus leaving the hands of the latter free, and 
her courage undiminished, for the coming trial. 

Meanwhile, a vast Persian force, brought together in conse- 
quence of the preparation made during the last two years im 


' Berodot. vi, 70. ?Heodet vi, 72 


PERSIAN INVASION OF GREECE. 329 


every part of the empire, had assembled in the Aleian plain of 
Kilikia, near the sea. A fleet of six hundred armed triremes, 
tovether with many transports, both of men and horses, was 
brought hither for their embarkation: the troops were put on 
board, and sailed along the coast to Samos in Jonia. The Ionie 
and Zolic Greeks constituted an important part of this arma 
ment, and the Athenian exile Hippias was on board as guide and 
auxiliary in the attack of Attica. The generals were Datis, a 
Median,! — and Artaphernés, son of the satrap of Sardis, so 
named, and nephew of Darius. We may remark that Datis is 
‘he first person of Median lineage who is mentioned as appointed 
to high command after the accession of Darius, which had been 
preceded and marked, as I have noticed in a former chapter, by 
an outbreak of hostile nationality between the Medes and Per 
sians. Their instructions were, generally, to reduce to subjec 
tion and tribute all such Greeks as had not already given earth 
and water. But Darius directed them most particularly to con- 
quer Eretria and Athens, and to bring the inhabitants as slaves 
into his presence.2 These orders were literally meant, and prob- 
ably neither the generals nor the soldiers of this vast armament 
doubted that they would be literally executed; and that before 
the end of the year, the wives, or rather the widows, of men like 
Themistoklés and Aristeidés would be seen among a mournful 
train of Athenian prisoners, on the road from Sardis to Susa, 
thus accomplishing the wish expressed by queen Atossa at the 
instance of Démokédés. 

The recent terrific storm near Mount Athos deterred the Per- 
stans from following the example of Mardonius, and taking their 
course by the Hellespont and Thrace. It was resolved to strike 


Ἢ ‘ 


straight across the Augean? (the mode of attack which intelligent 


1 Herodot. vi. 94. Adriv te, ἐόντα Μῆδον γένος ete. 

Cornelius Nepos (Life of Pausanias, ec. 1) calls Mardonius a Mede ; 
which cannot be true, since he was the son of Gobryas, one of the seven 
Persian conspirators (Herodot. vi, 43). 

3 Herodot, vi, 94. ἐντειλάμενος δὲ ἀπέπεμπε, ἐξανδραποδίσαντας ’Epetpiay 
aah ᾿Αϑήνας, ἄγειν ἑωυτῷ ἐς ὄψιν τὰ ἀνδράποδα. 

According to the Menexenus of Plato (c. 17, p. 245), Darius ordered 
Datis to fulfil this order on peril of his own head; no such harshness ap 
pears in Herodotus. 3 Thucyd. 1, 93. 


330 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Greeks like Th mistoklés most feared, even after the repulse of 
Σινὰ Luboea, attacki » intermediate isk 
Xerxés), from Samos to Euboa, atta king the intermediate 


ands in the way. Among those islands was Naxos, which ten 
vears before had stood a long siege, and gallantiy repelled the 
Persian Megabatés with the Milesian Aristagoras. It was ane 
objects of Datis to efface this stain on the dhe 
arms, and to take a signal revenge on the Naxians.' ( rossing 
from Samus to Naxos, he landed his army on the island, which 
prize than he had expected. The terrified 
their town, fled with their families to the 
while the Persians, seizing 


the main 


was found an easier 
citizens, abandoning 
hichest summits of their mountains ; 
as slaves a few who had been dilatory in flight, burnt the unde- 


fended town with its edifices sacred and protane. 


Immense, indeed, was the difference in Grecian sentiment to 
se, l re 
created by the terror-striking reconquest of 


» lakes , 
wards the Persians, ng . 
sibition of a large Phenician fleet in the 


Ionia, and by the ex! | : 
JEcean. The strength of Naxos was the same now as it had 
bene before the Ionic revolt, and the suecesstul resistance then 

been supposed likely to nerve the courage of 
Yet such is the fear now inspired by a Persian 
armament, that the eight thousand Naxian hoplites abandon their 
gods without striking a blow. and think of noth- 


made might have 
its inhabitants. 


»wn and their 
chal personal safety for themselves and their families. A sad 
aucury for Athens and Eretria ! - i" 

From Naxos, Datis despatched his fleet round the other Cy- 
clades islands, requiring from each, hostages for fidelity and a 
contingent to increase his army. With the sacred island of 
Delos, however, he dealt tenderly and respectfully. The De- 
lians had fled before his approach to Teénos, but Datis sent a 
herald to invite them back again, promised to preserve their 
sons and property inviolate, and proclaimed that he had reas 
express orders from the Great King to reverence the 1s - pe 
and Artemis were born. His acts corresponded with 


which Apollo A 
for the fleet was not allowed to touch the is and, 


this language ; τ. 


' ᾿ . ᾿ f 5 VO) > me OLTNY ἐπ ivov Τ᾽ 
- Herodot. vi, 95, 96. ἐπὶ ταύτην (Naxos) γὰρ δὴ πρώτην ἐπεῖχον στρα 
Ἱ i 7 eV τῶν προτερον. 
τεύεσϑαι οἱ Πέρσαι, μεμνημένοι τῶν TPOTEPO : 
4 Τῆς historians of Naxos affirmed that Datis had been repulsed from 
the island. We find this statement in Plutarch, De Malign. Herodot. ς 
B6, p. 869, among his violent and unfounded contradictions of Herodotus. 


THE PERSIANS TAKE NAXOS AND ERETREIA. 331 


and he himself, landing with only a few attendants, oifered a mag 
nificent sacrifice at the altar. A large portion of his armament 
consisted of Ionic Greeks, and this pronounced respect to the 
island of Delos may probably be ascribed to the desire of satisfy- 
ing their religious feelings; for in their days of early freedom, 
this island had been the scene of their solemn periodical festivals, 
as I have already more than once remarked. 

Pursuing his course without resistance along the islands, and 
lemanding reinforcements as well as hostages from each, Datis 
at leneth touched the southernmost portion of Eubosa,— the 
town of Karystus and its territory.!’ The Karystians, though at 
first refusing either to give hostages or to furnish any reinforce- 
ments against their friends and neighbors, were speedily com- 
pelled to submission by the aggressive devastation of the invaders. 
This was the first taste of resistance which Datis had yet expe- 
rienced; and the facility with which it was overcome gave him a 
promising omen as to his suecess against Eretria, whither he soon 
arrived. 

The destination of the armament was no secret to the inhabit- 
ants of this fated city, among whom consternation, aggravated by 
intestine differences, was the reigning sentiment. They made 
application to Athens for aid, which was readily and conveni- 
ently afforded to them by means of those four thousand kleruchs, 
or out-citizens, whom the Athenians had planted sixteen years 
before in the neighboring territory of Chalkis. Notwithstand- 
ing this reinforcement, however, many of them despaired of 
defending the city, and thought only of seeking shelter on the 
unassailable summits of the island, as the more numerous and 
powerful Naxians had already done before them; while another 
party, treacherously seeking their own profit out of the publi 
calamity, lay in wait for an opportunity of betraying the city to 
the Persians.2, Though a public resolution was taken to defend 

* Herodot. vi, 99. 

* Herodot. vi, 100. Τῶν δὲ Ἐρετριέων ἣν dpa οὐδὲν ὑγιὲς βούλευμα, οἵ 
μετεπέμποντο μὲν ᾿Αϑηναίους, ἐφρόνεον δὲ διφασίας ἰδέας. οἱ μὲν yao αὐτῶν 
ἐβουλεύοντο ἐκλιπεῖν τὴν πόλιν ἐς τὰ ἄκρα τῆς Εὐβοίης, ἄλλοι δὲ αὐτῶν 
ἰδια κέρδεα προσδεκόμενοι παρὰ τοῦ Πέρσεω οἴσεσϑαι προδοσίην ἐσκευάζοντο, 


Allusion to this treason among the Eretrians is to be found in a saying 
of Themistoklés (Plutarch, Themist. ο. 11). 


832 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the city, yet 80 manifest was the absence of that stcutness of 
heart which could alone avail to save it, that a leading Eretrian 
named /Eschinés was not ashamed to forewarn the four thousand 
Athenian allies of the coming treason, and urge them to save 
themselves before it was too late. They followed his advice and 
passed over to Attica by way of Oropus ; while the Persians dis- 
embarked their troops, and even their horses, in expectation that 
the Eretrians would come out and fight, at Tamyne and other 
places in the territory. As the Eretrians did not come out, they 
proceeded to lay siege to the city, and for some days met with a 
brave resistance, so that the loss on both sides was considerable. 
At length two of the leading citizens, Euphorbus and Philagrus, 
with others, betrayed Eretria to the besiegers ; its temples were 
burnt, and its inhabitants dragged into slavery.! It is impossible 
to credit the exaggerated statement of Plato, which is applied by 
him to the Persians at Eretria, as it had been before applied by 
Herodotus tothe Persians at Chios and Samos, —that they 
swept the territory clean of inhabitants by joining hands and 
forming a line across its whole breadth.2 Evidently, this is an 
idea illustrating the possible effects of numbers and ruinous 
conquest, which has been woven into the tissue of historical state- 
ments, like so many other illustrative ideas in the writings οἱ 
Greek authors. That a large proportion of the inhabitants were 
carried away as prisoners, there can be no doubt. But the 
traitors who betrayed the town were spared and rewarded by the 


The story told by Hérakleidés Ponticus (ap. Athene. xii, p. 536), of an 
earlier Persian armament which had assailed Eretria and failed, cannot be 
at all understood ; it rather looks like a mythe to explain the origin of the 
great wealth possessed by the family ef Kallias at Athens, — the Aakko- 
πλουτος. There is another storv. having the same explanatory object, τῇ 
Plutarch, Aristeidés, c. 5. 

1 Herodot. vi, 101. 102. u 

? Plato, Legg. iii, p. 698, and Menexen. ὁ. 10, p. 240; Diogen. Laert. 11 
33: Herodot. vi, 31} : compare Strabo, x, p. 446, who ascribes to Herod: 
otus the statement of Plato about the σαγήνευσις of Eretria. Plato say 
nothing about the betrayal of the city. 

It is to be remarked that, in the passage of the Treatise de Legibus, 
Plato mentions this story (about the Persians having swept the territory 
of Eretria clean of its inhabitants) with some doubt as to its truth, and aa 
if it were a rumor intentionally circulated by Datis with a view to fri_htea 
the Athenians. But in the Menexenus, the story is given as if it were am 
authentic historical fact. 


fHE PERSIAN ARMY LANDS AT MARATHON. 333 


Persians,! and we see plainly that either some of the inhabitants 
must have been left or new settlers introduced, when we find the 
Eretrians reckoned ten years afterwards among the opponents of 
Xerxés. 

Datis had thus accomplished with little or no resistance one of 
the two express objects commanded by Darius, and his army was 
elated with the confident hope of soon completing the other. 
After halting a few days at Eretria, and depositing in the neigh- 
boring islet of A‘gilia the prisoners recently captured, he reém- 
barked his army to cross over to Attica, and landed in the 
memorable bay of Marathon on the eastern coast,—the spot 
indicated by the despot Hippias, who now landed along with the 
Persians, twenty years after his expulsion from the government. 
man this same passage, from Eretria to Marathon, in conjunction 
with his father Peisistratus, on the occasion of the second restora- 


Forty-seven years had elapsed since he had made as a young 


tion of the latter. On that previous occasion, the force accom- 
panying the father had been immeasurably inferior to that which 
now seconded the son; yet it had been found amply sufficient te 
earry him in triumph to Athens, with feeble opposition from 
citizens alike irresolute and disunited. And the march of Hip- 
pias from Marathon to Athens would now have been equally 
easy, as it was doubtless conceived to be by himself, both in his 
waking hopes and in the dream which Herodotus mentions,— had 
not the Athenians whom he found been men radically different 
from those whom he had left. 

To that great renewal of the Athenian character, under the 
democratical institutions which had subsisted since the disposses- 
sion of Hippias, I have already pointed attention in a former 
chapter. The modifications introduced by Kleisthenés in the 
constitution had now existed eighteen or nineteen years, without 
any attempt to overthrow them by violence. The Ten Tribes, 


1 Plutarch, De Garrulitate, c. 15, p. 510. The descendants of Gongylus 
the Eretrian, who passed over to the Persians on this occasion, are found 
nearly a century afterwards in possession of a town and district in Mysia, 
which the Persian king had bestowed upon their ancestor. Herodotus 
does not mention Gongylus (Xenoph. Hellen. iii, 1, 6). 

This surrender to the Persians drew upon the Eretrians bitter remarzt 
at the time of the battle of Salamis ‘Plutarch, Themistoklés, c. 11). 


334 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


each with its constituent demes, had become a part of the estab 
lished habits of the country, and the citizens had become accus- 
tomed to exercise a genuine and self-determined decision in their 
assemblies, political as well as judicial; while ¢7en the senate of 
Areopagus, renovated by the nine annual archons successively 
chosen who passed into it after their year of office, had also be- 
come identified in feeling with the constitution of Kleisthenés. 
Individual citizens, doubtless, remained partisans in secret, and 
perhaps correspondents of Hippias ; but the mass of citizens, in 
every scale of life, could look upon his return with nothing but 
terror and aversion. With what degree of newly-acquired energy 
the democratical Athenians could act in defence of their country 
and institutions, has already been related in a former chapter, 


though unfortunately we possess few particulars ct Athenian his- 


tory during the decade preceding 100 B.c., nor czn we follow in 
a > * 


detail the working of the government. ‘The new form, however, 
which Athenian politics had assumed becomes partially manilest, 
when we observe the three leaders who stand prominent at this 
important epoch, --- Miltiadeés, Themistoklés, and Aristeidés. 

The first of the three had returned to Athens, three or four 
years before the approach of Datis, after six or seven years’ ab- 
sence in the Chersonesus of Thrace, whither he had been origi- 
nally sent by Hippias about the year 517-516 B.c., to inherit the 
property as well as the supremacy of his uncle the ekist Miltia- 
dés. As despot of the Chersonese, and as one of the subjects 
of Persia, he had been among the lonians who accompanied 
Darius to the Danube in his Seythian expedition, and he had 
been the author of that memorable recommendation which Histi- 
zeus and the other despots did not think it their interest to follow, 
— of destroying the bridge and leaving the Persian king to perish. 
Subsequently, he had been unable to remain permanently in the 
Chersonese, for reasons which have before been noticed; yet he 
seems to have occupied it during the period of the Tonic revolt.! 


''The chapter of Herodotus (vi, 40) relating to the adventures of Mil 
siadés is extremely perplexing, as I have already remarked in a formet 
rote: and Wesseling considers that it involves chronological difficulties 
which our present MSS. do not enable us to clear up. Neither Schweig 
bauser, nor the explanation cited in Bahr’s note, is satis’ \ctory. 


ADVENTURES OF MILTIADES $35 


What part he took in that revolt we do not know. But he 
availed himself of the period while the Persian satraps were 
employed in suppressing it, and deprived of the mastery of ths 
sea, to expel, in conjunction with forces from Athens, both the 
Persian garrison and Pelasgic inhabitants from the islands of 
Lemnos and Imbros. The extinction of the Ionic revolt threat- 
ened him with ruin; so that when the Phenician fleet, in the 
summer following the capture of Milétus, made its conquering 
appearance in the Hellespont, he was forced to escape rapidly to 
Athens with his immediate friends and property, and with a 
small squadron of five ships. One of these ships, commanded 
by his son Metiochus, was actually captured between the Cherso- 
nese and Imbros; and the Phenicians were most eager to cap- 
ture himself,| — inasmuch as he was personally odious to Darius 
from his strenuous recommendation to destroy the bridge over the 
Danube. On arriving at Athens, after his escape from the Phe- 
nician fleet, he was brought to trial before the judicial popular 
assembly for alleged misgovernment in the Chersonese, or for 
what Herodotus calls “his despotism ” there exercised.2_ Nor is 
it improbable, that the Athenian citizens settled in that peninsula 
may have had good reason to complain of him, — the more 80 as 
he had carried out with him the maxims of government preva- 
lent at Athens under the Peisistratids, and had in his pay a body 
of Thracian mercenaries. However, the people at Athens honor- 
ably acquitted him, probably in part from the reputation which 
he had obtained as conqueror of Lemnos ;3 and he was one of the 
ten annually-elected generals of the republic, during the year of 
this Persian expedition, — chosen at the beginning of the Attic 
year, shortly after the summer solstice, at a time when Datis 
and Hippias had actually sailed, and were known to be approach- 
ing. 

The character of Miltiadés is one of great bravery and decision, 
— qualities preéminently useful to his country on the present 
srisis, and the more useful as he was under the strongest motive 


=n 2 _—n 


1 Herodot. vi, 43-104. 3 Herodot. vi, 39-104. 

* Herodot. vi, 132. Μιλτιάδης, καὶ πρότερον εὐδοκιμέων ----ἰ, e. lefore the 
battle of Marathon. How much his reputation had been heigt ned by 
the conquest of Lemnos, see Herodot. vi, 136. 


< ta 


ω —e = 


~~ ... 


δας 


836 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


to put them forth, from the personal hostility of Darius towards 
him; but he does not peculiarly belong to the democracy of 
Kleisthenés, like his younger contemporaries Themistoklés and 
Aristeidés. The two latter are specimens of a class of men new 
at Athens since the expulsion of Hippias, and contrasting for- 
ciblv with Peisistratus, Lykurgus, and Megaklés, the political 
leaders of the preceding generation. Themistoklés and Aristei- 
dés, different as they were in disposition, agree in being politi- 
cians of the democratical stamp, exercising ascendency by and 
through the people, — devoting their time to the discharge of 
public duties, and to the frequent discussions in the political and 
judicial meetings of the people, — manifesting those combined 
powers of action, comprehension, and persuasive speech, which 
gradually accustomed the citizens to look to them as advisers as 
well as leaders, — but always subject to criticism and accusation 
from unfriendly rivals, and exercising such rivalry towards eacl 
other with an asperity constantly increasing. Instead of Attica, 
disunited and torn into armed factions, as it had been forty years 
before, — the Diakrii under one man, and the Parali and Pedieis 
under others,— we have now Attica one and indivisible ; regi- 
mented into a body of orderly hearers in the Pnyx, appornting 
and holding to accountability the magistrates, and open to be ad- 
dressed by Themistoklés, Aristeidés, or any other citizen who 
ean engage their attention. 
Neither Themistoklés nor Aristeidés could boast of a lineage 
of gods and heroes, like the JEakid Miltiadés:! both were of 
middling station and circumstances. Aristeidés, son of Lysim- 
achus, was on both sides of pure Athenian blood. But the wife 
of Neoklés, father of Themistoklés, was a foreign woman of 
Thrace or of Karia: and such an alliance is the less surprising, 
since Themistoklés must have been born during the dynasty of 
the Peisistratids, when the status of an Athenian citizen had not 
yet acquired its political value. There was a marked contrast 
between these two eminent men, — those points which stood most 
conspicuous in the one, being comparatively deficient in the other. 
In the description of Themistokles, which we have the advan- 
tage of finding briefly sketched by Thucydidés, the circumstance 


ian ——<— et me 


' Herodot. vi, 35 


THEMISTOKLES AND ARISTEIDES. 837 


most emphatically brought out is, his immense force of sponta 
neous invention and apprehension, without any previous aid 
either from teaching or gradual practice. The might of unas- 
sisted nature! was never so strikingly exhibited as in him: he 
conceived the complications of a present embarrassment, and 
divined the chances of a mysterious future, with equal sagacity 
and equal quickness: the right expedient seemed to flash upon 
his mind extempore, even in the most perplexing contingences, 
without the least necessity for premeditation. Nor was he less 
distinguished for daring and resource in action. When engaged 
on any joint affairs, his superior competence marked him out as 
the leader for others to follow, and no business, however foreign 
to his experience, ever took him by surprise, or came wholly 
amiss to him. Such is the remarkable picture which Thucyd- 
idés draws of a countryman whose death nearly coincided in 
time with his own birth: the untutored readiness and univer- 
sality of Themistoklés probably formed in his mind a contrast to 
the more elaborate discipline, and careful preliminary study, 
with which the statesmen of his own day —and Periklés es 
pecially, the greatest of them — approached the consideration 
and discussion of public affairs. Themistoklés had received no 
teaching from philosophers, sophists, and rhetors, who were the 
instructors of well-born youth in the days of Thucydidés, and 
whom Aristophanés, the contemporary of the latter, so unmerci- 
fully derides, — treating such instruction as worse than nothing, 
and extolling, in comparison with it, the unlettered courage, with 
mere gymnastic accomplishments, of the victors at Marathon.? 


' Thucyd. i, 138. ἣν γὰρ ὁ Θεμιστοκλῆς βεβαιότατα δὴ Θ ὕσεως ἰσχὺν 
δηλώσας καὶ διαφερόντως τι ἐς αὐτὸ μᾶλλον ἑτέρων ἄξιος ϑαυμάσαι " οἰκείᾳ 
γὰρ συνέσει καὶ οὔτε προμαϑὼν ἐς αὐτὴν οὐδὲν οὔ τ' ἐπιμα- 
ϑὼν, τῶν τε παραχρῆμα dv ἐλαχίστης θουλῆς κράτεστος γνώμων, καὶ τῶν 
μελλόντων ἐπὶ πλεῖστον τοῦ γενησομένου ἄριστος εἰκαστῆς. Καὶ ἃ μὲν μετὰ 
χεῖρας ἔχοι, καὶ ἐξηγήσασϑαι οἷός τε" ὦν δὲ ἄπειρος εἴη, κρῖναε ἱκανῶς οὐκ 
ἀπήλλακτο. Τό τε ἄμεινον ἢ χεῖρον ἐν τῷ ἀφανεῖ ἔτι προεώρα μάλιστα" καὶ 
τὸ ξύμπαν εἰπεῖν, φύσεως μὲν δυνάμει μελέτης δὲ βραχύτητι, 
κράτιστος δὴ οὗτος αὐτοσχεδιάζειν τὰ δέοντα ἐγένετο. 

* See the contrast of the old and new education, as set forth in Aris- 
tophanés, Nubes, 957-1003 ; also Rane, 1067. 

About the training of Themistoklés, compared with that of the contem 
poraries of Periklé-, see also Plutarch, Themistokl. ec. 2. 

VOL. IV. ‘5 


HISTORY OF GREECE 
888 


There is no evidence in the mind of Thucydides of any suca 
undue contempt towards his own age. Though the same terms 
of contrast are tacitly present to his mind, he seems to treat the 
great capacity of Themistoklés as the more a mee er of pes 
since it sprung up Without that preliminary cultivation whic 
had gone to the making of Perikles. | 
The general character given of Plutarch,' though many of ne 
anecdotes are both trifling and apocryphal, is quite consistent 
with the brief sketch just cited from Thucydidés. * ‘hemistoklés 
had an unbounded passion, —not merely for glory, insomuch 
that the laurels of Miltiadés acquired at Marathon deprived him 
of rest, — but also for display of every kind. He was eager to 
vie with men richer than himself in showy exhibition, — one 
great source, though not the only source, of popularity at Athens, 
— nor was he at all scrupulous in procuring the means ΟἹ doing 
so. Besides being assiduous in attendance at the ekklesia and the 
dikastery, he knew most of the citizens by name, and was always 
ready with advice to them in their private affairs. Moreover, 
he possessed all the tactics of an expert party-man in conciliat- 


ae int ἀκ ὦ ων δ 
ing political friends and in defeating political enemies : 
though he was in the early part of his life sincerely bent upon 

: δ: of his ὁ ot, was on 
the upholding and aggrandizement ot his country, and w 


some most critical occasions of unspeakable value to it, — yet on 
the whole his morality was as reckless as his intelligence was 
eminent. He will be found grossly corrupt in the exercise οἱ 
power, and employing tortuous means, sometimes indeed for 
ends in themselves honorable and patriotic, but sometimes also 
merely for enriching himself. He ended a glorious life by years 
of deep disgrace, with the forfeiture of all Hellenic esteem and 
brotherhood, — a rich man, an exile, a traitor, and a pensioner ot 
the Great King, pledged to undo his own previous work of liber 
ation accomplished at the victory of Salamis. a 

Of Aristeidés we possess unfortunately no description from 
the hand of Thueydidés ; yet his character is so simple and con 
sistent, that we may safely accept the brief but unqualified en 
comium of Herodotus and Plato, expanded as it is in the biog: 


- Plutarch, Themistoklés, c. 3, 4,5; Cornelius Nepos, T \emist. c. ἢ 


ARISTEIDES. 339 


raphy of Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos,! however little ἢ details 
of the latter can be trusted. Aristeidés was inferior to Themis- 
tokles in resource, quickness, flexibility, and power of coping 
with difficulties ; but incomparably superior to him, as well as to 
other rivals and contemporaries, in integrity, public as well as 
private ; inaccessible to pecuniary temptations, as well as to other 
seductive influences, and deserving as well as enjoying the high- 
est measure of personal confidence. He is described as the pe- 
culiar friend of Kleisthenés, the first founder of the democracy,? 
—as pursuing a straight and single-handed course in political 
lite, with no solicitude for party ties, and with little care either to 
conciliate friends or to offend enemies, —as unflinching in the 
exposure of corrupt practices, by whomsoever committed or up- 
held, — as earning for himself the lofty surname of the Just, not 
less by his judicial decisions in the capacity of archon, than by his 
equity in private arbitrations, and even his candor in political 
dispute, — and as manifesting throughout a long public life, full 
of tempting opportunities, an uprightness without flaw and be- 
yond all suspicion, recognized equally by his bitter contemporary 
‘he poet Timokreon,? and by the allies of Athens, upon whom he 
urst assessed the tribute. Few of the leading men in any part 
of Greece were without some taint on their reputation, deserved 
or undeserved, in regard to pecuniary probity ; but whoever be- 
came notoriously recognized as possessing this vital quality, ac- 
quired by means of it a firmer hold on the public esteem thav 
even eminent talents could confer. Thucydidés ranks conspicuous 
probity among the first of the many ascendent qualities possessed 
by Periklés ;4 and Nikias, equal to him in this respect, though 
immeasurably inferior in every other, owed to it a still larger 
proportion of that exaggerated confidence which the Athenian 
people continued so long to repose in him. The abilities of Aris- 
teidés, though apparently adequate to every occasion on which 
be was engaged, and only inferior when we compare him with so 


' Herodot. viii, 79; Plato, Gorgias, 
καὶ δικαιότατον. 

* Plutarch (Aristeidés, c. 1-4; Themistoklés, c.3; An Seni sit gerende 
respubliea, c. 12, p. 790; Pracepta Reip. Gerend. c. ii, p. 805). 

* Timokreon ap. Plutarch. Themistoklés, ¢. 21. 

* Thucvd. ii. 65. 


c. 172. ἄριστον ἄνδρα ἐν ᾿Αϑήνῃσι 


340 HIST )RY OF GREEOE. 


remarkable a man as Themistoklés, were put in the shade by this 
incorruptible probity, which procured for him, however, along 
with the general esteem, no inconsiderable amount of private 


enmity from jobbers whom he exposed, and even some jealousy. 


from persons who heard it proclaimed with offensive ostentation. 

We are told that a rustic and unlettered citizen gave his ostra- 
cizing vote, and expressed his dislike against Aristeidés,' on the 
-imple ground that he was tired of hearing him always called the 
Just. Now the purity of the most honorable man will not bear 
to be so boastfully talked of as if he were the only honorable 
man in the country: the less it is obtruded, the more deeply and 
cordially will it be felt: and the story just alluded to, whether 
true or false, illustrates that natural reaction of feeling, produced 
by absurd encomiasts, or perhaps by insidious enemies under the 
mask of encomiasts, who trumpeted forth Aristeidés as The Just 
man at Attica, so as to wound the legitimate dignity of every 
one else. Neither indiscreet friends nor artful enemies, however, 
could rob him of the lasting esteem of his countrymen ; which 
he enjoyed, with intervals of their displeasure, to the end of his 
life. Though he was ostracized during a part of the period be- 
tween the battle of Marathon and Saiamis, — at a time when the 
rivalry between him and Themistoklés was so violent that both 
could not remain at Athens without peril, — yet the dangers of 
Athens during the invasion of Xerxés brought him back before 
the ten years of exile were expired. His fortune, originally 
very moderate, was still farther diminished during the course ot 


his life, so that he died very poor, and the state was obliged to 


lend aid to his children. 

Such were the characters of Themistokiés and Aristeidés, the 
two earliest leaders thrown up by the Athenian democracy. 
Half a century before, Themistoklés would have been an active 
partisan in the faction of the Parali or the Pedieis, while Aris- 
teidés would probably have remained an unnoticed citizen. At 
the present period of Athenian history, the characters of the 
soldier, the magistrate, and the orator, were intimately blended 
together in a citizen who stood forward for eminence, though 
they tended more and more to divide themselves during the er 


“em se ~ ~_— an nearness atti 


! Plutarch, Aristeicés. ὁ 7 


δι. 4 


rHE ATHENIANS ASK AID FROM SraAanTA. 34) 


suing century and a half. Aristeidés and Miltiadés were both 
elected among the ten generals, each for his respective tribe, in 
the year of the expedition of Datis across the A&gean, and prob- 
ably even after that expedition was known to be on its voyage. 
Moreover, we are led to suspect from a passage in Plutarch, 
that Themistoklés also was general of his tribe on the same oc 
casion,! though this is doubtful ; but it is certain that he fought 
at Marathon. ‘The ten generals had jointly the command of the 
army, each of them taking his turn to exercise it for a day: in 
addition to the ten, moreover, the third archon, or polemarch, 
was considered as eleventh in the military council. The pole- 
march of this year was Kallimachus of Aphidne.? Such were 
the chiefs of the military force, and to a great degree the admin- 
istrators of foreign affairs, at the time when the four thousand 
Athenian kleruchs, or settlers planted in Eubcea, — escaping 
from Eretria, now invested by the Persians, — brought word to 
their countrymen at home that the fall of that city was impend- 
ing. It was obvious that the Persian host would proceed from 
Eretria forthwith against Athens, and a few days afterwards Hip- 
pias disembarked them at Marathon, whither the Athenian army 
marched to meet them. 

Of the feeling which now prevailed at Athens we have no de- 
tails, but doubtless the alarm was hardly inferior to that which 
had been felt at Eretria: dissenting opinions were heard as to the 
proper steps to be taken, nor were suspicions of treason wanting. 
Pheid:ppidés the courier was sent to Sparta immediately to solicit 
assistance ; and such was his prodigious activity, that he per- 
formed this journey of one hundred and fifty miles, on foot, in 
forty-eight hours.3 He revealed to the ephors that Eretria was 
already enslaved, and entreated their assistance to avert the 
came fate from Athens, the most ancient city in Greece. The 
Spartan authorities readily promised their aid, but unfortu 
nately it was now the ninth day of the moon: ancient law or cus- 
‘om forbade them to march, in this month at least, during the 


Plutarch, Aristeidés, c. 5. 2 Herodot. vi, 109, 110. 
3 Mr. Kinneir remarks that the Persian, Cassids, or foot-messengers, will 
sravel for several (lays successively at the rate of sixty or seventy miles a 
lay (Geographical Mc«moir of Persia, p 44). 


329 HISTG2Y OF GREECE. 


last quarter before tlie full moon ; but after the full they engaged 
to march without delay. Five days’ delay at this sities hao. 
ment might prove the utter ruin of the endangered city ; yet the 
reason assigned seems to have been no pretence on the part of 
the Spartans. It was mere blind tenacity of ancient habit 
which we shall find to abate, though never to disappear, as a 
advance in their history.! Indeed, their delay in marching ta 
rescue Attica from Mardonius, eleven years afterwards, at the 
imminent hazard of alienating Athens and ruining the Hellenic 
cause, marks the same selfish dulness. But the reason now given 
certainly looked very like a pretence, so that the Athenians pale 
indulge no certain assurance that the Spartan troops would start 
even when the full moon arrived. 

In this respect the answer brought by Pheidippidés was mis- 
chievous, as it tended to increase that uncertainty and indecision 
which already prevailed among the ten generals, as to the proper 
steps for meeting the invaders. Partly, perhaps, in reliance on 
this expected Spartan help, five out of the ten generals were 
decidedly averse to an immediate engagement with the Persians ; 
while Miltiadés with the remaining four strenuously urged that 
bot a moment should be lost in bringing the enemy te action 
without leaving time to the timid and the treacherous to eatabliah 
correspondence with Hippias, and to take some active step for 
paralyzing all united action on the part of the citizens. This 
most momentous debate, upon which the fate of Athens hung, 
is represented by Herodotus to have occurred at Marathon, after 
the army had marched out and taken post there within sicht of 


the Persians ; while Cornelius Nepos describes it as having been 
g be 


raised before the army quiited the city,—upon the question 
whether it was prudent to mect the enemy at all in the field, of 
to confine the defence to the city and the sacred rock. Inaccu- 
rate as this latter author generally is, his statement seems more 
probable here than that of Herodotus. For the ten generals 
would scarcely march out of Athens to Marathon without having 
previously resolved to fight: moreover, the question between 
fighting in the field or resisting behind the walls, which had al 
ready been raised at Eretria, seems the natural point on which 


, Herodvi ip 7—LU 


VEBATE ABOUT FIGHTING AT MARATHON. 343 


the five n istrustful generals would take their stand. And prob 
ably indeed Miltiad@s himself, if debarred from immediate ac- 
tion, would have preferred to hold possession of Athens, and 
prevent any treacherous movement from breaking out there, — 
rather than to remain inactive on the hills, watching the Persians 
at Marathon, with the chance of a detachment from their numer 
ous fleet sailing round to Phalérum, and thus distracting, by 8 
jouble attack, both the city and the camp. 
However this may be, the equal division of opinion among the 
ten generals, whether manifested at Marathon or at Athens, is 
certain. — so that Miltiadés had to await the casting-vote of the 
polemarch Kallimachus. To him he represented emphatically 
the danger of delay, and the chance of some traitorous intrigue 
nxecurring to excite disunion and aggravate the alarms of the citi- 
zens. Nothing could preve:* such treason from breaking out, 
with all its terrific consequences of enslavement to the Persians 
and to Hippias, except a bold, decisive, and immediate attack, — 
the success of which he (Miltiadés) was prepared to guarantee, 
Fortunately for Athens, the polemarch embraced the opinion of 
Miltiadés, and the seditious movements which were preparing 
did not show themselves until after the battle had been gained. 
Aristeidés and Themistoklés are both recorded to have seconded 
Miltiadés warmly in this proposal, — while all the other generals 
agreed in surrendering to Miltiadés their days of command, so 
as to make him, as much as they could, the sole leader of the 
army. It is said that the latter awaited the day of his own ~eg- 
ular turn before he fought the battle! Yet considering the 
eagerness which he displayed to bring on an immediate and de- 
cisive action, we cannot suppose that he would have admitted 
any serious postponement upon such a punctilio. 

While the army were mustered on the ground sacred to Hera- 
klés near Marathon, with the Persians and their fleet occupying 
the plain and shore beneath, and in preparation for immediate 
action, they were joined by the whole force of the little town of 
Platea, consisting of about one thousand hoplites, who had 
marched directly from their own city to the spot, along the south- 
ern range -f Kitherén and passing through Dekeleia. We are 


* Herodot. vi, 110. 


344 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


not told that they had been invited, and very probably tha 
Athenians had never thought of summoning aid from this unim 
portant neighbor, in whose behalf they had taken upon them 
selves a lasting feud with Thebes and the Beeotian league.! 
Pheir coming on this important occasion seems to have been a 
spontaneous effort of gratitud( ,which ought not to be the less 
commended because their intesests were really wrapped up in 
those of Athens, — since if the latter had been conquered, noth- 
ing could have saved Platwa from being subdued by the Thebans, 
— yet many a Grecian town would have disregarded both gener- 
ous impulse and rational calculation, in the fear of provoking a 
new and terrific enemy. If we summon up to our imaginations 
all the circumstances of the case, — which it requires some effort 
to do, because our authorities come from the subsequent genera- 
tions, after Greece had ceased to fear the Persians, — we shall 
be sensible that this volunteer march vf the whole Platzan force 
to Marathon is one of the most affect ag incidents of all Grecian 
history. Upon Athens generally it produced an indelible im- 
pression, commemorated ever afterwards in the public prayers 
of the Athenian herald,? and repaid by a grant to the Platawans 
of the full civil rights — seemingly without the political rights — 
of Athenian citizens. Upon the Athenians then marshalled at 
Marathon its effect must have been unspeakably powerful and 
encouraging, as a proof that they were not altogether isolated 
from Greece, and as an unexpected countervailing stimulus under 
circumstances so full of hazard. 

Of the two opposing armies at Marathon, we are told that the 
Athenians were ten thousand hoplites, either including or besides 
the one thousand who came from Platea*® Nor is this state 


' Herodot. vi, 108-112. 

* Thucyd. iii, 55 

+ Justin states ten thousand Athenians, besides one thousand Platzans, 
Cornelius Nepos, Pausanias, and Plutarch give ten thousand as the sum 
tntal of both. Justin, ii, 9; Corn. Nep. Miltiad. c. 4; Pausan. iv, 25, 5; x, 
20, 2: compare also Suidas, v, Ἱππίας. 

Heeren (De Fontibus Trogi Pompeii, Dissertat. ii, 7) affirms that Trogas, 
or Justin, follows Herodotus in matters concerning the Persian invasions of 
Greece. He cannot have compared the two very attentively; for Justin 
Rot only states several matters which are not to be found in Herodotns, bas 
ᾧ at variance with the latter on sows particulars not unimportant. 


THE PLATEANS JOIN THE ATHENIANS 345 


ment in itself improbable, though it does not come from Herodo- 
tus, who is our only really valuable authority on the case, and 
who mentions no numerical total. Indeed, the number named 
seems smaller than we should have expected, considering that no 
less than four thousand kleruchs, or out-settled citizens, had just 
come over from Eubeea. A sufficient force of citizens must of 
course have been left behind to defend the tity. The numbers 
of the Persians we cannot be said to know at all, nor is there 
anything certain except that they were greatly superior to the 
Greeks. We hear from Herodotus that their armament origi- 
pally consisted of six hundred ships of war, but we are not told 
how many separate transports there were ; and, moreover, reill- 
forcements had been procured as they came across the Aigean 
from the islands successively conquered. The aggregate crews on 
board of all their ships must have been between one hundred and 
fifty thousand and two hundred thousand men; but what propor- 
tion of these were fighting men, or how many actually did fight 
at Marathon, we have no means of determining.' There were a 


i Justin (ii, 9) says that the total of the Persian army was six hundred 
thousand, and that two hundred thousand perished. Fiato (Menexen. > 
240) and Lysias (Orat. Funebr. c.7) speak of the Persian total as five 
hundred thousand men. Valerius Maximus (v, 3), Pausanias (iv, 25), and 
Plutarch (Parallel. Grac. ad init.), give three hundred thousand men. 
Cornelius Nepos (Miltiadés, c. 5) gives the more moderate total of one 
and ten thousand men. 
Ἴ observations on the battle of Marathon, made both by Colona 
Leake and by Mr. Finlay, who have examined and described the es 
Leake, on the Demi of Attica, in Transactions of the Royal Society ο 
Literature, vol. ii, p. 160, seg.; and Finlay, on the Battle of Marathon, ‘in 
the same Transactions, vol. iii, pp. 360-380, etc. My 
Both have given remarks on the probable numbers of the armies a 
bled; but there are really no materials, even for a probable guess, in _— 
to the Persians. The silence of Herodotus (whom we shall find herent 
very circumstantial as to the numbers of the army under Xerxés) seems to 
show that he had no information which he could trust. His account of 
battle of Marathon presents him in honorable contrast with the loose He 
boastful assertors who followed him ; for though he does not tell us sens 
und falls lamentably short of what we should like to know, yet all that 9 
does say is reasonable and probable as to the proceedings of both armies 
and the little which he states becomes more trustworthy on that very τα 
count. — because it is so little, —showing that he keeps str ctly within 


suthorities. 
1ξν 


346 HISTORY OF GREECK. 

certain proportwn of cavalry, and some transports expressly pre 
pared for the conveyance of horses: moreover, Herodotus tella 
us that Hippias selected the plain of Marathon for a landing 
place, because it was the most convenient spot in Attica for cay: 
alry movements, — though it is singular, that in the battle the 
cavalry are not mentioned. 

Marathon, situated near to a bay on the eastern coast of At 
tica, and ina direction E.N.E. from Athens, is divided by the 
high ridge of Mount Pentelikus from the city, with which it 
communicated by twe roads, one to the north, another to the 
south of that mountain. Of these two roads, the northern, a’ 
once the shortest and the most difficult, is twenty-two miles in 
length: the southern -— longer but more easy, ood the only one 
practicable for chariots is twenty-six miles in length, or about 
six and a half hours of computed march. It passed between 
mounts Pentelikus and Hymettus, through the ancient demes of 
(zargéttus and Palléné, and was the road by which Peisistratus 
and Hippias, when they landed at Marathon forty-seven years 
before, had marched to Athens. The bay of Marathon, sheltered 
by a projecting cape from the northward, affords both deep wate- 
and a shore convenient for landing; while “its plain (says a 
eareful modern observer!) extends im a perfect level along this 


There is nothing in the account of Herodotus to make us believe that he 
had ever visited the ground of Marathon. 

‘See Mr. Finlay on the Battle of Marathon, Transactions, etc., vol. iii, 
pp. 364, 368, 383, ut supra: compare Hobhouse, Journey in Albania, i, 
p. 432. 

Colonel Leake thinks that the ancient town of Marathon was not on the 
exact site of the modern Marathon, but at a place called Vrana, a little to 
the south of Marathon (Leake, on the Demi of Attica, in the Transactions 
of the Royal Society or Literature, 1829, vol. ii, p. 166). 

“ Below these two points,” he observes, “(the tumuli of Vrand and the 
hill of Kotroni,) the plain of Marathon expands to the shore of the bay 
which is near two miles distant from the opening of the valley of Vrand. 
It is moderately well cultivated with corn, and is one of the most fertile 
s: ots in Attica, though rather inconveniently subject to inundations from 
the two torrer s which cross it, particularly that of Marathona. From 
Lucian (in Icvaro-Menippo) it appears that the parts about (Enoé were 
noted for their fertility, and an Egyptian poet of the fifth century has cele 
brated the vines and olives of Marathon. It is natural to suppose that the 
vinerards occupied the rising grounds; and it is probable that the olive 


PLAIN OF MARATHOM. $47 


fine bay, and is in length about six miles, in breadth never lesa 


than about one mile and a half. Two marshes bound the extrem- 
ities of the plain: the southern is not very large, and is almost 
dry at the conclusion of the great heats; but the northern, which 
generally covers considerably more than a square mile, offers 
several parts which are at all seasons impassable. Both, however, 
leave a broad, firm, sandy beach between them and the sea. The 
uninterrupted flatness of the plain is hardly relieved by a single 
tree; and an amphitheatre of rocky hills and rugged mountains 
separates it from the rest of Attica, over the lower ridges of 
which some steep and difficult paths communicate with the dis- 


tricts of the interior.” 
The position occupied by Miltiadés before the battle, identified 
as it was to all subsequent Athenians by the sacred grove of 


« 


Héraklés near Marathon, was probably on some portion of the 
high ground above this plain, and Cornelius Nepos tells us that 
he protected it from the attacks of the Persian cavalry by felled 
trees obstructing the approach. The Persians occupied a position 
on the plain; while their fleet was ranged along the beach, and 
Hippias himself marshalled them for the battle! The native 
Persians and Saks, the best troops in the whole army, were 
placed in the centre, which they considered as the post of honor? 


trees were chiefly situated in the two valleys, where some are still growing: 
for as to the plain itself, the circumstances of the battle incline one to be 
lieve that it was anciently as destitute of trees as it is at the present day.” 
(Leake, on the Demi of Attica, Trans. of Roy. Soc. of Literature, vol. ii, 
p. 162.) 

Colonel Leake farther says, respecting the fitness of the Marathonian 
ground for cavalry movements: “As I rode across the plain of Marathon 
with a peasant of Vrand, he remarked to me that it was a fine place for 
cavalry to fight in. None of the modern Marathonii were above the rank 
of laborers: they have heard that a great battle was once fought there, but 
that is all they know.” (Leake, μὲ sup. ii, p. 175.) 

1 Herodot. vi, 107. 

3 Plutarch, Symposiac. i, 3, p. 619; Xenophon, Anabas. i, 8, 21; Arrian, 
ἡ 8, 18; iii, 11, 16. 

We may compare, with this established battle-array of the Persian ar 
sues, that of the Turkish armies, adopted and constantly followed ever 
since the victorious battle of Ikonium, in 1386, gained by Amurath ths 
First over the Karamanians. The Enropean troops, or those of Rum, 
occupy the left wing: the Asiatic troovs, or those of Anatoli, the right 


348 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


and which was occupied by the Persian king h.mself, when pres 
ent at abattle. The right wing was so regarded br the Gre k 
and the polemarch Kallimachus had rag cain’ of it igre 
ry ge being arranged in the order of their respective P= 
xen a =“ — τὸ enero left stood the Platzans. It 
cessary for Miltiadés to present a front equal, or nearl 
equal, to that of the more numerous Persian host in ‘onde μὰ 
guard himself from being taken in flank: and with thts proaatin 
say μὴ the central tribes, including the Leontis and Mintboclde 
1 she " Υ ει . « "ἵν yo a : : tr 
_ μοημνηηγανύωνη py po large breadth of ground; while 
cout gs wi stronger and deeper order, so as to 
make his attack efficient on both sides. His whole army cor 
sisted of hoplites, with some slaves as unarmed or Preah 
erromerants, but without either bowmen or cavalry. a soni 
the Persians have been very strong in this latter ΠΗ 566] . 
hat their horses had to be trans] orted across the Boe . ye 
the elevated position of Miltiadés enabled chown asl tabs ἐμ 
measure of the numbers under his command, “οὖ the diva ak 
gence of cavalry among their enemies could not but confirm th 
confidence with which a long career of uninterrupted victory | 3 
tui pressed their generals. | : rare 
" Ἢ ἜΝ the megane in the Greek camp were favorable ἴοι 
attle, and Miltiadés, who had everything to gain by coming im 
mediately to close quarters, ordered his army μων Sere at ᾿ 
running step over the interval of one mile which cai ‘te 
«wo armies. This rapid forward movement, sconaeadel by the 
war-cry, or pwan, which always animated the charge of the Greek 
soldier, astounded the Persian army; who naresd it nt ee 
act of desperate courage, little short of insanity, in a body ὃ 
only small but destitute of cavalry or archers, fi but wha at “a 
same time, felt their conscious superiority sink within them. it 


~ 


Wing : » Janissaries are i T 
μῃ ng = Janissaries are in the centre. The Sultan, or the Grand Vizir 
pen ed by the national cavalry, or Spahis, is in the central peint of 
a‘! (Von Hammer, Geschichte des Osmannischen Reichs, book i 
vagy s, book v, vol. i, 
About the hono i i 
rof occupying the right wing i i 
Bor shag apy g ght wing in a Grecian army, see in 
ale ed dispute between the Athenians and the Tegeates 
bef 16 attle of Platwa (Herodot. ix, 27): it is the post assigned te the 
heroic kings of legendary warfare (Eurip. Supplices, 657) 


BATTLE %F MARATHOW 349 


n long remembered ulso among the Greeks ag 
the peculiar characteristic of the battle of Marathon, and Herod- 
optus tells us that the Athenians were the first Greeks who ever 
charged at arun.! It doubtless operated beneficially in render- 
ing the Persian cavalry and archers comparatively innocuous, 
but we may reasonably suppose that it also disordered the Athe- 
nian ranks, and that when they reached the Persian front, they 
were both out of breath and unsteady in that line of presented 
spears and shields which constituted their force. On the two 
where the files were deep, this disorder produced no mis- 
a certain resistance, were 


seems to have bee 


wings, 
chievous effect: the Persians, after 
overborne and driven back. 
were shallow, and where, 
other choice troops of the 
disordered Athenian hoplites found themselves in far greater 
difficulties. The tribes Leontis and Antiochis, with Themistoklés 
and Aristei:-s among them, were actually defeated, broken, 
driven back, and pursued by the Persians and Sake.? Miltiad 2s 


But in the centre, where the files 
moreover, the native Persians and 
army were posted, the breathless and 


} Herodot. vi, 112. Πρῶτοι μὲν γὰρ Ἑλλήνων πάντων τῶν ἡμεῖς ἱόμεν, 
ὑρύμῳ ἐς πολεμίους ἐχρήσαντο. 
The running pace of the charge was obviously one of the most remark- 
connected .with the battle. Colonel Leake and Mr. Finlay 
a quick march ; partly on the ground 
and out of breath by running 8 


able events 
geem disposed to reduce the run to 
that the troops must have been disordered 
mile. ‘The probability is, that they really were so, and that such was the 
son of the defeat of the centre. It is very probable that a part of 
the mila run over consisted of declivity. I accept the account of Herod- 
ptus lit wy, though whether the distance be exactly stated, we cannot 
rertain’, say: indeed the fact is, that it required some steadiness of disci- 
pline to prevent the step of hoplites, when charging, from becoming accel- 

ative of the battle of Kunaxa in Xenoph. 


erated intoarun. See the narr 
ἃ. 18: Diodor. xiv, 23: compare Polyen. ii, 2,3. The passage 


Anabas. 1, 8, 
of Diodorus here referred to contrasts the advantages with the disadvan- 


tages of the running charge. 

Both Colonel Leake and Mr. Finlay try to point out the exact ground 
occupied by the two armies : they differ in the spot chosen, and I cannct 
think that there is sufficient evidence to be had in favor of any spot. Leake 
thinks that the Persian commanders were encamped in the plain of Tri 
at of Marathon by the great marsh, and com 


corythos, separated from th: 
by means of a causeway (Leake, Transact. 1 


great rea 


municating with it only 
Ρ. 170). 

® Hemdot. vi. 115. Kara τοῦτο μὲν δὴ, 
ἐδίωκον ἐς τὴν μεσοναιαν 


ἐνίκων οἱ βάρβαροι, καὶ ἐνδαντεῦ 


850 HISTORY OF GREECE 


= to have foreseen the possibility of such a check, wher he 
ν ind himself compelled to diminish so materially the depth of 
τῇ centre : for his wings, having routed the enemies opposed tc 
+ rong έτη Ὗ Ἢ 1 | vd 
them, were stayed from pursuit until the centre was extricated 
and the Persians and Sake i Sl ὦ ciate 
- Fig 1 Sake put to flight along with the rest. 
pursuit then became general, and the Persians were chased 
) | | slans were chase 
{ : , eS | oe i i | 
to ange ships ranged in line along the shore: some of them be- 
pow involved in the impassable marsh and there perist ed The 
Athenians tried to set the ships on fire, but the defence here was 
oth vigorous and successful, — several of the forward wantin 
of i 2 ῳᾧ χέιγρο Ν Κ΄ ΜΝ pia 
Athens were slain, — and only seven ships out of the 
font, deatvoved.® This ! Nb p: Ol the numerous 
stroyed. iis part of the battle terminated to the ς 
vantave of the Persi: " rr RAGA oO i 1€ ad- 
ersians. They repulsed the Athenians from the 
sea-shore, ἢ cured a safe i 5 
ore, τῇ secured a safe reémbarkation; leaving few or no 
risoners a ric ‘ if “ 
Ρ rs, but ἃ ri h spoil of tents and equipments which had 
een disembarked and could not be carried away 
I er matt ‘ r : Τ᾿ 
: ego estimates the number of those who fel! on the Per 
sian side is memor: i i ᾿ 
ide in this memorable action at six thousand four hundred 
men: ‘r ot i | 
: 1: the number of Athenian dead is accurately known, since 
a we “(> . ry ih » " ν } » « \ Ι ' : i j 
, re collected for the last solemn obsequies, — they were one 
1undred and ninety-two. How many were w 
ee eee : 3 any were wounded, we do not 
ar. ave Kallimachus the polemarch, : stesi 
the polemarch, and Stesilaus, one 


of the ten generals, were : 

. n gene rals, were among the slain; together with Kyne 

elrus § » Ν " : : τ ¢ 
g ᾽ “tt of Euphorion, who, in laying hold on the poop-staff of 
one of the vessels, had his t off .d died o 

sels, had his hand cut 

s hand cut off by an axe} and di 
the w - we , f Ἶ agg snare 
se He was brother of the poet A®schylus, himself pres 
ent at the ficht; to =e is Uns ne ᾿ 
the fight; to whose imagination this battle at the ships 
must have e atic: 7: Δ 
ist have emphatically recalled the fifteenth book of the Iliad 


Herodotus her : 
rodotus here tells us » whole tr itl i 
Resi og the whole truth without disguise: Plutarch 
Aristcidés, ο. 3) only savs that t! -ersi relied é 
y sav at the Persian centre 

LZ } T ¢ » ‘ »y* 2 ἴω 
ance, and cave the tribes in Ce ee 

‘ Pausan. i, 32, 6. 

? Herodot. vi, 114. 


the Grecian centre more trouble to overthrow 
ia * Herodot. vi, 113-115 
is is the statement of Her τ᾿ 
... Ε i ΟῚ erodotus respec Ly 
geiras. How creditably does his cn: i ΠΝ ar 
ee ; s his character as an historian contrast with 
ooh subsequent romancers! Justin tells us that Kynegei i 
seized the vessel wi ie. at a i ace ae 
v 1 wit? se with his right hand: that was cut off, and he held a 
essel wit is left: whe “ ive 
sooth - is left: when he had lost that also, he seized the shi it] 9 
ΚΟ: νὉ sehen " ὁ lik ih ᾿ ἡ Ρ ἐηήο ἢ 
a wild beast,” (Justin, ii, 9’ — Justin seems to have ἢ 1 thi 
statcment in many different authors : Sean ale 


. ; “ Cynegiri ae υἱὲ 4 
scriptorum laudibus celebrata.” ΘΠ πῆς vinta, δ 


VICTORY OF THE ATHENIANS 351 


Both these Athenian generals are said to have perished in the 

assault of the ships, apparently the hottest part of the combat. 

'The statement of the Persian loss as given by Herodstus appears 

moderate and reasonable,' but he does net specify any distin- 
guished individuals as having fallen. 

But the Persians, though thus defeated and compelled to aban- 

f Marathon, were not yet disposed to relinquish 


don the position oO 
Their fleet was observed 


altogether their chances against Attica. 
the direction of Cape Sunium,—a portion being sent to 
trian prisoners and the stores which had been left 
At the same time a shield, discernible 
off, was seen held aloft upon some 
on the summit of Mount Pen- 


to talk 
take up the Ere 
in the island of JE gilia. 
from its polished surface afar 
high point of Attica,” — perhaps 
telikus, as Colonel Leake supposes with much plausibility. The 
Athenians doubtless saw ‘tas well ¢s the Persians; and Mil- 
tiadés did not fail to put the right interpretation upon it, taken in 
the course of the departing fleet. The shield 
partisans in the country, to invite the 
Persians round to Athens by sea, while the Marathonian army 
was absent. Miltiadés saw through the plot, and lost not a mo- 
On the very day of the battle, 
k with the utmost speed from the 
inct of the same 


conjunction with 
was a signal put up by 


ment in returning to Athens. 

the Athenian army marched bac 
preeinct of Héraklés at Marathon to the prec 
god at Kynosarges, close to Athens, which they reached before 
the arrival of the Persian fleet Datis soon came off the port 


1 For the exaggerated stories of the numbers of Persians slain, see Xeno- 
phon, Anabas. iii, 2, 12; Plutarch, De Malign. Herodot. c. 26, p. 862; 
Justin, ii, 9; and Suidas, v, Ποικίλη. 

In the account of Ktésias, Datis was represented as having been killed 
in the battle, and it was farther said that the Athenians refused to give up 
his body for interment; which was one of the grounds whereupon Xerxés 
afterwards invaded Greece. It is evident that in the authorities which 
Ktésias followed, the alleged death of Datis at Marathon was rather em- 
phatically dwelt upon. See Ktésias, Persics, ¢- 18-21, with the note af 
Bahr. who is inclined to defend the statement, against Herodotus. 

3 Herodot. vi, 124. ᾿ἀνεδέχϑη μὲν γὰρ ἄσπις, καὶ τοῦτο οὐκ ἔστι ἄλλως 
εἰπεῖν ἐγένετο γάρ" ὃς μέντοι ἣν ὁ ἀναδέξας οὐκ ἔχω τὸ προσωτέρω εἰπεῖν 


τουτέων. 
3 τχοροᾶοι. vi, 116. Obroe μὲν δὴ περιέπλωον Σούνιον. ᾿Αϑηναῖοι de, ὡς 


τοὐῶν εἶχον, τάχιστα ἐβοήϑεον ἐς τὸ ἄστυ " καὶ ἔφϑησάν τε ἀπικόμενοι 


B52 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


of Phalérum, but the partisans of Hippias had been dismaysd 
by the rapid return of the Marathonian army, and he did not 
therefore find those aids and facilities which he had anticipated 
for a fresh disembarkation in the immediate neighborhood of 
Athens. Though too late, however, it seems that he was not 
mich too late: the Marathonian army had only just completed 
their forced return-march. A littie less quickness on the part of 
Miltiadés in deciphering the treasonable signal and giving the in- 
stant order of march, —a little less energy on the part of the 
Athenian citizens in superadding a fatiguing march toa no less 
fatiguing combat, — and the Persians, with the partisans of Hip- 
pias, might have been found in possession of Athens. As the 
facts turned out, Datis, finding at Phalérum no friendly move 
ment to encourage him, but, on the contrary, the unexpected pres 
ence of the soldiers who had already vanquished him at Mara- 
thon, — made no attempt again to disembark in Attica, and sailed 
away, after a short delay, to the Cyclades. 
Thus was Athens rescued, for this time at least, from a danger 
aot less terrible than imminent. Nothing could have rescued her 
except that decisive and instantanesus attack which Miltiadés so 
emphatically urged. The running step on the field of Marathon 
might cause sor.e disorder in the ranks of the hoplites ; but 
extreme haste in bringing on the combat was the only means Οἱ 
preventing disunion and distraction in the minds of the citizens. 
Imperfect as the account is which Herodotus gives of this most 
interesting crisis, we see plainly that the partisans of Hippias 
had actually organized a conspiracy, and that it only failed by 
coming a little too late. The bright shield uplifted on Mount 
Pentelikus, apprizing the Persians that matters were prepared 
for them at Athens, was intended to have come to their view 
before any action had taken place at Marathon, and while the 
Athenian army were yet detained there; so that Datis might 
have sent a portion of his fleet round to Phalérum, retaining the 


piv ἢ τοὺς βαρβάρους ἧκειν, καὶ ἐστρατοπεδεύσαντο ἀπιγμένοι ἐξ ‘HpaxAntov 

τοῦ ἐν Μαραϑῶνι ἐς ἄλλο Ἡρακληΐον τὸ ἐν Κυνοσάργει. if 
Plutarch (Bellone an Pace clariores fuerint Athenienses, c. 8, p. 350) 

represents Miltiadés as returning τὸ Athens on the day after the battle : it 


must Lave been on the same afternoon, according to the s<cournt of Herod 
etus. 


REMARKS ON THE BATTLE. 363 


rest for combat with the enemy before him. If it had once 
become known to the Marathonian army that εἰ Persian detach- 
ment had landed at Phalérum,!— where there was a good plain 
for cavalry to act in, prior to the building of the Phaléric wall, 
as had been seen in the defeat of the Spartan Anchimolius by 
the Thessalian cavalry, in 510 B.c., — that it had been joined by 
timid or treacherous Athenians, and had perhaps even got pos 
session of the city, —their minds would have been so distracted 
by the double danger, and by fears for their absent wives and 
children, that they would have been disqualified for any unani- 
mous execution of military orders, and generals as well as 
soldiers would have become incurably divided in opinion, — 
perhaps even mistrustful of each other. The citizen-soldier of 
Greece generally, and especially of Athens, possessed in a high 
degree both personal bravery and attachment to order and disci- 
pline; but his bravery was not of that equal, imperturbable, 
uninquiring character, which belonged to the battalions of Wel- 
lington or Napoleon,—it was fitful, exalted or depressed by 
‘asual occurrences, and often more sensitive to dangers absent 
and unseen, than to enemies immediately in his front. Hence 
the advantage, so unspeakable in the case before us, and so well 
appreciated by Miltiadeés, of having one undivided Athenian 
army, — with one hostile army, and only one, to meet in the 
field. When we come to the battle of Salamis, ten years later, 
it will be seen that the Greeks of that day enjoyed the same 
advantage: though the wisest advisers of Xerxés impressed 
upon him the prudence of dividing his large force, and of send- 
ing detachments to assail separate Greek states — which would 
infallibly produce the effect of breaking up the combined Gre- 
cian host, and leaving no central or cooperating force for the 
defence of Greece generally. Fortunately for the Greeks, the 
childish insolence of Xerxés led him to despise all such advice, 
as implying conscious weakness. Not so Datis and Hippias. 
Sensivle of the prudence of distracting the attention of the 
Athenians by a double attack, they laid a scheme, while tha 
main army was at Marathon, for rallying the partisans of Hip- 
pias, with a force to assist them, in the reighborhood of Athens, 


.----- ... ..............ς.-ς- - - --ἰἃ. ἠἰ,κι.. ......... 


! Herodot. v, 62, 63. 


VOL. IV. 2800. 


854 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


— and the signal was upheld by these partisans as soon as then 
measures were taken. but the rapidity of Miltiadés so precipi- 
tated the battle, that this signal came too late, and was only 
given, “when the Persians were already in their ships,” ! after 
the Marathonian defeat. Even then it might have proved 
dangerous, had not the movements of Miltiadés been as rapid 
after the victory as before it: but if time had been allowed for 
th2 Persian movement on Athens before the battle of Marathon 
had been fought, the triumph of the Athenians might well have 
been exchanged for a calamitous servitude. To Miltiadés 
belongs the credit of having comprehended the emergency 
from the beginning, and overruled the irresolution of his col- 
leagues by his own single-hearted energy. The chances all 
turned out in his favor,— for the unexpected junction of the 
Platzans in the very encampment of Marathon must have 
wrought up the courage of his army to the highest pitch: ard 
not only did he thus escape all the depressing and distracting 
accidents, but he was fortunate enough to find this extrateous 
encouragement immediately preceding the battle, from a sourcé 
on which he could not have calculated. 

I have already observed that the phase of Grecian history 
best known to us, amidst which the great authors from whom we 
draw our information lived, was one of contempt for the Per 
sians in the field. And it requires some effort of imagination té 
call back previous feelings after the circumstances have been 
altogether reversed: perhaps even /éschylus the poet, at the 
time when he composed his tragedy of the Pers, to celebrate 
the disgraceful flight of the invader Xerxés, may have forgot- 
ten the emotions with which he and his brother Kynegeirus must 
have marched out from Athens fifteen years before, on the eve 
of the battle of Marathon. It must therefore be again men:- 
tioned that, down to the time when Datis landed in the bay οἱ 
Marathon, the tide of Persian success had never yet been inter 
rupted, — and that especially during the ten years immediately 
preceding, the high-handed and cruel extinction of the Ionic 
revolt had aggravated to the highest pitch the alarm of tha 


‘ Herodot. vi, 115. Τοῖσι Πέοσῃσι ἀναδεξαι ἀσπίδα, ἐοῦσι 40m b> 
φῷσι νηυσί. 


CHANGE OF FRELING TOWARDS THE PERSIANS 855 


Greeks. To this must be added the successes of Datis him 
self, and the calamities of Eretria, coming with all the freshness 
of novelty as an apparent sentence of death to Athens. The 
extreme effort of courage required in the Athenians, to encoun- 
ter such invaders, is attested by the division of opinion among 
the ten generals. Putting all the circumstances together, it is 


without a parallel in Grecian history, surpassing even the combat 
of Thermopylx, as will appear when I come to describe that 
memorable event. And the admirable conduct of the five dis- 
sentient generals, when outvoted by the decision of the pole- 
march against them, in cooperating heartily for the success of a 
pelicy which they deprecated, — proves how much the feelings 
of a constitutional democracy, and that entire acceptance of the 
pronounced decision of the majority on which it rests, had 
worked themselves into the Athenian mind. The combat of 
Marathon was by no means a very decisive defeat, but it was 
a defeat, — and the first which the Persians had ever received 
from Greeks in the field. If the battle of Salamis, ten years 
afterwards, could be treated by Themistoklés as a hair-breadth 
escape for Greece, much more is this true of the battle of Mara- 
thon;! which first afforded reasonable proof, even to discerning 
and resolute Greeks, that the Persians might be effectually 
repelled, and the independence of European Greece maintained 
against them,— a conviction of incalculable value in reference 
to the formidable trials destined to follow. Upon the Athenians 
themselves, the first to face in the field successfully the terrific 
look of a Persian army, the effect of the victory was yet more 
stirring and profound.2 It supplied them with resolution for 


ne -- ....ὕὺ. ..-.-.ς..-ς. ι-΄ο.--- eo 


1 Herodot. viii, 108. ἡμεῖς de, εὕρημα γὰρ εὑρῆκαμεν ἡμέας τε καὶ τὴν 
Ελλάδα, νέφος τοσοῦτον ἀνθρώπων ἀνωσώμενοι. 

2 Pausanias, i, 14,4: Thucyd. i, 73. φαμὲν γὰρ Μαραϑῶνί τε μόνοι 
κοοκινδυνεῦσαι τῷ βαμϑάρῳ, etc. 

Herodot. vi, 112. πρῶτει τε ἀνέσχοντο ἐσθῆτά τε Μηδικὴν ὁρέοντες. καὶ 
ἄνδρας ταύτην ἐσθημένους τέως δὲ ἣν τοῖσι Ἔλλησι καὶ τὸ οὔνομα τὸ Μήδων 
φύό3ος ἀκοῦσαι. 

It is not unworthy of remark, that the memorable oath in the oration of 
Demosthenés, de Coron’, wherein he adjures the warriors of Marathon 
copies the phrase of Thucydidés, — ot μὰ τοὺς ἐν Μαραϑῶνι προκινᾶν 
νεύσαντας τῶν προγόνων, etc ‘(Demosthen. de Corona, c. 60.) 


δὲ HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the far greater actual sacrifices which they cneerfully underwent 
ten years afterwards, at the invasion of Xerxés, without falter. 
ing in their Pan-Hellenie fidelity ; and it strengthened them at 
home by swelling the tide of common sentiment and patri atic 
fraternity in the bosom of every individual citizen. It was the 
exploit of Athenians alone, but of all Athenians without dissent 
or exception, — the boast of orators, repeated until it almost 
degenerated into common-place, though the people seem never 
to have become weary of allusions to their single-handed vic 
over a host of forty-six nations.! It had heen seine 
out a drop of intestine bloodshed,—for even the unknown 
traitors who raised the signal-shield 29n Mount Pentelikus, took 
care not to betray themselves by want of apparent sympathy 
with the triumph: lastly, it was the final cuarantee of their 
democracy, barring all chance of restoration of Hippias for the 
future. 'Themistoklés? is said to have been robbed of his sleep 
by the trophies of Miltiadés, and this is cited in proof of his 
ambitious temperament ; but without supposing either jealousy 
or personal love of glory, the rapid transit from extreme danger 
to unparalleled triumph might well deprive of rest even the 
most sober-minded Athenian. 

Who it was that raised the treacherous signal-shield to attract 
the Persians to Athens was never ascertained: very probably 
in the full exultation of success, no investigation was ‘made. Of 
course, however, the public belief would not be satisfied without 
singling out some persons as the authors of such a treason; and 
the information received by Herodotus (probably about 450-440 
B.C., forty or fifty years after the Marathonian victory) ascribed 
the deed to the Alkmzdénids; nor does he notice any other re- 
ported authors, though he rejects the allegation against them 
upco very sufficient grounds. They were a race religiously 


1 So the computation stands in the language of Athenian oratecrs 
mernt ix, 27.) It would be unfair to examine it critically. 

] lutarch, Themistokles, e. 3. According to Cicero (Epist. ad Attic. ix 
19) and Justin (ii, 9) Hippias was killed at Marathon. Suidas (v deeeiee} 
gays that he died afterwards at Lemnos. Neither of these staiiabeite 
seems probable. Hippias would hardly go to Lemnos, which wer an 


1 ᾿ δὰ 
Athenian possession; and had he been slain in the battle, Herodctus 
would have been likely to mention it. 


€FFECT OF THE BATTLE OF MARATHON. 357 


winted, ever since the Kylonian sacrilege, and were therefore 
convenient persons to brand with the odium of an anonymous 
crime; while party feud, if it did not originally invent, would at 
least be active in spreading and certifying such rumors. At the 
time when Herodotus knew Athens, the political enmity between 
Periklés son of Xanthippus, and Kimon son of Miltiadés, was 
at its height: Periklés belonged by his mother’s side to the Alk- 
meonid race, and we know that such lineage was made subser- 
vient to political manoeuvres against him by his enemies.! More- 
over, the enmity between Kimon and Periklés had been inherited 
by both from their fathers ; for we shall find Xanthippus, not 
long after the battle of Marathon, the prominent accuser of Mil- 
tiad3s. Though Xanthippus was not an Alkme6énid, his mar 
riage witk Agariste connected himself indirectly, and his son 
Periklés directly, with that race. And we may trace in this 
standing political feud a probable origin for the false reports as 
to the treason of the Alkmwénids, on that great occasion which 
{,unded the glory of Miltiades ; for that the reports were false, 
the intrinsic probabilities of the case, supported by the judgment 
of Herodotus, afford ample ground for believing. 

When the Athenian army made its sudden return-march from 
Marathon to Athens, Aristeidés with his tribe was left to guard 
the field and the spoil; but the speedy retirement of Datis from 
Attica left the Athenians at full liberty to revisit the scene and 
discharge the last duties to the dead. A tumulus was erected 
on the spot? — such distinction was never conferred by Athens ex- 
cept in this case only — to the one hundred and ninety-two Athe- 
nian citizens who had been slain. Their names were inscribed 
on ten pillars erected at the spot, one for each tribe: there was 
also a second tumulus for the slain Plateans, a third for the 
slaves, and a separate funeral monument to Miltiadés himself. 
Six hundred years after the battle, Pausanias saw the tumulus, 
and could still read on the pillars the names of the immortalized 
warriors ;3 and even now a conspicuous tumulus exists about 
balf a mile from the sea-shore, which Colonel Leake believes te 


-- 


Thucyd. i, 126. 3 Thucyd. ii, 34 
? Pausan. i, 32,3. Compare the elegy of Kritias ap. Athens. i p. 28 


B58 HISTORY OF GREECE 


be the same.! The inhabitants of the deme of Marat} y 

shipped these slain warriors as heroes, along with γ Ὁ pes 
eponymus. and with Héraklés. | : ie 
So splendid a victory had not been achieved, in the belief 

tue Athenians, without marked supernatural aid. The ? ahs 
had met th: courier Pheidippidés on his hasty viii ων A I αἱ 
to Sparta, and had told him that he was much hurt that ᾿ : “el .. 
nians had as yet neglected to worship him ;2 in s ite of which 
neglect, however, he promised them effective aid ᾿ Ἀπ hon. 
The promise was faithfully executed, and the ‘Aeietilans μὰ aid 
it by be temple with annual worship and sacrifice. iain is 
hero Theseus was seen strenuously ass. ting in the battle ; pine 
an unknown warrior, in rustic garb and armed only with a ἀμ 

share, dealt destruction among the Persian ranks: ties i as : 
tle he could not be found; and the Athenians | ὡ ae 
Delphi who he was, were directed to worship the Noda Echeitu 3 


Even in the time of Pausanias, this memorable battle-field anu 
heard to resound every night with the noise of combatants ad 
the snorting of horses. “It is dangerous ainsi 
author) to goto the spot with the express perpen of faci 
what is passing ; but if a man finds himself there is μὲ κῶν 
aa “ gm enyiting about the maiter, the gods will 
i shells eg | The _* seems, could not pardon 
ing e mortal who deliberately pried into their secrets 

Amidst the ornaments with which Athens was decorated du hia 
the free working of her democracy, the glories of Maratt ἢ nae 
course occupied a conspicuous place. The battle es ims d ᾿ 

one of the compartinents of the portico called Peckile eres 
amidst several figures of gods and heroes, — Athéné, Heraklés, 
Theseus, Echetlus, and the local patron of Marathon,— were eh 
honored and prominent the polemarch Μιλονννω. jad ne : ᾿ : 
eral Miltiadés, while the Platwans were dituouishel ἯΙ ae 
Beeotian leather casques.* And the sixth of the macnth Boédre- 


. The tumulus now €xisting is about thirtv feet hich, and two hundred 
yards in circumference. (Leake, on the Demi of Attica Transa mi 
Royal Soc. of Literat. ii, p. 171.) -σν 

3 Herodot. vi, 105; Pausan. i, 28, 4. 

> Plutarch, Theseus, «. 24; Pausan. i, 32, 4. 

* Pausan. i, 15, 4; Démosthen. cont. Neer. c. 25. 


TARDY ASSISTANCE FROM THE SPARTANS. 359 


mion, the anniversary of the battle, was commemorated by an 


annual ceremony, even down to the time of Plutarch.! 


1 Herodot. vi, 120; Plutarch, Camill. c. 19: De Malignit. Herodoti, c 
26, p. 862; and De Gloria Atheniensium, c. 7. 

the third month of the Attic year, which year began 
The first three Attic months, Hekatom- 


Boédromion was 
near about the summer solstice. 
beon, Metageitnion, Boédromion, approach (speaking in a loose manner) 
nearly to our July, August, September; probably the month Hekatombxon 
began usually at some day in the latter half of June. 

From the fact that the courier Pheidippidés reached Sparta on the ninth 
duy of the moon, and that the two thousand Spartans arrived in Attica on 
the third day after the full moon, during which interval the battle took 
place, we see that the sixth day of Boédromion could not be the sixth day 
of the moon. The Attic months, though professedly lunar months, did 
not at this time therefore accurately correspond with the course of the 
moon. See Mr. Clinton, Fast. Hellen. ad an. 490 B.c. Plutarch (in the 
Treatise De Malign. Herodoti, above referred to) appears to have no con- 
ception of this discrepancy between the Attic month and the course of the 
moon. A portion of the censure which he casts on Herodotus is grounded 
on the assumption that the two must coincide. 

M. Boeckh, following Fréret and Larcher, contests the statement of Plu- 
tarch, that the battle was fought on the sixth of the month Boédromion, 
but upon reasons which appear to me insufficient. His chief argument 
rests upon another statement of Plutarch (derived from some lost verses of 
schylus), that the tribe Zantis had the right wing or post of honor at 
the battle; and that the public vote, pursuant to which the army was led 
out of Athens, was passed during the prytany of the tribe Hantis. He 
assumes, that the reason why this tribe was posted on the right wing, 
~nust have been, that it had drawn by lot the first prytany in that par- 

ticular year: if this be granted, then the vote for drawing out the army 
must have been passed in the first prytany, or within the first thirty-five 
or thirty-six days of the Attic year, during the space between the first of 
Hekatombzon and the fifth or sixth of Metageitnion. But it is certain 
that the interval, which took place between the army leaving the city and 
the battle, was much less than one month,— we may even say less than 
one week. ‘The battle, therefore, must have been fought between the sixth 
end tenth of Metageitnion. (Plutarch, Symposiac. i, 10, 3, and Ideler, 
Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i, p. 291.) Herodotus (vi, 111) says that 
the tribes were arranged in line ὡς ἠριϑμεόντο, ---- “ as they were num- 
bered,” — which is contended to mean necessarily the arrangement betwee 
them, determined by lot for the prytanies of that particular year. “In 
acic instruenda (says Boeckh, Comment. ad Corp. Inscript. p. 299) Athe- 
nienses non constantem, sed variabilem secundum prytanias, ordinem s¢- 
eutos esse. ita ut tribus ex hoc ordine inde a dextro cornu disponerentur, 
docui in Commentatione de pugnd Marathonia.” Prowmia Lect. Univ. 


Berolin. zstiv. a. 1816. 


860 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Two thousand Spartans, starting from their city, immediately 
after the full moon, reached the frontier of Attica, on the third 


The Procemia here referred to I have not been able to consult, and they 
may therefore contain additional reasons to prove the point advanced, viz., 
that the order of the ten tribes in line of battle, beginning from the right 
wing, was conformable to their order in prytanizing, as drawn by lot for 
the year; but I think the passages of Herodotus and Plutarch now before 
us insufficient to establish this point. From the fact that the tribe antis 
had the right wing at the battle of Marathon, we are by no means war- 
ranted in inferring that that tribe had drawn by lot the earliest prytany in 
the year. Other reasons, in my judgment equally probable, may be as- 
signed in explanation of the circumstance: one reason, I think, decidedly 
more probable. This reason is, that the battle was fought during the pry- 
tany of the tribe Aantis, which may be concluded from the statement 
of Plutarch, that the vote for marching out the army from Athens was 
passed during the prytany of that tribe ; for the interval, between the march 
of the army out of the city and the battle, must have been only a very few 
days. Moreover, the deme Marathon belonged to the tribe Rantis (see 
Boeckh, ad Inscript. No. 172, p. 309): the battle being fought in their 
deme, the Marathonians may perhaps have claimed on this express ground 
the post of honor for their tribe ; just as we see that at the first battle of Man- 
tineia against the Lacedemonians, the Mantineians were allowed to occupy 
the right wing or post of honor, “ because the battle was fought in their 
territory,” (Thucyd. vy, 67.) Lastly, the deme Aphidnz also belonged to 
the tribe Zantis (see Boeckh, 1. c.): now the polemarch Kallimachus was 
an Aphidnzan (Herodot. vi, 109), and Herodotus expressly tells us, “ the 
law or custom then stood among the Athenians, that the polemarch should 
have the right wing,” — ὁ γὰρ νόμος τότε εἶχε οὕτω τοῖσι ᾿Αϑηναίοισι, τὸν 
πολέμαρχον ἔχειν κέρας τὸ δέξιον (vi, 111). Where the polemarch stood, 
there his tribe would be likely to stand: and the language of Herodotus 
indeed seems directly to imply that he identifies the tribe of the polemarch 
with the polemarch himself, — ἡγεομένου dé τούτου, ἐξεδέκοντο ὡς ἀριϑμέοντο 
ai φυλαὶ, ἐχόμεναι GAAjAwY,—meaning that the order of tribes began by 
that of the polemarch being in the leading position, and was then “ taken 
up” by the rest “in mumerical sequence,” —?. e.in the order of their pry 
tanizing sequence for the year. 

Here are a concurrence of reasons to explain why the tribe Hantis had 
the right wing at the battle of Marathon, even though it may not have 
been first in the order of prytanizing tribes for the year. 3oeckh, there- 
fre, is not warranted in inferring the second of these two facts from the 
first. 

T=s concurrence of these three reasons, all in favor of the same con- 
elusion, and all independent of the reason supposed by Boeckh, appears te 
me to have great weight; but I regard the first of the three, even sirgly 
taken, as more probuble than his reasor If my view of the case be cor 


rARDY ASSISTANCE FROM THE SPARTANS. 361 


day of their march,—a surprising effort, when we consider that 
the total distance from Sparta to Athens was about one hundred 


rect, the sixth day of Boédromion, the day of battle as given by Plutarch, 
is not to be called in question. That day comes in the second prytany of 
the year, which begins about the sixth of Metageitnion, and ends about 
the twelfth of Boédromion, and which must in this year have fallen to the 
lot of the tribe Mantis. On the first or second day of Boédromion, the 
vote for marching out the army may have passed; on the sixth the battle 
was fought ; both during the prytany of this tribe. 

I am not prepared to carry these reasons farther than the particular case 
-f the battle of Marathon, and the vindication of the day of that battle as 
stated by Plutarch; nor would I apply them to later periods, such as the 
Peloponnesian war. It is certain that the army regulations of Athens were 
considerably modified between the battle of Marathon and the Pelopon- 
nesian war, as wellin other matters as in what regards the polemarch ; 
and we have not sufficient information to enable us to determine whether 
ia that later period the Athenians followed any known or perpetual rule in 
the battle-order of the tribes. Military considerations, connected with the 
state of the particular army serving, must have prevented the constant ob- 
servance of any rule: thus we can hardly imagine that Nikias, command- 
‘ng the army before Syracuse, could have been tied down to any invariable 
order of battle among the tribes to which his hoplites belonged. More- 
over, the expedition against Syracuse lasted more than one Attic year: can 
it be believed that Nikias, on receiving information from Athens of the 
sequence in which the prytanies of the tribes had been drawn by lot during 
the second year of his expedition, would be compelled to marshal his army 
‘n a new battle-order conformably to it? As the military operations of 
the Athenians became more extensive, they would find it necessary to leave 
such dispositions more and more to the general serving in every particular 
It may well be doubted whether during the Peloponnesian 


campaign. 
established rule was observed in marshalling the tribes for 


war any 
battle. 
One great motive which induces critics to maintain that the battle was 


‘ought in the Athenian month Metageitnion, is, that that month coincides 
with the Spartan month Karneius. so that the refusal of the Spartans to 
march before the full moon, is construed to apply only to the peculiar sanc- 
tity of this last-mentioned month, instead of being a constant rule for the 
whole year. I perfectly agree with these critics, that the answer, given by 
the Spartans to the courier Pheidippidés, cannot be held to prove a regular, 
invuriable Spartan maxim, applicable throughout the whole year, not to 
begin a march in the second quarter of the moon: very possibly, as Boeckh 
remarks, there may have been some festival impending during the particu 
lar month in question, upon which the Spartan refusal to march was 
founded. But no inference can be deduced from hence to disprove the sixth 


VOL. IV. 16 


352 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


and fifty miles. ‘They did not arrive, however, until the battie 
had been fought, and the Persians departed ; but curiosity led 
them to the field of Marathon to behold the dead bodies of the 
Persians, after which they returned home, bestowing well- merited 
praise on the victors. 

Datis and Artaphernés returned across the AZgean with their 
EF retrian prisoners to Asia ; stopping for a short time at the island 
of Mykonos, where discovery was made of a gilt image of Apollo 
carried off as booty in a Phenician ship. Datis went himself to 
restore it to Délos, requesting the Delians to carry it back io the 
Delium, or tempie of Apollo, on the eastern coast of Boeotia: 
the Delians, however, chose to keep the statue until it was re- 
claimed from them twenty years afterwards by the Thebans. On 
reaching Asia, the Persian generals conducted their prisoners up 
to the court of Susa, and into the presence of Darius. Though 
he had been vehemently incensed against them, yet when he 
saw them in his power, his wratn abated, and he manifested ne 
desire to kill or harm them. They were planted at a spot called 
Arderikka, in the Kissian territory, one of the resting-places on 
the road from Sardis to Susa, and about twenty-six miles distant 
from the latter place: Herodotus seems himself to have seen 
their descendants there on his journey between the two capitals, 


of Boédromion as the day of the battle of Marathon: for though the months 
of every Grecian city were professedly lunar, yet they never coincided with 
each other exactly or long together, because the systems of intercalation 
adopted in different cities were different: there was great irregularity and 
confusion (Plutarch, Aristeidés, c. 19; Aristoxenus, Harmon. ii, p. 30 
compare also K. F. Hermann, Ueber die Griechische Monatskunde, p. τὸ 
27. Gottingen, 1844; and Boeckh, ad Corp. Inscript. t. i, p. 734). 

Granting, therefore, that the answer given by the Spartans to Pheidip 
pidés is to be construed, not as a general rule applicable to the whole year 
but as referring to the particular month in which it was given, — no infer- 
ence can be drawn from hence as to the day of the battle of Marathon, 
because either one of the two following suppositions is possible: 1. The 
Spartans may have had solemnities on the day of the full moon, or on the 
duy before it, in other months besides Karneius; 2. Or the full moon of tha 
Spartan Karneius may actually have fallen, in the year 490 B.c., on the 
fifth or sixth of the Attic month Boédromion. 

Dr. Thirlwall appears to adopt the view of Boeckh, but does not add 
anything material to the reasons in its favor (Hist. of Gr. vol. ii, Append 


Hii, p. 488). 


SUBSEQUENT CONDUCT OF MILTIADES. 363 


and to have had the satisfaction of talking to them in Greek, — 
which we may well conceive to have made some impression upon 
him, at a spot distant by nearly three months’ journey from the 


coast of Ionia.! 

Happy would it have been for Miltiadés if he had shared the 
honorable death of the polemarch Kallimachus, — “ animam 
exhalasset opimam,”— in seeking to fire the ships of the defeated 
Persians at Marathon. The short sequel of his history will be 
found in melancholy contrast with the Marathonian heroism. 

His reputation had been great before the battle, and after it 
the admiration and confidence of his countrymen knew no 
bounds: it appears, indeed, to have reached such a pitch that 
his head was turned, and he lost both his patriotism and his 
prudence. He proposed to his countrymen to incur the cost 
of equipping an armament of seventy ships, with an adequate 


them no intimation whither he intended to go, but merely assur- 
ing them that, if they would follow him, he would eonduct them 
to a land where gold was abundant, and thus enrich them. Such 
a promise, from the lips of the recent victor of Marathon, was 


{ 


.dés knowing what was its destination. He sailed immediately 
he island cf Paros, laid siege to the town, and sent in a 


1 Herodot. vi, 119. Darius — σφεας τῆς Κισσίης χώρης κατοίκισε ἐν 
σταϑμῷ éwitod τῷ οὔνομα ᾿Αρδέρικκα --- évbaita τοὺς ᾿Ερετριέας Karoixine 
Δαρεῖος, οἱ καὶ μέχρι ἐμέο εἶχον τὴν χώρην ταύτην, φυλάσσοντες τὴν ἀρχαίεν 
γλῶσσαν. The meaning of the word σταϑμὸς is explained by Herodot. w, 
52. σταϑμὸς ἑωῦτοῦ is the same as σταϑμὸς βασιληΐος : the particulars 
which Herodotus recounts about Arderikka, and its remarkable well, or pit 
of bitumen, salt, and oil, give every reason to believe that he had himself 
stopped there. 

Strabo places the captive Eretrians in Gordyéné, which would be con 
tiderably higher up the Tigris; upon whose authority, we do not know 
Strabo, xv, p. 747). | 

The many particulars which are given respecting the descendants ot 
these Eretrians in Kissia, by Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius of 
'yana, as they are alleged to have stood even in the first century of the 
Vhristian era, cannot be safely quoted. With all the fiction there con- 
tained, some truth may perhaps be mingled ; but we cannot discriminate if 


{Philostratus, Vit. Apollon. i, c. 24-30). 


864 HISTURY OF GREECE. 


herald to require from the inhabitants a contribution of one 
hundred talents, on pain of entire destruction. His pretence for 
this attack was, that the Parians had furnished a trireme to Datis 
for the Persian fleet at Marathon; but his real motive, so 
Herodotus assures us,! was vindictive animosity against a Parian 
citizen named Lysagoras, who had exasperated the Persian gat 
eral Hydarnés against him. The Parians amused him at first 
with evasions, until they had procured a little delay to repair the 
defective portions of their wall, after which they set him at 
defiance; and Miltiadés in vain prosecuted hostilities against 


them for the space of twenty-six days: he ravaged the island, 
but his attacks made no impression upon the town.2 Beginning 
to despair of suecess in his military operations, he entered into 


some negotiation-—such at least was the tale of the Parians 
themselves — with a Parian woman named Timd, priestess or 
attendant in the temple of Démétér, near the town-gates. This 
woman, promising to reveal to him a secret which would place 
Paros in his power, induced him to visit by night a temple to 
which no male person was admissible. He leaped the exterior 
fence, and approached the sanctuary; but on coming near, was 
seized with a panic terror and ran away, almost out of his senses: 
on leaping the same fence to get back, he strained or bruised his 
thigh badly, and became utterly disabled. In this melancholy 
state he was placed on ship-board; the siege being raised, and 
the whole armament returning to Athens. 

Vehement was the indignation both of the armament and of 


the remaining Athenians against Miltiadés on his return;* and 


! Herodot. vi, 132. ἔπλεε ἐπὶ Πάρον, πρόφασιν ἔχων ὡς of Πώριοι ὕπηρξαν 
πρότεροι στρατευόμενοι tpinpet ἐς Μαραϑῶνα ἅμα τῷ Πέρσῃ. Τοῦτο per 
δὴ πρόσχημα τοῦ λόγου ἣν" ἀτάρ τινα καὶ ἔγκοτον εἶχε τοῖσι Παρίοισι διὰ 
Δυσαγόρεα τὸν Τισίεω, ἐόντα γένος Ilapiov, διαβαλόντα μιν πρὸς Ὑδάρνεα 
.ov Πέρσην. 

3 Ephorus (Fragm. 107, ed. Didot; ap. Stephan. Byz. v, Πάρος) gave an 
account of this expedition in several points different from Herodotus, 
which latter I here follow. The authority of Herodotus is preferable in 
every respect ; the more so, since Ephorus gives his narrative as a sort of 
explanation of the peculiar phrase ἀναπαριάζειν. Explanatory narratives 
of that sort are usually little worthy of attention. 

3 Herodot. vi, 136. ᾿Αϑηναῖοι δὲ ἐκ Πάρου Μιλτιάδεα ἀπονοστήσαντά 


ἐὥχον ἐν στόμασι, οἱ τε ἄλλοι, καὶ μάλιστα Ξάνϑιππος ὁ ᾿Αρίφρονος" 4 


SUBSEQUENT CONDUCT OF MILTIADES. 365 


Xanthippus, father of the great Periklés, became the spokesman 
of this feeling. He impeached Miltiadés before the popular 
judicature as having been guilty of deceiving the people, and as 
having deserved the penalty of death. The accused himself, 
disabled by his injured thigh, which even began to show symp- 
toms of gangrene, was unable to stand, or to say a word in his 
own defence: he lay on his couch before the assembled judges, 
while his friends made the best case they could in his behalf. 
Defence, it appears, there was none; all they could do, was to 
appeal to his previous services : they reminded the people largely 
and emphatically of the inestimable exploit of Marathon, coming 
in addition to his previous conquest of Lemnos. The assembled 
dikasts, or jurors, showed their sense of these powerful appeals 
by rejecting the proposition of his accuser to condemn him to 
death; but they imposed on him the penalty of fifty talents “for 
his iniquity.” 

Cornelius Nepos affirms that these fifty talents represented the 
expenses incurred by the state in fitting out the armament; but 
we may more probably believe, looking to the practice of the 
Athenian dikastery in criminal cases, that fifty talents was th< 


Yavarov ὑπαγαγὼν ὑπὸ τὸν δῆμον Μιλτιάδεα, ἐδίωκε τῆς ᾿Αϑηναίων ἀπάτη; 
εἵνεκεν. Μιλτιάδης δὲ, αὐτὸς μὲν παρεῶν, οὐκ ἀπελογέετο" ἦν γὰρ ἀδύνα- 
τος, ὥστε σηπομένου τοῦ μηροῦ. Προκειμένου δὲ αὐτοῦ ἐν κλίνῃ, ὑπερ- 
απολογέοντο οἱ φιλοι, τῆς μάχης τε τῆς ἐν Μαραϑῶνι γενομένης πολλὰ ἐπι- 
μεμνημένοι, καὶ τὴν Λήμνου αἵρεσιν" ὡς ἑλὼν Λῆμνόν τε καὶ τισάμενος τοὺς 
Πελασγοὺς, παρέδωκε ᾿Αϑηναίοισι. ἹΠροσγένομενου δὲ τοῦ δήμου αὐτῷ κατὰ 
τὴν ἀπόλυσιν τοῦ ϑανάτου, ζημεώσαντος δὲ κατὰ τὴν ἀδικίην πεντήκοντα 
ταλάντοισι, Μιλτιάδης μὲν μετὰ ταῦτα, σφακελίσαντός τε τοῦ μηροῦ καὶ 
σαπέντος, τελευτᾷ" τὰ δὲ πεντήκοντα τῴάλαντα ἐξέτισεν ὁ πάϊς αὐτοῦ Κίμων. 

Plato (Gorgias, c. 153, p. 516) says that the Athenians passed a vote to 
east Miltiadés into the barathrum (ἐμιϑαλεῖν ἐψηφίσαντο), and that he 
would have been actually thrown in, if it had not been for the prytanis, ἡ. ¢ 
the president, by turn for that day, of the prytanizing senators and of the 
ekklesia. The prytanis may perhaps have been among those who spoke 
to the dikastery on behalf of Miltiadés, deprecating the proposition made 
by Xanthippus ; but that he should have caused a vote once passed to be 
actually rescinded, is incredible. The Scholiast on Aristeidés (cited by 
Valckenzr ad Herodot. vi, 136) reduces the exaggeration of Plato te 
something more reasonable —"Ore γὰρ ἐκρίνετο Μιλτιάδης ἐπὶ τῇ Mapy, 
ἠθέλησαν αὐτὸν κατακρηωνίσαι" ὁ δὲ πρύτανις εἰσελϑὼν ἐξῃτήσατε 
αὐτόν 


--- “““-- ταῦ ——_— 
ea τς 


— = 
ee 
- 


SN eee tl le αἱ 


an 
_——— 


— «ὦν 
— 


366 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


minor penalty a tually proposed by the defenders of Miltiadés 
themselves, as a substitute for the punishment of death. Ir 
those penal cases at Athens, where the punishment was not fixed 
beforehand by the terms of the law, if the person accused was 
found guilty, it was customary to submit to the jurors, subse- 
quently and separately, the question as to amount of punishment: 
first, the accuser named the penalty which he thought suitable ; 


next, the accused person was called upon to name an amount of 


penalty for himself, and the jurors were cons rained to take their 


choice between these two,—no third gradation of penalty being 
ndmissible for consideration.) Of course, under such circum- 

! That this was the habitual course of Attic procedure in respect to pub- 
lic indictments, wherever a positive amount of penalty was not previously 
determined, appears certain. See Platner, Prozess und Klagen bei den 
Attikern, Abschn. vi, vol. i, p. 201; Heffter, Die Athenaische Gerichtsver- 
fussung, p. 334. Meier and Schomann (Der Attische Prozess, Ὁ. IV, Pp. 725) 
maintain that any one of the dikasts might propose a third measure of pen- 

lty, distinet from that proposed by the accuser as well as the accused. In 
respect to public indictments, this opinion appears decidedly incorrect ; but 
where the sentence to be pronounced involved a compensation for private 
wrong and an estimate of damages, we cannot so clearly determine whether 
there was not sometimes a greater latitude in originating propositions for 
the dikasts to vote upon. It is to be recollected that these dikasts were 
several hundred, sometimes even more, in number, —that there was no dis- 
cussion or deliberation among them, — and that it was absolutely necessary 
for some distinct proposition to be laid before them to take a vote upon. In 
reeard to some offences, the law expressly permitted what was called a 
<poeriitape ; that is, after the dikasts had pronounced the full penalty de- 
manded by the accuser, any other citizen who thought the penalty 80 
imposed insufficient. might call for a certain limited amount of additional 
penalty, and require the dikasts to vote upon it,—ay or no. The votes οἱ 
the dikasts were given, by depositing pebbles in two casks, under certain 
arrangements of detail. 

The ἀγὼν τιμητὺς, δίκη τιμητὸς, or trial including this separate admeas- 
urement of penalty,—as distinguished from the δίκη ἀτίμητος, OF trial 
where the penalty was predetermined, and where was no τίμησις, ΟΥ vote ot 
admeasurement of penalty,—is an important line cf distinction in the 
subject-matter of Attic procedure; and the practice of calling on the 
accused party, after having been pronounced guilty, to impose upon himself 
& esunter-penalty or under -penalty (ἀντιτιμᾶσϑαι or ὑποτιμᾶσϑαι) in contrast 
with that named by the accuser, was a convenient expedient for bringing 
the question to a substantive vote of the dikasts. Sometimes accused per 
sons found it convenient to name very large penalties on themselves, m@ 


FINE IMPOSED ON MILTIADES. 367 


stances, it was the interest of the accused party to name, even in 
his own case, some real and serious penalty,— something which 
the jurors might be likely to deem not wholly inadequate to his 
crime just proved; for if he proposed some penalty only trifling, 
he drove them to prefer the heavier sentence recommended by 
his opponent. Accordingly, in the case of Miltiadés, his friends, 
lesirous of iadacing the jurors to refuse their assent to the 
punishment of death, proposed a fine of fifty talents as the self- 
assessed penalty of the defendant; and perhaps they may have 
stated, as an argument in the case, that such a sum would suffice 
to defray the costs of the expedition. The fine was imposed, but 
Miltiadés did not live to pay it- his injured limb mortified, and 
he died, leaving the fine to be paid by his son Kimon. 
According to Cornelius Nepos, Diodorus, and Plutarch, he was 
put in prison, after having been fined, and there died.’ But 


order to escape a capital sentence invoked by the accuser (see Démosthen. 
cont. Timokrat. c. 34, p. 743, R). Nor was there any fear, as Platner 
imagines, that in the generality of cases the dikasts would be left under 
the necessity of choosing between an extravagant penalty and something 
merely nominal; for the interest of the accused party himself would pre- 
vent this from happening. Sometimes we see him endeavoring by entreaties 
to prevail upon the accuser voluntarily to abate something of the penalty 
which he had at first named; and the accuser might probably do this, if he 
saw that the dikasts were not likely to go along with that first proposition. 
In one particular case, of immortal memory, that which Platner contem- 
plates actually did happen; and the death of Sokratés was the effect of it. 
Sokratés, having been found guilty, only by a small majority of votes 
among the dikasts, was called upon to name a penalty upon himself, in 
opposition to chat of death, urged by Melétus. He was in vain entreated hy 
his friends to name a fine of some tolerable amount, which they would at 
once have paid in his behalf; but he would hardly be prevailed upon to 
name any penalty at all, affirming that he had deserved honor rather than 
punishment: at last, he named a fine so small in amount, as to be really 
tantamount to an acquittal. Indeed, Xenophon states that he would not 
lame any eounter-penalty at all; and in the speech ascribed to him, he con- 
tended that 1e had even merited the signal honor of a public maintenance 
in the prytaneium (Plato, Apol Sok. c. 27; Xenoph. Apol. Sok. 23; 
Diogen. Laért. ii, 41). Plato and Xenophon do not agree; but taking the 
two together, it would seem that he must have named a very small fine. 
There can be little doubt that this circumstance. together with the tenor of 
his defence, caused the dikasts to vote for the proposition of Mel tus. 
Cornelius Nepos, Miltiadés, c. 7; and Kimon, c.1 ; Plutarch, Kimon, e 


868 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Herodotus dves not mention this imprisonment, and the tac 
appears to me improbable: he would hardly have omitted te 
notice it, had it come to his knowledge. Immediate imprisor 
ment of a person fined by the dikastery, until his fine was paid, 


was not the natural and ordinary course of Athenian procedure, 
though there were particular cases in which such aggravation 
was added. Usually, a certain time was allowed for payment,! 
before absolute execution was resorted to, but the person under 
sentence became disfranchised and excluded from all political 
rights, from the very instant of his condemnation as a public 
debtor, until the fine was paid. Now in the instance of Milti- 
adés, the lamentable condition of his wounded thigh rendered 


4; Diodorus, Fragment. lib. x. All these authors probably drew from the 
same original fountain; perhaps Ephorus (see Marx ad Ephori Fragmenta, 
p. 212); but we have no means of determining. Respecting the alleged 
imprisonment of Kimon, however, they must have copied from different 
authorities, for their statements are all different. Diodorus states, that 
Kimn put himself voluntarily into prison after his father had died there, 
because he was not permitted on any other condition to obtain the body of 
his deceased father for burial. Cornelius Nepos affirms that he was impris- 
oned, as being legally liable to the state for the unpaid fine of his father. 
Lastly, Plutarch does not represent him as having been put into prison at 
all. Many of the Latin writers follow the statement of Diodorus: see the 
citations in Bos’s note on the above passage of Cornelius Nepos. 

There can be no hesitation in adopting the account of Plitarch as the 
true one. Kimon neither was, nor could be, in prison, by the Attic law, 
for an unpaid fine of his father; but after his father’s death, he became liable 
for the fine, in this sense,— that he remained disfranchised (ariwoc) and 
excluded from his rights as a citizen, until the fine was paid : see Démosthen. 
cont. Timokrat. c. 46, p. 762, R. 

‘See Boeckh, Public Economy of Athens, Ὁ. iii, ch. 13, p. 390, Engl 
Transl. (vol.i, p. 420, Germ.); Meier und Schémann, Attisch. Prozess, p. 
744. Dr. Thirlwall takes a different view of this point, with which I cannot 
concur (Hist. Gr. vol. iii, Append. ii, p. 488); though his general remarks 
on the trial of Miltiadés are just and appropriate (ch. xiv, p. 273). 

Cornelius Nepos | Miltiadés, c. 8; Kimon, c. 3) says that the misconduct 
connected with Paros was only a pretence with the Athenians for punishing 
Miltiad¢s; their real motive, he affirms, was envy and fear, the same feel- 
ings which dictated the ostracism of Kimon. How little there is to justify 
this fancy, may be seen even from the nature of the punishment inflicted. 
Fear would have prompted them to send away or put to death Miltiadés, 
not to fine him. The ostracism, which was dictated by fear, was a tempo 
rary banishment. 


MILTIADES DIES OF HIS WOUND. 369 


escape impossible, — so that there would be no special motive for 
departing from the usual practice, and imprisoning him forth- 
with: moreover, if he was not imprisoned forthwith, he woud 
not be imprisoned at all, since he cannot have lived many days 
atter his trial! To carry away the suffering general in his 
couch, incapable of raising himself even to plead for his own 
life, from the presence of the dikasts toa prison, would not only 
have been a needless severity, but could hardly have failed to 
imprint itself on the sympathies and the memory of all the be- 
holders ; so that Herodotus would have been likely to hear and 
mention it, if it had really occurred. I incline to believe there- 
fore that Miltiadés died at home: all accounts concur in stating 
that he died of the mortal bodily hurt which already disabled 
him even at the moment of his trial, and that his son Kimon paid 
the fifty talents after his death. If he could pay them, probably 
his father could have paid them also. And this is an additional 
reason for believing that there was no imprisonment, — for noth- 
ing but non-payment could have sent him to prison; and to 
rescue the suffering Miltiadés from being sent thither, would have 
been the first and strongest desire of all sympathizing friends. 
Thus closed the life of the conqueror of Marathon. The last 
act of it produces an impression so mournful, and even shocking, 
— his descent from the pinnacle of glory to defeat, mean tam- 
pering with a temple-servant, mortal bodily hurt, undefended 
ignominy, and death under a sentence of heavy fine, is so abrupt 
and unprepared, — that readers, ancient and modern, have not 
been satisfied without finding some one to blame for it: we must 
except Herodotus, our original authority, who recounts the trans- 
action without dropping a single hint of blame against any one 
To speak ill of the people, as Machiavel has long ago observed,« 
is a strain in which every one at all times, even under a demo- 
cratical government, indulges with impunity and without provok- 


' The interval between his trial and his decease is expressed in Herodotus 
(vi, 136) by the difference between the present participle σηπομένου and the 
past participle σαπέντος τοῦ μηροῦ. 

* Machiavel, Discorsi sopra Tito Livio, cap. δὅ8. “ΤΡ Opinione contro ai 
popoli nasce, perché dei popoli ciascun dice male senza paura, e liberamente 
ancora mentre che regnano: dei principi si parla sempre con mille timori ¢ 
mille rispetti.” 

VOL. IV. 16* 240C. 


-_ - -- τὰν. 


- . 


370 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


ing any opponent to reply ; and in this instance, the hard fa‘e of 


Miltiadés has been imputed to the vices of the Athenians and 


their democracy, — it has been cited in proof, partly of their 


fickleness, partly of their ingratitude. But however such blame 
may serve to lighten the mental sadness arising from a series of 
painful facts, it will not be found justified if we apply to those 
facts a reasonable criticism. | : . 
What is called the fickleness of the Athenians on this occasion 


is nothing more than a rapid and decisive change in their estima. 
5. ΤῸ σ᾽ me 


tion οἵ Miltiadés; unbounded admiration passing at once into 
extreme wrath. To censure them for fickleness is here an abuse 
of terms ; such a change in their opinion was the unavoidable 
result of his conduct. His behavior in the expedition of Paros 
was as reprehensible as at Marathon it had been meritorious, and 
the one succeeded immediately after the other: what else could 
ensue except an entire revolution in the Athenian feelings? He 
had employed his prodigious ascendency over their minds to In- 


duce them to follow him without knowing whither, in the confi- 
dence of an unknown booty: he had exposed their lives and 
wasted their substance in wreaking a private grudge: in addition 
‘o the shame of an unprincipled project, comes the constructive 


shame of not having succeeded in it. Without doubt, such be- 


“ Γ " ᾿ Ἰ sane et sy PeEKcR - 
havior, coming from a man whom they admired to excess, must 
produced a violent and painful revulsion in the feelings ot 
The idea of having lavished praise and confi- 


dence upon a person who forthwith turns it to an unworthy 


of the greatest torments of the human bosom ; 


have 
his countrymen. 


purpose, is one 
and we may well understand that the intensi 
displeasure would be aggravated by this reactionary sentiment, 
without accusing the Athenians of fickleness. If an officer, 


tv of the subsequent 


whose conduct has been such as to merit the highest encomiums, 
comes on a sudden to betray his trust, and manifests cowardice 
or treachery in a new and important undertaking confided to 
him, are we to treat the general in command as fickle, because 
his opinion as well as his conduct undergoes an instantaneous 
revolution, — which will be all the more vehement in proportion 
to his previous esteem? The question to be determined 1s, 
whether there be sifficient grour d for sucha change; δὶ in the 


THE ATHENIAN PEOPLE AND MILTILADES 37] 


case of Miltiadés, that question must be answered in the affirm 
ative. 

In regard to the charge of ingratitude against the Athenians. 
this last-mentioned point — sufficiency of reason — stands tacitly 
admitted. It is conceded that Miltiadés deserved punishment for 
his conduct in reference to the Parian expedition, but it is never- 
theless maintained that gratitude for his previous services at 
Marathon ought to have exempted him from punishment. But 
the sentiment upon which, after all, this exculpation rests, will 
not bear to be drawn out and stated in the form of a cogent or 
justifying reason. For will any one really contend, that a man 
who has rendered great services to the public, is to receive in 
return a license of unpunished misconduct for the future? Is the 
general, who has earned applause by eminent skill and important 
victories, to be recompensed by being allowed the liberty of be- 
traying his trust afterwards, and exposing his country to peril, 
without censure or penalty? ‘This is what no one intends to vin- 
dicate deliberately ; yet a man must be prepared to vindicate it, 
when he blames the Athenians for ingratitude towards Miltiadés. 
For if all that be meant is, that gratitude for previous services 
ought to pass, not as a receipt in full for subsequent crime, but as 
an extenuating circumstance in the measurement of the penalty, 
the answer is, that it was so reckoned in the Athenian treatment 
of Miltiades.!. His friends had nothing whatever to urge, against 


! Machiavel will not even admit so much as this, in the clear and forcible 
statement which he gives of the question here alluded to: he contends that 
the man who has rendered services ought to be recompensed for them, but 
that he ought to be punished for subsequent crime just as if the previous 
services had not been rendered. He lays down this position in discussing 
the conduct of the Romans towards the victorious survivor of the three 
Horatii, after the battle with the Curiatii: “ Erano stati imeriti di Orazio 
grandissimi avendo con la sua virtd vinti i Curiazi. Era stato il fallo suo 
atroce, avendo morto la sorella. Nondimeno dispiacque tanto tale omicidio 
ai Romani, che lo condussero a disputare della vita, non ostante che gli 
meriti suoi fussero tanto grandi e si freschi. La qual cosa, a chi superficial 
mente la considerasse, parrebbe uno esempio d’ ingratitudine popolare. 
Nondimeno chi lo esaminera meglio, e con migliore considerazione ricer- 
thera quali debbono essere gli’ ordini delle republiche, biasimeara quel 
popolo piuttosto per averlo assoluto, che per averlo voluto condannare: 6 
a ragione ὁ questa, che nessuna republica bene ordinata, non mai cancelle¢ 


372 HISTORY OF GREECY. 


the extreme penalty proposed by his accuser, except these pre 
vious services, —- which influenced the dikasts sufficiently to ins 
duce them to inflict the lighter punishment instead of the heavier. 
Now the whole amount of punishment inflicted consisted in 8 
fine which certainly was not beyond his reasonable means of 
paying, or of prevailing upon friends to pay for him, since his 
son Kimon actually did pay it. And those who blame the 
Athenians for ingratitude, — unless they are prepared to maine 


£ 


tain the doctrine that previous services are to pass as full 80- 


quittal for future crime, — have no other ground left except to 
say that the fine was too high; that instead of being fifty talents, 
it ought to have been no more than forty, thirty, twenty, or 
ten talents. Whether they are right in this, I will not take 
upon me to pronounce. If the amount was named on behalf of 


the accused party, the dikastery had no legal power of diminish- 
ing it; but ‘t is within such narrow limits that the question actu- 
ally lies, when transferred from the province of sentiment to that 
of penson: It will be recollected that the death of Miltiadés arose 
neither from his trial nor his fine, but from the hurt in his thigh. 

The charge of ingratitude against the Athenian popular juries 
really amounts to this, — that, in trying a person accused of pres- 
ent crime or fault, they were apt to confine themselves too 
strictly and exclusively to the particular matter of charge, either 
forgetting, or making too little account of, past services which he 
might have rendered. Whoever imagines that such was the 
habit of Athenian dikasts, must have studied the orators to very 
little purpose. Their real defect was the very opposite : they 
were too much disposed to wander from the special issue before 
them. and to be affected by appeals to previous services and con: 


i demeriti con gli meriti dei suoi cittadini: ma avendo ordinati i premi ad 
una buona opera, 6 le pene ad una eattiva, ed avendo premiato uno pe? 
quel medesimo opera dipoi male, lo gastiga senza 


aver bene operato, 56 
E quando questi ordini sono 


avere riguardo alcuno alle sue buone opere. 
bene osservati, una citta vive libera molto tempo: altrimenti sempre rovi- 
nera presto. Perché se, ad un cittadino che abhna fatto qualche egregia opera 
per la citta, si aggrunge oltre alla ripucazione, che quella cosa gli arreca, una au 
dacia e confidenza di potere senza temer pena, far qualche opera non buona, ds 
venterd in breve tempo tanto insolente, che st risolvera. ogn cwilta.” — Machiared 
Discorsi sop. Tit Livio, ch. 24. 


Vol I 4 L 


DISPOSITIUNS OF THE DIKASTERY. 373 


duct.! That which an accused person at Athens ustally strives 
to produce is, an impression in the minds of the dikasts fa\ orable 
to his general character and behavior. Of course, he meets the 
particular allegation of his accuser as well as he can, but he 
never fails also to remind them emphatically, how well he has 
performed his general duties of a citizen, — how inany times he 
lias served in military expedit’ons, — how many trierarchies and 
liturgies he has performed, and performed with splendid eff- 
ciency. In fact, the claim of an accused person to acquittal is 
made to rest too much on his prior services, and too little upon 
innocence or justifying matter as to the particular indictment. 
When we come down to the time of the orators, I shall be pre- 
pared to show that such indisposition to confine themselves to a 
special issue was one of the most serious defects of the assem- 
bled dikasts at Athens. It is one which we should naturally 
expect from a body of private, non-professional citizens assem- 
bled for the occasion, and which belongs more or less to the 
system of jury-trial everywhere ; but it is the direct reverse of 
that ingratitude, or habitual insensibility to prior services, for 
which they have been so often denounced. 

The fate of Miltiadés, then, so far from illustrating either the 
fickleness or the ingratitude of his countrymen, attests their just 
appreciation of deserts. It also illustrates another moral, of no 
small importance to the right comprehension of Grecian affairs ; 
it teaches us the painful lesson, how perfectly maddening were 
the effects of a copious draught of glory on the temperament of 
an enterprising and ambitious Greek. There can be no doubt, 


' Machiavel, in the twenty-ninth chapter of his Discorsi sopra T. Livio, 
examines the question, “ Which of the two is more open to the charge of 
being ungrateful, — a popular government, or a king?” He thinks that the 
latter is more open to it. Compare chapter fifty-nine of the same work, 
where he again supports a similar opinion. 

M. Sismondi also observes, in speaking of the long attachment of the 
city of Pisa to the cause of the emperors and to the Ghibelin party: “ Pise 
montra dans plus d’une occasion, par sa constance a supporter la cause des 
empereurs au milieu des revers, combien la reconnoissance lie un peuple 
libre d’une manitre plus puissante et plus durable qu’elle ne sauroit lier le 
peuple gouverné par un seul homme’ (Histoire des Républ. Italiennaa 
eh xiii, tom. ii, p. 302.) 


974 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


that the rapid transition, in the course of about one week, from 
Athenian terror before the battle to Athenian exultation after it, 
must have produced demonstrations towards Miltiadés such 88 
were never paid towards any other man in the whole history of 
the commonwealth. Such unmeasured admiration unseated his 
rational judgment, so that his mind became abandoned to the 
reckless impulses of insolence, and antipathy, and rapacity ;— 
that distempered state, for which (according to Grecian morality) 
the retributive Nemesis was ever on the wateh, and which, in 
his case, she visited with a judement startline in its rapidity, as 
well as terrible in its amount. Had Miltiadés been the same 


man before the battle of Marathon as he became after it. the bat- 
tle might probably have turned out a defeat instead of a victory. 
Démosthenés, indeed,! in speaking of the wealth and luxury of 
political leaders in his own time. and the profuse rewards be- 
stowed upon them by the people, pointed in contrast to the house 
of Miltiadés as being noway more splendid than that of a private 
man. But though Miltiadés might continue to live in a modest 
establishment, he received from his countrymen marks of admi- 
ration and deference such as were never paid to any citizen be- 
fore or after him; and, after all, admiration and deference consti- 
tute the precious essence of popular reward. No man except 
Miltiadés ever dared to raise his voice in the Athenian assembly, 
and say: “ Give me a fleet of ships : do not ask what I am poing 
to do with them, but only follow me, and I will enrich lt 
Herein we may read the unmeasured confidence which the Athe- 
nians placed in their victorious general, and the utter incapacity 
of a leading Greek to bear it without mental depravation ; while 
we learn from it to draw the melancholy inference, that one re- 
sult of success was to make the successful leader one of the most 
dangerous men in the community. We shall presently be called 
upon to observe the same tendency in the case of the Spartan 
Pausanias, and even in that of the Athenian Themistoklés. It 
is, indeed, fortunate that the reckless aspirations of Miltiadés did 
bot take a turn more noxious to Athens than the comparatively 
amimportant enterprise against Paros. For had he sought to 


Require dominion and gratify antipathies against enemies at 


-»-................. ΜΝ ω 
.---- a 


' Démosthenés, Olynth. iii, c. 9, p. 35, R 


LEADING GREEKS CORRUPTED BY SUCCESS. KP 
. 


home, instead of directing his blow against a Parian enemy, the 
peace and security of his country might have been serious} 
endangered. 

Of the despots who gained power in Greece, a considerable 
proportion began by popular conduct, and by rendering good ser- 
vice to their fellow-citizens: having first earned public gratitude, 
they abused it for purposes of their own ambition. There was 
far greater danger, in a Grecian community, of dangerous excess 
of gratitude towards a victorious soldier, than of deficiency in 
that sentiment: hence the person thus exalted acquired a position 
such that the community found it difficult afterwards to shake 
him off. Now there is a disposition almost universal among 
writers and readers to side with an individual, especially an emi- 
nent individual, against the multitude; and accordingly those 
who under such circumstances suspect the probable abuse of an 
‘xalted position, are denounced as if they harbored an unworthy 
ealousy of superior abilities. But the truth is, that the largest 
analogies of the Grecian character justified that suspicion, and 
required the community to take precautions against the corrupt- 
ing effects of their own enthusiasm. There is no feature which 
more largely pervades the impressible Grecian character, than a 
liability to be intoxicated and demoralized by success: there was 
no fault from which so few eminent Greeks were free : there was 
hardly any danger, against which it was at once so necessary 
and so difficult for the Grecian governments to take security, — 
especially the democracies, where the manifestations of enthu- 
siasm were always the loudest. Such is the real explanation of 
those charges which have been urged against the Grecian de- 
mocracies, that they came to hate and ill-treat previous benefac- 
tors; and the history of Miltiadés illustrates it in a manner no 
less pointed than painful. 

I have already remarked that the fickleness, which has been 
so largely imputed to the Athenian democracy in their dealings 
with him, is nothing more than a reasonable change of opinion 
on the best grounds. Nor can it be said that fickleness was in 
any case an attribute of the Athenian democracy. It is a well 
known fact, that feelings, or opinions, or modes of judging, which 

have once obtained footing among a large number of people, are 
more lasting and unchangeable than those which belong only ts 


876 HISTORY OF GREECE 


one or a few; insomuch that the judgmen:s and «ctions of the 
many admit of being more clearly understood as to the past, and 
more certainly predicted as to the future. If we are to predicate 
any attribute of the multitude, it will rather be that of undue 
tenacity than undue fickleness ; and there will occur nothing in 
the course of this history to prove that the Athenian people 
changed their opinions on insufficient grounds more frequently 
than an unresponsible one or few would have changed. 

But there were two cireumstarces in the working of the 
Athenian democracy which imparted to it an appearance of 
greater fickleness, without the reality: First, that the manifesta 
tions and changes of opinion were all open, undisguised, and 
noisy: the people gave utterance to their present impression, 
whatever it was, with perfect frankness; if their opitions were 
really changed, they had no shame or scruple in ayvewing it. 
Secondly,—and this is a point of capital importanee in the 
working of democracy generally, — the present impression, what- 
ever it might be, was not merely undisguised in its manifestations, 
but also had a tendency to be exaggerated in its intensity. This 
arose from their habit of treating public affairs in multitudinous 
assemblages, the well-known effect of which is, to inflame senti- 
ment in every man’s bosom by mere contact with a sympathizing 
circle of neighbors. Whatever the sentiment might be, — fear, 
ambition, cupidity, wrath, compassion, piety, patriotic devotion, 
etc,! — and whether well-founded or ill-founded, it was constantly 


' This is the general truth, which ancient authors often state, bath par- 
tially, and in exaggerated terms as to degree: “Hc est natura multitu- 
dinis (says Livy); aut humiliter servit aut superbe dominatur.” Again, 
Tacitus : “ Nihil in vulgo modicum ; terrere, ni paveant; ubi pertimuerint, 
impune contemni.” (Annal.i, 29.) Herodotus, iii, 81. ὠϑέει δὲ (ὁ δήωος) 
ἐμπεσὼν τὰ πρήγματα ἄνευ vod, χειμάῤῥῳ ποταμῷ ἴκελος, 

It is remarkable that Aristotle, in his Politica, takes little or no notice 
of this attribute belonging to every numerous assembly. He seems rather 
to reason as if the aggregate intelligence of the multitude was represented 
by the sum total of each man’s separate intelligence in all the individuals 
composing it (Polit. iii, 6, 4, 10, 12); just as the property of the multitude. 
taken collectively, would be greater than that of the few rich. He takes ne 
notice of the ditference between a number of individuals judging jointly 
and judging separately : 1 do not, indeed, observe that such omission leads 
him inio any positive mistake, but it occurs m some cases calculated 2 


FICKLENESS IMPUTED fC THE PEOPLE. 877 


influenced more or less by such intensifying cause. This is 8 
defect which of course belongs in a certain degree to all ΦΕΡΡΕΙ͂Ν 
of power by numerous bodies, even though they be SQ gaene™ 
bodies, — especially when the character of the people, instead o 
being comparatively sedate and slow to move, like the English, is 
quick, impressible, and fiery, like Greeks or Balan’. υἱῷ ν 
operated far more powerfully on the self-acting Démos assem - 
in the Pnyx. It was in fact the constitutional malady of the de- 
mocracy, of which the people were themselves perfectly sensible, 
—_as I shall show hereafter from the securities which they tried 
to provide against it, — but which no securities could ever ions 
eradicate. Frequency of public assemblies, far from aggravating 
the evil, had a tendency to lighten it. The people thus became 
accustomed to hear and balance many different views as a prelim- 
inary to ultimate judgment; they contracted personal interest 
and esteem for a numerous class of dissentient speakers ; ΜῊΝ 
they even acquired a certain practical consciousness of their own 
liability to error. Moreover, the diffusion οἵ habits of ΕΝ 
speaking, by means of the sophists and the rhetors, whom it ἊΝ 
been so much the custom to disparage, tended in the same direc 
tion, —to break the unity of sentiment among the listening 
crowd, to multiply separate judgments, and to nemenees: ὅνμ 
contagion of mere sympathizing impulse. These were ge SiR 
deductions, still farther assisted by the superior taste and intelli- 
gence of the Athenian people: but still, the inherent malady 
remained, — excessive and misleading intensity of present senti- 
ment. It was this which gave such inestimable value to the 
ascendency of Periklés, as depicted by Thucydidés : his me 
the people was so firm, that he could always speak Wig er 
against excess of the reigning tone of feeling. “ W wer , = 
(says the historian) saw the people in a state of unseasona ἡ 
and insolent confidence, he spoke so as to cow them into alarm ; 
when again they were in groundless terror, he combated it, 
brought them back to confidence.”! We shall find Démosthen 5 


; ai : . Ψ = i . to 
surprise us, and where the difference here adverted to is important 


notice: see Politic. iii, 10. 5, 6. i el 

‘ Thucyd. ii, 65. ποτε γοῦν αἴσϑοιτέ τι αὐτοὺς παρὰ καιρὸν ng 
ϑαρσοῦντας, λέγων κατέπλησσεν πάλιν ἐπὶ TO φοβεῖσϑαι " καὶ δεδ.5" ας 
ἀλυγως ἀντικαϑίστη πάλιν ἐπὶ τὸ ϑαρσεῖν. 


378 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


with far inferior ascendency, employed in the same honorable 
task: the Athenian people often stood in need of such correction, 
but unfortunately did not always find statesmen, at once friendly 
and commanding, to administer it. 

These two attributes, then, belonged to the Athenian democ- 
racy; first, their sentiments of every kind were manifested 
loudly and openly; next, their sentiments tended to a pitch of 
great present intensity. Of course, therefore, when they changed, 
the change of sentiment stood prominent, and forced itself upon 
every one’s notice,—- being a transition from one strong sentiment 
past to another strong sentiment present.' And it was because 
such alterations, when they did take place, stood out so palpably 
to remark, that the Athenian people have drawn upon themselves 
the imputation of fickleness: for it is not at all true, I repeat, 
that changes of sentiment were more frequently produced in 
them by frivolous or insufficient causes, than changes of senti- 
ment in other governments. 


CHAPTER AXAVII. 
IONIC PHILOSOPHERS.— PYTHAGORAS.—KROTON AND SYBARIS. 


Tue history of the powerful Grecian cities in Italy and Sicily, 
between the accession of Peisistratus and the battle of Marathon, 
is for the most part unknown to us. Phalaris, despot of Agn- 
gentum in Sicily, made for himself an unenviable name during 
this obscure interval. His reign seems to coincide in time with 
the earlier part of the rule of Peisistratus (about 560-540 B.C.), 


* Such: swing of the mind, from one intense feeling to another, is always 
deprecated by the Greek moralists, from the earliest to the latest: even 
Demokritus, in the fifth century B.c., admonishes against it,— Ai ἐκ peya 
λων διαστημάτων Kiveduevar τῶν ψυχῶν οὔτε εὐσταϑέες εἰσὶν, οὔτε εὔϑυμοι 
— Fragmenta, lib. iii, p. 168, ed. Mallach ap. Stobeum, Florileg 

40. 


PHALARIS, DESPOT OF AGRIGENTUM. $79 


and the few and vague statements which we find respecting it, 
merely show us that it was a period of extortion and cruelty, 
even beyond the ordinary license of Grecian despots. The 
reality of the hollow bull of brass, which Phalaris was accu» 
tomed to heat in order to shut up his victims in it and burn them, 
appears to be better authenticated than the nature of the story 
would lead us to presume: for it is not only noticed by Pindar, 
but even the actual instrument of this torture, the brazen bull 
itself,2 — which had been taken away from Agrigentum as 8 
trophy by the Carthaginians when they captured the town, was 
restored by the Romans, on the subjugation of Carthage, to its 
original domicile. Phalaris is said to have acquired the supreme 
command, by undertaking the task of building a great temple 3 
to Zeus Polieus on the citadel rock ; a pretence whereby he was 
enabled to assemble and arm a number of workmen and devoted 
partisans, whom he employed, at the festival of the Thesmophoria, 
to put down the authorities. He afterwards disarmed the citizens 
by a stratagem, and committed cruelties which rendered him so 
abhorred, that a sudden rising of the people, headed by Teélema- 
chus (ancestor of the subsequent despot, Théro), overthrew and 


The letters of Bentley against Boyle, discussing the pretended Epistles 
ef Phalaris, — full of acuteness and learning, though beyond measure ex- 
eursive,— are quite sufficient to teach us that little can be safely asserted 
about Phalaris. His date is very imperfectly ascertained. Compare Bent- 
ley, pp. 82, 83. and Seyfert, Akragas und sein Gebiet, p. 60: the latter as- 
signs the reign of Phalaris to the years 570-554 B.c. It is surprising to see 
Seyfert citing the letters of the pseudo-Phalaris as an authority, after the 
exposure of Bentley. 

2 Pindar. Pyth. 1 ad jin, with the Scholia, p. 310, ed. Boeckh; Polyb. 
xii, 25; Diodor. xiii, 99; Cicero cont. Verr. iv, 38. The contradiction 
of Timzus is noway sufficient to make us doubt the authenticity of the 
story. Ebert (Σεκελίων, part ii, pp. 41-84, Konigsberg, 1829) collects all 
the authorities about the bull of Phalaris. He believes the matter of fact 
substantially. Aristotle (Rhetoric, ii, 20) tells a story of the fable, whereby 
Stésichorus the poet dissuaded the inhabitants of Himera from granting a 
gusrd to Phalaris: Conon (Narrat. 42 ap. Photium) recounts the same 
story with the name of Hiero substituted for that of Phalaris. But it is 
not likely that either the one or the other could ever have been in such 
relations wiih the citizens of Himera. Compare Polybius, vii, 7, 2. 

® Polyen. v, 1, 1; Cicero de Officiis ii, 7. 


ue THALES. 

380 HISTORY OF GREECE. ne 
like tha’ of the Pythagoreans, to be noticed presently, — can be 
There is, indeed, a certain general analogy in the 


slew him. νων. ον win ᾿ 
1. A severe rev enge was taken on his partisans aftey made out 
al vein of Thalés, Hippo, Anaximenés, and Diogenés 


his fall.! 
During the interv "40. ὃ philosophic 
g the interval between 540-500 B.c., events of ἢ oat Ὁ ; 
0 Β.0., events of much of Apollonia, whereby they all stand distinguished from Xeno- 
phanés of Elea, and his successors, the Eleatic dialecticians, 


but there are also material differences 
doctrines, — no two of them holding the 
rson next im 


importance occurred among the Italian Greeks, — especially at 
Kroton and Sybari ent : πὰ" nee 
7 « δ, IAL IS. C 4 ῷ m a μὲ ᾿ 
oe ) . events, unhappily, very imperfectly handed Parmenidés and Zeno; 
3 Jetwee wept ee i . " ἣν 4 

setween these two periods fall both the war between between their respective 

And if we look to Anaximander, the pe 

to Thalés, as well as to Herakleitus, we find them 

a great degree, even from that character which all 

one and the other are 


S ἶ ΔΙῚΞ ; 4: . 4 
Sybaris and Kroton, and the career and ascendency of Pythag- sic 
oras. ction wi ᾿ “τω αἱ J ame. 
ra An connection with this latter name, it will be requisite te οὐδεν af tines 
say a few words respectin: : ‘ : raer 1 
y a few words respecting the other Grecian philosophers of the που τε, in 
epar σ΄ 
the rest have in common, though both the 


I have, in a former 
ave, a former chapter ed ; αν μι, 

chapter, noticed and characterized those usually enrolled in the list of Tonic philosophers. 
Of the old legendary and polytheistic conception of navure, 


sixth century B.C. 
i 


distinguished persons called the Seven Wise Men of Greece 
whose celebrity falls in the first half of this century, — men Sot 
60 much marked by scientific genius as by practical sagacity and 
foresight in the appreciation of worldly affairs, and nel ie a 
high degree of political respect from their fellow-citizens. Gus 
of them, however, the Milesian Thalés, claims our aida not 
only on this ground, but also as the earliest known name in the 


which Thalés partially discarded, we may remark that it is 8 
state of the human mind in which the problems suggesting 
themselves to be solved, and the machinery for solving them, 
bear a fair proportion one to the other. If the problems be vast, 
sndeterminate, confused, and derived rather from the hopes, fears, 
love, hatred, astonishment, etc., of men, than from any genuine 


desire of knowledge, — so also does the received belief supply 
unlimited number, and with every variety 
The means of explanation are thus 
readily as the phenomena to be 
tes can be pre- 


long line of Greek scientific investigators. His life, nearly con- 
temporary with that of Solon, belongs seemingly to the interval Ἵν. , 
about 640-550 B.c.: the stories mentioned in Herodotus — rien οι ϑευεβὰναϑδροι 
perhaps borrowed in part from the Milesian Hekatzus are " ρου ane capensis: 
sutlicient to show that his reputation for wisdom, as well as for multiplied ond spina ~ ἘΣ ΩΣ sf 
science, continued ito be very great, even a century after his Sapiens ΑΝ ΒΑΝΟΥ ΒΟ τη ηρ hanes sd ΠΟ! 

dicted on trustworthy grounds, in such manner as to stand the 
epoch in the progress of the Greek mind, as having been {} of subsequent verification, — yet there is little difficulty 
Se ee, we in rendering a specious and plausible account of matters past, of 


first man to depart both i en 

é oth in " spirit fr eve 
. ee any and all things alike ; especially as, at such a period, matters 
of fact requiring explanation are neither collated nor preserved 
. no event or state, which has not yet 0¢- 


death, among his fellow-citizens. And he marks an important 
scrutiny 


a 
The ogony, introducing the conception of substances with their 
Is ῷ iN i a " re Ἢ + Ὥ Hn , . , iJ 
t : formations and sequences, in place of that string of persons And thougl 
and quasi-human attributes whi ad ani ) iden GAS 
- Ἐν ge ate W ee pire old legend- eurred, can be predicted there is little difficulty in rendering 8 
ar ; s the father of what is called the Ionic philos nc eversthing 
τ, 080- ' : ‘ing whi red 1 β 
sl, Ge: δι ον is Madey ἄνα ἐῶν ων dois tes Gani ot plausible account of everything which has occurred in the past. 
Sokratés; and writers, ancient as well as modern, hav Gene: Oe aa piso το om gual 
»é . ave pro- ae Ἀ ‘ 15 ἃ - : jati T 
Sis ud 4 vasa 4b duu bcd uk re rs | ? a sort of perscnal history, with intermarriages, filiation, quarrels, 
| 8, e pupi of invisi ut: 
‘dh tis ceiceidhen: Ultima ties das cetianen eacite αὐ, κῷ and other adventures, of these invisible agents ; among whom 
appellati ia ἢ aa. ! ‘puma : 5 ἃ were assumed as unbegotten and self-existent, 
ppellation is, in truth, undefined, and even incorrect, since wan ee whetare ΝΜ Ξ ᾿ 
— the latter assumption being ἃ 


nothing entitled to the name of a school, or sect, or successi difficulty common to all systems 
ing sl shay of cosmogony, and from which even this flexible and expansivs 
hypothesis is not exempt. 


s . | " i ll 
Pintarch, Philosophand. cum Principibus, c. 3, p. 778. 


$82 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


πὴ ῸὉ Thalés disengaged Grecian philosophy from the 
mode -x planatic ᾿ 
old 10de of explanation, he did not at the same time diseno: 
it from the old problems and te ‘Sees. 
a ἢ 5. and matters propounded for inquir 
naa he retained, and transmitted to his successors, as va tel 
and vast as t τὰ ae : vi ae), 
: 9g as they were at first conceived; and so they remained 
t ouyr γῇ ΟΖ ΠΣ ae ᾿ : ; i 
ee with some transformations and modifications bogeties 
i τς ao " . fi Ἶ 
4 — new questions equally insoluble, substantially a ent 
o the Greeks throughout their whole history, as the ], ithe 
wo Page oe : story, as the legitimate 
" s for philosophical investigation. But these probl 
a a yte ᾽ * y aie ᾿ ᾿ τ . i et 
" Ν d only to the old elastic system of polytheistic explanation 
nd omniprese rsonal ¢ ἱ διαίδξερη 
᾿ nnipresent personal agency, became utterly disproportioned 
a impersonal hypotheses such as those of Thalés an Ι tl | 
rite gg } Pw), c S allt 10 
2 ἜΗΝ after him,— whether assumed physical laws, or 
‘ ᾿ ve « 1 } ἡ Ἶ ᾿ ἢ: 
Ρ sive ble moral and metaphysical dogmas, open to argumentative 
attack ᾿ eourse reauiri Ἥ | i τὰ; 
tte , and of course requiring the like defence. Τὸ tr 
visible world as a whol inqui wat co 
ir as a whole, and inquire when and how it began, as 
ell as into all its past changes, — to discuss the firs cata οἱ 
ΠΝ ges, ss the first origin of 
ἢ als, plants, the sun, the stars, etc., — to assign some 
rehensiv pa ' : , i ahaa 
P ensive reason W hy motion or change in general took place in 
1e€ Ul αν Η Teaticos in} ᾿ ' 
, aioe to investigate the destinies of the human race 
and to lay ys gates 
o lay down some systematic relation between them and the 
gous, - é 50 Were ics itti ie 
g tir these were topics admitting of being conceived in 
many different ways, ἢ set fe ith = 
y different ways, and set forth with eloquent plausibility, but 
5 - 


not re ‘ible to ἢ . i i 
ducible to any solution either resting on scientific evide nee 
δ τ TICE 
7) ~ + | 


or commanding steady adherence under a free scrutiny.! 


At the time whe | 5016 ag y t 
“ oi the ower sc ific 1 € j j 
| 0 Scle ntific investi; ation Was 


Scanty : ; ΟΝ 
y and helpless, the problems proposed were thus such as te 
8 sue as 


} TI " am in 
16 less these pro “lems 

5 - ms are adapted for rati 

apter rational solut 
ὡ isu | : solution 
bly do they present themselves in the language of a great pas 

oll cee ge wyuage rreat μὲ 

specimen, Euripidés, Fragment. 101, ed. Dindorf ‘ 


. the more 
set asa 


"Os γος UOT C THe LoToplac 

Boye μάϑησιν, μῆτε πολιτῶν 

᾿Επὲὶ πημοσύνῃ, unr’ εἰς ἀδέκους 
Πράξεις ὁρμῶν: 

᾿Αλλ᾽ ἀϑανάτου καϑορῶν φύσεως 
Κόσμον ἀγήρω, πῆ τε συνέστη 

Καὶ ὅπη καὶ ὅπως 

Τοῖς δὲ τοιούτοις οὐδέποτ᾽ αἰσχρῶν 
Ἔργων μελέτημα πρι σίζει. 


SKEPTICISM OF GRECIAN PHILOSOPAY. 8382 


lie out of the reach of science in its largest compass. Gradu 
ally, indeed, subjects more special and limited, and upon which 
experience, Or deductions from experience, could be brought to 
bear, were added to the list of questa, and examined with great 
profit and ‘nstruction: but the old problems, with new ones, alike 
unfathomable, were never eliminated, and always occupied a 
prominent place in the philosophical world. Now it was this 
disproportion, between questions to be solved and means of solu- 
tion, which gave rise to that conspicucus characteristic of Gre- 
gian philosophy, — the antagonist force of suspensive skepticism, 
passing in some minds into a broad negation of the attainability 
of general truth, — which it nourished from its beginning to its 
end ; commencing as early as Xenophanés, continuing to manifest 
itself seven centuries afterwards in JEnesidémus and Sextus 
Kmpiricus, and including in the interval between these two 
extremes some of the most powerful intellects in Greece. The 
present is not the time for considering these Skeptics, who bear 
ai unpopular name, and have not often been fairly appreciated ; 
the more so, as it often suited the purpose of men, themselves 
essentially skeptical, like Sokrates and Plato, to denounce pro 
fessed skepticism with indignation. But it is essential to bring 
them into notice at the first spring of Grecian philosophy under 
Thalés, because the circumstances were then laid which so soon 
afterwards developed them. 

Though the celebrity of Thalés in antiquity was great and 
universal, scarcely any distinct facts were known respecting 
him: it is certain that he left nothing in writing. Extensive 
travels in Egypt and Asia are ascribed to him, and as a general 
fact these travels are doubtless true, since no other means of 
acquiring knowledge were then open. At a time when the 
brother of the Lesbian Alkwus was serving in the Babylonian 
army, we may easily conceive that an inquisitive Milesian would 
make his way to that wonderful city wherein stood the temple- 
observatory of the Chaldean priesthood ; nor is it impossible 
that he may have seen the still greater city of Ninus, or Nine- 
veh, before its capture and destruction by the Medes. How 
great his reputation was in his lifetime, the admiration expressed 
by his younger contemporary, Xenophanés, assures us; and 
Herakleitus, in the next generation, a severe judge of all other 


$84 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


philosophers, spoke of him with similar esteem. To him were 
traced, by the Grecian inquirers of the fourth century B.c., the first 
beginnings of geometry, astronomy, and physiology in its large 
eche i * vou . F τῶ a p ᾿ 
and really appropriate sense, the scientific study of nature : for the 
Greck word denoting nature (φύσις,) first comes into compre 
— use about this time (as I have remarked in an earlier 
chapter),! with its derivatives physics and physiology, as distin- 
guished from the theology of the old poets. Little stress can be 
laid on those elementary propositions in geometry which are 
specified as discovered, or as first demonstrated, by Thalés 
ὃ at | i Abs 4) c ARTI 
= less upon the solar eclipse respecting which, according to 
Sree: he determined beforehand the year of occurrence.2 
3 " i" - Ἶ ων , " Ε ων " ΓΙ : 
“ the main doctrine of his physiology, — using that word in 
its larcer Greek nse 1 ist] - ig 
= uger Greek sense,—is distinctly attested. He stripped 
a ee Tethys, primeval parents of the gods in the 
omeric theogony, of their rsonality "13 
i agomes ἣν ; cir personality,—and laid down 
ater, or fluid substance, as the single original element fr 
which everything οἰ id alee sellin 
= | very 15 came, and into which everything returned.3 
16 ‘trine 2 eterns ae 
doctrine of one eternal element, remaining always the 
same in its essence, but indefinitely variable in its manifestations 
fi Wd ifs 3 a | J nw < Se be 
to sense, was thus first introduced to the discussion of the Gre 
Cli I } » Γ 2 ‘ ει, i } : | 
an public. We have no means of knowing the reasons | 
which Thalés supported this opini ὕ edi de 
5. supported this opinion, nor could even Aristotle do 
= than conjecture what they might have been; but one of 
the en urged on behalf of it,—that the earth itself 
reste: ater.4 — we may saf 
fe ed on water, we may safely refer to the Milesian himself 
Ἂ ἢν ᾿ ‘ 7 r ν x ! 
ol ἜΝ hardly have been advanced at ἃ later age. More 
ver ‘ Ae ia ΤΩ ‘To , : ail 1 i 
over, halés is reported to have held, that everything was livi 
and fall of gods; and thi chapel. 
of gods ; and that the magnet, especially, was a living 
thing. Thus the gods, as far as we cat ἀηρεγϑλρθηβάνος 
- g- fhas the gods, as far as we can pretend to follow opin- 
ns so very faintly transmitted, are conceived as active powers, 


‘ Vol. i, ch. xvi. 
Pe ap Laért. i, 23; Herodot. i, 75; Apuleius, Florid. iv Ρ. 144, Bip 
apoaie h 75 . iv, p. 144, . 
" oo "a Commentary on Euclid, specifies several propositions said 
Υ͂ en discovered by Thalés (Brandis, Han G 
*** nd 
= il geal ( : buch der Gr. Philos 
Σ δ. ἊΝ cil , € 
᾿ Aristotel. Metaphys. i,3; Plutarch, Placit. Philos. i, 3, p. 875. ὃς ἐξ 
ατὸς φησὶ πάντα εἶναι, καὶ εἰς ὕδωρ πάντα ἀναλύεσϑαι 
4 Aristotel. ut supra, and De Ceelo, ii, 13. 


HIPPU. — ANAXIMANDER. 385 


and causes of changeful manifestation, attached to the primeval 
substance:! the universe being assimilated to an organized body 
or system. 
Respecting Hippo, 
under a more generalized form of 
something common to air and 


— who reproduced the theory of Thalés 
expression, substituting, in 
place of water, moisture, or 
water — we do not know whether he belonged to the sixth or 


the fifth century B.c. But Anaximander, Xenophanés, and 


Pherekydés belong to the latter half of the sixth century. 
Anaximander, the son of Praxiadés, was a native of Milétus, 
a native of Kolophon; the former, among the 
doctrine in prose,3 while the latter com- 
Anaximander 


— Xenophanés, 
earliest expositors of 
mitted his opinions to the old medium of verse. 
seems to have taken up the philosophical problem, while he 
materially altered the hypothesis of his predecessor Thales. 
Instead of the primeval fluid of the latter, he supposed a 
primeval principle, without any actual determining qualities 
whatever, but including all qualities potentially, and manifesting 
them in an infinite variety from its continually self-changing 


nature, —a principle, which was nothing in itself, yet had the 


ity of producing any and all manifestations, however con- 


capac 


trary to each other,#— ἃ primeval something, whose essence 


1 Aristotel. De Anima, i, 2-5; Cicero, De Legg. ii, 11; Diogen. Laeért. 


i, 24. 
2 Aristotel. De Anima, i, 2; Alexander Aphrodis. in Aristotel. Metaphys. 


a 
3 Apollodorus, in the second century B.c., had before him some brief ex: 
(Diogen. Laért. ii, 2): Περὶ Φύσεως, 

Σφαῖραν καὶ ἄλλα τινα. Suidas, vy 
ἐϑάῤῥησε πρῶτος ὦν ἴσμεν 


pository treatises of Anaximander 
Τῆς Περίοδον, Περὶ τῶν ᾽Α πλανῶν καὶ 
᾿Αναξίμανδρος. Themistius. Orat. xxv, p. 317: 
“Ελλήνων λόγον ἐξενεγκεῖν περί Φύσεως συγγεγραμμένον. 

4 Treneens, ii, 19, (14) ap. Brandis, Handbuch der Geschichte der Griech. 
Rém. Philos. ch. xxxv, p. 133: “ Anaximander hoc quod immensum est, 
omnium initium subjecit, seminaliter habens in semetipso omnium genesia, 
ex quo immensos mundos constare ait.” Aristotel. Physic. Auscult. iii, 4, 
p. 203, Bek. οὔτε yap μάτην αὐτὸ οἷόν τε εἶναι (τὸ ἄπειρον), οὔτε ἄλλην 
ὑπάρχειν αὐτῷ δύναμιν, πλὴν ὡς ἀρχῆν. Aristotle subjects this ἄπειρον to 
an elaborate discussion, in which he says very little more abcut Anaximan- 
der, who appears to have assumed it without anticipating discussion or 


ebjections. Whether Anaximander called his ἄπειρον divine, or god, as 
VOL. Iv. 17 250¢. 


B86 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


it was to he eternally productive of different phenomenz, - -- ἃ 
sort of mathematical point, which counts for nothing in cself, 
but is vigorous in generating lines to any extent that may be 
desired. In this manner, Anaximander professed to give a com. 
prehensive explanation of change m general, or generation, or 
destruction, — how it happened that one sensible thing began and 
another ceased to exist.— according to the vague problems 
which these early mmquirers were in the habit of setting to 
themselves.' He avoided that which the firet philosophers 
especially dreaded, the affirmation that generation could take 
place out of Nothing; yet the primeval Something, which he 
supposed was only distinguished from nothing by possessing 
this very power of generation. 

In his theory, he passed from the provine: of physics into that 
of metaphysics. He first introduced inte Grecian philosophy 
that important word which signifies a beginning or a principle,? 
and first opened that metaphysical discussion, which was carried 
on in various ways throughout the whole period of Grecian phi- 
losophy, as to the one and the many —the continuous and the 
variable — that which exists eternally, as distinguished from that 
which comes and passes away in ever-changing manifestations 
His physiology, or explanation of na ure, thus conducted the 
mind into a different route from that su,sgested by the hypothesis 
of Thalés, which was built upon physical considerations, and was 
therefore calculated tosuggest and stimulate observations of 
physical phenomena for the purpose of verifying or confuting it, 
— while the hypothesis of Anaximander admitted only of being 
Tennemann (Gesch. Philos. i, 2, p. 67) and Panzerbieter affirm (ad Diogenis 
Apolloniat. Fragment. c. 13, p. 16,) I think doubtful: this is rather an 
inference which Aristotle elicits from his language. Yet in another pas- 
sage, which is difficult to reconcile, Aristotle ascribes to Anaximander the 
water-doctrine of Thalés, (Aristotel. de Xenophane, p. 975. Bek.) 

Anaximander seems to have followed speculations analogous to those of 
Thalés, in explaining the first production of the human race (Plutarch 
Placit. Philos. v, 19, p. 908), and in other matters (ibid. iii, 16, p. 896). 

' Aristotel. De Generat. et Destruct. c. 3, p. 317, Bek. ὃ μάλιστα gv 
βούμενοι διετέλεσαν οἱ πρῶτοι φιλοσοφήσαντες, Td ἐκ μηδενὸς γίνεσϑαι προ. 
ὑπάρχοντος " compare Physic. Auscultat. i, 4, p. 187, Bek. 

* Simplicius in Aristotel. Physic. fol. 6.82. πρῶτος αὐτὸς ᾿Αρχὴν ὀνομῶ 


@ag τὸ ὑποκείμενον. 


XENOPHANES. — THE ELEATIC SCHOOL. 387 


discussed dialectically, or by reasonings expressed in general lan 
guage ; reasonings sometimes, indeed, referring to experience fot 


oD”? 


the purpose of illustration, but seldom resting on it, and never 
looking out for it as a necessary support. The physical expla 
nation of nature, however, once introduced by Thalés, although 
deserted by Anaximander, was taken up by Anaximenes and 
others afterwards, and reproduced with many divergences of doc- 
trine, — yet always more or less entangled and perplexed with 
metaphysical additions, since the two departments were never 
clearly parted throughout all Grecian philosophy. Of these sub- 
sequent physical philosophers I shall speak hereafter : at present, 
I confine myself to the thinkers of the sixth century B.C., among 
whom Anaximander stands prominent, not as the follower of 
Thalés, but as the author of an hypothesis both new and tending 
in a different direction. 

It was not merely as the author of this hypothesis, however, 
that Anaximander enlarged the Greek mind and roused the 
powers of thought: we find him also mentioned as distinguished 
in astronomy and geometry. He is said to have been the first to 
establish a sun-dial in Greece, to construct a sphere, and to ex- 
plain the obliquity of the ecliptic ;! how far such alleged author- 
ship really belongs to him, we cannot be certain, — but there is 
immense importance which he is clearly affirmed to 
have made. He was the first to compose a treatise on the geog- 
the land and sea within his cognizance, and to construct 


one step of 


raphy of 
a chart or map founded thereupon, — seemingly a tablet of brass. 
Such a novelty, wondrous even to the rude and ignorant, was 
calculated to stimulate powerfully inquisitive minds, and from it 
may be dated the commencement of Grecian rational geography, 
__ not the least valuable among the contributions of this people 
to the stock of human knowledge. 
Xenophanés of Kolophon, somewhat younger than Anaximan- 
der, and nearly contemporary with Pythagoras (seemingly from 
about 570-480 B.c.), migrated from Kolophon? to Zankle and 
Katana in Sicily and Elea in Italy, soon after the time when 


! Diogen. Laért. ii, 8! 3. 
A 


He agreed with Thalés in maintaining thas 


3. 295, ed Bekk.) 


ee he Er 
the earth was stationary. | 4c's6v!. οἷο, =i. 43, 7 
3 Diogen. Laer. a, -> 


588 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


fonia became subject to the Persians, (540-530 B.c.) He was 
the founder of what is called the Eleatic school of philosophers, 
—a real school, since it appears that Parmenidés, Zeno, and 
Melissus, pursued and developed, in a great degree, the train of 
speculation which had been begun by Xenophanés, — doubtless 
with additions and variations of their own, but especially with a 
dialectic power which belongs to the age of Periklés, and is um 
known in the sixth century B.c. He was the author of more 
than one poem of considerable length, one on the foundation of 
Kolophon and another on that of Elea; besides his poem on 
Nature, wherein his philosophical doctrines were set forth.! His 
manner appears to have been controversial and full of asperity 
towards antagonists ; but what is most remarkable is the plain- 
spoken manner in which he declared himself against the popular 
religion, and in which he denounced as abominable the descrip- 
tions of the gods given by Homer and Hesiod.* 

He is said to have controverted the doctrines both of Thalés 
and Pythagoras: this is probable enough; but he seems to have 
taken his start from the philosophy of Anaximander, — not, 
however, to adopt it, but to reverse it,— and to set forth an opin 
ion which we may call its contrary. Nature, in the conception of 
Anaximander, consisted of a Something having no other attribute 
except the unlimited power of generating and cancelling phe 
nomenal changes: in this doctrine, the something or substratum 
existed only in and for those changes, and could not be said to 
exist at all in any other sense: the permanent was thus merged 
and lost in the variable, — the one in the many. Xenophanés laid 
down the exact opposite: he conceived Nature as one unchangea- 
ble and indivisible whole, spherical, animated, endued with reason, 
and penetrated by or indeed identical with God: he denied the 
objective reality of all change, or generation, or destruction, 
which he seems to have considered as only changes or modifica- 
tions in the percipient, and perhaps different in one percipient 
and another. That which exists, he maintained, could not have 
been generated, nor could it ever be destroyed: there was neither 
real generation nor real destruction of anything; but that which 


' Diogen. Laért. ix, 22; Stobzus, Eclog. Phys. i, p. 294. 
3 Sextus Empiricus, alv. Mathem. ix, 193. 


XENOPHANES.— THE ELEATIC SCHOOL. 389 


the change in their own feelings and 
d the permanent without the variable,! 
And his treatment of the received 
religious creed was in harmony with such physical or metaphys- 
ical hypothesis ; for while he held the whole of Nature to be 
God, without parts or change, he at the same time pronounced 
of subjective fancy, imagined by 
* oxen or lions were to become re- 
lizious, he added, they would in like manner provide for thom. 
elves vods after their respective shapes and characters.” f his 
᾿ δ ὁ set aside altogether the study of the 
sensible world as a source of knowledge, was expounded briefy, 
and as it should seem, obscurely and rudely, by Xenophanés 7 at 
- infer thus much from the slighting epithet applied 
to him by Aristotle. But his successors, Parmenidés and Zeno, 
in the succeeding century, expanded it considerably, supported it 
arv acuteness of dialectics, and even superadded 
Ἢ the phenomena of sense — though con- 
not partaking in the reality of the 
one Ens — were yet explained by anew physical hypothesis ; so 
that they will be found to exercise great influence over the spec- 
ulations both of Plato and Aristotle. We discover in Xenoph- 
moreover, a vein of skepticism, and a mournful despair as 


men took for such, was 
ideas. He thus recognize 
— the one without the many. 


the popular gods to be entities 
men after their own model: i 


hypothesis, which seemed t 


least we may 


with extraordinary 
a second part, in whi 
sidered only as appearances, 


anes, 


73. 1, 5 6. Bek Ξενοφάνης δὲ πρῶτος τούτων 
i Aristot. Metaphys. 1, 5, p. 956, Bek. Ξενοφάνης δὲ pe ¢ f 
it τῆς φύσεως τούτων (τοῦ κατὰ τὸν ΛΟγὸν 


évicac, οὐϑὲν διεσαφῆνισεν, OU , 
' ᾿ » Ν Ἵ - , ᾽ ᾽ ‘ “ , 
; οὐδετέρας ἔοικε δὲ) εἴν, ἀλλ᾽ εἰς τὸν ὅλον οὐρανὸν 


évdc καὶ τοῦ κατὰ τὴν ὅλην) 
"ποβλέψας τὸ ἕν εἶναί ¢ τὸν ϑεόν. 
ἀποθλέψας τὸ ἕν elval φῆσι τὸ A yee 
με - ἱ ‘separ Svangel. i Ξενοφάνης δὲ ὁ Kodo 
Plutarch. ap. Eusebium Preeparat. Ev angel. i, 8. Ξενοφί 1¢ 
πεπορευμένος καὶ παρηλλαχυῖαν πάντας τοὺς προει- 
͵ 


} . ἰδίαν μὲν τ 1 ὑδὸν 
φωνιος ἰθιαν μὲν τινα ; 3 | ; ι 
εἶναι λέγει τὸ πᾶν ἀεὶ 


Ι " = * ’ » ἡ "9% 
ρημένους, οὗτε γενεσιν οὔτε φϑορὰν ἀπολείπει, αλλ “δὴ 
ΓΟ" i 2 : ἢ . sn sae : : i 
ὅμοιον. Compare Timon ap. Sext. Empiric. Pyrrh. Hypotyp. i, 224, 2 
τῶν ἄλλων ἀνϑρώπῶΩῶν προλήψεις, ἕν 


ς £ - -- > 

bdo τι ζ ; Sevogouvyg παρὰ Τὰς 

ἐδογμάτιζε δὲ ὁ ενοφαϊ : ρολήψε 

εἶναι τὸ πᾶν, καὶ τὸν ϑεὸν συμφυῆ τοῖς πᾶσιν " εἰναι δὲ σφαιροειδὴ καὶ ἀπαϑῆ 
τὸ πᾶν, 


r 4) - ᾿ ᾽ ψ i 
καὶ ἀμετάβλητον καὶ λογικόν, ( Aristot. de Xenoph. c. 3, p. 977, Bek.) Αδύνσ 
| 3 εἶ τι ἐστὶν, γενέσϑαι, ete. 
hether all the arguments ascribed to Xen 
yphanés, in the short but obscure treatise last quoted, really belong to hira 

—s 


8 Clemens Alexand. Stromat. v, p. 601, vii, p. 711. 
3 Aristot. Metaphysic. i, 5, p. 986, Bek. μικρὸν ayporxorepe. 


τόν φησιν (ὁ Ξενοφάνης) εἶναι, 
One may reasonably doubt w 


i gg ea --- 


390 HISTURY OF GREECE. 


to the attainability of certain knowledge,! which the nature of 
his philosophy was well calculated to suggest, and in which the 
sillograph Timon of the third century 3.c., who seems to have 
spoken of Xenophanés better than of most of the other philoso~ 
phers, powerfully sympathized. ᾿ 

The cosmogony of Pherekydés of Syrus, contemporary οὗ 
Anaximander and among the teachers of Pythagoras, seems, 
according to the fragments preserved, a combination of the old 
legendary fancies with Orphic mysticism,? and probably exercised 
little influence over the subsequent course of Grecian philosophy 
By what has been said of Thalés, Anaximander, and Xenoph 
anes, it will be seen that the sixth century B.c. witnessed the 
opening of several of those roads of intellectual speculation 
which the later philosophers pursued farther, or at least from 
which they branched off. Before the year 500 B.c. many inter- 
esting questions were thus brought into discussion, which Solon, 
who died about 058 B.c., had never heard of, — just as he may 
probably never have seen the map of Anaximander. But neither 
of these two distinguished men — Anaximander or Xenophanés 
was anything more than a speculative inquirer. The third emi- 
nent name of this century, of whom I am now about to speak,— 
Pythagoras, combined in his character disparate elements which 
require rather a longer development. 

Pythagoras was founder of a brotherhood, originally brought 
together by a religious influence, and with observances approach- 
ing to monastic peculiarity, — working in a direction at once 
religious, political, and scientific, and exercising for some time a 
real political ascendency, — but afterwards banished from govern- 
ment and state affairs into a sectarian privacy with scientific 
pursuits, not without, nowever, still producing some statesmen 
individually distinguished. Amidst the multitude of false and 
apocryphal statements which circulated in antiquity respecting 
this celebrated man, we find a few important fucts reasonably 
attested and deserving credence. He was a native of Samos, 


oF Xenophanés, Fr. xiv, ed. Mullach ; Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathematicos, 
vii, 49-110; and Pyrrhon. Hypotyp. i, 224; Plutarch ady. Coldétén, p. 1114: 
compare Karsten ad Parmenidis Fragmenta, p. 146. : 

* See Brandis, Handbuch der Griech. Rom. Philosophie, ch. xxii 

ὃ Herodot. iv, 95. The place of his nativity is certain from He-odotus, 


PYTHAGORAS. 391 


son of an opulent merchant named Mnésarchus, — or, according 
to some of his later and more fervent admirers, of Apollo; born, 
as far as we can make out, about the 50th Olympiad, or 580 B.c. 
On the many marvels recounted respecting his youth, it is 
unnecessary to dwell. Among them may be numbered his wide- 
reaching travels, said to have been prolonged for nearly thirty 
years, to visit the Arabians, the Syrians, the Phenicians, the 
Chaldzans, the Indians, and the Gallic Druids. But there is 
reason to believe that he really visited Egypt! — perhaps also 
Phenicia —and Babylon, then Chaldean and independent. At 
the time when he saw Egypt, between 560-540 B. Ο., about one 
century earlier than Herodotus, it was under Amasis, the last of 
its own kings, with its peculiar native character yet unimpaired 
by foreign conquest, and only slightly modified by the admission 
during the preceding century of Grecian mercenary troops and 
traders. ‘The spectacle of Egyptian habits, the conversation of 
the priests, and the initiation into various mysteries or secret 
rites and stories not accessible to the general public, may very 
naturally have impressed the mind of Pythagoras, and given him 
that turn for mystic observance, asceticism, and peculiarity of 
diet and clothing, — which manifested itself from the same cause 
among several of his contemporaries, but which was not a com- 
mon phenomenon in the primitive Greek religion. Besides 
visiting Egypt, Pythagoras is also said to have profited by the 
teaching of Thalés, of Anaximander, and ‘of Pherekydés of 


but even this fact was differently stated by other authors, who called him 8 
Tyrrhenian of Lemnos or Imbros (Pornhyry, Vit. Pythag. c. 1-10), 8 
Syrian, a Phliasian, etc. 

Cicero (De Repub. ii, 15: compare Livy, s, 18) censures the chronologi- 
cal blunder of those who made Pythagoras the preceptor of Numa; which 
certainly is a remarkable illustration how much confusion prevailed among 
literary men of antiquity about the dates of events even of the sixth cen- 
tury B.c. Ovid follows this story without hesitation: see Metamorph. xv, 
60, with Burmann’s note. 

i Cicero de Fin. v, 29; Diogen. Laért. viii, 3; Strabo, xiv, p. 638; Alex- 
ander Polyhistor ap. Cyrill. cont. Julian. iv, p. 128, ed. Spanh. For the 
vast reach of his supposed travels, see Porphyry, Vit. Pythag. 11; Jamblie 
14, seqq- 

The same extensive ‘curneys are ascribed to Demokritus, Diogen. Laert 
wx, 35. 


392 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Syros.! Amidst the towns of Ionia, he wculd, moreover, have 
an opportunity of conversing with many Greek navigators who 
had visited foreign countries, especially Italy and Sicily. His 
mind seems to have been acted upon and impelled by this com- 
bined stimulus, -— partly towards an imaginative and religious 
vein of speculation, with a life of mystic observance, — partly 
towards that active exercise, both of mind and body, which the 
genius of an Hellenic community so naturally tended to suggest. 

Of the personal doctrines or opinions of Pythagoras, whom we 
must distinguish from Philolaus and the subsequent Pythagoreans, 
we have little certain knowledge, though doubtless the first germ 
of their geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, ete. must have pro- 
ceeded from him. But that he believed in the metempsychosis 
or transmigration of the souls of deceased men into other men, 
as well as into animals, we know, not only by other evidence, but 
also by the testimony of his contemporary, the philosopher 
Xenophanés of Elea. Pythagoras, seeing a dog beaten, ana 
hearing him howl, desired the striker to desist, saying: “It is 


- 


the soul of ἃ friend of mine, whom I recognized by his voice.” 
This — together with the general testimony of Hérakleitus, that 
Pythagoras was a man of extensive research and acquired 
instruction, but artful for mischief and destitute of sound judg- 
ment—is all that we know about him from contemporaries. 
Herodotus, two generations afterwards, while he conceives the 
Pythagoreans as a peculiar religious order, intimates that both 
Orpheus and Pythagoras had derived the doctrine of the metem- 
psychosis from Hgypt, but had pretended to it as their own 
without acknowledgment.2 


‘The connection of Pythagoras with Pherekydés is noticed by Aristox- 
enus ap. Diogen. Laert. i, 118, vin, 2; Cicero de Divinat. . 12. 

* Xenophanés, Fragm. 7, ed. Schneidewin; Diogen. Laért. Vili, 36: com- 
pare Aulus Gellius, iv, 11 (we must remark that this or a like doctrine is 
not peculiar to Pythagoreans, but believed by the poet Pindar, Olymp. ii, 
68. and Fragment, Thren. x, as well as by the philosopher Pherekydés, 
Porphyrius le Antro Nympharum, c. 31). 

Kai ποτέ μιν στυφελιζομένου σκύλακος παριόνττ 
Φασὶν ἐποικτεῖραι, καὶ τόδε φάσϑαι ἔπος --- 
Παῦσαι, μηδὲ pail: ἐπείη φίλου ἄνερός ἐστι 
ψυχὴ, τὴν ἔγνων φϑεγξαμένης ἀΐων. 
Consult also Sextus Empiricus, viii, 286, as to the κοινωνία between gods, 


MIXED CHARACTER OF PYTHAGORAS. 398 


Pythagoras combines the character of a sophist (a man of 
large observation, and clever, ascendent, inventive tind, — the 
original sense of the word Sophiet, prior to the polemics of the 
Platonic school, and the only sense known to Herodotus!) with 
that of an inspired teacher, prophet, and worker of miracles, — 
approaching to and sometimes even cunfounded with the gods, — 
and employing all these gifts to found a new special order of 
brethren, bound together by religious rites and observances pecu- 
liar to chemselves. In his prominent vocation, analogous to that 
of Epimenidés, Orpheus, or Melampus, he appears as the re- 
vealer of a mode of life calculated to raise his disciples above 
the level of mankind, and to recommend them to the favor of the 
gods ; the Pythagorean life, like the Orphic life,? being intended 


mep and animals, believed both by Pythagoras and Empedokleés. That 
Herodotus (ii, 123) alludes to Orpheus and Pythagoras, though refraining 
designedly from mentioning names, there can hardly be any doubt: com 
pare il, 81; also Aristotle, De Anima, 1, 3, 23. . i: i 

The testimony of Hérakleitus is contained in Diogenes Laértius, viii, δ; 
ix, 1. Ἡρακλεῖτος γοῦν ὁ φυσικὸς μονονουχὶ κέκραγε καί φησι ᾿Ἰνϑαγύρης 
Μνησάρχου ἱστορίην ἤσκησεν ἀνϑρώπων μάλιστα πάντων, καὶ ἐκλεξάμενος 
ταύτας τὰς συγγραφὰς, ἐποιήσατο ἑαυτοῦ σοφίιῆν, πολ υμαϑί ῃ », κα κα- 
τεχνίην. Again, Πολυμαϑίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει " Ἡσίοδον γὰρ ἂν ἐδίδαξε 
καὶ Πυϑαγόρην, αὖϑις δὲ Ξενοφώνεώ Te καὶ Ἑκαταῖον. 

Dr. Thirlwall conceives Xenophanés as having intended in the passage 
above cited to treat the doctrine of the metempsychosis “ with deserved 
(Hist. of Greece, ch. xii, vol. ii, p. 162.) Religious opinions are 
so apt to appear ridiculous to those who do not believe them, that such 8 
suspicion is not unnatural; yet I think, if Xenophanés had been so dis 
posed, he would have found more ridiculous examples among the many 
which this doctrine might suggest. Indeed, it seems hardly possible to 
present the metempsychosis in a more touching or respectable point of 
view than that which the lines of his poem set forth. The particular ani- 
mal selected is that one between whom and man the sympathy is most 
marked and reciprocal, while the doctrine is made to enforce a practical 


ridicule.” 


lesson against cruelty. 
' Herodot. i, 29; ii, 49; iv, 95. Ἑλλήνων ob τῷ ἀσϑενεστάτῳ σοφιστῇ 

Πυϑαγόρῃς.  Hippokratés distinguishes the σοφιστὴς from the ἰητρὸς, 

though both of them had handled the subject of medicine, — the general 

from the special habits of investigation. (Hippokratés, Περὲ ἀρχαίης 
οικῆς, ο. 20, vol. i, p. 620, Littré. 

"νὰν he and cain treatise, Aglaophamus, Orphica, ib 

li, pp. 247, 698, 900; also Plato, ζ΄ vi 782, and Euripid. Hippol. 946. 


894 HISTORY OF GREECE 


as the exclusive prerogative of the brothei hood, — approached 
only by probation and initiatory ceremonies which were adapted 
to select enthusiasts rather than to an indiscriminate crowd, — 
and exacting entire mental devotion to the master.! In these 
lofty pretensions the Agrigentine Empedoklés seems to have 


greatly copied him, though with some varieties, about half a cen- 


tury afterwards.2 While Aristotle tells us that the Krotoniates 
identified Pythagoras with the Hyperborean Apollo, the satirical 
Timon pronounced him to have been “a juggler of solemn 
speech, engaged in fishing for men.” ‘This is the same charac- 
ter, looked at from the different points of view of the believer 
and the unbeliever. There is, however, no reason for regarding 
Pythagoras as an impostor, because experience seems to show, 
that while in certain ages it is not difficult for a man to persuade 
others that he is inspired, it is still less difficult for him to con- 
tract the same belief himself. 

Looking at the general type of Pythagoras, as conceived by 
witnesses in and nearest to his own age,— XAenophanés, Hére- 
kleitus, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, lsokratés,4— we find in him 


' Plato’s conception of Pythagoras (Republ. x, p. 600) depicts him as 
something not unlike St. Benedict, or St. Francis, (or St. Elias, as some 
Carmelites have tried to make out: see Kuster ad Jamblich. c. 3) — ᾿Αλλὰ 
δὴ, εἰ ph δημοσίᾳ, ἰδίᾳ τισιν ἡγεμὼν παιδείας αὐτὸς ζῶν λέγεται “Ὅμηρος 
γενέσϑαι, οἱ ἕκεινον ἠγάπων ἐπὶ συνουσίᾳ καὶ τοῖς ὑστέροις ὁδόν τινα βίου 
παρέδοσαν Ὁμηρικήν - ὥσπερ Πυϑαγόρας αὐτός τε διαφερόντως ἐπὶ τούτῳ 
ἠγαπήϑη, καὶ οἱ ὕστερον ἔτι καὶ νῦν Πυϑαγορεῖον τροπὸν ἐπονομάζοντες τοῦ 
Biow διαφανεῖς πῃ δοκοῦσιν εἶναι ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις. 

The description of Melampus, given in Herodot. ii, 49, very much fills 
up the idea of Pythagoras, as derived from ii, 81-123, and iv, 95. Pythag- 
oras, as well as Melampus, was said to have pretended to divination and 
prophecy (Cicero, Divinat. i, 3, 46; Porphyr. Vit. Pyth. c. 29: compare 
Krische, De Societate a Pythagor4 in urbe Crotoniataruam condita Com- 
mentatio, ch. v, p. 72, Gottingen, 1831). 

3 Brandis, Handbuch der Geschichte der Griechisch. Rom. Philosophie, 

i, sect. xlvii, p. 191. 

3 Wlian. V. H. ii, 26; Jamblichus, Vit. Pyth. c. 31, 140; Porphyry, Vit 
Pyth. c. 20; Diodorus, Fragm. lib. x, vol. iv, p. 56, Wess.: Timon ap 
Diogen. Laért. viii, 36; and Plutarch, Numa, c. 8. 

Πυϑαγύρην te γόητος ἀποκλίναντ᾽ ἐπὶ δόξαν 
Θήρῃ ἐπ᾽ ἀνϑρώπων, σεμνηγορίης δαριστήν. 
¢ Isokratés, Busiris, p. 402, ed. Auger. Πυϑαγόρας ὁ Σάμιος, ἀφικόμενοι 


MIXED CHARACTER OF PYTHAGORAS. 895 


chiefly the religious missionary and schoolmaster, with little of 
the politician. His efficiency in the latter character, originally 
subordinate, first becomes prominent in those glowing fancies 
which the later Pythagoreans communicated to Aristoxenus and 
Dikzarchus. ‘The primitive Pythagoras inspired by the gods to 
reveal a new mode of life,|—the Pythagorean life,— and to 
promise divine favor to a select and docile few, as the recome- 
pense of strict ritual obedience, of austere self-control, and of 
laborious training, bodily as well as mental. ‘To speak with con- 
fidence of the details of his training, ethical or scientific, and of 
the doctrines which he promulgated, is impossible; for neither 
he himself nor any of his disciples anterior to Philolaus —who 
was separated from him by about one intervening generation — 
left any memorials in writing. Numbers and lines, studied 


εἰς Αἴγυπτον, καὶ μαϑητὴς τῶν ἱερέων γενόμενος, τῆν τε ἄλλην φιλοσοφίαν 
πρῶτος εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐκόμισε, καὶ τὰ περὶ τὰς ϑυσίας καὶ τὰς ἁγιστείας 
ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς ἐπιφανέστερον τῶν ἄλλων ἐσπούδασε. 

Compare Aristotel. Magn. Moralia, i, 1, about Pythagoras as an ethical 
teacher. Démokritus, born about 460 B.c., wrote a treatise (now lost) re- 
specting Pythagoras, whom he greatly admired: as far as we can judge, it 
would seem that he too must have considered Pythagoras as an ethical 
teacher (Diogen. Laért. xi, 38; Mullach, Democriti Fragmenta, lib. ii, p 
113; Cicero de Orator. iii, 15). 

Δ Jamblichus, Vit. Pyth. c. 64, 115, 151, 199: see also the idea ascribed 
to Pythagoras, of divine inspirations coming on men {ἐπίπνοια παρὰ τοὺ 
δαιμονίου). <Aristoxenus apud Stobzeum, Eclog. Physic. p. 206; Diogen 
Laért. viii, 32. 

Meiners establishes it as probable that the stories respecting the miracu 
lous powers and properties of Pythagoras got into circulation either during 
his lifetime, or at least not long after his death (Geschichte der Wissens- 
chaften, b. iii, vol. i, pp. 504, 505). 

? Respecting Philolaus, see the valuable collection of his fragments, and 
commentary on them, by Boeckh (Philolaus des Pythagoreers Leben, Ber- 
lin,1819). That Philolaus was the first who composed a work on Pythag- 
orean science, and thus made it known beyond the limits of the brother- 
hood — among others to Plato—appears well established (Boeckh, Philo- 
laus, p. 22; Diogen. Laért. viii, 15-55; Jamblichus, c.119). Simmias and 
Kebés, fellow-disciples of Plato under Sokratés, had held intercourse with 
Philolaus at Thebes (Plato, Phzdon, p. 61), perhaps about 420 Βα. The 
Pythagorean brotherhood had then been dispersed in various parts of 
Greece, though the attachment of its members to each other seems to have 


rontinued long afterwards. 


eee 


396 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


partly in their own mutual relations, partly under various sym- 
bolizing fancies, presented themselves to him as the primary con- 
stituent elements of the universe, and as a sort of magical key 
to phenomena, physical as well as moral. And these mathemat- 
ical tendencies in his teaching, expanded by Pythagoreans, his 
successors, and coinciding partly also, as has been before stated, 
with the studies of Anaximander and Thalés, acquired more and 
more development, so as to become one of the most glorious and 


profitable manifestations of Grecian intellect. Living as Pythag- 


oras did at a time when the stock of experience was scanty, 
the license of hypothesis unbounded, and the process of deduc- 
tion without rule or verifying test,—he was thus fortunate 
enough to strike into that track of geometry and arithmetic, in 
which, from data of experience few, simple, and obvious, an im- 
mense field of deductive and verifiable investigation may be 
travelled over. We must at the same time remark, however, 
that in his mind this track, which now seems so straightforward 
and well defined, was clouded by strange fancies which it 1s not 
easy to understand, and from which it was but partially cleared 
by his successors. Of his spiritual training much is said, though 
not upon very good authority. We hear of his memorial disci- 
pline, his monastic self-scrutiny, his employment of music te 
soothe disorderly passions,'! his long novitiate of silence, his 
knowledge of physiognomy, which enabled him to detect even 
without trial unworthy subjects, his peculiar diet, and his rigid 
care for sobriety as well as for bodily vigor. He is also said ta 
have inculeated abstinence from animal food, and this feeling 13 
so naturally connected with the doctrine of the metempsychosis 
that we may well believe him to have entertained it, as Empedo 
klés also did after him.2 It is certain that there were peculiat 


! Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. p. 384, ad fin. Quintilian, Instit. Orate 


ix, 4. 

5 Empedoklés, ap. Aristot. Rhetoric. i, 14,2; Sextus Empiric ix, 127; 
Plutarch, De Esu Carnium, pp. 993, 996, 997; where he puts Pythagcras 
and Empedoklés together, as having both held the doctrine of the me: 
tempsychosis, and both prohibited the eating of animal food. Ezapede- 
khés supposed that plants had souls, and that the souls of human beings 
passed after death into plants as well as into animals. “I have been 
myself heretofore (said he) a boy, a girl, a shrub, a bird, and a fish of 
the sea.” 


mm rt --.«.....». . . 


DOCTRINES OF PYTHAGORAS. 397 


observances, and probably a certain measure of self-denial em- 
bodied in the Pythagorean life; but oa the other hand, it seems 
equally certain that the members of the order cannot have been 
all subjected to the same diet, or training, or studies. For Milo 
the Krotoniate was among them,! the strongest man and the un- 
paralleled wrestler of his age, — who cannot possibly have dis- 
pensed with animal food and ample diet (even setting aside the 
tales about his voracious appetite), and is not likely to have bent 
his attention on speculative study. Probably Pythagoras did not 
enforce the same bodily or mental discipline on all, or at least 
knew when to grant dispensations. ‘The order, as it first stood 
under him, consisted of men different both in temperament and 
aptitude, but bound together by common religious observances 
and hopes, common reverence for the master, and mutual attach- 
ment as well as pride in each other’s success; and it must thus 
be distinguished from the Pythagoreans of the fourth century 
B.C., who had no communion with wrestlers, and comprised only 
ascetic, studious men, generally recluse, though in some cases 
rising to political distinction. 

The succession of these Pythagoreans, never very numerous, 
seems to have continued until about 300 B.c., and then nearly 
died out; being superseded by other schemes of philosophy more 
suited to cultivated Greeks of the age after Sokratés. But dur- 
ing the time of Cicero, two centuries afterwards, the orientalizing 
tendency —then beginning to spread over the Grecian and Ro- 
man world, and becoming gradually stronger and stronger — 
caused the Pythagorean philosophy to be again revived. It was 
revived too, with little or none of its scientific tendencies, but with 
more than its primitive religious and imaginative fanaticism, — 


ἤδη yap ποτ᾽ ἐγὼ γενόμην κοῦρός Te κύρη Te, 
ϑάμνος τ᾽, οἴωνός τε καὶ ἐξ ἁλὸς ἔμπυρος ἰχϑύς. 
(Diogen. L. viii, 77; Sturz. ad Empedokl. Frag. p. 466.) Pythagoras is 
said to have affirmed that he had been not only Euphorbus in the Grecian 
army before Troy, but also a tradesman, a courtezan, etc., and various other 
human characters, before his actual existence; he did not, however, extend 
the same intercommunicn to plants, in any case. 
The abstinence from animal food was an Orphic precept as wel es 9 
Pythagorean (Aristophan. Ran. 1032). 
? Strabo, vi, p. 263 ; Diogen. L. viii, 40 


398 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Apollonius of Tyana constituting himself a living copy of 
Pythagoras. And thus, while the scientific elements developed by 
the disciples of Pythagoras had become disjoined from all pecu- 
liarity of sect, and passed into the general studious world, — the 
original vein of mystic and ascetic fancy belonging to the master, 
without any of that practical efficiency of body and mind which 
had marked his first followers, was taken up anew into the 
pagan world, along with the disfigured doctrines of Plato. Neo- 
Pythagorism, passing gradually into Neo-Platonism, outlasted 
the other more positive and masculine systems of pagan philoso- 
phy, as the contemporary and rival of Christianity. A large 
proportion of the false statements concerning Pythagoras come 
from these Neo-Pythagoreans, who were not deterred by the 
want of memorials from illustrating, with ample latitude of fancy, 
the ideal character of the master. 

That an inquisitive man like Pythagoras, at a time when there 
were hardly any books to study, would visit foreign countries, 
and converse with all the Grecian philosophical inquirers within 
his reach, is a matter which we should presume, even if no one 
attested it; and our witnesses carry us very little beyond this 
What doctrines he borrowed, or from 


general presumption. 
But. in fact, his whole life 


whom, we are unable to discover. 
and proceedings bear the stamp of an original mind, and not of 
a borrower,—a mind impressed both with Hellenic and with 
non-Hellenic habits and religion, yet capable of combining the 
two in a manner peculiar to himself; and above all, endued with 
those talents for religion and personal ascendency over others, 
which told for much more than the intrinsic merit of his ideas. 
We are informed that after extensive travels and inquiries he 
returned to Samos, at the age of about forty: he then found his 
native island under the despotism of Polykratés, which rendered 
it an unsuitable place either for free sentiments or for marked 
individuals. Unable to attract hearers, or found any school or 
b:otherhood, in his native island, he determined to expatriate. 
And we may presume that at this period (about 535-030 B.C.) 
the recent subjugation of Ionia by the Persians was not without 
influence on his determination. The trade between the Asiatic 
and the Italian Greeks,—and even the intimacy between 
Milétus and Knidus on the one side, and Sybaris and Tarentum 


STATE OF KROTON. 999 


on the other, —had been great and of long standing, so that 


there was more than one motive to determine him to the coast 


of Italy; in which direction also his contemporary Xenophanés, 
the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, emigrated, 
seemingly, about the same time, —from Kolophon to Zankle, 


Katana, and Elea.! 

Kroton and Sybaris were at this time in their fullest prospet- 
ity, — among the first and most prosperous cities of the Hellenic 
name. To the former of the two Pythagoras directed his course. 
A council of one thousand persons, taken from among the heirs 
and representatives of the principal proprietors at its first foun- 
dation, was here invested with the supreme authority : in what 
manner the executive offices were filled, we have no information. 
Besides a great extent of power, and a numerous populatiaa, the 
large mass of whom had no share in the political franchise, 
Kroton stood at this time distinguished for two things, — the 
general excellence of the bodily habit of the citizens, attested, 
in part, by the number of conquerors furnished to the Olympic 
games, — and the superiority of its physicians, or surgeons.? 
These two points were, in fact, greatly connected with each 
other. For the therapeutics of the day consisted not so much of 
active remedies as of careful diet and regimen; while the 


trainer, who dictated the life of an athlete during his long and 
fatiguing preparation for an Olympic contest, and the professional 
superintendent of the youths who frequented the public gym- 
nasia, followed out the same general views, and acted upon the 
same basis of knowledge, as the physician who prescribed for 8 


1 Diogen. Laért. ix, 18. 
2 Herodot. iii, 131 ; Strabo, vi, p. 261: Menander de Encomiis, p. 96, ed. 


Heeren. ᾿Αϑηναίους ἐπὶ ἀγαλματοποιΐᾳ τε καὶ ζωγραφικῇ, καὶ Κροτωνιάτας 


ἐπὶ ἰατρικῇ, μέγα φρονῆσαι, ete. 
The Krotoniate Alkmzon, a younger contemporary of Pythagoras (Aris- 
among the earliest names mentioned as philosophiz- 


totel. Metaph. i, 5), is 
See Brandis, Handbuch der 


ing upon physical and medical subjects. 
Geschicht. der Philos. sect. Ixxxiii, p. 508, and Aristotel. De Generat. 
Animal. iii, 2, p. 752, Bekker. 

The medical art in Egypt, at the time when Pythzgoras visited that 


country, was sufficiently far advanced to excite the attention of an inquisi- 
tive traveller, — the branches of it minutely subdivided and strict rules laid 


down for practice (Herodot. fi, 84 ; Aristotel. Politic. iii. . 0, 4). 


400 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


state of positive bad health.’ Of medical education properly 

80 called, especially of anatomy, there was then little or nothing. 
1 See the analogy of the two strikingly brought out in the treatise. of 

Hippokratés Περὶ ἐρχαίης ἰητρικῆς, c. 3, 4, 7, vol. i, p. 580-584, ed. Littré. 
Ἔτι γοῦν καὶ viv οἱ τῶν γυμνασίων καὶ ἀσκησίων ἐπιμελόμενοι αἰεί τι προ- 


σεξευοίσκουσι, καὶ τὴν αὐτέην ὁδὸν ζητέοντες ὃ, τι ἔδων καὶ πίνων ἐπικρατήσει 
τε αὐτέων μάλιστα, καὶ ἰσχυρότερος αὑτὸς ἑωῦτοῦ ἔσται (p. 580); again, p 
584: Τί οὖν φαίνεται ἑτεροῖον διινοηϑεὶς ὁ καλεύμενος ἰητρὸς καὶ ὁμολο- 
γημένως χειροτέχνης, ὃς ἐξεῦρε τὴν ἀμφὶ τοὺς κάμνοντας δίαιταν καὶ τροφὴν, 
ἢ κεῖνος ὁ ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς τοῖσε πᾶσιν ἀνϑρώποισι τροφὴν, ἡ νῦν χρεόμεϑα, ἐξ 


ἐκείνης τῆς ἀγρίης καὶ ϑηριώδεος εὑρῶν Te καὶ παρασκευωσας διαίτης : com: 
pare another passage, not less illustrative, in the treatise of Hippokratés 
Περὶ διαίτης ὀξέων, c. 3, vol. ii, p. 245, ed. Littré. 

Following the same general idea, that the theory and practice of the 
physician is a farther development and variety of that of the gymnastic 
trainer, I transcribe some observations from the excellent Remarques 
Rétrospectives of M. Littré, at the end of the fourth volume of his edition 


of Hippokratés (p. 662). 

After having observed (p. 659) that physiology may be considered as 
divided into two parts, — one relating to the mechanism of the functions ; 
the other, to the effects produced upon the human bocy by the different 
influences which act upon it and the media by which it is surrounded ; 
and after having observed that on the first of these two branches the an- 
cients could never make progress from their ignorance of anatomy, — he 
goes on to state, that respecting the second branch they acquired a large 
amount of knowledge : — 

“ Sur la physiologie des influences extérieures, la Gréce du temps d’Hip- 
pocrate et apres lui fut le théatre d’expériences en grand, les plus impor- 
tantes et les plus instructives. Toute la population (la population libre, 
s’entend) étoit soumise ἃ un systéme régulier d’éducation physique (N. B. 
this is a little too strongly stated): dans quelques cités, ἃ Lacédémone par 
exemple, les femmes n’en étoient pas exemptées. Ce systéme se compo- 
soit d’exercices et d’une alimentation, que combinérent l’empirisme d’abord, 
puis une théorie plus savante: il concernoit (comme dit Hippocrate lui- 
méme, en ne parlant, il est vrai, que de la partie alimentaire), il concernoit 
et les malades pour leur rétablissement, et les gens bien portans pour la 
conservation de leur santé, et les personnes livrées aux exercices gymnas- 
tiques pour l’accroissement de leurs forces. On savoit au juste ce qu'fl 
falloit pour conserver seulement le corps en bon état ou pour traiter un 
malade — pour former un militaire ou pour faire un athléte — et en particu- 
lier, un lutteur, un coureur, un sauteur, un pugiliste. Une classe d’hom- 
mes, les maitres des gymnases, étoi2nt exclusivement adoanés ἃ la culture 
de cet art, auquel les médecins participoient dans les limtes de leur pro- 
fession , et Hippocrate, qui dans les Aphorismes, invoque l’exemple des 
athlétes, nous parle dans le Traité des Articulations des personnes maigres 


ARRIVAL OF PYTHAGORAS AT KROTON. 401 


The physician acquired his knowledge from observation of men 
sick as well as healthy, and from a careful notice of the way in 
which the human body was acted upon by surrounding agents 
and circumstances: and this same knowledge was not less neces 
sary for the trainer; so that the same place which contained the 
best men in the latter class was also likely to be distinguished in 
the former. It is not improbable that this celebrity of Kroton 
may have been one of the reasons which determined Pythagoras 
to go thither; for among the precepts ascribed to him, precise 
rules as to diet and bodily regulation occupy a prominent place. 
The medical or surgical celebrity of Démokédés (son-in-law of 
the Pythagorean Milo), to whom allusion has been made in a 
former chapter, is contemporaneous with the presence of Pythag- 
oras at Kroton; and the medical men of Magna Grecia main- 
tained themselves in credit, as rivals of the schools of the As- 
klepiads at Kos and Knidus, throughout all the fifth and fourth 
centuries B.C. 

The biographers of Pythagoras tell us that his arrival there, 
his preaching, and his conduct, produced an effect almost electric 
upon the minds of the people, with an extensive reform, public as 
well as private. Political discontent was repressed, incontinence 
disappeared, luxury became discredited, and the women, hastened 
to exchange their golden ornaments for the simplest attire. No 
less than two thousand persons were converted at his first preach- 
ing; and so effective were his discourses to the youth, that the 
Supreme Council of One Thousand invited him into their assem- 
bly, solicited his advice, and even offered to constitute him their 


qui n’ayant pas été amaigris par un procédé régulier de l’art, ont les chairs 
muqueuses. Les anciens médecins savoient, comme on le voit, procurer 
l'amaigrissement conformément a l’art, et reconnoitre ἃ ses effets in 
amaigrissement irrégulier: toutes choses auxquelles nos médecins sont 
étrangers, et dont ov ne retrouve l’analogue que parmi les entraineurs An- 
glois. Au reste cet ensemble de connoissances empiriques et theoriques 
dcit étre mis au rang des pertes facheuses qui ont accompagné la longue et 
turowente transition du monde ancien au monde moderne. Les admira- 
bles institutions destinées dans l’antiquité ἃ développer et affermir le corps, 
ont disparu: hygiene publique est déstituée a cet égard de toute direction 
scientifique et générale, et demeure abandonnée compleétement au hasard.” 

See also the remarks of Plato respecting Herodikus, De Republic, iii, p 
406; Aristotel Politic. iii, 11,6; iv, 1, 1° fii, 4, 1. 

VOL. Iv. 2θοο. 


402 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


prytanis, or president, while his wife and daughter were placea 
at the head of the religious processions of females.' Nor was 
his influence confined to Kroton. Other towns in Italy and 
Sicily, — Sybaris, Metapontum, Rhégium, Katana, Himera, etc., 
all felt the benefit of his exhortations, which extricated some of 
them even from slavery. Such are the tales of which the biog- 
taphers of Pythagoras are full. And we see that even the 
disciples of Aristotle, about the year 300 B.c.,— Aristoxenus, 
Dikzarchus, Herakleidés of Pontus, etc., are hardly less charged 
with them than the Neo-Pythagoreans of three or four centuries 
later: they doubtless heard them from their contemporary Py- 
thagoreans,3 the last members of a declining sect, among whom 


Δ Valerius Maxim. viii, 15, xv, 1; Jamblichus, Vit. Pyth. c. 45; Timzus, 
Fragm. 78, ed. Didot. 

? Porphyry, Vit. Pythag. c. 21-54 ; Jamblich, 33-35, 166. 

3 The compilations of Porphyry and Jamblichus on the life of Pythag- 
cras, copied from a great variety of authors, will doubtless contain some 
truth amidst their confused heap of statements, many incredible, and 
nearly all unauthenticated. But it is very difficult to single owt what 
these portions of truth really are. Even Aristoxenus and Diksearchus, 
the best authors from whom these biographers quote, lived near two 
centuries after the death of Pythagoras, and do not appear to have 
had any early memorials to consult, nor any better informants than the 
contemporary Pythagoreans,—the last of an expiring sect, and prob- 
ably among the least eminent for intellect, since the philosophers of the 
Sokratic school in its various branches carried off the acute and aspiring 
young men of that time. 

Meiners, in his Geschichte der Wissenschaften (vol. i, Ὁ. iii, p. 191, seq.), 
has given a careful analysis of the various authors from whom the twe 
biographers have borrowed, and a comparative estimate of their trustwor- 
thiness. It is an excellent piece of historical criticism, though the author 
exaggerates both the merits and the influence of the first Pythagoreans : 
Kiessling, in the netes to his edition of Jamblichus, has given some extracts 
from it, but by no means enough to dispense with the perusal of the orig- 
inal. I think Meiners allows too much credit, on the whole, to Aristox- 
enus (see p. 214), and makes too little deduction for the various stories, 
difficult to be believed, of which Aristoxenus is given as the source: of 
course the latter could not furnish better matter than he heard from his 
own witnesses. Where Meiners’s judgment is more severe, it is also better 
borne out, especially respecting Porphyry himself, and his scholar Jambli- 
chus. These later Pythagorean philosophers seem to have set up asa 
formal canon of credibility, that which many religious men of antiquity 
acved upon from 1 mere unconscious sentiment and fear of giving offence 


PERSONAL ASCENDENCY OF PYTHAGORAS. 403 


the attributes of the primitive founder passed for godlike, bu 
who had no memorials, no historical judgment, and no means of 
forming a true conception of Kroton as it stood in 530 B.c.! 

To trace these tales to a true foundation is impossible: but we 
may entertain reasonable belief that the success of Pythagoras, 
as a person favored by the gods and patentee of divine secrets, 
was very great, — that he procured to himself both the reverence 
of the multitude and the peculiar attachment and obedience of 
many devoted adherents, chiefly belonging to the wealthy and 
powerful classes, — that a select body of these adherents, three 
hundred in number, bound themselves by a sort of vow both to 
Pythagoras and to each other, and adopted a peculiar diet, rituai, 
and observances, as a token of union, — though without anything 
like community of property, which some have ascribed to them. 
Such aband of men, standing high in the city for wealth and station, 
and bound together by this intimate tie, came by almost unconscious 
tendency to mingle political ambition with religious and scientific 
pursuits. Political clubs with sworn members, under one form 
or another, were a constant phenomenon in the Grecian cities,? 


to the gods, — That it was not right to disbelieve any story recounted respect- 
ing the gods, and wherein the divine agency was introduced: no one could 
tell but what it might be true: to deny its truth, was to set bounds to the 
divine omnipotence. Accordingly, they made no difficulty in believing 
what was recounted about Aristeus, Abaris, and other eminent subjects of 
mythes (Jamblichus, Vit. Pyth. c. 138-148)— «ai τοῦτό ye πάντες ol 
Πυϑαγόρειοι ὅμως ἔχουσι πιστευτικῶς, οἷον περὶ ᾿Αρισταίου καὶ ᾿Αβάριδος τὰ 


μυϑολογούμενα καὶ doa ἄλλα τοιαῦτα λέγεται τῶν τοιούτων δὲ τῶν 


“ 
δοκούντων μυϑικῶν ἀπομνημονεύουσιν, ὧς οὐδὲν ἀπιστοῦντες ὅτι 
ἂν εἰς τὸ ϑεῖον ἀνάγηται. Also, not less formally laid down ἰὼ 
Jamblichus, Adhortatio ad Philosophiam, as the fourth Symbolum, p. 324, 
ed. Kiessling. Περὶ ϑεῶν μηδὲν ϑαυμαστὸν ἀπιστεῖ, μηδὲ περὶ Geiwy δογμά 


των. Reasoning from their principles, this was a consistent corollary to 
lay down; but it helps us to estimate their value as selectors and discrim- 
inators of accounts respecting Pythagoras. The extravagant compliments 
paid by the emperor Julian in his letters to Jamblichus will not suffice to 
establish the authority of the latter as a critic and witness: see the Epis- 
tolx, 34, 40, 41, in Heyler’s edit. of Julian’s letters. 

? Aulus Gell. N. A. iv, 11. Apollonius (ap. Jamblich. c. 262) alludes to 
τὰ ὑπομνήματα τῶν Κροτωνιατῶν : what the date of these may be, we de 
not know, but there is no reason to nelieve them anterior to Aristoxenus. 

* Thucyd. viii, 54. τὰς ξυνωμοσίας, aimep ἐτύγχανον mpirenav οὗσαι ἐν τῇ 
πύλει ἐπὶ δίκαις καὶ ἀρχαῖς, ἁπάσας ἐπελϑὼν, ete. 


404 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


aid the Pythagorean order at its first formation was the most 
efficient of all clubs; since it presented an intimacy of attach 
ment among its members, as well as a feeling of haughty 
exclusiveness against the public without, such as no other frater- 
nity could parallel.! The devoted attachment of Pythaygoreans 
towards each other is not less emphatically set forth than their 
contempt for every one else. In fact, these two attributes of the 
order seem the best ascertained, as well as the most permanent 
of all: moreover, we may be sure that the peculiar observances 
of the order passed for exemplary virtues in the eyes of its 
members, and exalted ambition into a duty, by making them 
sincerely believe that they were the only persons fit to govern. 
It is no matter of surprise, then, to learn that the Pythagoreans 
gradually drew to themselves great ascendency in the government 
of Kroton. And as similar clubs, not less influential, were formed 
at Metapontum and other places, so the Pythagorean order spread 
its net and dictated the course of affairs over a large portion of 
Magna Grecia. Such ascendency of the Pythagoreans must 
have procured for the master himself some real, and still more 
supposed, influence over the march of government at Kroton and 
elsewhere, of a nature not then possessed by any of his contem- 
poraries throughout Greece.? But his influence was probably 
exercised in the background, through the medium of the brother- 
hood who reverenced him: for it is hardly conformable to Greek 
manners that a stranger of his character should guide personally 
and avowedly the political affairs of any Grecian city. 


On this important passage, in which Thucydidés 1 otes the political clubs 
of Athens as sworn societies, — numerous, notorious, and efficient, -— I shall 
speak farther in a future stage of the history. Dr. Arnold has a good note 
on the passage. 

1 Justin, xx, 4. “Sed trecenti ex juvenibus cum svdalitii juris sacra- 
mento quodam nexi, separatam a ceteris civibus vitam exercerent, quast 
ceetum clandestine conjurationis haberent, civitatem in se converterunt.” 

Compare Diogen. Laért. viii, 3; Apollonius ap. Jamblich. c. 254; Por- 
phyry, Vit. Pyth. c. 33. 

The story of the devoted attachments of the two Pythagoreans Damon 
and Phintias appears to be very well attested: Aristoxenus heard it from 
the lips of the younger Dionysius the despot, whose sentence had elicited 
such manifestation of friendship (Porphyry, Vit. Pyth. ec. 59-62, Cicero. 
De Officiis, iii, 10; and Davis ad Cicero, Tuse. Disp. v. 22). 

3 Plutarch, Philosoph cum Principib.c.i,p.777. ἄν & ἄρχοντος ἀνδρὸς «a 


Vol. 4 M 


PYTHAGOREANS AS POLITICIANS. 406 


Nor are we to believe that Pythagoras came originally to Kro 
fon with the express design of creating for himself an ascendent 
political position, — still less that he came for the purpose οἱ 
realizing a great preconceived political idea, and transforming 
Kroton into a model-city of pure Dorism, as has been supposed 
by some eminent modern authors. Such schemes might indeed 
be ascribed to him by Pythagoreans of the Platonic age, when 
large ideas of political amelioration were rife in the minds of 
speculative men, — by men disposed to forego the authorship of 
their own opinions, and preferring to accredit them as traditions 
handed down from a founder who had left no memorials; but it 
requires better evidence than theirs to make us believe that any 
real Greek born in 580 B.c. actually conceived such plans. We 
cannot construe the scheme of Pythagoras as going farther thar. 
the formation of a private, select order of brethren, embracing his 
religious fancies, ethical tone, and germs of scientific idea, — and 
manifesting adhesion by those observances which Herodotus and 
Plato call the Pythagorean orgies and mode of life. And his 
private order became politically powerful, because he was skilful 
or fortunate enough to enlist a sufficient number of wealthy 
Krotoniates, possessing individual influence which they strength- 
ened immensely by thus regimenting themselves in intimate 
union. The Pythagorean orgies or religious ceremonies were 
not inconsistent with public activity, bodily as well as mental: 
probably the rich men of the order may have been rendered even 
more active, by being fortified against the temptations of a life of 
indulgence. ‘The character of the order as it first stood, different 
from that to which it was afverwards reduced, was indeed reli- 
gious and exclusive, but also active and domineering ; not despis- 
ing any of those bodily accomplishments which increased the 
efficiency of the Grecian citizen, and which so particularly har- 


monized with the preexisting tendencies of Kroton.! Niebuhr 


πολ.τικοῦ Kal πρακτικοῦ καϑάψηται (ὁ φιλόσοφος) Kal τοῦτον ἀναπλῆσῃ ka: 
λοκαγαϑίας, πολλοὺς δι᾽ ἑνὸς ὠφέλησεν, ὡς Πυϑαγόρας τοῖς mpwrevovot τῶν 
Ιταλιωτῶν συγγενόμενος. 

1 I transcribe here the summary given by Krische, at the <lose of his Dis- 
aertation on the Pythagorean order, p. 101: “ Societatis scopus fuit mere 
politicus, ut lapsam optimatium potestatem non modo in pristinum restitu- 
sret. sed firmaret amplificaretyue: *um summo hoc scopo duo conjunc 


406 HISTOKY OF GREECE. 


aud O. Muller have even supposed that the select Three Hun 
dred Pythagoreans constituted a sort of smaller senate at that 


fuerunt; moralis alter, alter ad literas spectans. Discipulos suos bonos 
probosque homines reddere voluit Pythagoras, et ut civitatem moderantes 
potestate sua non abuterentur ad plebem opprimendam; et ut plebs, intelli- 
gens suis commodis consuli, conditione sua contenta esset. Quoniam vero 
bonum sapiensque moderamen nisi a prudente literisque exculto viro ex- 
spectari (non) lice, philosophiz studium necessarium duxit Samius iis, qui 
ad civitatis clavum tenendum se accingerent.” 

Chis is the general view (coinciding substantially with that of O. Miiller, 
— Dorians, iii, 9, 16) given by an author who has gone through the evi- 
dences with care and learning. It differs on some important points from the 
idea which I conceive of the primitive master and his contemporary breth- 
ren. It leaves out the religious ascendency, which I imagine to have stood 
first among the means as well as among the premeditated purposes of Py- 
thagoras, and sets forth a reformatory political scheme as directly contempla- 
ted by him, of which there is no proof. Though the political ascendency 
of the early Pythagoreans is the most prominent feature in their early his- 
tory, it is not to be considered as the manifestation of any peculiar or set- 
tled political idea, — it is rather a result of their position and means οἱ 
union. Ritter observes, in my opinion more justly: “We must not be- 
lieve that the mysteries of the Pythagorean order were of a simplv politica) 
character: the most probable accounts warrant us in considering that its 
central point was a mystic religious teaching,” (Geschicht. der Philosophie, 
b. iv, ch. i, vol. i, pp. 365-368 :) compare Hoeck. Kreta, vol. iii, p. 223. 

Krische (p. 32) as well as Boeckh (Philolaus, pp. 39-42) and Ὁ. Miiller 
assimilate the Pythagorean life to the Dorian or Spartan habits, and call 
the Pythagorean philosophy the expression of Grecian Dorism, as opposed 
to the Ionians and the Ionic philosophy. I confess that I perceive no anal- 
ogy between the two, either in action or speculation. The Spartans stand 
completely distinct from other Dorians ; and even the Spartan habits of life, 
though they present some points of resemblance with the bodily training 
of the Pythagoreans, exhibit still more important points of difference in 
respect to religious peculiarity and mysticism, as well as to scientific ele 
ment embodied with it. The Pythagorean philosophy, and the Eleatic 
philosophy, were both equally opposed to the Ionic; yet neither of them is 
in any way connected with Dorian tendencies. Neither Elea nor Kroton 
were Doric cities; moreover, Xenophanés as well as Pythagoras were 
both Ionians. 

The general assertions respecting Ionic mobility and inconstancy, con- 
trasted with Doric constancy and steadiness, will not be found borne out by 
8 etndy of facts. The Dorism of Pythagoras appears to me a complete 
fancy. Ὁ. Miilley even turns Kroton into a Dorian city, contrary te all 
evidence. 


CAUSES OF PYTHAGOREAN SUBVERSION. 407 


city,! — an hypothesis no way probable ; we may rather conceive 
them as a powerful private club, exercising ascendency in the 
‘nterior of the senate, and governing through the medium of the 
constituted authorities. Nor can we receive without great allow- 
ance the assertion of Varro,2 who, assimilating Pythagoras to 
Plato, tells us that he confined his instructions on matters of 
government to chosen disciples, who had gone through a com- 
plete training, and had reached the perfection of wisdom and 
virtue. It seems more probable that the political Pythagoreans 
were those who were most qualified for action, and least for spec- 
ulation. And we may reasonably suppose in the general of the 
order that skill in turning to account the aptitudes of individuals, 
which two centuries ago was so conspicuous “πὶ the Jesuits; to 
whom, in various ways, the Pythagoreans bear considerable ΓΘ’ 
semblance. All that we can be said to know about their political 
principles is, that they were exclusive and aristocratical, adverse 
to the control and interference of the people; a circumstance no 
way disadvantageous to them, since they coincided in this respect 
with the existing government of the city, — had not their own 
vonduct brought additional odium on the old aristocracy, and 
raised up an aggravated democratical opposition, carried to the 
most deplorable lengths of violence. 

All the information which we possess, apocryphal as it is, re 
specting this memorable club, is derived from its warm admirers ; 
yet even their statements are enough to explain how it came to 
provoke deadly and extensive enmity. A stranger coming to 
teach new religious dogmas and observances, with a tincture of 
science and some new ethical ideas and phrases, though he 
would obtain some zealous votaries, would also bring upon him. 
self a certain measure of antipathy. Extreme strictness of ob- 
servances, combined with the art of touching skilfully the springs 
of religious terror in others, would indeed do much both to for- 
tify and to exalt him. But when it was discovered that science, 
philosophy, and even the mystic revelations of religion, whatever 
they were, remained confined to the private talk and practice of 


1 Niebuhr, Rémisch. Gesch. i, p. 165, 2d edit.; O. Miiller, Hist of Doi 
ans, iii, 9,16: Krische is opposed to this idea, sect. v, p. 84 
3 Vacro ap. Augustin. de Ordine, ii, 30; Krische, p. 77. 


408 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


the disciples, and were thus thrown into the background, while 
ull that was seen and felt without, was the political scedombneneh 
of an ambitious fraternity, — we need not wonder that Pythaa 
ism in all its parts became odious to a large portion of the a 
munity. Moreover, we find the order represented sa ee 
constituting a devoted and exclusive political party, but alan as 
manifesting an ostentatious self-conceit throucheut their acai 
demeanor,! — refusing the hand of fellowship to all ie nt the 
brethren, and disgusting especially their own familiar friends ao 
kinsmen. So far as we know Grecian philosophy, this is the 
only instance in which it was distinctly abused for political and 
party objects : the early days of the Pythagorean order stand 
listinguished for such perversion, which, fortunately for the prog- 
ress of philosophy, never presented itself afterwards in ένεκα": 
Even at Athens, however, we shall hereafter see that Sokratas 
though standing really aloof from all party intrigue ieee 
much of his unpopularity from supposed political cengeetion with 
Kritias and Alkibiadés,*® to which, indeed, the orator Eschinés 


ἐγένοντο τῆς διαφορᾶς of rai ΐ i ταὶ ; 
) ἐς οὐ Ταῖς i νυ 
7 ἧς Go, ἰς συγγενείαις καὶ ταῖς οἰκειότησιν ἐγγύτατα 
"αϑεστηκότες τῶν Πυϑαγορείων. Αἴτιον δ᾽ ἦν, ὅτι τὰ μὲν πολλὰ « 
ἐλύπει τῶν πραττομένων, etc.: compare also the lines descriptive of Pythag 
ΠῚ » Ἂ my. , ᾿ , ; “ ! ἽΝ ᾿ 
oras, 6. 959. Τοὺς μὲν ἑταίρους ἣγεν ἴσους μακάρεσσι ϑεοῖσι. Τοὺς δ᾽ ἀ2 
λους ἡγεῖτ᾽ οὔτ᾽ ἐν λόγῳ, ἐν ἀριϑμῷ. 

That this Apollonius, cited both by Jamblichus and by Porphyry, is 
eta of ‘T'yana, has been rendered probable by Meiners (Gesch. der 
sep nar , ἡ 990.945) - : r ’ ; ἢν | ; 
issensch. v. 1, pp 239-245): compare Welcker, Prolegomena ad Theo nid 
pp. xlv, xlvi. sil 
When we read the life of Apollonms by Philostratus, we see that the 
ormer was himself extremely c icative: he mi w i 

emely communicative: he might be the rather dis- 


; eG : 
Apollonius ap. damblichum, V. P. c. 254, 255, 256, 257. ἡγεμόνες δὲ 


posed therefore to think that the seclusion and reserve of Pythagoras was a 
ἘΝ to ascribe to it much of the mischief which afterwards overtook 

* Schleiermacher observes, that “ Philosophy among the Pythagoreans was 
connected with political objects, and their school with a practical brother! 
partnership, such as was never on any other occasion seen in Greece.” (in 
troduction to his Translation of Plato, p.12.) See also Theopons van Fr. 
a Didot, apud Atheneum, γι p. 213, and Euripidés, Médéa, 994. sil 
Xenophon, Memorab.i, 2,12; A‘schin2s, cont. Timarch. c. 34. ὑμεῖς, ἃ 
ἀἰιδηναῖοι, Σωκράτη τὸν σοφιστὴν ἀπεκτείνατε, ὅτι Κριτίαν Sites inal 
sar. ἕνα τῶν Tr aKoVTZ 


VIOLENT SUBVERSION OF ry THAGOREANS. 409 


distinctly ascribes his condemnation, speaking about sixty years 
after the event. Had Sokratés been known as the founder of a 
band holding together intimately for ambitious purposes, the re- 
sult would have been eminently pernicious to philosophy, and 
probably much sooner pernicious to himself. 

It was this cause which brought about the complete and vio 
lent destruction of the Pythagorean order. Their ascendency 
had provoked such wide-spread discontent, that their enemies 
became emboldened to employ extreme force against them. Ky- 
lon and Ninon —the former of whom is said to have sought ad- 
mittance into the order, but to have been rejected on account of 
his bad character — took the lead in pronounced opposition to 
the l’ythagoreans; and the odium which the latter had incurred 
extended itself farther to the Senate of One Thousand, through 
the medium of which their ascendency had been exercised. Prop- 
ositiuns were made for rendering the government more demo- 
cratical, and for constituting a new senate, taken by lot from all 
the people, before which the magistrates should go through their 
trial of accountability after office; an opportunity being chosen 
in whieh the Senate of One Thousand had given signal. offence 
by refusing to divide among the people the recently conquered 
territory of Sybaris.!| In spite of the opposition of the Pythag- 
oreans, this change of government was carried through. Ninon 
and Kylon, their principal enemies, made use of it to exasperate 
the people still farther against the order, until they provoked 
actual popular violence against it. The Pythagoreans were 
attacked when assembled in their meeting-house near the temple 
of Apollo, or, as some said, in the house of Milo: the building 
was set on fire, and many of the members perished ;2 none but 
the younger and more vigorous escaping. Similar disturbances, 
and the like violent suppression of the order, with destruction of 
several among the leading citizens, are said to have taken place 


1 This is stated in Jamblichus, c. 255; yet it is difficult to believe ; for if 
the fact had been so, the destruction of the Pythagoreans would naturally 
have produced an allotment and permanent occupation of the Syharitan 
territory, — which certainly did not take place, for Sybaris remained with. 
out resident possessors until the foundation cf Thurii. 

3. Jamblichus. ο. 253-259; Porphyry, ¢. 54-57; Diogen. Laér+. will. 395 
Diodor. x, Fragm vol. iv, p. 56, Wess. 

VOL. IV. is 


410 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


in other cities of Magna Grecia,— Tarentum, Metapontum, 
Kaulonia. And we are told that these cities remained for some 
time in a state of great disquietude and commotion from which 
they were only rescued by the friendly mediation of the Pelo 
ponnesian Achzans, the original founders of Sybaris and Kro 
ton, — assisted, indeed, by mediators from other parts of Greece 


[4 ἃ; e,e > 7 
The cities were at length pacified, and induced to adopt an amica- 


ble congress, with common religious festivals at a temple founded 
expressly for the purpose, and dedicated to Zeus Homarius.! 
Thus perished the original Pythagorean order. Respecting 
Pythagoras himself, there were conflicting accounts ; same rep- 
resenting that he was burnt in the temple with his disciples ;? 
others, that he had died a short time previously ; others Aiea 
affirmed that he was alive at the time, but absent, and that he 
died not long afterwards in exile, after forty days of voluntary 
abstinence from food. His tomb was still shown at Metapontum 
in the days of Cicero.’ As an active brotherhood, the Pythago- 


] > " * Ps i > ‘ie | Φ ~ . 

Polyb. ii, 39; Plutarch, De Genio Socratis, c. 13, p. 583; Aristoxenus 
ap. Jamblich. ec. 250. That the enemies of the order attacked it by set- 
ting fire to the house in which the members were assembled, is the cir. 
— in which all accounts agree. On all other points there is great 

screpancy, especially respecting the names and dates of the Pythago- 

> agg ΕῚ . γ Th 4 Η ῃ i = 
— who escaped: Boeckh (Philolaus, p. 9, seg.) and Brandis (Hand- 
. a γ . a . “λὲν » . i 

ch der Gesch. Philos. ch. lxxiii, p. 432) try to reconcile these discrep- 
ncies. i 

Aristo és i ‘es § siadé 
! Μ᾿ phanés introduces Strepsiadés, at the close of the Nubes, as set 
‘ng fire to the meeting-house (φροντιστήριον) of Sokratés and his disciples 

ἢ > > φῶς ᾿ ᾿ Ι 
eed the Pythagorean conflagration may have suggested this 
“ P., ‘ Tl ὃς ; ἫΝ" “ὧν Bee ΝΜ Α od i . Ἵ 
Ἐγιδάροτοο Samius suspicione dominatis injusta vivus in fano con- 
Tie est.” (Arnobius adv. Gentes, lib. i, p. 23, ed. Elmenhorst.) 
ieerr » Wini r ς ; ἢ μῃ 
— De Finib v, 2 (who seems to have copied from Dikzarchus: 
Bee uhr. ad Diksarchi Fragment. p. 55); Justin, xx, 4; Diogen. Laért 
viii, 40 : Jamblichus, V. P. c. 249. (i , 
O. — says (Dorians, iii, 9, 16), that “ the influence of the Pythago- 
me - . 2 * . ἡ = 
rean league upon the administration of the Italian states was of the most 


beneficial kind, which continued for many generations after the dissolution 
of the league itself.” ) 


The first of these two assertions cannot be made out, and depends only 
on the statements of later encomiasts, who even supply materials to 
contradict their own general view. The judgment of Welcker respecting 
the influence of the Pythagoreans, much less favorable, is at the same tme 
more probable. (Pra-fat. ad Theognid. p. xlv.) : 


LATER PYTHAGOREANS. 41} 


reana never revived; but the dispersed members came together 
as a sect, for common religious observances and common pursuit 
of science. They were readmitted, after some interval, into the 
cities of Magna Grecia,! from which they had been ortginally 
expelled, but to which the sect is always considered as particularly 
belonging, — though individual members of it are found be- 
sides at Thebes and other cities of Greece. Indeed, some of 
these later Pythagoreans sometimes even acquired great political 
influence, as we see in the case of the Tarentine Archytas, the 
contemporary of Plato. 

It has already been stated that the period when Pythagoras 
arrived at Kroton may be fixed somewhere between B.C. 540- 
530: and his arrival is said to have occurred at a time of great 
depression in the minds of the Krotoniates. They had recently 
been defeated by the united Lokrians and Rhegians, vastly infe- 
rior to themselves in number, at the river Sagra ; and the humil- 
‘ation thus brought upon them is said to have rendered them 
docile to the training of the Samian missionary.* As the birth 
of the Pythagorean order is thus connected with the defeat of 
the Krotoniates at the Sagra, so its extinction is also connected 
with their victory over the Sybarites at the river Traeis, or Tri- 
onto, about twenty years afterwards. 


The second of the two assertions appears to me quite incorrect ; the in- 
fluence of the Pythagorean order on the government of Magna Grecia 
ceased altogether, as far as we are able to judge. An individual Pythago- 
rean like Archytas might obtain influence, but this is not the influence of 
the order. Nor ought O. Miler to talk about the Italian Greeks giving up 
the Doric customs and adopting an Achwan government. There is nothing 
to prove that Kroton ever had Dorie customs. 

1 Aristotel. de Ceelo, ii, 13. οἱ περὶ τὴν Ἰταλίαν, καλούμενοι δὲ Πυϑαγ 
ορεῖοι. “ Italici philosophi quondam nominati.” (Cicero, De Senect 
». 24.) 

2 Heyne places the date of the battle of Sagra about 560-s.c. ; but this is 
very uncertain. See his Opuscula, vol. ii, Prolus. ii, pp. 53, and Prolus. x, p. 
184. See also Justin, xx, 3, and Strabo, vi, pp. 261-263. It will be seen 
that the latter conceives the battle of the Sagra as having happened after 
the destruction of Sybaris by the Krotoniates ; for he states twice that the 
Krotoniates lost so many citizens at the Sagra, that the city did not long 
survive so terrible a blow: he cannot, therefore, have supposed that the 
complete triumph of the Krotoniates over the great Sybaris wae gained 


sfterwards. 


412 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


Of the history of these two great Achzan cities we unforte 
nately know very little. ‘Though both were powerful, yet down 
to the period of 510 B.c., Sybaris seems to have been decidedly 
the greatest: of its dominion as well as of its much-denounced 
luxury I have spoken in a former chapter.' It was at that tima 
that the war broke out between them which ended in the destruce 
tion of Sybaris. It is certain that the Sybaritans were agcres: 
sors in the war; but by what causes it had been preceded in 
their own town, or what provocation they had received, we ake 
out very indistinctly. There had been a political revolution at 
Sybaris, we are told, not long before, in which a popular leader 
named Teélys had headed a rising against the oligarchical gov- 
ernment, and induced the people to banish five hundred of the 
leading rich men, as well as to confiscate their properties. He 
had acquired the sovereignty and become despot of Sybaris ;2 and 
it appears that he, or his rule at Sybaris, was much ‘abhorred at 
Kroton, — since the Krotoniate Philippus, a man of splendid mus- 
cular form and an Olympic victor, was exiled for having engaged 
himself to marry the daughter of Télys.3 According to the nar- 
rative given by the later Pythagoreans, those exiles, whom Télys 
had driven from Sybaris, took refuge at Kroton, and cast them- 
selves as suppliunts on the altars for protection. It may well be, 
indeed, that they were in part Pythagoreans of Sybaris. A 
hody of powerful exiles, harbored in a town so civse at hand, nat- 
urally inspired alarm, and Télys demanded that they should be 
delivered up, threatening war in case of refusal. This demand 
excited consternativn «at Kroton, since the military strength of 
Sybaris was decidediy superior. The surrender of the εὐἴἶω 
was much debated, ind almost decreed, by the Krotoniates, until 


See above, vol. iii, chap. xxii. 

* Diodor. xii, 9. Herodotus calis Télys in one place βασιλῆα, in anrather 
τύραννον of Sybaris (v, 44): this iy not at variance with the story of 
Diodorus. 

The story given by Athenzus, oat of Herakleidés Ponticus, respecting 
the swbversion of the dominion of Taiys, cannot be reconciled either with 
Herodotus or Diodorus (Athenxus, xii p 522). Dr. Thirlwall supposes 
the deposition of 'Télys to have occurred betweep the defeat at the Treeis 
and the capture of Sybaris; but this is inconsistent with th. tetemea ff 
Herakleidés, and not countenanced by any other cvdepce 

* Hervdot. vy, 47. 


DESTRUCTION OF SYBARIS. 418 


at leng-h the persuasion of Pythagoras himself is said to have 
determined them to risk any hazard sooner than incur the dis- 
honor of betraying suppliants. 

On the demand of the Sybarites being refused, 1 δῖ γβ marched 
against Kroton, at the head of a force which is reckoned at three 
hundred thousand men.'! He marched, too, in defiance of the strong- 
est religious warnings against the enterprise, — for the sacrifices, 
offered on his behalf by the Iamid prophet Kallias of Elis, were 
decisively unfavorable, and the prophet himself fled in terror to 
Kroton.2 Near the river Traeis, or ‘Trionto, he was met by the 
forces of Kroton, consisting, we are informed, of one hundred 
thousand men, and commanded by the great athlete and Pythag- 
orean Milo; who was clothed, we are told, in the costume and 
armed with the club of Hérakles. They were farther reinforced, 
however, by a valuable ally, the Spartan Dorieus, younger 
brother of king Kleomenés, then coasting along the gulf of Taren- 
tum with a body of colonists, intending to found a-settlement in 
Sicily. A bleody battle was fought, in which the Sybarites were 
totally worsted, with prodigious slaughter; while the victors, 
fiercely provoked and giving no quarter, followed up the pursuit 
vo warmly that they took the city, dispersed its inhabitants, and 
crushed its whole power® in the short space of seventy days. 
The Sybarites fled in great part to Laus and Skidrus,’ their 
settlements planted on the Mediterranean coast, across the Cala- 
brian peninsula. And so eager were the Krotoniates to render 
the site of Sybaris untenable, that they turned the course of the 
river Krathis so as to overwhelm and destroy it: the dry bed in 
which the river had originally flowed was still visible in the time 
of Herodotus,> who was among the settlers in the town of Thurn, 


afterwards founded, nearly adjoining. 


' Diodor. xii, 9: Strabo, vi, p. 263; Jamblichus, Vit. Pythag. ὁ. 2€0 
Skymn. Chi. v, 340 ® Herodot. v, 44. 

3 Diodor. xii, 9, 10; Strabo, vi, p. 263. 

4 Herodot. vi, 21; Strabo, vi, p. 253. 

5 Herodot. v, 45; Diodor. xii, 9, 10; Strabo, vi, p. 263. Strabo men 
tions expressly the turning of the river for the purpose of overwhelm 
ing the city,— ἑλόντες γὰρ τὴν πόλιν ἐπήγαγον τὸν ποταμὸν καὶ Kitt 
κλυσαν. It is to this change in the channel of the river that I refer the 
expression in Herodotus, -— τέμενός τε καὶ νηὸν ἐόντα παρὰ τὸν ξηρὸν 


105" 


414 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


It appears, however, that the Krotoniates for a long time kept 
the site of Sybaris deserted, refusing even to allot the territory 
among the body of their own citizens: from which circumstances 
as has been before noticed, the commotion against the Pythago- 
rean order is said to have arisen. They may perhaps have been 
afraid of the name and recollections of the city; wherein no 
large or permanent establishment was ever formed. until Thur 
was established by Athens about sixty-five years afterwards. 
Nevertheless, the name of the Sybarites did not perish. Hav- 
ing maintained themselves at Laos, Skidros, and elsewhere, they 
afterwards formed the privileged Old-citizens among the colonists 
of Thurii; but misbehaved themselves in that capacity, and 
were mostly either slain or expelled. Even after that, however, 
the name of Sybaris still remained on a reduced scale in some 
portion of the territory. Herodotus recounts what he was told 
by the Sybarites, and we find subsequent indications of them 
even as late as Theokritus. 

The conquest and destruction of the original Sybaris — per 
haps in 510 B.c. the greatest of all Grecian cities — appears tu 
have excited a strong sympathy in the Hellenic world. In 
Milétus, especially, with which it had maintained intimate union, 
the grief was so vehement, that all the Milesians shaved their 
heads in token of mourning.! The event happened just at the 
time of the expulsion of Hippias from Athens, and must have 
made a sensible revolution in the relations of the Greek cities on 


Κρᾶϑιν. It was natural that the old deserted bed of the river should be 
called “ the dry Krathis :” whereas, if we suppose that there was only one 
channel, the expression has no appropriate meaning. For I do not ‘think 
that any one can be well satisfied with the explanation of Bahr: “ Vocatur 
Crathis hoc loco ξηρὸς siceus, ut qui hieme fluit, estatis vero tempore exsic- 
eatus est: quod adhue in multis Italie inferioris fluviis observant.” I doubt 
whether: this be true, as a matter of fact, respecting the river Krathis (see 
my preceding volume, ch. xxii), but even if the fact were true, the epithet 
in Bahr’s sense has no especial significance for the purpose contemplated 
by Herodotus, who merely wishes to describe the site of the temple erected 
by Dorieus. “Near the Krathis,” or “near the dry Krathis,” would be 
equivalent expressions, if we adopted Bihr’s construction ; whereas to say, 
% near the deserted channel of the K~athis,” would be a good local desig: 
pation 1 Herodot. vi, 21. 


COLONIZATION OF DORIEUS. $15 


the Ttalian coast with the rustic population of the interior. The 
Krotoniates might destroy Sybaris, and disperse its inhabitants, 
but they could not succeed to its wide dominion over dependent 
territory; and the extinction of this great aggregate powcr, 
stretching across the peninsula from sea to sea, lessened the 
means of resistance against the Oscan movements from the 
inland. From this time forward, the cities of Magna Grecia, 
as well as those of Ionia, tend to decline in consequence, while 
Athens, on the other hand, becomes both more conspicuous and 
more powerful. At the invasion of Greece by Xerxés, thirty 
years after this conquest of Sybaris, Sparta and Athens send te 
ask for aid both from Sicily and Korkyra, — but not from Magna 
Grecia. 


It is much to be regretted that we do not possess fuller infor- 


mation respecting these important changes among the Greco- 


Italian cities, but we may remark that even Herodotus, — 
himself a citizen of Thurii, and dwelling on the spot not more 
than eighty years after the capture of Sybaris, — evidently found 
no written memorials to consult; and could obtain from verbal 
conversation nothing better than statements both meagre and 
contradictory. ‘The material circumstance, for example, of the 
aid rendered by the Spartan Dorieus and his colonists, though 
positively asserted by the Sybarites, was as positively denied by 
the Krotoniates, who alleged that they had accomplished the 
conquest by themselves, and with their own unaided forces. 
There can be little hesitation in crediting the affirmative asser- 
tion of the Sybarites, who showed to Herodotus a temple and 
precinet erected by the Spartan prince in testimony of his share 
in the victory, on the banks of the dry, deserted channel, out of 
which the Krathis had been turned, and in honor of the Krathian 
Athéné.! This of itself forms a proof, coupled with the positive 
assertion of the Sybarites, sufficient for the case. But they pro 
duced another indirect argument to confirm it, which deserves 
notice. Dorieus had attacked Sybaris while Le was passing 
along the coast of Italy to go and found a colony in Sicily, under 
the express mandate and encouragement of the oracle; and after 
tarrying awhile at Sybaris, he pursued his journey to the south 


1 Herodot. ¥, 45. 


416 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


western portion of Sicily, where he and nearly all bis companions 
perished in a battle with the Carthaginians and Egestwans, — 
though the oracle had promised him that he should acquire and 
eecupy permanently the neighboring territory near Mount Eryx. 
Now the Sybarites deduced from this fatal disaster of Dorieus 
ard his expedition, combined with the favorable promise of the 
8616 beforehand a confident proof of the correctness of their 
awn statement thit he had fought at Sybaris. For if he had 
gone straight to the territory marked out by the oracle, they 
argued, without turning aside for any other object, the prophecy 
on which his hopes were founded would have been unquestionably 
realized, and he would have succeeded; but the ruinous disap- 
pointment which actually overtook him was at once explained, 
and the truth of prophecy vindicated, when it was recollected 
that he had turned aside to help the Krotoniates against Sybaris, 
and thus set at nought the conditions prescribed to kim. Upon 
this argument, Herodotus tells us, the Sybarites of his day 
especially insisted! And while we note their pious and literal 
faith in the communications of an inspired prophet, we must at 
the same time observe how perfectly that faith supplied the place 
of historical premises, — how scanty their stock was of such 
legitimate evidence, -—and how little they had yet learned to 
appreciate its value. 

It is to be remarked, that Herodotus, in his brief mention of 
the fatal war between Sybaris and Kroton, does not make the 
least allusion to Pythagoras or his brotherhood. ‘The least 
which we can infer from such silence is, that the part which 
they played in reference to the war, and their general ascen- 
deney in Magna Grecia, was in reality less conspicuous and 
overruling than the Pythagorean historians set forth. Even 
making such allowance, however, the absence of all allusion in 
Herodotus. to the commotions which accompanied the subversion 
of the Pythagoreans, is a surprising circumstance. Nor can I 
pass over a perplexing statement in Polybius, which seems ta 


Herodot v,45. Τοῦτο δὲ, αὐτοῦ Δωριέος τὸν ϑάνατον μαρτύριον μέγισ- 
τὸν ποιεῦντα: (Σι Bapirac), ὅτι παρά τὰ υεμαντευμένα ποιέων διεφϑάρῳῃ 
Ei γὰρ δὴ μὴ παρέπρηξε μηδὲν, ἐπ᾿ ᾧ δὲ ἐστάλη, ἐποίεε, εἷλε ἂν τὴν ἘἜρυκένην 
χώρην καὶ ἑλὼν κάτεσχε, οὐδ᾽ ἂν αὐτός τε καὶ ἡ στρατίη διεφϑάρῃ. 


CHARONDAS THE LAWGIVER 417 


chow that he too must have conceived the history of Sybaris is 
a way different from that in which it is commonly represented 
Ile tells us that after much suffering in Magna Grecia, from the 
troubles which followed the expulsion of the Pythagoreans, the 
cities were induced by Achzan mediation to come to an accom- 
modation, and even to establish something like a permanent 
league, with a common temple and sacrifices. Now the three 
cities which he specifies as having been the first to do this, are 
Kroton, Sybaris, and Kaulonia.' But according to the sequence 
of events and the fatal war, just described, between Kroton and 
Sybaris, the latter city must have been at that time in ruins; 
little, if at all, inhabited. 1 cannot but infer from this statement 
of Polybius, that he followed different authorities respecting the 
early history of Magna Grecia in the beginning of the fifth 
century B.C. 

Indeed, the early history of these cities gives us little more 
than a few isolated facts and names. With regard to their legis- 
lators, Zaleukus and Charondas, nothing is made out except their 
existence, — and even that fact some ancient critics contested. 
Of Zaleukus, whom chronologists place in 664 B.C., I have 


already spoken; the date of Charondas cannot be assigned, but 
we may perhaps presume that it was at some time betweer 


600-500 g.c. He was a citizen of middling station, born in the 
Chalkidic colony of Katana in Sicily and he framed laws not 
only for his own city, but for the other Chalkidie cities in Sicily 


' Polyb. ii, 39. Heyne thinks that the agreement here mentioned by Po- 
lybius took place Olymp. 80, 3; or, indeed. after the repopulation of the 
Sybaritaneterritory by the foundation of Thurii (Opuscula, vol. ii; Pro- 
lus. x, p. 189). Bus there seems great difficulty in imagining that the 
state of violent commotion — which, according to Polybius, was only ap- 
peased by this agreement — can possibly have lasted so long as half a cen- 
tury; the received date of the overthrow of the Pythagoreans being about 
504 B.C. 

 Aristot. Politic. ii, 9,6; iv, 9.10. Heyne puts Charondas much earlier 
than the foundation of Thurii, in which, I think, he is undoubtedly right: 
but withont determining the date more exactly (Opuscul. vol. ii; Prolus. 
ix, p. 160), Charondas must certainly have been earlier than Anaxilas of 
Rhécium and the great Sicilian des”ots ; which will place him higher than 
500 Βασι: but I ἴο not know that a. y more precise mark of t me can he 


2708 


found. 
VOL. IV- 


418 HISTORY OF GREECE. 


and Italy, — Leontini, Naxos, Zanklé, and Rhégium. The laws 
and the solemn preamble ascribed to him by Diodorus and 
Stobzeus, belong to a later day,! and we are obliged to content 
ourselves with collecting the brief hints of Aristotle, who tells 
us that the laws of Charondas descended to great minuteness of 
distinction and specifica*ion, especially in graduating the fine for 
offences according to the property of the guilty person fined,? — 
‘ut that there was nothing in his laws strictly original and pecu- 
liar, except that he was the first to introduce the solemn indictment 
against perjured witnesses before justice. The perjured witness, 
in Grecian ideas, was looked upon as having committed a crime 
half religious, half civil; and the indictment raised against him, 
known by a peculiar name, partook of both characters, approach- 
ing in some respects to the procedure against a murderer. Such 
distinct form of indictment against perjured testimony — with its 
appropriate name,’ which we shall find maintained at Athens 


1 }iodorus. xii, 35: Stobseus, Serm. xliv. 20-40; Cicero de Legg. ii, 6 
See K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech. Staatsalterthiimer, ch. 89; Heyne 
Opuseul. vol. ii, pp. 72-164. Brandis (Geschichte der ROm. Philosophie, 
ch. xxvi, p. 102) seems to conceive these prologues as genuine. 

The mistakes and confusion made by ancient writers respecting tliese 
lawgivers — even by writers earlier than Aristotle (Politic. ii, 9, 5) — are 
such as we have no means of clearing up. 

Seneca (Epist. 90) calls both Zaleukus and Charondas disciples of 
Pythagoras. That the former was so, is not to be believed; but it is not 
wholly impossible that the latter may have been so,—or at least that he 
may have been a companion of the earliest Pythagoreans. 

2 Aristotel. Politic. ii, 9,8. Χαρώνδου δ᾽ ἴδιον μὲν οὐϑέν ἐστι πλὴν αἱ δίκαι 
τῶν ψευδομαρτύρων" πρῶτος γὰρ ἐποίησε τὴν ἐπίσκηψιν" τῇ & ἀκριβείᾳ τῶν 
νόμων ἐστὶ γλαφυρώτερος καὶ τῶν νῦν νομοϑετῶν. To the fulness and pre 
cision predicated respecting Charondas in the latter part of this passage, I 
refer the other passage in Politic. iv, 10, 6, which is not to be construed as 
if it meant that Charondas had graduated fines on the rich and poor with 
a distinct view to that political trick (of indirectly elimmating the poor 
from public duties) which Aristotle had been just adverting to, — but mere- 
ly means that Charondas had been nice and minute in graduating pecuniary 
penalties generally, having reference to the wealth or poverty of the person 
sentenced. 

8 Πρῶτος yap ἐποίησε τὴν ἐπίσκηψιν (Aristot. Ῥοϊο. ἢ, 9,8). See Har- 
pokration, v, ᾿Ἐποσκήψατο, and Pollux, viii, 88 ; Démosthenés cont. Ste- 
phanum, ii, c. 5; cont. Euerg. et Mnésibul. c. 1. The word ἐπίσκηψις car. 
nes with it the solemnity of meaning adverted to it ju the text, and seemr 


CHRONDAS THE LAWGIVER. 419 


throughout the best-known days of Attic law — was first enacted 
by Charondas. 


to have been used specially with reference to an action or indictment 
against perjured witnesses: which indictment was permitted to be brought 
with a less degree of risk or cost to the accuser than most others in the 


Attic dikasteries, (Démosth. cont. Euerg. et Mn. ἐ c.) 


COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


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